Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Acolyte's Education
    The Acolyte's Education
    The Acolyte's Education
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    The Acolyte's Education

    By Mary C. Findley

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Red Riding Hood with a clockwork twist -- Is Grandma in danger, or is Grandma the danger?

    Russet and her friend Gareth the woodcutter train to become the Protectress and the Songster. They believe they must join forces in the LastNight ritual to keep their village prosperous and safe.

    Their discovery of a dying race shakes Russet's faith in Grandmother's teachings. These mute, starving people seem more desperate to share a message of life and hope carved on alabaster tablets than to save their own lives.  Are they hiding beneath the lake from the wolves and monsters prowling the woods, or are there even greater terrors to be faced? 

     Family betrayals and disappearing villagers make Russet wonder who she can trust and how she can keep searching for the truth. A terrifying fate awaits her village if she makes the wrong choice. Before the final clockwork turns, she must discover the real power she and Gareth can unleash by performing the Song and the Dance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFindley Family Video
    Release dateAug 17, 2015
    ISBN9781516353217
    The Acolyte's Education
    Author

    Mary C. Findley

    Mary grew up in rural NY and Michael is from AZ. We met at college, taught school in AZ, MO and PA, homeschooled, and created curriculum and videos for church and commercial productions. We have three supposedly grown children and traveled the 48 states and Canada together in a tractor trailer.Findley Family Video Publications has the key verse “Speaking the Truth in Love” from Ephesians 4:15. We have four main goals:To Present a Biblical WorldviewTo Exalt the Lord Jesus ChristTo Edify BelieversTo Teach and to DelightMichael J. Findley has been on the road most of his life and his writings reflect that motion. From the rise of the ancient Hittite Empire to a generational saga of a Space Empire, the one constant is his desire to communicate the truth of God's Word through fiction and nonfiction. Homeschoolers, church leaders, and ordinary believers who want to go deeper into the Word and reach higher to put God in the exalted place where He belongs will find many answers here.They say write what you know. Mary C. Findley has poured her real life into her writing -- From the cover designs inspired by her lifelong art studies to the love of pets and country life that worm their way into her historicals. The never-say-die heroes in her twenty-some fiction works are inspired by her husband, a crazy smart man with whom she co-writes science and history-based nonfiction. These works were jump-started by a deep awareness of the dangers in our future if we don't understand ideological enemies rooted in the past. She's a strong believer in helping others and also has books about publishing advice and the need to have strong standards in reading and writing.She has traveled internationally and around the lower 48 and Canada multiple times. Anecdotes from her small town life, college experiences, European, Canadian, and south-of-the border travels, as well as adventures as shotgun rider in a tractor trailer fill her contemporary works. She has also donned the cloak of alt-Victorian adventuress as Sophronia Belle Lyon, steampunk writer with her own League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and ladies) from the great 1800s novelists. In all her works you will find faith, family, friendship and fulfilling stories. Do come have a look!

    Read more from Mary C. Findley

    Related to The Acolyte's Education

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      10 Literary Witches To Hex Trump

      Mar 24, 2017

      In case you hadn’t heard, witches across America—including Lana Del Rey—are uniting to take down Trump via a binding spell, which calls on the spirits to keep the President from doing harm (it already seems to be working). Covens, communities, and so

      5 min read

    • Article

      Forfeit

      Jan 1, 2021

      Forfeit
      7 min read

    • Article

      Left To Lose

      Jul 10, 2022

      Around the time she gives up her name, it starts to feel like this entire revolution isn’t worth it anymore. The world is probably lucky that Kelian—she still remembers Kelian, in spite of everything—is there to pick up the pieces, the way he always

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Dancing Skinny

      Jul 11, 2019

      The Dancing Skinny
      12 min read

    • Article

      Eight Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      The rain is splashy.The baby is fat as apat of butter.Mother is sleeping.No one is crying.Because it was timeto live with strangersbaby was born.Hearing the rainjumping in puddleshe feels another eventis due in time.Not knowing what,not guessing what

