The Ring of the Giants

the long version

Released in Summer 2013 by Pink Flamingo Publications http://www.pinkflamingo.com/brands/Olivia-Ravensworth.html , The Ring of the Giants Life is the tale of times long forgotten. Life is hard in 8000 BC middle Europe, but for Kalesh, child of none, friend of none, kinsman of none, it is hardest still. The unwanted foundling can only dream, despairingly, of acceptance, of happiness...and of the enigmatic black-haired Mara who, secretly and yet known to all, in dark of night creeps about the sleeping village, and with her determined mouth performs unspeakable acts. Once—yet only once—when Mara sees Kalesh spying from his lean-to at her midnight prowlings, before he can draw back, she scampers in and steals his seed. The boy is smitten, yet very confusedly. He calls her many bad names. He scorns and degrades her. He pulls her hair. But after she swallows in comingled triumph and shame, before she turns to leave, he whispers helplessly, “I love you!” Certainly after the things she has done, no man could want Mara for a wife. Yet Kalesh alone senses that somehow the smirking wench looks down upon the others as from a great height, disdainfully. He cannot understand it, though, and mere notions will not change his miserable life, or hers. One day, however, Kalesh on a lonely hill deep in the forest discovers the petrified body of an ancient giant. With the magical power of the gifts he finds there, he at last will take away his Mara, along with a wide-eyed, diminutive, yet very intimately skilled blonde junior wife named Pon. Swaggering now with two shapely girls of his very own—his to touch and fondle, to tease and torment, to heap with any outrage that might amuse him—the long-repressed Kalesh will cross the known world, from mammoth-haunted forests, over the pirate-ravaged Sea of the South, across burning desert and through fetid jungle, to chase his wild passions, and his destiny.