HAWKMERE: A FAIRY TALE

by Marcus Attwater

novella, epub

After years in London and Paris the disgraced elf-lord known as Charles Legris has almost grown used to life among lesser mortals. With a nearly unlimited supply of fairy gold, glamour that would put a dandy to shame and an excellent tailor, he cannot say that exile has been a hardship. But he is still homesick for his own lands, and as the term of his banishment draws to a close he and his sister Odile move to Hawkmere, a forbidding mansion on the boundary with Elfland, where he takes up a post as dancing master. And that is where it all starts to go wrong. For his pupils are Alfie, a possible if unlikely heir to the English throne, and his soon-to-be fiancée Odette, who becomes firm friends with Odile. In a bid to keep the boundary secret Legris is forced to abandon his aloofness and contend with touchy human aristocrats and meddlesome elvish ones. Having inadvertently trapped Odette on his own side of the boundary and feeling reluctantly responsible for Alfie, he must find a way out for them from the age-old patterns of a fairy tale ¬– a tale which gets ever more twisted in the telling...

Hawkmere is a Regency fairy tale about things not being as they seem, not even the old story of a beautiful youth stolen away by an elf. It is part of the Tales of the Boundaries, a series of novellas exploring what happens when this and the otherworld meet. They can be read in any order.