Isle of Fenrir's Heir by Hayley E. Frerichs
"I spot its tracks again. The Wolf walked this edge last night, silently stalking us."
There is no better smell than that of the salty sea air and a fresh pelt. The droplets of water gather on the thick fur creating an earthly aroma even out on the ocean. Squinting into the dense fog for the first sign of land, I adjust the wolf cape over my shoulders.
It’s not long before I’m pointing at a streak of green on the horizon and the bottom of the longship scrapes along the shore. Splashing in the surf, I land on the pebble strewn beach.
Walking to where stones meet the edge of the wood, the land is covered in rich green moss. Ferns curl over each other like spindly fingers. But there! I push aside the underbrush to the dirt beneath. A paw print. A triangle pad and four oblong toes. The Wolf.
“Oye Dauðamaðr!”
I look over my shoulder. Our captain Bjørn whistles and waves me over to help unload supplies.
“Can’t even wait until morning to start thy hunt,” Njal says as he wraps Sten’s hands, chafed from rowing, with salve-soaked cloth.
The men laugh, and I’m absorbed into their circle of pungent body odor. Troels, his one eyebrow burned off from a fire when he was a lad, tends to a popping driftwood fire.
“So eager to get back home to Revna?” Troels teases, staring intently into the flames.
“Ack, I’ve told thee,” I say. “No.”
Njal loops an arm around my shoulders. “She’s a hard worker.”
“I know that.”
I had told Revna one last hunt. But I wasn’t so sure. Even if we claim this island for our growing village, I’m not sure I wanted to grow it with her.
Njal humphs. “It would do thee good to settle down and cool thy blood.”
“My blood is plenty cool.”
“Just thee wait,” he laughs. “A lass will come along and stir thy feelings so thee can’t keep thy mind in order.”
“Not to worry.” I laugh with him, clapping him on the back. “I won’t find one on this island.”
⧫⧫⧫
Seeking fresh water the next morning, a couple of us go towards the edge of the wood. I spot its tracks again. The Wolf walked this edge last night, silently stalking us. As I step fully under the canopy of the wood, cool air hits my windburned cheeks. The trees are old, larger than an arm’s width around.
There’s a trickle of a stream but it’s too low and muddy to refill our water skins. We follow it uphill to find its spring. I point to a glade up ahead. Sunlight breaks into the canopy as we get closer. A path appears and widens and then…a house?
The sod roof is thick with growth and the edges of the birch bark create an eave over the log siding. It’s quaint with fences that corral a kitchen garden on one side and a flock of sheep on the other. Their gentle baas weave through the grasses they eat. A sliver of thin smoke oozes from the northwest corner.
We are not alone.
I gesture for the men to hide, ducking behind a pine myself. Someone exits the cottage. Bare feet. Skirts of linen. A leather belt hung with tools slants across wide hips. A curvy chest. Long flaxen hair with thin plaits.
I stand, leaning against the tree and staring. My body reacts. A tension in my lower abdomen clenching. My jaw loosens as I watch her close her eyes and tilt her face towards the sun.
I step. Another. And another. Drawn against my will.
Her eyes open and her chin drops. I hold my breath. But she turns and goes into the garden.
My shoulders relax and I look down at my boots. Tracks. My eyes follow them. Around and around the house the Wolf circled. I loosen an arrow from my quiver. It might not be asleep after all.
Behind me, the men unfold from the trees, drawn as I was to the hope of something warm. Even so, another possibility crosses my mind. Another man could be here. Their family. I nock the arrow, and my other hand grips the bow.
The sound of our party draws the woman’s attention, and she stands from where she was bent below the edge of the fence. Her head and neck are visible now, eyes wide with surprise. She doesn’t cover her mouth in fear or trip over her feet. Just stares like she can hardly believe someone else is here.
“Fair maiden,” I say.
She wipes the back of her hand over her brow, sweeping back her golden hair. “Greetings, hunter.”
“Are thou here alone?”
“Yes…” She takes my measure with pursed lips.
I stalk forward, not lowering the aim of my undrawn bow, and glance around for the Wolf. “I can protect thee.”
She smiles and it glows with mirth. Her eyes dance along the wooden shaft of my arrow pointed towards her heart, tracking it from the stone tip up to my fist. My lungs seize and it’s like I’ve walked out of the feverish longhouse in the dead of winter. Her nimble finger touches the base of the arrow and pushes it down towards her feet.