      2 min read

    • Article

      Taking Sides

      Apr 1, 2022

      Taking Sides
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Witch Finders

      Jul 16, 2020

      Beth pulled her cloak tightly around her. It was the very last day of October and the air was damp and chill. Dead autumn leaves lay in deep piles in the woods and smoke curled into the night air from her cottage. Not far to go now. She bent her head

      4 min read

    • Article

      On Uppermost Winds

      Mar 1, 2024

      On Uppermost Winds
      5 min read

    • Article

      When the SUN RISES

      Jun 14, 2023

      When the SUN RISES
      6 min read

    • Article

      This One So Loved

      May 9, 2019

      This One So Loved
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Silence of Witches

      Dec 10, 2019

      The Silence of Witches
      6 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Gifts

      Oct 30, 2019

      Did you ever pine after the cake decorations as a child, not the cake? The pointy ballerina, caped crusader? Bowerbird Marion Frith understands the miniature world that children love to inhabit; her own hunting from around the world housed in an alph

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Black Spider

      Nov 28, 2019

      The Black Spider
      22 min read

    • Article

      The Witches Of Literature

      May 30, 2023

      Tor Books T. KINGFISHER challenges the idea of the “wicked witch” through the gravewitch in her subversive fairy tale Nettle & Bone. The nameless dust-wife—part witch, part gravedigger—is all too willing to help the novel’s heroine on her quest to ki

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Postmenopausal Fairy Tale

      Feb 4, 2019

      The Postmenopausal Fairy Tale
      9 min read

    • Article

      'The Hazel Wood' Has Few Uses For Enchantment

      Jan 30, 2018

      In Melissa Albert's dark take on fairy tales, 17-year-old Alice has spent her entire life on the run from her family legacy: a terrifying mythical world created by her grandmother, a famous author.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rose - Tinted Glasses

      Nov 10, 2021

      From the corner of her eye, Becca watched a small pack of drunk pixies adding salt into her grandmother’s bone china sugar pot. The sugar pot was the oldest thing in the house, even older than grandmother herself. There would be hell to pay if it bro

      12 min read

    • Article

      Out On The MOOR

      Mar 20, 2024

      Out On The MOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      Beauty and THE BEAST

      Nov 26, 2020

      Your mum probably told you ‘looks can be deceiving’, and never was that more true than in mythology. Leaving gods, goddesses and mortals to one side, as a rule, the more beautiful the creature, the more likely it is to be planning to rip your head of

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Nightingale

      May 1, 2019

      The Nightingale
      10 min read

    • Article

      Follow Your HEART

      Mar 30, 2022

      Follow Your HEART
      9 min read

    • Article

      Timeless Movement

      Jan 30, 2018

      Timeless Movement
      10 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      My Name's Giles And I'm A Gardening Addict

      Apr 5, 2023

      The wife and I have finished our second book. The previous one charted a year in the life of a theoretically incompatible married couple. In this one, we turn the lens away from ourselves to look outside the cottage window and attempt to paint an aut

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Acolyte's Education

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Acolyte's Education - Mary C. Findley

      Chapter One --Two Attacks

      Russet stepped onto the ornately carved wood disc and put out her hands to grasp the railing twined with gilded vines. She heard the Scroll of the Dancer repeating in her head, spoken in her grandmother’s gentle tones.

      The Dancer must empty her mind of everything but the steps toward the Singer. However much the patterns change, the Dancer will know the right path if she follows her heart.

      As her toes gripped the smooth grooves carved in the turntable, a sudden misgiving; urge to run toward the sun and light; toward the village, home, and safety, almost overpowered her.

      No! Empty my mind! Follow my heart! Russet whispered.

      Tic-tic-tic went the interconnected clockwork beneath the platform as the dense forest closed in around her. Russet wanted to hug herself to stop the sudden attack of shaking but the spinning platform would have thrown her off into the blackness alongside the path. Grandmother had warned her to stay on the platforms.

      Ravagers lurk in the darkest wood. Keep to the clockwork path and be safe.

