Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Maid’s Caul
    The Maid’s Caul
    The Maid’s Caul
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    The Maid’s Caul

    By Jon Jacks

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When the same girl appears in every dream, Zoa sets out to find her.
    Three times he thinks he’s found her, only for each girl to insist he must be seeking her far more beautiful sister.
    At the palace of the girls’ mother, the queen has been deserted by everyone but a maid born with an irremovable caul; a maid who serves yet never sees a prisoner held in a high tower.
    Is this where Zoa will find the girl of his dreams?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJon Jacks
    Release dateJul 14, 2021
    ISBN9781005664169
    The Maid’s Caul
    Author

    Jon Jacks

    While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you're second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside. On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her. So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now 'after talking to the boy'. 'Boy?' we asked. 'What boy?' 'The little boy; he's been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.' We rushed into the room, looking around. There wasn't any boy there of course. 'There isn't any little boy here,' we said. 'Of course,' my daughter replied. 'He told me he wasn't alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.' A child's wild imagination? Well, that's what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise. And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

    Read more from Jon Jacks

    Related to The Maid’s Caul

    Related ebooks

    YA Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      5 New Fantasy Novels Invigorate Old Tropes

      May 18, 2023

      Spell books, dragons, mermaids, fairies and a magic circus all take on new life in the pages of these five enchanting tales hitting shelves in May and June.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Witches Of Literature

      May 30, 2023

      Tor Books T. KINGFISHER challenges the idea of the “wicked witch” through the gravewitch in her subversive fairy tale Nettle & Bone. The nameless dust-wife—part witch, part gravedigger—is all too willing to help the novel’s heroine on her quest to ki

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Hazel Wood' Has Few Uses For Enchantment

      Jan 30, 2018

      In Melissa Albert's dark take on fairy tales, 17-year-old Alice has spent her entire life on the run from her family legacy: a terrifying mythical world created by her grandmother, a famous author.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Children Will Listen: The Blakean World of ‘Into the Woods’

      Jun 21, 2023

      Like Sondheim, William Blake uncovered the darker elements of children’s literature. The post Children Will Listen: The Blakean World of ‘Into the Woods’ appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Path Through the Woods

      May 30, 2023

      A Path Through the Woods
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Primeval Comic Book

      Aug 1, 2017

      The Primeval Comic Book
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Foulest One Of All

      Nov 11, 2023

      The legend of the Loathly Lady circulated for centuries in medieval Britain, and its central figure is a woman so ugly she is practically monstrous. One of the best iterations of the tale, which survives in multiple different versions, was written so

      5 min read

    • Article

      Weird World Folklore Frenzy

      Oct 6, 2022

      Weird World Folklore Frenzy
      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 16, 2024

      Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Aug 8, 2024

      Great Read
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tale As Old As Time: The Dark Appeal of 'Beauty And The Beast'

      Mar 26, 2017

      Disney's new live-action extravaganza is just the latest retelling of this classic fairy tale. But why do Beauty and her Beast have such a hold on us? And why are there so many versions of their tale?

      4 min read

    • Article

      Quirrell From Hollow Knight

      Oct 6, 2020

      Quirrell From Hollow Knight
      2 min read

    • Article

      Worlds Of Ink And Paper

      Nov 22, 2022

      As a young girl, I still remember my dear mother, smile on her face, curled up with Family Circle magazine in her lap. She was engrossed in an article titled “Butternut Wisdom,” written by Gladys Taber. At my age, it didn’t mean a thing to me. But as

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Maid’s Caul

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Maid’s Caul - Jon Jacks

      Chapter 1

      The best maid is completely unnoticeable: so diligently and quietly providing for our every need that anyone would think dirty cups have been whisked away as if by an invisible spirt, fires in the grate lit by nothing more than a wish, beds freshly prepared because it is wholly of their own nature to clean and tidy themselves up.

      And so we, too, will ignore her for now.

      There is a young, handsome man whom many would understandably find far more interesting. Being more fortunately wellborn, he has ample time to ponder the important things in life that no hardworking maid would consider worthy of her attention for even a moment.