“I don’t need protection.” She seems annoyed. Not worried or scared.
“How do thou survive here with the Wolf?”
“We live in harmony on this island.”
“We’ve come to defeat it,” my chest puffs out, “to rid the land of this plague.”
“Many have tried and none have succeeded.”
“But I will—” My words are cut short when her bare feet step in between my booted ones. My eyes roam up from the dirt squished between her toes over the length of her body to her breasts that almost brush against my chest. She takes my measure, gaze lingering on my biceps and then my lips.
“Take heed, hunter,” she warns. Our eyes meet. Hers as dark and as blue as the sea. “It cannot be killed.”
⧫⧫⧫
The tales of this place being haunted by none, but the Wolf could be—were clearly—wrong. Later that evening, I visit her again, drawn by something I can’t name.
Her garden is empty, so I go to her door and knock. Runes are drawn in blood, long dried black, on the wooden frame. I dare not enter beyond.
Summoned by my knock, she opens the door with a quirk to her brow.
“Tell me thy name,” I blurt out.
“Ulfhild.”
“Ulfhild.” I sigh and almost step forward. “Don’t thou want to ask after mine?”
“Perhaps if thou are here long enough for me to learn it.”
Her thinly veiled insult doesn’t deter me. “Tell me how to kill the Wolf.”
“I told thee… It cannot be killed.”
“How did thou end up here?” I ask, leaning against the frame and crossing my arms. She stares at my forearms and a jolt shoots through me. I rub the back of my neck, and my arms drop to my sides. She doesn’t stop looking.
“I was banished,” Ulfhild answers at last.
“Why?”
“For trying to set the moon free.” She gazes up at the sky as if she can see it now. As if it would bathe her skin in sea foam.
I try to look into her cottage, but the setting sun doesn’t illuminate the interior. “Are thee a witch?”
“No, but I have power.”
“What are thee?”
“I was a god.”
“A god?”
“Fenrir is my grandfather.” Loki is the father of Fenrir. And Fenrir’s own son Hati chases the moon across the night sky.
“So, you tried to set thy father free?”
She nods. “He who can only visit on the new moon when there is nothing to chase.”
“So, they locked thee on an island with a wolf?”
“Yes.”
I wonder what power she has but before I can ask, a long baaa cuts into the space that had shrunk between us. Her head turns towards her sheep. Ulfhild darts past me and I follow.
She curses at a man in the paddock, waving at him to get away. Troels’ only eyebrow furrows, but he doesn’t move. As I peer over the fence, a slaughtered sheep lies at his feet. It’s a clean cut across the neck and blood soaks into the wool of its coat, thick curls of hair preparing it for winter.
“Bastard! Thou had no right to take what is not thine.”
I shake my head, ashamed. “We are guests on this island, Troels.”
“But she has plenty of animals to spare,” he says, talking to me and not to her. “And we need—”
“Thou does not need anything.”
Troels steps over the dead animal in a nimble leap and grabs Ulfhild’s forearm. He pulls her to the fence, drawing her towards his chest, where blood splatter dots his tunic. “Don’t tell me what I need.”
“Troels,” I warn, shame rising in me.
With another glance at me, he lets go. But my stomach flips knowing what he would probably do if I wasn’t here. He grabs the sheep’s ankles and begins to drag it away.
“I would have invited thou all to dine with me, but thine greed means none are welcome,” Ulfhild spits.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My apology is thin in the wake of what happened. “I won't let any of the men near thy home.”
She huffs a laugh. “Do thou think this is the first time I've been threatened by a man?”
“I can protect thee,” I promise again.
“I don’t need or want thy protection.”
“What do thou want?” I ask without thinking.
She ignores my question and goes back to her house, feet stomping up the worn path of grass. I watch her go and wonder how I never noticed that hips could swish angrily. How I wish she was wearing her belt with all the things hanging off it so I could watch it move with her. I shake my head and go back through the woods.
⧫⧫⧫
After a second night on land, we’re restless to explore the island. For those of us who refused the tantalizing smell of cooking mutton—afraid, perhaps, Ulfhild had cursed it—we are eager to catch fresh meat, a welcome change from the barrels of salted fish and smoked jerky. We helped the other party set off this morning to row around the island and scope the land for our new village.
