1st 5 Pages Oct Workshop - Loftis Rev 2

Name: Taelor Loftis

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Title: Veil of Sparks

Pitch:

After eight years of sorrow and pain, Cailan Murray is convinced that her past is what happened to her, not who she is. Secrets her dead mother bore swirl inside her own soul, and the name of the place these secrets dwell, Aspen Springs, rings through her. Here, magic reigns in the midst of mundane and Veils between worlds are visible—if one has the eyes to see them. With a promise to learn what her mother hid, Cailan enters Aspen Springs University, where things aren’t always how they appear. 

Atlas Collins, a blood-sworn Sentinel, lives by an oath: to protect the righteous and destroy the evil, so long as the light burns within. Though his path has long been destined to cross with Cailan, nothing can prepare him for the sacrifice he must make, all in the name of duty. 

The Great War between the Veils and the Underworld is ancient and Cailan’s dangerous secrets add fuel to the flames. Does she let her mortal weakness show, allowing the Night Army to claim her life and all of the Veils, or does she harness the power of her secrets and bravely rise above? Deadly decisions must be made.

Revision 2:

I am Cailan Murray and weak has never been my name—the affirmation rings through Cailan’s bones as her eyes scan the jagged peaks of the Sangre de Cristos in a last ditch effort to hold herself together. The chaos of students and parents scurrying around amidst a maze of boxes, furniture, and other various belongings becomes a distant reality as her eyes search the horizon for anything to focus on to settle her mixed emotions.

Aspen Springs, with its beautiful and haunting surroundings, has always been the kind of place that makes Cailan peer a little more closely at things. Often, she’s convinced she’s glimpsed the unfamiliar sky of some other world beyond her own or noticed a phantom sparkle swimming in the depths of a passerby’s eyes.

Across the parking lot, someone’s possessions tear through the bottom of cardboard box and scatter across Aspen Springs University’s cobblestone pavers. The sound echoes off the granite, moss-covered buildings, tethering her back to reality. College move-in day is in full force, but for Cailan it’s come to an end—her few belongings tucked away safely in her new dorm room, and her uncle readying himself to leave. Despite the buzz of anxious excitement, today serves as a gentle reminder of times spent with her mother hiking these very mountains, and as a whispered promise to believe that she is not sorrow, that she is not pain, and that her past is what has happened to her, not who she is, and not who she will become.  

“Are you all right?” her Uncle Oliver asks, searching her stormy eyes for the truth they both know her words won’t say. “You look just like Fiona when you get lost in your thoughts like that.”

“I’m…good,” Cailan murmurs half-heartedly while flashing an even less stellar smile. She supposes another half-truth tagged on to the endless stream of them she’s told throughout the years won’t really matter.

A sharp talon of a memory claws its way up from the dregs of her mind like a nightmare sprung to life—her mother’s funeral on an unseasonably cold spring day. She pushes back against that memory, willing it to fade into the darkness where it resides. But her relief is short-lived. Another memory replaces the first—this one a still-life image of Ollie’s two-bedroom house in Williams, the home they’d shared for the last eight years.

Cailan swallows hard against a sob rising in her throat, fixing her eyes on the ground and absentmindedly toeing at some loose gravel.

Ollie starts to speak but she waves him off and cuts in, wiping away a tear. “You’re the only family I have left. Mom was the last person I ever said goodbye to.” Her voice cracks on the last few words as her emotions threaten to consume her. “I’ve been saying goodbye to people and places my entire life. I don’t want to ever say goodbye again.”

Furious at herself for allowing tears to form, Cailan kicks the pile of loose gravel towards Ollie’s truck. He peels himself from his resting spot against the old, blue Ford, nervously adjusting and readjusting his faded ASU cap atop his sandy curls, before embracing her in a giant bear hug. His arms tighten around her to the point where she finds it difficult to breathe, and as her tears betray her, spilling over the seams of her eyes, the soft knit fabric of his t-shirt collects them.

“Cai, I think you’re worrying about too many things you shouldn’t be worrying about today. You’ve got this.” Ollie’s words resonate through his chest.

When Cailan’s trembling slows and the nightmarish memories grow dim, she releases Ollie and dares to meet his eyes. His lopsided grin stretches across his face, a trait he shares with his sister. Longing pangs through her as she thinks about how much he resembles her mom.

“Don’t be afraid to have fun, Cai. You have your whole life to be adulty and serious. Enjoy your time here. You only get to do college for the first time, once.”

“I promise I’ll try—will—I promise I will have fun.” The sound of these words tumbling from her mouth are strange and foreign to Cailan. She’s always been more of a work first and play never type of girl, though she supposes Ollie is right. Getting an education is important, but discovering the secrets she knows her mother harbored is a priority—and being in the center of the place where those secrets began is exactly where she needs to be. After all, her mother’s memory lives here, nestled amongst the grotesque gargoyles with their ever-watching eyes and whispering through the pale, silvery leaves of the towering aspens.

As Ollie makes his way around his truck, Cailan studies the Sangre de Cristos surrounding the sprawling, gothic campus. Her blue-grey eyes climb higher and higher until nearing the top of the tallest peak, lingering on that spot, anticipating something more—an answer, perhaps, that there’s more to life than what’s perceived. And maybe her mother understood this. Maybe she, too, felt and saw veils of worlds beyond our own, she thinks.

Her attention is drawn away from the mountains when someone rushes past her, brushing her shoulder. She spins, expecting to find another student or parent juggling too many things and racing towards the dorm. Instead, now a few paces away, strides a man—no, a boy—with his hands shoved in the pockets of his cuffed jeans. As if aware of Cailan’s gaze, the boy glances over his shoulder, wearing a wicked grin beneath his dark stubble. Flecks of silver dance in the midnight pools of his eyes. And when he winks at Cailan, a dark chill runs through her, driving home the truth that this place is, in fact, more than it seems.

The sound of Ollie’s rusted truck door slamming shut startles her.

He leans across the bench seat speaking to Cailan through the passenger window. “Cai,” he begins, “I won’t say goodbye. Goodbye is permanent.” Again, his lopsided grin spreads across his face. “So instead, I’m saying later.”

And in the words between his words Cailan finds grace against her fears. “Later,” she says, daring to let a smile slip across her lips.

Cailan listens to the old Ford’s engine echoing off the granite buildings as it winds its way out the main entrance of the university.

I will do what I must to learn the secrets of this place—to become a part of the world my mom lived in, she thinks, even if it means becoming a secret myself.