Today on the blog, author John Tarrow provides an extract of his fantastical new release Talliston. The book has a beautiful cover, and the extract is intriguing to say the least. Enjoy!
THE BOOK
It is Twelfth Night 1590 and thirteen-year-old Bríane races to save her grandmother
from execution for crimes of witchcraft. Only one thing can prove her innocence; a
magicals grimoire owned by the town’s dark and sinister lord. In the attempt the girl
loses the precious book at a crossroad of all worlds called The Forest of Doors. Can
she locate the spell book in time to save Old Mother Moore from her terrible fate? Or
will she fall victim to the wood’s dark and dangerous puzzle of doors and rooms?
Both sequel and prequel to The Stranger’s Guide To Talliston, this new story revisits
many of the original thirteen locations but in entirely different moments – plus adds
two dozen new rooms in its extraordinary expanded universe. Starting in Elizabethan
Essex, The Stranger’s Door To Talliston goes deeper into the mysteries, adventures
and heroes battling to save the last magical places on Earth.
THE HOUSE
The novel is inspired by and set inside a unique and amazing house and gardens.
Talliston was a 25-year project that took the UK’s most ordinary house and
transformed it, room by room, by ordinary people on an ordinary budget, into
Britain’s Most Extraordinary Home.
Starting as a three-bedroomed, semi-detached, ex-council house in Essex, today not
a single square centimetre of the original house remains. In its place is an
extraordinary labyrinth of locations, each set in different times and places.
EXTRACT
TWELFTH NIGHT (MIDNIGHT)
WITCHCROSS MEDEGREAT DUNMOW, ESSEX, UNITED KINGDOM NOW
THE GIRL RAN THROUGH THE snow and darkness of the midnight wood, clutching the heavy book to her chest. The storm tore at her hooded cloak like the wind between worlds, whipping her hair from its tight plaits and ribbons. Despite the masquerade mask, unseen branches still found the flesh of her cheeks and her fingers froze against the book’s leather bindings. Behind her the chimneys and gables of Newton Hall were no longer visible. Out here no carolling nor festive music touched the January night. Every inch of her thirteen-year-old frame wanted to go back, to return to the Twelfth Night games and revels, while every ounce of her resolve forced her on.
What have I done? she thought as she ran. And more, what am I going to do? She had no idea. Bríane’s task had been simple enough – to enter the manor under cover of the night’s festivities and steal the Grand Grimoire of the hall’s master. Locating the resting place of Lord D’Ante’s dread spell book and leaving in secret was hardly an endeavour on par with Sir Francis Drake’s defeat of Spain’s Armada, but still she had failed. Though she had done all that was asked of her, earlier that evening, Old Mother Moore had been arrested and found grievous guilty of heresy and of practising the forbidden art of witchcraft. For these unforgivable crimes she was to be burned alive this night. Bríane had been too long in the task. Too distracted by folly and fancy. She had failed, and in so doing damned her grandmother to the flames.
So how could Bríane hope to halt an execution? It was impossible. I’m just a child, she acknowledged, and this is all my fault. It was said the book’s owner had power enough to conjure dastards and raise the dead, so the girl could only imagine the might and magic the book possessed. Still, she was no skilled sorceress, was barely able to craft moonwater. Did she think she could summon demons from the tome’s dark pages to serve her? It was foolishness and fantasy.
Stop it, she thought. There is no quarter for a craven heart. Not now. Not out here in this witching-hour wood.
“While magic exists, hope exists,” she whispered. “Without magic, there is nothing.” Instinctively Bríane reached for Old Mother Moore’s talisman at her throat, seeking its strength. But it offered only the opposite.
I have killed my grandmother with this, she thought bitterly as her fingers found the moss-green pendant.True as if I bound her to that stake and cast the torch into the pyre wood myself.
John Tarrow is a storyteller, poet, shaman, award-winning author and creator of Britain’s most extraordinary home; Talliston House and Gardens.
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