The humid morning has given way to a dry afternoon, crisp with autumn wind. I easily spot the deer trail, its thin brown line meandering through grassy patches and berry-ripe underbrush. We set our hare traps along it and eventually make our camp by a creek, the nearly full moon reflecting on the water-slick rocks.
As twilight gives way to evening, a herd of deer appear, and the men push towards them. Their white tails flick up and it’s all I can spot in the late hour. I draw my bow with two arrows. I exhale. The arrows whir into the night. A low grunt means I’ve hit my mark, and their hooves bound heavily into the shadows.
I rejoin the men, and fear makes my belly clench. We’re not alone. What signs there are—the hushed night creatures, the wind exhaling a forlorn chill, the sharp cut of white light through the cover of needles—I do not know, exactly, what warning we perceived.
We grab daggers and bows. Our backs shield each other as we form a circle.
We wait there, poised and tense, waiting. Waiting. Waiting…
Some men shift their weight.
Someone whispers into the dark. “Do thou think—”
A yell. Muffled cries. Metallic heat infuses the air. I turn to chaos.
Sten holds Troels by the armpits. The rest of the men flank them and aim towards something low. Low and dark. A gray jaw snaps. Tufted ears flatten on its head. I shout as recognition flares. The Wolf.
“Now!” I yell. A volley of arrows and daggers fly. They thud one after the other. It does naught but scare the Wolf away.
We fall back, and Troels seethes between his teeth, clutching his leg. Blood weeps from deep puncture wounds. Marked by the Wolf’s bite.
In pairs, we have hour-long watches throughout the night. But night eases on towards a normal dawn.
It doesn’t take me long the next morning as we pack up to find the trail of blood. It leads me to the remains of our deer, caught by the same sharp jaw that caught Troels. The fresh meat is torn to shreds; blood and entrails a massacred pile in the cavity of its belly. I yank my arrow from the dead deer’s flank and look at the paw prints around its midnight meal.
Why would the Wolf attack a man first instead of the easy meal of an injured deer?
⧫⧫⧫
Before we reach the beach carrying the islands’ spoils and a limping Troels, I slip away. What I encountered this morning and what Troels did two evenings before, does not sit right in my belly. It’s like I’ve swallowed a wish bone, and its prongs are lodged behind my chest.
I go up to her door frame again, wait beside it, and tentatively call her name. Quiet steps make their way across the cottage before her bare feet deliver her to me. She’s wrapped in a large patterned shawl that covers her from neck to ankles. Motifs of ferns and leaves crawl along the border and the start of the moon cycles disappears onto the back.
“What a beautiful wrap,” I say, the reason for my coming here forgotten.
She tells me how she wove it herself from the yarn spun of her own sheep’s wool and dyed with roots and plants. As she talks of her loom, there’s a feeling in my belly again. But it’s not stuck and lodged like a bone. It tingles and spreads.
“The design is as intricate as I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.
“I’ve had lots of time to learn my craft.”
A blush rises stubbornly to my cheeks. As alone as she is, she has created a home here—one where she grows and forages and makes all she needs.
“I came to help thee as repayment for Troels killing your sheep.”
“I appreciate thy offer.”
“Tell me what I can do,” I say before she can deny my request.
Ulfhild laughs. “I wasn’t going to refuse thy help. Thou can split that wood over there.” She points to a pile next to a fallen tree, half cut into smaller rounds.
“Good,” I reply and head over there. Pulling the ax from the closest log, I get to work.
Ulfhild doesn’t leave her doorframe as she watches me swing the ax. I feel like I can’t breathe as she stands there. By the time the sun has started to descend over the tops of the trees, there is a great pile of split wood waiting to be stacked. She finally leaves her door and goes back into the cottage. I wipe my brow and start back towards the beach.
“Hunter!”
I turn around as she catches up to me, handing me a cloth wrap. Our fingers brush and pink blooms on her cheeks. As I take the food from her, fresh cheese and fragrant fruit waft from within.
She looks at my sweat soaked tunic, clinging to my chest. “You’ve earned it.”
⧫⧫⧫
When I get back to the beach, Troels is laid out on a blanket, seemingly asleep. Njal whispers that he thinks the wound is festering. As the man whose wife is the village healer, Njal is the most equipped to handle any injuries during our travels.
“I put honey on the bite… But it’s not even that deep.”
When I put the back of my hand on Troels’ forehead, it feels hot, so we put him in the water to cool his fever. His mouth slackens as the sea washes over his skin and the saltwater sinks into his wound. But then his mouth starts to foam, and his body starts to shake.
