The Myling

Three years ago, Maren was told her daughter was stillborn. She was not allowed to hold her. She was not allowed to name her.

Now she is pregnant again - and there is something at the tideline.

It is small. Its hair hangs wet across its face. It waits at the edge of the water where the village dumps what it will not keep, and it is always, always turned toward her.

The village has an explanation for everything. For the men who never come back from a calm sea. For the graves that settle wrong. For Gudrun, the midwife, whose warm hands have delivered every child on this shore for longer than anyone can say - and whose kindness Maren is only beginning to recognise as something else.

Because the thing at the water is not leaving. And Maren is running out of time to learn what her village does with the children it refuses to name - before Gudrun's hands close around a second one.

What you cast out, the tide brings back.

THE MYLING is Book One of THE DROWNED GODS - a Norse folk horror series in the cold, patient tradition of The Witch, Andrew Michael Hurley, and Catriona Ward. A slow-burn descent for readers who like their dread earned, their villages rotten, and their sea keeping accounts.

The cold sea has its own dead.