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    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow
    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow
    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow
    Ebook47 pages43 minutes

    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow

    By Charles de Lint

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    When the restrictions and strife of her home life finally become too much, Lesli Betterberry runs away from home. But the freedom she hopes to find on the street is an illusion and she soon finds herself in far worse circumstances. Featured in this story are otherworldly musicians Cerin and Meran Kelledy, who must use their gifts of music and magic to try to find the girl.

    First published as a limited edition chapbook, 1990; also appears in Dreams Underfoot.

    "I can never recapture the feeling of first arriving in Newford and meeting the people and seeing the sights as a newcomer. However, part of the beauty of Newford is the sense that it has always been there, that de Lint is a reporter who occasionally files stories from a reality stranger and more beautiful than ours. De Lint also manages to keep each new Newford story fresh and captivating because he is so generous and loving in his depiction of the characters. Yes, there are a group of core characters whose stories recur most often, but a city like Newford has so many intriguing people in it, so many diverse stories to tell, so much pain and triumph to chronicle."
    — Challenging Destiny

    Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.
    — Alice Hoffman

    Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best.
    — Holly Black

    De Lint is probably the finest contemporary author of fantasy
    – Booklist, American Library Association
    Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it’s just damned fine writing.
    – Quill & Quire
    De Lint’s evocative images, both ordinary and fantastic, jolt the imagination.
    – Publishers Weekly
    It is hard to imagine urban fantasy done with greater skill
    – Booklist, American Library Association

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles de Lint
    Release dateFeb 12, 2015
    ISBN9780920623503
    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow
    Author

    Charles de Lint

    Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Charles de Lint has been republishing some earlier works and I'm so glad he is as I love reading or re-reading his works. I read Ghosts of Wind and Shadow originally as part of Dreams Underfoot. It's a lovely story about beliefs: what people think you should believe vs. what is your reality. Lesli Betterberry has inherited the ability to see faeries from her grandmother Nell, much to the dismay of her mother. When she runs away, her mother comes to Cerin and Meran Kelledy, a faerie bard and his wife, the daughter of the Oak king, for help, even though she doesn't want to know about the other world that her mother-in-law showed her. This is vintage de Lint; lyrical writing and descriptive prose are the essences of the story. It's a quick read and well worth it.

    Book preview

    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow - Charles de Lint

    Ghosts of Wind and Shadow

    by

    Charles de Lint

    Copyright © 1990 by Charles de Lint

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    for MaryAnn

    There may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting mankind; but because of our line of descent there are also queer limitations.

    —Clarence Day, from This Simian World

    Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, from two to four, Meran Kelledy gave flute lessons at the Old Firehall on Lee Street, which served as Lower Crowsea’s community centre. A small room in the basement was set aside for her at those times. The rest of the week it served as an office for the editor of The Crowsea Times, the monthly community newspaper.

    The room always had a bit of a damp smell about it. The walls were bare except for two old posters: one sponsored a community rummage sale, now long past; the other was an advertisement for a Jilly Coppercorn one-woman show at The Green Man Gallery featuring a reproduction of the firehall that had been taken from the artist’s In Lower Crowsea series of street scenes. It, too, was long out of date.

    Much of the room was taken up by a sturdy oak desk. A computer sat on its broad surface, always surrounded by a clutter of manuscripts waiting to be put on disk, spot art, advertisements, sheets of Lettraset, glue sticks, pens, pencils, scratch pads and the like. Its printer was relegated to an apple crate on the floor. A large corkboard in easy reach of the desk held a bewildering array of pinned-up slips of paper with almost indecipherable notes and appointments jotted on them. Post-its laureled the frame of the corkboard and the sides of the computer like festive yellow decorations. A battered metal filing cabinet held back-issues of the newspaper. On top of it was a vase with dried flowers—not so much an arrangement as a forgotten bouquet. One week of the month, the entire desk was covered with the current issue in progress, in its various stages of layout.

    It was not a room that appeared conducive to music, despite the presence of two small music stands taken from their storage spot behind the filing cabinet and set out in the open space between the desk and door, along with a pair of straight-backed wooden chairs salvaged twice a week from a closet down the hall. But music has its own enchantment, and the first few notes of an old tune are all that it requires to transform any site into a place of magic, even if that location is no more than a windowless office cubicle in the Old Firehall’s basement.

    Meran taught an old style of flute-playing. Her instrument of choice was that enduring cousin of the silver transverse orchestral flute: a simpler wooden instrument, side-blown as well, though it lacked a lip plate to help direct the airstream; keyless, with only six holes. It was popularly referred to as an Irish

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