“He’s convulsing! Get him out.”
We drag him onto the shore as he shivers with fever or cold or something else, I don’t know. He hugs himself, rolling and screaming. I pin his chest down to keep him from hurting himself. Under my palm, his chest hair seems to grow, and I blink rapidly, unbelieving. But no. His arms sprout rough dark brown hair, too. I let go and jump back.
I can do naught to help but watch in horror. His bare feet shrink, and I shake my head thinking it’s the surf threatening to drag him back in. He groans in pain, and I look at his face, skin turning white. He thrashes onto his stomach. Sand sprays and sticks to a mat of thick hair on his neck. His back hunches. The fingers digging into the ground are now paws.
Someone chokes on a sound. I realize it’s me. My mind can’t make sense of what’s before me. A great dog moves. Ears flick, taking in the sounds. It spots me and flees, bounding into the woods on four legs. Brown fur is mottled with water and sand. Its tail points towards the moon. I realize it’s not a dog at all. But a wolf.
⧫⧫⧫
I don’t know what power she holds over me—if she has any at all—but I am drawn again and again to her little cottage. We talk in her garden or by her doorway.
After a time, she lets me inside. It’s a cocoon, spun of her own hand. A protective shell from the outside world and from the night. It’s snug with layers of rugs on the ground. A cabinet of ceramic jars full of honey, herbs, vegetables, and fruits. I spot the corner of a bed behind a curtain. We sit by the fire with a cup of tea or a mug of wine and I share tales of my travels or of my village life. She shares about her complicated family and her banishment from Valhalla.
She didn’t disbelieve my tale about Troels, just shrugged and said the island has its own ways to deal with those it deems dishonorable.
When I asked again how to find the Wolf, she asked me a question instead, “Is it not better to live with those that call this island home?”
“No one can make a home here, have a family, while it lives.”
“Yet, I thrive here.”
“How can thou thrive when there is no one here like thee?”
She sighs then and looks forlorn. An edge of loneliness crosses her fair face. “There is no one like me…”
“No.” I cup her tender cheek.
She lets me, leans into my touch. Maybe I realize through her how lonely I am, too. How she offers only what is gentle and sure. How we could be more than simply man and woman. She lets me kiss her and I understand, then, what Njal meant when we first arrived on the island.
⧫⧫⧫
The moon shines bright, cutting through the line of pine trees that bow like ribs over the deer trail. My steps are soundless as I head into the heart of the wood. The men follow wordlessly even as crickets and other midnight bugs yelp their alarms of warning.
I follow the Wolf’s prints which have pressed sure wells into the mud. The water collected in them reflects the long shadows of the underbrush.
I breathe in and out through my nose. Elbows raised in readiness. My thighs work with the uphill climb, but I barely feel the strain in my muscles. We reach the peak of the mountain, and it flattens. Rocks and short pines are all that can survive at its harsh, exposed height. Filing onto the open summit, wind swirls around us.
Like a flash of gray lightening, the Wolf strikes from the trees and snaps at the ankles of one of the men. My arrow flies off my bow and sinks into the ground over its back. Snarling, it retreats like fog, low and drifting.
I whistle and the men fan out and create a semi-circle in the glade. Its yellow eyes pierce the shadows. Weapons glint in the lavender light of the moon’s glow. Tarnished bronze with sharp hewn edges glint with the promise of violence.
The Wolf strikes again, but we push forward. It retreats and we keep pressing into the wood with the open glade at our back. The underbrush is dense here on the humid side of the mountain, but any movement of the ferns and vines is eclipsed by the trees. Our breathing is loud, louder than the crickets and bugs which should be a chorus in the canopy. My chest vibrates with my heartbeat.
A yell. Ears ring. I turn my head, my body taut. Behind us! Knud’s back bows from a swipe of claws. Then he is dragged. The Wolf has sunk its teeth into his meaty hip. He cries again. His survival instincts try to bat the snout away, but the Wolf is latched.
Before I can decide to shoot, there’s another cry from the other side of the semi-circle. There are two! This one isn’t gray like I assumed but a mottled brown. It bites Sten’s arm and his dagger drops. The wolf lets go, muzzle curling as it prepares to strike again. I draw an arrow in my bow and as the brown wolf rises on its hind legs, I shoot. It falls back with a whimper and lands on its side. My arrow protrudes from its chest.
