This Little Light of Mine

By Claire Horne

Stella used to think she was just a normal twelve-year-old girl. She used to believe everyone knew they had a light shining brightly within them making magical things possible. She used to think everyone saw auras and sometimes just knew things without ever being told. She thought everyone saw Crossovers and Whisperers, and chatting with Mother Earth was nothing out of the ordinary.

Apparently not. Now, Stella is realising just how unique she truly is. Shes also discovering what shes here for. She is somehow right in the middle of what Mother Earth has always told herthat nature is a balancing act, and when its harmed, Nature Spirits pay the ultimate price. Not only are the Faeries depending on Stella, theyre depending on others just like her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504305693

Claire Horne

Claire Horne is a clairvoyant medium and author in one life and a library officer in the other. She lives in Adelaide with featherbaby, Rossi, and fur-baby, Elwood, in a little house with a big yard protected by gum trees.

Book preview

THIS

LITTLE

Light

OF

MINE

CLAIRE HORNE

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Copyright © 2017 Claire Horne.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com.au

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0568-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0569-3 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:   12/15/2016

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

About The Author

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Horne, Claire, author.

Title: This little light of mine / Claire Horne.

ISBN: 9781504305686 (paperback)

Target Audience: For young adults.

Subjects: Fantasy fiction.

Clairvoyance—Fiction.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Horne, Claire, author.

Title: This little light of mine / Claire Horne.

ISBN: 9781504305693 (ebook)

Target Audience: For young adults.

Subjects: Fantasy fiction.

Clairvoyance—Fiction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, an enormous and heartfelt thank you to Wendy Schmidt (Editing Extraordinaire) who laboured long and hard to help turn this book into a reality. You truly are a gift to the world, and I am blessed to have your input here. Thank you for the hours, the editing, the endless cups of tea, the meals, the tears, and the laughter. Most of all, thank you for always, and without fail, believing in me.

An equally enormous and heartfelt thank you to Meleah. I am so lucky to have not one, but two, Editing Extraordinaires in my life, and luckier still to call you a friend. Thank you for the time you have invested in this book and for transforming it into something that makes my heart glad.

Thank you to everyone who read all, or parts, of this book in its various stages of completion and provided feedback, suggestions, and encouragement. It still amazes me that you all simply and unquestionably believed this was inevitable; when I thought that it was a pipedream, you gave me the courage and the confidence to trudge on. A special thank you to Auntie Pat who was the first person to read the book in any coherent format, and who gave me the confidence to believe it was worth it. A special thank you, also, to Nanna Pauline who said she loved what she saw, but never got to read the finished version. I hope you can finish it from wherever you are now.

Thank you to all of those others who have gone before me. I am indebted to you for your guidance and for your love. You are welcome any time.

Last, and most definitely not least, thank you to Pangea and the Faeries for sharing their stories. I am honoured that you chose me. I hope I have done you proud.

Astrid - gratitude to you by the bucket load, my beautiful, sassy, protective, powerful friend. Thank you for picking me as your human. In a world that I don’t always understand, you are my compass. I love you to your star and back again.

Dedicated to Astrid

If you have been doing something from the moment you were born (and you have done it for the rest of your life since) however old you may be, it is natural for you. You don’t question where the particular something came from. You don’t ask why you do this something and no one else does. You just assume everybody is doing it. If you can do it, they must be able to as well, surely? The fact that you do something that is second nature to you (because you’ve done it forever) isn’t important. It isn’t even worth a second’s thought.

Everyone else has their own something they do. They draw, they sing, they cook, they write. They have done these things since before they can even remember; whichever one or two of them they have a particular talent for. They do their something in their houses, in their gardens, in the streets, in school, in their classrooms, at their grandparent’s houses, with their best friends. They do their something out in the open, in full view of whoever happens to be watching or listening at the time. They aren’t embarrassed. Some are more shy than others, but they still know that they have a skill, a talent, a meaning in their lives. Why be embarrassed about a something you are good at?

