A tale wherein our Heroine, Merilance of the brave hands and stout heart, is spirited away to Fairyland and must there conquer many a great and perilous evil in order to save it.
Everyone in the sleepy town of Champcoeur knows that the Corbin twins are inseparable. Merilance and Valerie are on top of the world, the dynamic-duo queens of high school — until they trip into the world of Fairyland, a strange and dreamy place full of strange and dreamy magic.
With no way home, the pair find themselves at the mercy of the kind yet enigmatic Braughen Ferriador, a member of Fairyland's Gentry. Ten years later, Merilance, now a ward of the wizard Carrier, wants nothing more than to earn her place in the Court of the Quagmire and to prove herself before its ruler, the Rosenthral.
Her plans are dashed when Braughen is murdered days before Quagmire is set to begin annexing the smaller court of Boisvert. Sifting through the mysteries he left behind, the twins find themselves embroiled deeper into Court intrigues and deceptions than they'd ever thought possible, all while discovering their own shocking capacities for trickery and betrayal. As the annexation draws nigh and Fairyland veers on the verge of terrible violence, the two must, alongside the irritable knight Sir Flerimand and Braughen's secretive daughter Roscobell, reach the bone of what, exactly, is so important about Boisvert that not only was Braughen killed in its name, but a whole world is in jeopardy as a result of its peril.
E N D O S O M A T I C: The variance of death; Drawn nine, falter twlve; None may escape it.
Dramatis Personae
Merilance Corbin, our brave heroine, and a Changeling
Merilance is brash, bold, and brave - but she often lets her hot-headedness get the better of her. She has a strong sense of justice and will not hesitate to do what she thinks is right.
Valerie Corbin, our brave heroine, and a Stolen Child
Valerie is bright, ambitious, and soft-spoken. Where her sister is all bluster, she is analytical and observant.
Braughen Ferriador, a father and member of the Gentry
Braughen is jovial and thoughtful and an utter mystery to the Corbins. They are both indebted to his kindness, but wary of his actions.
Andrias Ferriador, Braughen's eldest son and a revolutionary
Andrias is cunning and fast. He is fiercely protective of his own, but is too quick to martyr himself.
Roscobell Ferriador, Braughen's eldest daughter and a courtier
Roscobell is graceful and sharp. She keeps many secrets, all close to her chest, but her pragmatism often gets in the way of her empathy.
The Rosenthral, the enigmatic ruler of the Court of the Quagmire
Where then hangs the fair ruler of Fairy? Or does he lie in loam?
Carrier Erring-Hook, an academic and wizard of renown
Carrier is a researcher before all else, and enlists Merilance to help with his studies of transference theory.
Sir Flerimand, a gloomy human knight of the Quagmire
Flerimand is introspective and snippy, but has a soft spot for Merilance, who he is partnered with when she, too, becomes a knight.
Evalarre, the timid ambassador from Boisvert
Eva is regal and reserved. Some consider her a coward; others are convinced she knows more than she lets on.
Adilene Kingslayer, the Rosenthral's seneschal
Adilene is the cruel and calculating right-hand-man to the Rosenthral. Who, exactly, did she slay to get that name?
Parsifal Priorhark, where is he where has he gone?
He is deep underground, where no true sunshine can reach him.
What is this, exactly?
This is "Ceux qui domptent le Boisvert ", the literal translation of which is "They Who Tame the Green-Wood ". In order to capture the same feeling as the French title, I've translated it to "The Taming of Boisvert ".
Boisvert has been a project of mine for a few years, but in truth, has been in the works for a lot longer than that. I've always been fascinated by fairy tales and fairy stories, reading a ton of them in my youth. Fairies and their related folklore have been a special interest of mine for my whole life. Boisvert was born of that interest and fascination!
Boisvert is a series of novels in the works by yours truly. They feature the adventures of one Merilance Corbin as she is spirited into Fairyland alongside her twin sister Valerie, and subsequently has to save it with a strange variety of magical revolutionaries and knights.
Writing this book is one of my favourite things to do. It frustrates me to no end, and oftentimes I feel as though it will never be finished, but at the end of the day, I am so grateful for what it has taught me and cannot wait to share it with the world - a sharing that starts here, with this portal!
Snippets
I am alone again, she would whisper quietly into the dark. Just me and the stone and not much of anything. Oh, how I wish my friends were here! I am coming, I promise, it’s only that I must eat something and drink fresh water, or I shall not make it out of this dismal place at all.
This was what she might have said in a recount of her misadventure. In truth, no such thing happened. What happened was Merilance said a lot of cuss words very loudly and in rapid succession, and then she kicked the wall and hurt her foot something awful, which made her angrier still.
Flerimand sighed — his shoulders rose and fell abruptly, as though no one had ever taught him to sigh before. “He was a beautiful young man with hair as thick as clotted cream and bright green eyes and a mole on his right cheek and he had eyebrows like question marks and he liked a nice walk around the courtyards in the morning to clear his head, and he would watch all us knights sparring and always he would have a book in his hand, he was always reading books, little ones he could hang from his belt and regular ones with silk bookmarks always dangling out and great big ones, too, so big he would have to hold them open with both hands. All was good and summer because he loved us and governed us with rhymes and songs and pecan pie for everyone on sunny days and when he would go out riding he would wear a crown studded with pearls gifted from the Undersea and everyone did whatever they could just to make him laugh. Every dance smelled of milk and wheat and sugar and chocolate and his name was Parsifal and he has been gone for years and years but we are still here, and we keep going and we never ever stop because we do not know how to.”
This is a tale about the sisters Corbin, and so by necessity it will feature a great many adventures, and much grief and many tears shed; but so, too, will it be full of wonderful things and noble things and things that are strange and beautiful. Fairies as a rule are more susceptible to children predisposed to lives full of adventures, same as you or I are susceptible to sunny days. Both of the sisters Corbin had been reared on a healthy diet of fairy’s tales and wilderness expeditions therefore they knew, when the time came, that they had been chosen because of a certain propensity for purloining peaches and being feckless with schoolwork.
We have special privileges, for we are not the sisters Corbin, and so we know that there will come a time when they will both be spirited away into this life of grand old adventures. But all of this is some ways ahead, and so we mustn’t cut forwards. That would be like having dessert before dinner, which spoils all of dessert’s fun, and dinner’s, too. No, let’s all sit at the table and turn our faces for a while to what, in later years, the sisters would refer to as the Before.
“Happenstance,” the Lady said. “You, too, will learn, little Corbin. These lands have a way of making their customs known to every foreigner. I’ve seen it happen, many a time; they come like you, with their round ears and their lack of claw and fang and hook, wide eyed, turning twice and again in moor and meadow and field and forest, their day minds seeing such strange, strange things lurking at the edges of their sunlight sights. Untold. Unreal. All is white and good. And just as you know it, the sunlight lifts from the eyes, and the twilight hours set calmly in.” All of this went so far over Merilance’s head, it might as well have been rocket science. Lady Mayfly smiled again. “So long as you don’t get eaten before that all can happen,” she added.