Sten cradles his arm and stoops to get his weapon with a grateful nod towards me. A howl from the gray wolf behind me, and I turn to see two more men injured, but not fatally. The gray wolf slinks back. When I go to look at the brown wolf, I find instead Troels lying there with an arrow in his heart. My arrow.
I fall to my knees and place a hand on his naked ribs. His pale flesh is still warm but there is no more rise and fall of his chest. His skin will soon be cold. Cold by my own hand. And the thing I can no longer deny is here. In front of me under the full moon’s laughing light.
My chin touches my chest, and I close my eyes. I can hear the other men come close. I open my eyes and gaze around—four men. The cold terror at knowing what the Wolf venom will make them suffuses through my body more potent than the strongest berry wine.
What I can no longer deny ripples through the men, too. They kneel beside me. Wordlessly as when we arrived, we reach out and carry Troels back down the mountain. It’s more than an hour in such a procession before we reach the beach. Whoever is on watch by the fire stands, a glowing silhouette against the sea.
The gray wolf—the Wolf—howls again as we lay Troels down on the cool sand. The sound seems too keen as if its brother, not ours, was taken this night.
⧫⧫⧫
“We should leave before the ice forms on the sea,” Bjørn commands. He’s a bear of a man, all shoulders and neck, who captains the ship and can catch salmon with his bare hands.
“Yes, or we’ll be trapped here all winter,” one says, while someone else adds, “Next Spring we’ll find another island.”
They are saying things, avoiding the truth of the thing we witnessed. What the Wolf can do to us.
“But we found this island,” I say.
Men shake their heads, still unable to utter the thing I know all of them are thinking. Ire rises in me. If only they would blame me for killing Troels.
“It’s not worth it…”
“We’re close to getting the Wolf,” I say.
“Too close!”
“Thou have someone to warm your bed—”
I growl at their brash words. What I wish was true.
“There’s time yet.”
Bjørn cuts in. “Dauðamaðr, it’s done.”
I stand. “I stay.”
Some of the men nod like they knew it was inevitable.
“Who will stay with me? The fight is not over. We can take this island for our village. For thy growing families. Where there is fish and food aplenty here.”
“We’ll return six moons from now.” Bjørn’s unspoken words are clear enough. We’ll return to see if there is anyone left.
Njal takes me aside. He pulls up the side of his tunic and a great gash of claws racks down his side. It wasn’t four men the Wolf got, but five.
“It’s barely a graze.” I choke on the words.
He is calm. Resigned. “Thou know it does not matter.”
Ire makes my cheeks heat like with fever. The injustice of it. “This is some trick of Loki!”
“Perhaps…”
“We can find a cure for this.”
“Dauðamaðr, go back and tell my daughter—”
“No! I will not leave until this is done.”
His ruddy cheeks are almost white. “Leave us here on the island. I don’t want to die. It’s not so bad to live as a wolf.”
“I refuse to leave!”
He sighs. “If thou won’t kill us then you will become one of us.” There’s an inevitable promise in his words. A truth Njal doesn’t want to utter but falls from his lips anyhow.
“There has to be a way…”
Njal just shakes his head and turns to look at the sky, at the moon setting on the other side of the mountain. His last night to look at the blanket of stars through his own eyes. My gaze turns downward to the tree line and the line of smoke I can imagine curling up through the wood.
I sprint. Brought to her front door, I call out. Emotions toss inside me, but I can’t grasp any of them. Can’t put a name to what has happened tonight. I crave something in my control.
At her doorway, I knock on the frame filled with runes. They don’t bar me from entering. When I venture back to the bedroom, fumbling my way through the dark, I find her pallet empty.
“Ulfhild?”
There’s another howl. Close. Too close. I run out the back door and she emerges from the woods, naked and pale in the darkest part of the morning. There’s blood on her. On her nose and around her mouth. It drips down her neck.
She shivers, not noticing me yet. I can’t seem to feel anything at all.
“Ulfhild.”
“Dauðamaðr! I—” Her voice is harsh, strained.
A cold settles over me. It’s like my throat is an icicle and it slowly drips into my center. How she can live on this island with the Wolf. Her mysterious power. The ancestry that runs through her veins.
“Thou…” I start, unable even to speak it out loud. What she truly is.
She walks over to me, curves fully her own. Bones and breasts and skin. “Will thou kill the Wolf now?”