      He has suffered dreams of the most beautiful girl, a girl benefiting from every grace a bountiful nature could endow, a girl whispering to him enticingly, yet always remaining just out of reach…

      Surely this is the girl he’s destined to marry?

      What other reason could there be for such realistic, such torturous dreams?

      The glimpses of his beloved, naturally, are forever always tantalisingly close, within reach, almost touchable; and then, just as he stretches out a hand, or proffers his lips for a kiss, she turns, and is gone, as if she’d never, ever really been there in the first place.

      Rather, he suddenly finds himself lost deep within the woods, as if lured here by a malevolent spirt who wishes him harm.

      And here he feels entirely bereft, strangely empty, for he’s truly nothing without her.

      ‘These are nothing but the wishful imaginings of youth,’ his father’s advisors assuredly inform him when he asks for an interpretation of his visions. ‘The truth is, no such girl exists, except in your most fevered sleep.’

      ‘If you were ever unfortunate enough to find this girl at last in your embrace, you’d discover she melts away to nothing or, in the fluid, ever-changing nature of sleep, transforms in your arms into a hideous monster you can only wish to flee.’

      ‘I disagree!’ the young prince declared adamantly. ‘Night after night I dream of her, and only her; as if she calls out to me across the vast expanses of sleep’s realm, wishing me to know that somewhere – somewhere within our world – she waits for me.’

      The king’s advisors merely shrugged at the young man’s refusal to accept their well-meant advice.

      Hadn’t they, too, when they were young, suffered similarly enticing dreams?

      Eventually, like them, he would come to accept that attempting to strip away the veils of our dreams and somehow make the substance real only ever leads to disappointment.

      ‘In my last dream of her, the one I had only last night, she seemed to rise up from the sea itself,’ the prince explained, seeing no reason to describe how the sun, moon, and all the stars had earlier set and been readily absorbed within this sea. ‘I’ve asked my father to grant me a year in which I can search for her.’

      *

      There were far more roads leading out and stretching away from his father’s kingdom than the prince could have ever conceived, even though he restricted the infinite pathways his journey could take by always heading towards where the sun set each day.

      Even so, it was only when the sun finally set that he could at last be with his true love once more: for even though every city, even every town, had its fair share of the most gorgeous girls and women imaginable, none came close to matching the perfect beauty he sought.

      Indeed, when he was at his most disheartened, he often found himself wishing he could sleep forever, if this were truly the only way that he could always be with her. Even as he travelled, then, he tended to let his mount lead the way as he drifted off into a far more pleasant sleep, where he might yet be rewarded with further glimpses of his love.

      He frequently awoke, it seemed, while in the midst of his dreams, while wholly forgetting when he had originally laid down to sleep, such were the minglings of his happy visions and sad reality.

      In the wilder areas of woodland he was now passing through, pathways were far less obvious, especially if they were rarely trodden these days and had fallen into disuse. A previously clear track could slowly peter away to nothing but a narrow gap wildly meandering between overgrown bushes, or chaotically branch off into any number of faded trails leading off into darker, even more forbidding areas of the vast forest.

      Here, too, he’d left behind the very last of the familiar, reassuring sounds of a carefully tended and tamed land, the cheerful greetings of toiling farmhands, the bright ‘good-days’ of busy milk maids. It had all been replaced now with the worrying rustling of creatures hidden in the undergrowth, the startling cries of disturbed birds.

      Naturally, those woodland animals hiding away in fear from a passing rider are nothing to worry about at all. Far more worrying are those beasts that don’t have a care that you might hear the crash of hundreds of splintering branches as they rush towards you through the veiling bushes.

      Their thunderous pounding of the earth, their ferocious snorts: they’re all there to let you know your time has suddenly been brought short.

      As the prince blissfully sleeps, his mount is more thankfully aware of the swiftly approaching danger. Yet it’s an alertness hurriedly edging towards nervousness; and when the giant boar finally breaks out of the bushes into the open, the mare rears up in fright, throwing her rider

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1