I promised a story, and a story, it is!  This is an excerpt from the new book, an interim book, one might say, between “WInterfrost” and “Above the Stars.”  For those of you have read “Winterfrost” you have met this family on the way to the Farmer’s Market. For those of you who haven’t met them before, BUY THE BOOK! Actually, it can be a stand alone book about these charming gnomes and they will have an interaction with the gnomes of Twistedoak. So, for now, meet Rawlink Ragwort…

” Rawlink was small, for a gnome; rather boney and slim.  He had a short dark beard and the sharpest emerald-green eyes. Sometimes, he wore a cap, rather than the normal, pointed, gnome hat.  All of his ways were quiet, he didn’t speak much.  Rawlink’s quietness was very useful. He could sneak up on an animal or one of his brothers and they’d never know he was there. Even though he was small, he was quick. That quickness let him run and hide in the woods when he and his brothers would play “chase and hide.”  He could lead them on a chase for hours.

From the time he could hold a book, Rawlink read incessantly. He’d just as soon read one of Poppa’s books, or whittle something, than go out and play with his brothers. He read anything he could find about the tales of the warrior dwarves and their weapons. It was told that the dwarves used special weapons during the Blue Azuric Wars, against the Red Witch.  Interested by the dwarves bows and arrows, Rawlink spent most of his time carving pictures on the bows and setting stones in the arrows he made.  As he got older, his carving became much finer.  “That Rawlink whittles just like his Poppa,” his dad would proudly say.

Rawlink loved the legends of the Warrior Dwarves and would make up his own stories about them.  He wrote about their riding on giant dragonflies, with purple wings that glowed, even in the dark, and flew faster than an eagle, or of the dinosaurs that they rode into battle and their tails, that with one swipe, could crush a battalion of goblins.  The pick axes and sabers the dwarves used would be made of silver and gold and inset with the most precious of gems. They wore armor crafted by the finest metal smiths and it was so polished, that shine would burn the eyes of their enemies.  He would later read the stories to his sons.

By the time he was ready to go to school, he already knew how to read and write. The gnome had all his stories written in a little book hidden under the straw mattress of his bed, tightly wrapped in an old shirt of his, so his brothers wouldn’t find it.  Rawlink just knew that those dwarves were real.  He carved arrows from the twigs he would find in the Dark Forest and arrow heads from smooth, flat stones.”