“Ulfhild.” I grab her forearm and drag her to my chest. Ire radiates like a bonfire.
She does not resist my touch but the way I hold her to me, a brutal blow buried in my masculine muscles, makes me let go.
I fall to my knees before her. What she told me those weeks ago, that it cannot be killed, comes to pass. Because I won’t kill the Wolf if it means killing the woman I love.
She falls on her knees and hugs me.
“How can we break this curse?” I ask.
“There is no way to break it for it is no curse to be strong and to run beneath the moon.”
Njal’s words return to me. It’s not so bad to live as a wolf.
“Then let me run with you,” I plead.
“I can give thee this gift so thou can run with your brothers again,” she offers.
I could protect this island. Protect her. Have a family. Start a village here, one we could defend.
“How?”
“Thou must take its power so I may be fully human. I must give up my magic, my God-hood.” She gazes past me to the sky with a far off look on her face. It’s a look I imagine she's done alone so often.
“Would you do that for me?”
She nods. “To be with you and have a family.”
I brush away hair from her face, staring into her stormy eyes. Tears spring to my own.
“Will I ever be human again?” I ask.
“At first, I could not turn. It took time, but eventually I could turn every morning.”
“And now?”
“Only when the moon is at its fullest.”
⧫⧫⧫
The next evening Ulfhild walks me into the woods. She undresses me, kissing me along my collarbone, my neck, my jaw line. She holds my face in her calloused hands, and I exhale a sigh.
We kiss and I tuck her into me, wishing I could hold her this close forever. To never have to let go or have the moon rise. She smells of home.
It’s not long before I unwrap her from her shawl and she is naked before me. I spread the shawl on a soft bed of pine needles, and we lay on top of it. Our night unravels faster, all lips and pressing fingers and groans.
When I’m buried inside her, Ulfhild’s spirit emerges in the form of a wolf. Her beastly form glows around her like the ring around the moon on hot summer nights. The Wolf leans forward, its teeth sharp and as white as wool. They sink into my shoulder. Pain flairs and my muscles tense. I howl into the sky.
Her hips writhe with abandon, distracting me from the bite and shooting sensations down my legs. My heart races and pleasure lights my blood ablaze. Sinking my claws into her back and holding her on me, we finish together.
Our damp, slick foreheads touch. She cups my slackened jaw and kisses me deep.
When I go to stand my knees buckle, and I fall onto my palms. I watch as hair sprouts on the backs of my hands. I gaze up at the moon, knowing. Pain crackles through me next. Skin stretching, body shaking, bones breaking. My vision goes black.
My eyes clear, and I look up at her. I know her, but my instinct is strong, too strong. I snarl. She backs away then stretches out her hand to me. Sniffing, a flood of smells sweeps through me, registering all at once: fire smoke and fabric, herbs, and rich butter, sweat and a salty smell from between her thighs. I shake my head, unsure how I know all these smells by name.
Then there’s a howl and my ears perk up. It echoes over the treetops and my body is pulled towards it. Towards them. I run.
There is no time. Just a cold winter. Days of snow and ice. Hunting and walking as a pack. There’s an awareness sometimes. Like a calling or when my skin feels taut.
When bunnies breed and the grass tickles my paw pads, I find a place that feels familiar. I wait at the edge of the woods where she can’t see me, watching with my eyes still yellow, and dig my claws into the dirt. She stands there with arms wrapped around her as the spring nips at the heels of winter.
She looks up. I do, too. The half-moon ducks behind a cloud and glows behind its gauzy tissue. I lower my snout and watch her gazing up at it. The moonlight reflected in her eyes. The delicate hand she places on her lower belly. My body shivers. Bones crack. Pain squeezes my muscles.
Then I am walking on two legs instead of four, pulled like gravity towards her. My legs shake as I stumble past the cover of trees. I open my arms, and beneath the moon, she runs into them.
Hayley E. Frerichs grew up in a log cabin nestled in the woods outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she cultivated a love of atmospheric fantasy and romance. She holds degrees in English and education and, following graduation, taught in southern Spain for a year. While she loves to travel, she is also content to stay at home with her sewing machine, tea kettle, and books. Hayley is co-founder and former editor of Dandelion Revolution Press, and her historical fantasy short stories have been published in anthologies. She is currently querying her romantasy novel and lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and works in marketing in higher education. You can learn more about her on her website hayleyefrerichs.com.
Photos by Hayley E. Frerichs.
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