My Swordhand Is Singing

by Sedgwick, Marcus

• ISBN13: 9780375846908
• ISBN10: 0375846905
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2009-07-28
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf

Summary

"Brings fresh blood to the vampire mythos."Publishers Weekly, Starred In a bitter winter, Tomas and his son, Peter, settle in a small village as woodcutters. Tomas digs a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut so that they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn't understand why his father has done this, or why his father carries a long, battered box, whose mysterious contents he is forbidden to know. But Tomas is a man with a pasta past that is tracking him with deadly intent. As surely as the snow falls softly in the forest of a hundred thousand silver birch trees, father and son must face a soulless enemy and a terrifying destiny. A Junior Library Guild Selection An ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

Author Biography

Marcus Sedgwick is the award-winning author of several books, including The Dark Horse, The Book of Dead Days, and The Foreshadowing. He is a sales representative for Walker Books in London, and lives in Sussex, England.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

1

Deep in the Woods

When he fell for the fifth time, when his face plunged into the deep snow, when his hands burnt from the cold but he didn’t care, Radu the woodcutter knew he was going to die. Somewhere behind him in the darknesses of the forest he could hear the man who had attacked him. He was scared now, almost too scared to move, almost too cold to run anymore, but still he knew something was wrong. Something that should not be.

He got up and stumbled on desperately, sending snow flying in little spurts. Even here among the thickness of the trees it lay heavily on the ground, whisked and funneled by the east wind into strange hills and troughs, like white beasts lurking at the foot of the birches.

Radu looked behind him, but could see nothing. Nothing but the vast unfathomable forest. It was said you could ride from Poland to Turkey and never leave the trees behind, but he knew that wasn’t true. Nothing could be that big! Not even the Mother Forest.

He stopped for a moment, listening hard, but all he could hear was his own panting as he sucked air into his painful chest. He no longer knew where he was, though the forest had been his home all his life. His hut and his village were far away. He looked around, straining to recognize anything, but all he saw were a hundred thousand silver birch trees.

A branch cracked, and with horror Radu’s eyes snapped back to his pursuer. Now that Radu saw him again, he knew what was wrong.

“In the name of Jesus and the Forest . . .”

The words fell dead in the softness of the snow, but even as they did Radu turned and began to run, lurching wildly from tree to tree. His right hand left a smear of blood on the paper bark of a birch, but that wound was irrelevant now. It was such a short while since he’d been cutting wood with his axe. The axe that lay somewhere in the snow, its blade stained with blood, already frozen. His blood.

He hit another two trees, but barely noticed, and suddenly he realized where he was. Close to Chust, where his fellow woodcutter Tomas lived in a hut outside the village.

For a fleeting moment a flame of hope ignited in his heart. He had run fast, the village was only a short way through the trees, and he could no longer hear his attacker behind him.

But then Radu rounded a tree and ran straight into him.

The man was not tall, but he was fat. Bloated. His skin was as white as the trees around them. There was dried blood at the corners of his shriveled mouth. It had taken Radu all this time to recognize him.

Radu took a step backward, his fur boots brushing through the snow. He tripped over an unseen root, but kept his feet. He lifted a hand and pointed at the man.

“But Willem. You’re dead!”

The man lunged forward and shoved his hand like a knife into Radu’s chest, feeling for his heart.

“Not anymore,” he said.

And now it was Radu who fell dead in the softness of the snow.


From the Hardcover edition.

---

Excerpted from My Swordhand Is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.