Effie of Glen Coe

An orphaned fey must find a means to survive despite the crown's ruthless hunters. This is the first encounter of Effie of Glen Coe and the fey hunter, Edmund Glover, set years before the events of the novel, THE LAIRD OF DUNCAIRN.

To align with THE LAIRD OF DUNCAIRN, the following version of "Effie of Glen Coe" has been revised since its original publication in Stories in the Ether. For starters, Effie wasn't Effie then, she was Aelfie, and the Fey Finder, Edmund Glover, only a land surveyor working for the crown. But the heart of the tale, that of a young, orphaned fey lost in a larger world of prejudice and propaganda, remains.

When writing the first novel of the Fey Matter series, I had first thought to leave out all of the action of this short story. It is a separate tale, after all. But my editor rightly convinced me parts of it were needed as backstory, so into the novel they went. For not only do these scenes depict the first encounter of Effie and Glover, but more so, they show the brutal reality of Effie's childhood and what drives her toward adventure.