      Tic-tic-tic … the clockwork gears moved the platform by revolutions and counter-revolutions and Russet stepped off the first platform onto the next, and then the next, making no missteps along the intricate puzzle-path. Each one contained grooves for her bare feet and a wiggle of her toes activated the next series of gears.

      The cool dimness of the trees, plus concentrating on correctly stepping through the clockwork patterns, usually helped calm her a little, but as she looked back down the trail toward the receding gold-lit valley she couldn’t help shiver again. Mist swirled in and out of the streams of sunlight from outside turned gray by the shadows. Had it always been so dark in the woods? She had made this trip to her grandmother’s hundreds of times, but the contrast between the busy streets and bright fields and this deep, canopied space seemed to strike more strongly into her soul today.

      It’s just that I’m becoming more serious; more grown up, now that my training is nearing its end. Russet chided herself, rapidly untwisting her braids with trembling fingers and letting the red-golden cascade fall over her scarlet cloak and pool into the black fur-lined hood.

      Grandmother had told her it was time to stop wearing braids, anyway, and loved to finger-comb her hair. My golden treasure; my Russet, her grandmother sometimes murmured as they sat together evenings by the firelight, Russet’s head in her grandmother’s lap. Tic-tic-tic the clockwork reminded her as she stepped onto the next platform.

      Those wonderful times of respite followed long, hard days of training to prepare Russet to follow her grandmother’s legacy as Benefactress. The clockwork puzzles she had to solve just to pass safely through the forest to grandmother’s were only the beginning of her instruction. The pattern was never the same twice. She needed to be alert to the true paths marked by the joining together of the dual images of the Benefactress and the Songster in each of the different poses of the Song and the Dance Ritual.

      Seek the Singer along the path. Only by joining will peace be assured.

      Soon Russet would take her grandmother’s place as the Benefactress, after she and the Benefactor’s apprentice, the Songster, performed the Song and the Dance Ritual at the long-awaited LastNight Festival. The heritage of the Benefactress and the Benefactor was to defend the village against the evil Ravagers who lived in the shadows and constantly sought to attack Russet’s people. Over and over Grandmother warned Russet not to stray from the protected path that led to her lonely cottage where her training took place.

      Tic-tic-tic … Russet swung her head, watched the pieces connect, and stepped again. She sometimes got impatient and wondered if Grandmother grew senile, she gave the warning so many times. The woods grew darker and the golden markings on the platforms grew dimmer. Russet inserted the lightguide into its holder in the top of her basket woven from slender young oak branches. How her fingers had ached making this basket, but it was a work of beauty when she had finished it, weaving strands of her own bright hair through and through. Russet could not help thinking how much prettier it was with that addition.

      Stop that. Now you’re acting childish again! Russet stepped again, intent on the next Dancer and Singer images as they clicked together. An apprentice could not approach the Benefactress shrine selfishly. She had to concentrate and prepare herself for the work ahead.

      The Benefactor’s apprentice, her childhood friend Gareth, should be on his way right now to his Songster training with the Benefactor. Russet was glad he had been chosen to join her in the Song and the Dance, though she blushed a little when she thought of them performing and joining together in front of the whole village at the LastNight festival.

      As Russet adjusted the light her fingers touched the soft, worn shoes in the basket, the shoes her father had made for her. Tears swam in her eyes at the thought of her father, lying paralyzed almost as long as she had been in training, now. Grandmother had promised he would be healed at the LastNight Festival. The time was coming soon. Russet just had to be ready.

      She stepped off onto a platform deeper into the woods, the blue glow of the lightguide showing her just a little as the clockwork spun her once more. Russet pulled her hood up and gathered her cloak close around her, unable to shake the feeling of oppression deeper than cold. She fingered the golden embroidery of the cloak. Grandmother had told her it contained protective charms, and she was glad for the loving concern she knew the old woman felt for her.

      Russet froze at the sounds of snorting and breaking branches up ahead. A huge wild boar broke out of the underbrush, smashing through her next platform and stampeding right for her. Russet fell to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1