So I am once again offering something up for constructive criticism. Below is my rewritten prologue for The Witch of November. I wrote it in about forty-five minutes, so it's not polished and pretty but it's not worth taking the time to polish it up if it's not accomplishing what I need it to do. Does it grab you? Does the dialogue sound like you imagine two young women from the late 1870s would sound? Does it make you want to know what these two women have to do with the Witch in the title? Basically, does it do what a prologue should do?
Please help me out here. I want to get working on this sucker again, but it's so hard to do that when you think what you have is terrible and not working.
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August 24, 1877
Lillian Cobb had known
the dangers inherent in accepting a fisherman's hand in marriage.
She'd spent her entire twenty-two years in the fishing town of
November, Maine, after all. She'd heard all the stories, watched with
her own eyes as the cruel ocean took fathers from children and turned
wives into widows. But try telling a blissfully happy
twenty-two-year-old whose childhood sweetheart had just proposed
marriage that maybe she should take a moment to think. She'd accepted
Josiah Blackstone's proposal in a heartbeat, and the two had been
married in a lovely church service on a snowy but oddly warm February
day in 1876.
Lillian Cobb, on the day
she'd become Lillian Blackstone, had taken the weather as a good
omen. The snow was light and fluffy, falling from the sky in thick
flakes but disappearing before it hit the ground. Eleven months
later, she realized she should have seen it as a portent of things to
come.
A sudden winter storm had
claimed Josiah Blackstone's small but profitable vessel, along with
every member of her four-man crew. Lillian was a left a
twenty-four-year-old widow with an entire life ahead of her, a
lifetime to spend without the only man she'd ever loved.
A knock on her front door
startled Lillian from her morose reverie. When she peeked out the
parlor curtain to check the identity of her visitor, she grinned. It
was time.
She opened the door to an
exuberant Mildred Albertson. “We couldn't have asked for better
atmosphere,” Millie said as Lillian ushered her inside. “A
storm's brewing, and if the thunder in the distance is any
indication, it's going to be a whopper. Have you managed to obtain
what I asked?”
“As much as I was
able,” Lillian confirmed as she led Millie to her parlor. Earlier
in the day, she'd pushed the armchairs and settee against the wall.
The bench that usually took up residence underneath the keys of
Lillian's mother's upright piano now sat in the hall. She'd set up an
old card table of Josiah's in the middle of the room with a dining
room chair on either side, facing each other. “I rescued that table
from the attic this morning. It was the only thing I could think to
use. Will it be all right?”
“It should do just
fine, thank you,” Millie replied. She approached the table, set her
satchel down at her feet, and began pulling item and item from it.
Lillian watched with both
amazement and anticipation as Millie drew out a thick velvet cloth
dyed such a deep purple it was almost black. She draped the cloth
over the table, reverently ensuring the white circle printed on the
velvet was centered. Five white candles followed, each set on the
edge of the circle on the cloth, equidistant from each other. Jars of
lavender and sage and other herbs that Lillian couldn't identify
joined the candles on the table.
If Lillian remembered
correctly, Millie had told her she would need the sage to perform a
blessing to purify the space before beginning. It was purely a
preparatory step, she'd said, but one that was necessary to ensure
their safety.
It was only now that
Millie's wording clicked with Lillian. Ensure their safety … but
from what? She watched Millie pull the final item from her satchel, a
small silver platter than reminded Lillian quite a bit of the
offering plate at church.
How could Lillian ever
show her face in church again after participating in something like
this? Josiah wouldn't have wanted this for her. She knew that in her
heart. Josiah wouldn't have wanted her to start listening to the town
eccentric, wouldn't have wanted to invite this kind of thing into the
sanctuary of their home.
But Josiah is no
longer here, she told herself. In fact, Josiah not being there
any longer was the whole point. How could she go through the rest of
her life without him by her side?
She couldn't. It was that
simple. She couldn't go through the rest of her life without him by
her side, which was why she'd asked Millie to do what they were about
to do.
That didn't mean she
wasn't nervous, however. “Forgive me,” she spoke up as she
watched Millie grind an unidentifiable sprig of … something with a
mortar and pestle, “but aren't we in need of an expert for
something like this?”
Millie looked up at her
friend, amusement lighting her eyes. “I'm not an expert by now?”
“Of course you are,”
Lillian sputtered. “I only meant that–”
“I'm aware of what you
meant,” Millie assured the nervous widow. “You don't have to
worry, Lillian. This ritual is perfectly safe. We'll be able to hear
and understand–”
“'Hear and understand?'
We won't be able to see them?”
Here, Millie hesitated.
“Though I have seen my Caleb on occasion, I mostly only hear him.”
Lillian's face fell, and Millie rushed to reassure her. “Oh, please
don't get discouraged before we even begin, Lillian. I'm not telling
you that you will never see Josiah. I'm only telling you that seeing
a spirit is very rare.”
After a moment of
deliberation, Lillian nodded. The misunderstand was, after all, her
own fault. All Millie had offered her was a chance to speak with
Josiah again. Lillian was the one who'd assumed they would be
speaking face-to-face.
She watched as Millie
performed the blessing, then lit the white candles on the table. At
Millie's nod, Lillian sat down in the chair across from her friend.
When Millie reached across the table, Lillian complied with the
silent instruction, slipping her hands into her friend's grip. “Now
what do we do?”
“We call to the
spirits,” Millie said, squeezing Lillian's hands for reassurance,
“and we wait for an answer.”
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