In October, Radiant Press are due to publish The Dark King Swallows the World, the latest novel by Robert G. Penner, a coming-of-age, historical fiction, and fantasy novel. Today, we have an excerpt to share with our readers. Here’s the synopsis:

While isolated and friendless in World War II Cornwall, Nora, a precocious American adolescent, loses her younger half-brother in a car crash. Overwhelmed by grief, Nora’s mother becomes involved with Olaf Winter, the self-professed necromancer Nora believes is responsible for the accident. Desperate to win back her mother’s love from the nefarious Mr. Winter, Nora embarks on an epic journey and is plunged into a world of faeries, giants, and homunculi. Eventually she reaches the land of the dead where she confronts the dark king who rules that realm, attempts to retrieve her half-brother, and heal her mother’s broken heart.

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The giant was undressing next to the pool. She was, of course, very tall. At least a head taller, Nora thought, than the double-decker buses in London. And she was very broad across the shoulders and back, with thick lumpy legs like stacked barrels. Her skin was as creased and grey as an elephant’s, and her long, lank hair a sort of mossy black. Nora could only see a partial profile of her face, the prodigious nose and jutting jaw, and a brief glitter from her black eye. The giant laid the rough tent of her dress down on the gravelled shore and, bending over, pendulous breasts swinging, slid into the pool. Once settled in the still water, she sat perfectly motionless, and if Nora had not seen her clambering in with her own eyes, she would have thought her nothing more than a clumsy pile of granite that had been sitting there since the beginning of time.

“Come quick,” said Tressa. “We can have a peek in her cave before she’s done. Perhaps there will be treasure.”

She darted off into the underbrush, and Nora, although she would’ve rather just quietly watched the giant, followed as best she could, trying to ignore the stinging of the thistles and the scratching trees and bushes that seem to part for Tressa but closed up tight in her wake. The cave, when they reached it, was not very big, certainly not big enough for the giant to stand up in, and only deep enough for her to squat just inside. It seemed very unlikely to Nora that there would be any treasure there, nor could she understand how she could’ve missed the cave the first time she explored the area. The corners of it were filled with junk: a collection of old boots, ragged clothes, a bent bicycle wheel, piles of old newspapers, and rusted and unrecognizable farming and mining tools.

“It’s all just garbage,” she said to Tressa, who stood in the middle of the cave grinning at her.

“They always bury the good stuff in the back,” Tressa said and dragged an old spade with a broken handle out from underneath some crooked umbrellas. “Right in the back. As far as you can go.  You dig. I’ll keep watch.”

Nora did not much like the idea and was about to refuse, but when Tressa said she understood if Nora was too afraid, her irritation got the better of her common sense and she took the shovel and marched resolutely into the farthest, gloomiest corner of the dank hole. There she found a smoothed-out spot about three feet wide on the cave floor, half-hidden beneath a rough scattering of rotting wildflowers and grasses. She swept the plants aside with her feet, and then she dug and dug and dug, the rusted spade turning the rich dark clay with remarkable ease, and she was somehow all the way up to her waist before she stopped to catch her breath. Tressa was at the cave mouth whistling happily, the sun shining on her tousled red hair.

“Don’t stop, little mole!” she shouted. “You’re almost there!”

And Nora returned to her digging, throwing shovelfuls of dirt over her shoulder, half listening to Tressa’s wild trilling tunes, humming along as best she could, until the metal of her spade clanked against something hard and brittle.

“Hullo,” she said to herself. “What’s this?” And she knelt in the mud to brush the soil away from a long bone.

“Almost there,” whispered Tressa, and Nora looked up to see her staring down from what seemed a long way up. “It’ll be with the bones.”

Nora felt queasy from the exertion, and a little frightened. The sweat was cool against her back, and she shivered.

“I’m in too deep, Tressa,” she said. “Help me out.”

“Not yet, little mole,” Tressa replied. “Just dig a little deeper.”

“No,” said Nora. “I don’t like this. Help me out.”

“They’re just animal bones,” laughed Tressa. “Cattle and sheep. Dig a little deeper. We’re almost there. But quick now. She’ll be back soon.”

Nora sighed and began to dig again, but without the mad energy that had driven her before. She scraped and scrabbled with her spade, but before long, it was more bones than soil, and she had to use her hands to claw the shards out of the way. It was getting darker and gloomier as she worked, and she realized she was crying—she felt incredibly sad and did not know why.

“There!” cried Tressa. “There’s one! You have it in your hand!”

Nora looked at her grubby palm, streaked with blood from where a splintered bone broke her skin, and through her tears saw a little ivory tooth.

“It’s just a tooth,” she said and blinked up at Tressa, whose features were stretched out by the long shadows into a marvellous grin.

“Yes, yes,” Tressa said impatiently. “Pass it up and find the rest. Any minute now. She’ll be back. Any minute now.”

Nora stretched up as far as she could, and, their fingertips barely brushing, Tressa plucked the tooth from her grasp.

“There’s another by your left foot,” Tressa told her. “And there’s another in the corner. Any minute now! Quick! Quick!”

Nora, amazed that Tressa could see them through the gloom and feeling sadder and more disconsolate by the minute, gathered up the little teeth and carefully handed them up, one by one, until finally, when she squatted back down, she found herself looking into the eye sockets of a small human skull, that of a child. She fell onto her knees in the mud and the bones and began to weep in earnest.  Distantly, as if on a radio in another room, she heard Tressa’s voice: “She’s back! She’s back! Have to run! Have to run! Will return! Will return!”

And then, cutting through everything like a knife, a desperate, keening wail began. Nora covered her ears to block it out, and threw herself onto her face, but it grew louder and louder and more and more shrill, until it felt like a drill driven into her skull, and then everything faded, all at once, into darkness and silence.

Mr. Lawry found her in the fields behind the cottage, covered in mud and soaked through with rain, shivering uncontrollably. He scooped her up and carried her into the house. Through a haze of confusion and disorientation, she had the most wonderful sensation of hot tea, and a hot bath, and her mother’s hot tears against her cheek—all at once, all at the same time—before she found herself snug in bed, listening to the conversation in the next room.

“Like she’d crawled up out of her own grave,” Mr. Lawry said cheerfully.

“Oh, good God!” cried her mother. “What a horrible thing to say!”

“Praise the Lord, she’s safe enough now,” came the response, and Nora fell asleep, dreaming of being clutched roughly to stony breasts, of endless days of hunger and thirst, of being buried alive by giant, clumsy hands, and of being led back to the light by Tressa’s wild whistling.

*

Robert G. Penner’s The Dark King Swallows the World is due to be published by Radiant Press, on October 8th.

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