It does get tricky, though, if your something isn’t quite drawing or singing or cooking or writing. What if it isn’t at all what everybody else does? What if everybody else wouldn’t even imagine that they could do it? What if your something attracts raised eyebrows, questioning, confused expressions, and astonished mouths gaping like goldfish (and what is more, if the possibility does in fact exist, shocked goldfish)? In that case, your something starts to feel a lot like embarrassment. You start to hide it, shutting it away as you realise that far from encouraging your something, people are scared of it. They avoid you. They cross the street to get to the opposite pavement rather than risk walking past you at close proximity.

‘You can’t catch it!’ you want to scream.

Of course they can’t catch your something. It was given to you before you drew your first breath. It is a gift, although sometimes it takes a while to recognise it as such.

This is a story about Stella and her something. It is a story about survival, and appreciating the talents you are given before you are born. It is also a story about accepting everybody else’s something, which actually might look a lot more like your something than you first thought.

Even if seeing it does make you look like a goldfish in a permanent state of shock.

CHAPTER 1

I have just crossed my bedroom on tiptoes and jumped into bed. I was on tiptoes for two reasons.

1. If I step on the cracks in the floorboards, something terrible will happen. Something unknown and unseen to me, but something terrible nonetheless.

2. If I don’t catapult myself quickly into bed, my feet will hover too long and too close to the dark space underneath. Who knows what could happen in that case? Many a toy or notebook or set of keys have gone missing under there, never to be seen again. Oblivion is a terrifying thought. I swear there’s a black hole under that bed, and I, at twelve years old, am far too young and far too clever to get sucked in to it. I’ll jump into my bed if it’s all the same to you.

So, for reasons you now fully understand, I have just crossed my bedroom on tiptoes and jumped into bed.

I slide down into the coolness of the cotton sheets and pull the quilt up to my chin. This is one of my favourite times of the day. Especially on nights like this one, when the wind is howling through every crack and crevice in the house, whispering menacing secrets that you can never quite catch; when the night is so cold that if you stay out in it, even for a few minutes, your fingers become numb and stiff and feel detached from your body like ten long, thin aliens wriggling to free themselves. On nights like these there is nothing better than crawling into a warm, cosy bed, knowing it will stay that way until you next have to leave it.

I’m waiting for my dad. He’s in the kitchen downstairs, helping Mum with the dishes. Mum washes, Dad dries. This is the way it’s always been. He’s coming up to say goodnight to me soon. He promised.

Here he is now. I can hear his footsteps on the stairs, heavy and slow, in perfect rhythm.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

Here is his footstep now on the stair that starts to turn the corner. Four more carpeted stairs to the top, and then he’ll be on the landing. Two large footsteps straight across the landing, and he’ll be in my doorway. I know he’s on the stair that turns the corner because it’s the only one that speaks. Every time it’s stepped on it groans and creaks in complaint with its deep, gruff voice (unless, like me, you have learned to step in the very corner where there’s hardly any stair at all. He won’t speak to you then because he won’t even know you’re there). I hear the stair grumbling at Dad. Four more foot falls.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

He’s at the top, on the landing. My eyes are squeezed tightly shut in anticipation. I’m trying to look like I’m asleep so that Dad has to pretend he can’t wake me up. Then he’ll have to go off to his own bed without saying goodnight, sad and lonely. And, finally, I’ll have to scream at him excitedly, ‘Come back! I’m really awake! Can’t you tell? Don’t you know by now?’ That’s just what we do. That’s our dance.

So, I’m waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Where is he? I open my eyes and look towards the doorway, wondering what sort of trick he’ll play on me this time. The light in my bedroom is off, but the light in the landing is a humming, luminous globe, casting shadows in my room. From where I’m lying I have to look over my toes to see the doorway. The view from over my toes is not the same tonight. This is definitely not what I was expecting.

The hallway light, shining brightly behind him, makes the man facing me from the doorway a perfect silhouette.