Step through the portal and enter the world of Faerie.
What if you followed a path through a city park, and found yourself in another land? What if the archway you just passed is really a portal to Faerie? What if the guardian of an opening into our world has perished, and left the doorway unattended?
If you catch a glimpse of the Faery Queen
Consider whether you should remain unseen
If you come across a faery ring
Listen to the wind laugh, and murmur and sing
But beware, for if you enter the world of the Fae
You may have no choice but to stay…
Walk through the doorway and into sixteen different worlds of magic and enchantment in the third volume of the anthology series A Procession of Faeries.
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The Stories
“Sidewynd,” by Alexandra Brandt, takes us to Edinburgh, Scotland. Born of two worlds but important to neither, Sky Patel balances life between her beloved city and its mirror in the faerie realm known as the Wynd. But everything changes with the retirement of her friend and mentor—and sole protector of Edinburgh’s Old Town.
Now, despite her best intentions, Sky finds her careful balance cracking. And she may be called to do more—and be more—than she could ever believe possible.
In “Midnight Thread,” by Brigid Collins, Cassandra keeps the spiders’ way, carrying a spool of midnight thread to repair the web she’d strung along the ley line. She’d planned to catch the lake pixies when they swarmed at the end of the summer, but had been foiled by her sister, who insisted on creating “art” with one of the pixies. Reduced to dining on moths, Cassandra learns something new and surprising about her own sister.
Lodie is dying, and takes her beloved horse out for one last ride in Diana Benedict’s “Dancing in the Moonlight.” They come across the queen of the faeries, who is following the ley line on the way to her summer court. Even with her magic the queen cannot cure Lodie, but she offers Lodie her heart’s desire.
In Annie Reed’s “How We Danced,” the stroke that robbed Claudia of the use of her body left something magical behind—a doorway to the Other Place. A happy place where she can escape the limitations of the real world for a little while.
If only she had someone to share it with.
Someone who would take her dancing.
“The Good Neighbors,” by DeAnna Knippling, is set in the small town of East Smithville where nobody knew why some people, on foggy nights, just flat-out disappeared.
Or rather, everyone knew why. The fairies took people.
The question was: how did the fairies decide who to take?
Tamara is bespelled by a faerie curse, framed for stealing a baby, and watches her boyfriend get spirited away by the beguiling fae bitch in Dayle A. Dermatis’ “At the Mirk and Midnight Hour.”
But Tamara isn’t someone who takes this sort of shit lying down.
She has a legacy to uphold, and a boyfriend to rescue…and a secret that will rock both the faerie and mundane worlds.
Detective Ron Conroy gave up hoping for a better world a long time ago in Karen L. Abrahamson’s “With One Shoe“. When he attends the dilapidated home of Elvira Paradis to investigate the disappearance of her daughter, he finds not only a woman worn beyond her years, but also visions of someplace—else. Someplace wonderful.
A delinquent youth becomes the primary suspect and takes Ron into the world of high school art classes, unrequited love and lost hope. Will the investigation result in the arrest of the wrong man—or rekindle Ron’s faith?
It’s hard to believe something as small as a sneeze can change the world, but that’s exactly what happens in Louisa Swann’s “One Good Sneeze.” Chiaroscuro Addicott Settlemire Moss didn’t believe in faeries, even though Da had always insisted they were real. And then Chia’s world turned upside down the day she found herself in the Land of the Infamous Fae.
In Lisa Silverthorne’s “Dust,” Club Oberon is an opulent dance club where bands of beautiful, vacuous fey hung out when they weren’t on Portland’s streets—stealing human souls. They lured humans to the exclusive downtown club with a pinch and a promise: a pinch of fey dust and a promise of Tír na nÓg’s riches if they’d only take that one last step…into oblivion.
In “To Have…and To Hold,” by Deb Logan, Artie Woodward and Jed Kendrick have fallen in love and plan to marry. But when Jed’s Irish grandmother invites them to visit her in Dublin, they discover what their shared ability to see the creatures they call “Terrors” really means. They are Seers. They can see the Fae…but the Fae don’t like being seen. When Jed is kidnapped and ensorcelled by the Faery Queen, Artie must use every skill she has to rescue the man she loves!
The Gothic mansion in Brenda Carre’s “Venom” would be the perfect place to haunt if there were such things as ghosts. But Marietta knows ghosts aren’t real, since her stupid sister hasn’t come back to haunt her. She wheedles her way into the house to talk with the old woman who lives there, hoping to find something of worth. But instead she learns about venom, which can be useful in so many ways…
Koko and Shacho are living in the ruins of civilization in Japan after a world war in Rei Rosenquist’s “Along These Lines.” Koko goes in search of the Magician, a magical being who had provided a spell to stop the hydrogen bomb and end the wars. Only that was a fairy tale, a story Shacho told on good days. The Magician wasn’t real.
Except the Magician was real after all.
In Linda Jordan’s “At the Crossroads,” Maureen is spending a year in Ireland after the deaths of her grandmother and parents. She’s rented a cottage next to the woods, unaware that her cottage stands at the crossroads of her world and Faerie.
Brea’s mother had not been a normal human woman, but a mystery born of water and starlight in Anthea Sharp’s “Waterborne.” Brea’s soul stirs with a fierce longing for more. She leaves her village after the death of her father, and searches for answers…and for home.
We go back to 1969 in Jamie Ferguson’s “And Then There Are Cats.” Abby had been looking forward to watching the landing of the Apollo 11 lunar module on television, but her orange tabby cat Neill snuck out the screen door, so she’s spending her day chasing after him instead. He runs across the street, into the city park, and down a path Abby hasn’t seen before. Finally Neill leaps off the path and into a small meadow in the middle of a forest…except Abby knows there’s no forest anywhere near the city…
In Sharon Kae Reamer’s “Night Shepherd,” Juliette von der Lahn does biogenetics research late at night in the University of Cologne biology lab. In addition to working on her doctorate, she uses her magic to clone hybrid animals with special properties. One night a korrigan appears in the lab and tells Juliette that the night shepherd, a creature out of Breton Celtic legend, has perished. But these mythical creatures don’t just die, they transform. And they get hungry. Juliette has no idea how to clone the night shepherd, but with the veil open and the irresistible scent of human blood in the air, she’d better learn fast.
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A Procession of Faeries
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