Michael A Wood

Little Gnome, Big Water Michael A Wood

Cancer crept into Muir Jackson's idyllic Midwestern world in his sophomore year of college and leached away at his Father's life until nothing remained except his memory. As fall turned to winter that year the pain of loss lay on Muir like a lead weight. He looked inward to discover who he was, to see what was left, and out of it what he might become. Where it seemed that he walked along a narrow defile, there was a broad road. Instead of being alone he found friends with whom he could journey along life's twisting byways. Together he and his friends learn about joy and hope, but also about the cruelty that abides in the world. Muir's path after college leads him to Scotland where a new universe opens to him, a culture and history that reaches back into mist shrouded forests and mountains. A people wedded to the wild and unforgiving seas, where myth and folklore intertwine with the recorded events of history like the strands of a DNA molecule. When his roommate and friend is kidnapped Muir plunges headfirst into an adventure that takes him into planes of existence that are wholly other, that by any sane measure cannot exist outside of pure imagination. It is a world he is unprepared to navigate until he meets the gnome. The gnome has walked the earth for millennia, one of the few survivors of a genocide that scattered his people in a diaspora across Europe and Asia. He is a shadowy figure who comes and goes in the lives of people, helping as he may, but in all of his long life he has always avoided the single task to which he is best suited, the challenge to confront evil at its source. To save his friend Muir must transform into someone, or something, that is entirely new. Extraordinary abilities are necessary to go where he must but obtaining them is not free. There is a demand for recompense, a need to balance the cosmic scales. The changes Muir must undergo are irreversible but without them he cannot succeed. In pursuit of his friend Muir's journey will carry him to the Orkney Islands off Scotland's northern coast. It is there that Muir will be baptized and purified. What he is about to undertake is no small task and he must prove himself worthy. It is the sea that informs the soul of his missing friend and it is in those depths that Muir must seek him. In a place far beneath the North Sea waters that is spoken of but which no one has ever seen, or at least returned from to tell the tale. Finfolkaheem. Muir will journey there and find unexpected alliances to aid him but will also encounter powerful enemies who will try to stop him.