Excerpt: The Weave Spinner

"Her mother's sister, Niamh, was a Catalan, a channeller of natural magic. She had a connection with nature that Alma envied. Wherever Niamh went, she could name the grass that she walked on, the bushes and trees around her, the birds in their branches and the animals that dug around their roots. The dance of the trees in the wind told her tales of the places from whence the wind had come. The shape and colour of the clouds in the sky told her when it would rain and how hard the rain would be. The sunrise and sunset, the stars in the sky, the shadows on the ground, every whisper of every blade of grass; in all these ways the world spoke to her. Caeric magic was about the land, its creatures and its people, and the energy that connected them all."