How a throwaway character becomes central to your story...
Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. The Spring semester got busy with rehearsals for The Wizard of Oz (I was the Emerald City Guard) and preparations for our regional spelling bee, and then all Hell broke loose. Our college was hit with a ransom ware hack attack that shut us down for three weeks, and as soon as we came back, the coronavirus pandemic sent everyone home for the rest of the semester. Now that the Spring is finally wrapped up and Summer is on the horizon, let's get back to our exploration of my new novel, The Spring of Llanfyllin.
I've been taking a closer look at some of the new characters who we meet in the new book, and today I want to talk about Baylen, grandson of Murdock, the old harbormaster of Macnylleth. He was literally nothing more than a plot device at the beginning of the book, a way for me to alert my main characters that an unknown fleet of ships was closing in on them in the middle of the night. But once you open the door and allow someone to enter, sometimes you end up making a lifelong friend, or maybe even a part of your family.
Part of the fun of making up a book as you go along is that you get to discover things in the same way that you hope your audience does. Once Baylen appears at Dylan's castle on that fateful, snowy night, I was never able to get rid of him. He rides with Dylan and Clyde to the harbor, then he ends up on the ship with them as they escape along the western coast of the kingdom, and from there, he becomes an integral part of the story, eventually joining Siannon on her quest to save the kingdom from the Norse.
I really loved the way the relationship between Siannon, a young mother and an orphan, and Baylen, an orphan himself, grows during their time on the road together. Here's one of my favorite scenes of the two of them together from Chapter 41, "Solitude."
She found some vegetables in a root cellar below the house and made a stew in a pot over the fireplace, which she had lit with the confidence that there were no Norse in the area to spot the smoke from the chimney. Every Norseman in the world waited outside the walls of Ellesmere Keep, it seemed to her, and she had grown too tired and too hungry to worry about an isolated patrol. In any case, it was already dusk, which would make the smoke harder to detect. She melted snow in the pot for water while she cut up the vegetables. As she added them to the water, the rich, earthy aromatic smell of carrots, leeks, and onions began to fill the house. It woke Baylen up first.
“Something smells delicious,” he said, stretching and scratching through his messy hair.
“We’re going to be riding all night until we reach Holywell,” Siannon said. “I thought a hot meal before we go back on the road would be better than cold rations from our packs.”
“This smells like my own home,” Baylen said, “like my own mum’s stew.” In a flash, the young man disappeared and the boy re-emerged, and he burst into tears. Siannon took him into her arms and let him sob into her shoulder. He was almost as tall as she was, but despite all he had experienced, he was still a young teenager in years, and the weight of their losses caught up with him in his memories of home.
“I’m sorry, Kira,” he said, composing himself. “I know I need to be stronger than that.”
“Don’t apologize for being human,” she assured him. “I didn’t know my mother at all, and I still miss her all the same. My father used to talk about her all the time; he told me so many stories about her that she’s almost as real as if I had known her. How long has it been since your mother died?”
“Three years,” Baylen said. “Grandfather takes good care of me, and he’s taught me so much, but…”
“But he’s not your mother,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “I’m glad that you understand.”
“I hope my own boy grows up to be as brave as you are,” she said, and she hugged him again. “Why don’t you help me set out bowls, and we’ll get the rest of these men up and about.”
Baylen appears again in my newest novel, which is currently in first-draft progress. In fact, Baylen recently appeared when the other characters (and to a certain extent, myself; I certainly hadn't intended what happened when I started) least expected to see him. But I think we will all be happy to have him as part of the story again.
To read more about Baylen's adventures in the Norse War, click on this HOME PAGE link to buy The Spring of Llanfyllin either in paperback or Kindle ebook. I'll be back on Wednesday (I promise!) with the next in my series of new second-book characters.
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