Red Petals (Open Novella Contest Entry)

It used to be tradition, to tell the children stories of the gods that lived down in the river. It had been generations since those stories had even closely resembled the truth, but they lingered, until finally they were no longer told at all.

Kenzie was never told these stories, so he has his own concerns when his younger sister, Tara, disappears. Was she bitten by a snake? Has she broken her leg, and gotten stranded somewhere far from home? Was she kidnapped by the strange woman who recently appeared in town?

But Tara has stumbled across something else entirely, something she has never known even to imagine.

The siblings' attempts to find each other will uncover a world of secrets- legends forgotten, in more ways than one.