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A NECKLACE OF SOULS
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A NECKLACE OF SOULS
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A Necklace of Souls
by R.L. Stedman
Release Date: 12/19/14
339 pages
Summary from Goodreads
‘A true dream is when the events I see in my sleep
have, or will happen. It’s a talent that runs in my family. I was thirteen when
I had my first true dream.’
Will’s Aunt says the Kingdom of the Rose is the most fortunate of lands. But Will hates the place – his uncle and aunt are horrible, and he misses his parents. Oh, how he misses them.
Dana wishes she wasn’t a princess. She’s always being told how to behave, what to wear. There’s a strangeness in the castle – why will no one talk about the Guardian, or the necklace that protects the land? And why does her father look at her with such sorrow? The collier’s cart seems the perfect escape. Only she didn’t realize she’d become so dirty, or so lost. Fortunately this boy, Will, has a sense of direction. And next to the forbidding stranger, N’tombe, he seems reassuringly normal.
Welcome to A Necklace of Souls: a story of love and loss, of shattered lives and desperate hopes. In the Kingdom of the Rose, bravery is not always measured by strength and magic is real, if only one has the courage to dream.
Will’s Aunt says the Kingdom of the Rose is the most fortunate of lands. But Will hates the place – his uncle and aunt are horrible, and he misses his parents. Oh, how he misses them.
Dana wishes she wasn’t a princess. She’s always being told how to behave, what to wear. There’s a strangeness in the castle – why will no one talk about the Guardian, or the necklace that protects the land? And why does her father look at her with such sorrow? The collier’s cart seems the perfect escape. Only she didn’t realize she’d become so dirty, or so lost. Fortunately this boy, Will, has a sense of direction. And next to the forbidding stranger, N’tombe, he seems reassuringly normal.
Welcome to A Necklace of Souls: a story of love and loss, of shattered lives and desperate hopes. In the Kingdom of the Rose, bravery is not always measured by strength and magic is real, if only one has the courage to dream.
Shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Award, A
Necklace of Souls was awarded the Tessa Duder Award for Young Adult Fiction,
Best First Book at the New Zealand Post Children and Young Adult Book Awards
and is a Storylines Notable Book.
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Character Introductions
Character
Introduction - Will:
Will was twelve years old when the plague
began. Winter in North Wales is always a dreary, damp season, but that year seemed
particularly harsh. The winds blew strong and cold and the people were
reluctant to leave their homes. Will’s parents, the town bakers, still kept
their shop open but now customers arrived singly, and said little while waiting
for their bread.
As the plague
spread, Will’s familiar world began to change. First, the school closed.
Normally this might have been something to be celebrated. But not now, not with
the town locked in fear, and no one going in or out. Then the fishing boats at
the quayside didn’t sail, either. Eventually even the church shut its doors. But
by then the plague had spread, growing like a big black cloud, until it seemed
to smother all the light. And in the bakery Will and his parents lay ill,
unable to move, unable even to think, as the world spun slowly about them.
Will didn’t
remember much of the illness, just a vague recall of heat and burning and
endless, heaving nausea. Like seasickness but far, far worse – the sort of
seasickness you might feel if the ship on which you were sailing had suddenly
caught alight. For days he tossed about, thrashing his head on his pillow,
calling for Ma. For anyone. But no one came.
Finally Will
woke and lay blinking at the ceiling. His throat felt thick and tight, as
though he’d been screaming for the longest time. Outside the world sounded
eerily quiet; no shop bells, no wagon wheels creaking. No horse’s hooves, or
people calling to one another across the street. Only the distant wash of the
waves and the creaking of the shop sign in the wind.
All his life,
Will remembered the feeling of waking into silence, the bitter knowledge of his
loneliness in a wide, wide world. Because after the plague, everything had changed.
I
hadn’t meant to write something quite so gloomy. So here’s another lively
little piece. There are heaps of side characters in A Necklace of Souls. This is
Nurse, written in Nurse’s voice.
Character
Introduction – Nurse:
‘You want to ask me questions? Why would
you ever want to do that? Not to say that there ain’t plenty of things I could
tell you about the goings on in this place, if I had the mind to do, but I
don’t. Well then, I haven’t got all day. Go ahead and ask me your questions,
then, if you must.
What’s that? How
long have I been in the Castle? Goodness! Truth be told, I don’t rightly know. ’Tis
many a long day since I arrived, that’s for certain.
My earliest
memory? Well now, let me see. When you’re my age things jumble themselves
together, and ’tis hard to remember anything in particular. I do remember
waking from a long nap, and seeing the light sparkling on the water and
thinking how pretty this place was. That must have been after I’d only just
arrived, when everything was new-looking. The place has certainly changed since
then. Things never change for the better, I reckon, only for the worst. At
least, that’s been my experience anyway.
Take that blamed
necklace. Used to be the simplest thing, only a ruby on a silver chain and
never caused anyone any grief. But I knew it would change. Soon as I saw that
little man holding it in that courtyard I knew it was evil. But them at the top
didn’t listen. No, they thought they knew better than old Nurse, even though I
warned them, so I did.
“Get rid of it,”
says I to Her Majesty – the Queen that was, I mean. “Thing like that, ain’t to
be trusted.”
But laughed and
told me I was too gloomy. Me, gloomy? Anyways I was right, because now that
necklace chains the Guardians down, so it does, and takes them young. Oh, ’tis
a sad and sorry world, when people don’t listen to them as knows more than
they.
Speak up, speak
up! I can’t hear you. What do I do in my spare time? ’Tis crazy you are,
thinking I’ve got such a thing as spare
time. Up early I am, getting the Princess ready for the day, and like it as
not I’m the last to bed too, cleaning her clothes and so forth. What with her
with her fighting and her knives and her hose, sometimes it takes me hours to
get the stains out. For shame, thinking I’d have “spare time”.
Mind you, I do enjoy
working with wood. Made a whole bedstead once. Princess sleeps in it now, I
know she likes it. Never told her it was me as built it. Strange in a way,
ain’t it? I mean, when you look at me, you’d never imagine in your wildest
dreams that I’d be one for woodwork. But then, you never can tell what folks
get up to.
What’s my
biggest regret? What fool of a question is that? You think I’m the sort of
person who’s likely to be going telling that to a total stranger? Me, I don’t
have regrets. Save for that ruby. I wish, well, ’tis crazy for sure, but I wish
that they ain’t never found that thing. I know they all did it for the best. Still,
look at the grief it’s caused.
Now, get along
with you. Ain’t got all day to be standing here gossiping. Yes, lovely to see
you, too. And do drop in again.’
About the author
My name is
Rachel Stedman. I’m a physiotherapist (physical therapist) by background, but
now I work as a freelance contractor. I live in the wild and windy place of
Dunedin, New Zealand, with my husband and two kids.
I write mostly
for children and young adults. In 2012 I won the Tessa Duder Award for an
unpublished YA work and my first novel, A Necklace of Souls, was published
by HarperCollins in 2013 (available in the United Kingdom and on Book
Depository from June 2015). This year, A Necklace of Souls was
awarded Best First Book at the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards and won
a Notable Book Award from Storylines. Inner Fire is
my second novel.
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