The Frewyn Herald: Home of the Haanta Series

There are good neighbours and bad neighbours, and while bad neighbours might be decent people, their noise will make them offensive, especially when the noise is that of ten wanton children.  B aba continued along the fence, watching for the neighbour’s children, expecting them to harass her at any moment, and her cat followed her lead, pattering in and out of the pickets, scouring the adjacent field with nose high and tail low. Baba waited beside the fence, watching her cat swat a   and just as Baba determined she was safe from all interaction with her neighbours, a familiar voice caught her ear. Her nose twitched, her chin whiskers bristled, and she began her grumblings on the man failings of “farmers who don’t know how to manage their sow and piglets.” She would have preferred a wanton boar roaming about her fields in quest of a few hazelnuts rather than the disenchanted whinges of fat children crying about the supper’s being not done or about there being no buns to ...

The mountains along Frewyn's western boarder are named after Menor, The Fourth Son of Diras. Unlike his older brothers, he is a rather diffident God, preferring to perform miracles and visit his children in secret. He quietly defies Frannach, gets on well with Borras, and brooks Aoidhe's incessant japery with all the endurance that being a youngest brother can imply.  T hey cleared the field together, Baba picking up the stones and hurling them aside, and Aoidhe walking alongside her, replanting the bulbs she had planted along the border of the fields lately pulled out by a few wanton squirrels. She feared at first that Aoidhe would improve their looks by ‘doing his     Goddin’ business’ on them, and was prepared to reproach him by way of the cane she had left leaning on the side of the house, but he subdued his natural inclination to solve every difficulty by ‘puttin’ his share-end inna it’, and behaved while Baba Connridh was by. He could have cleared away the fie...

Not everyone has the ear of the Gods. While those who follow the Word, read the Good Book every Gods' Day, and say their prayers to their patron deities might receive a hint or two in return for devotion, there are those who see the Gods more as friends than beings of worship-- or in Gran Mara Connridh's case, beings of annoyance, who exist only to plague her mind and ruin her work in the field. B aba Connridh trundled about for another half hour, wending her way down the rows, rather hoping the children would come at last as an excuse to make her apron lighter, but the wind changed again, the grass peaking out of the snowmelt bowed to the wind, and the heat from the morning sun instantly cooled. A few mare’s tales drifted in overhead, a gale rippled along the rows, an oppressive silence descended, and Baba’s nose twitched. She righted and listened, her nose hairs standing on end, vibrating as though communicating that something were about to happen.     ...