The Hunt for the Eye of Ogin

“Patrick Doud has the heart of a poet and writes with the skill of a seasoned storyteller. Evoking the awe and magic of the natural world, his beautifully-paced work is rich in detail, crackling with action, and populated by characters we care deeply about. The ease with which he keeps us turning pages makes it hard to believe that Ogin is his fiction debut. Well-imagined, intelligent, and original–there is much to love in the wondrous world of The Winnitok Tales!”

-Frederic S. Durbin, author of Dragonfly and The Star Shard

“A thoroughly enjoyable adventure from first page to last.”

-Midwest Book Review

Elwood Pitch is only thirteen years old when he is carried away to the land of Winnitok, in the otherworld of Ehm. Desperate to find a way back home to his family, Elwood’s one hope is Granashon, the land’s immortal protector. But Granashon is missing, and her power that protects Winnitok is fading fast. When Elwood dreams of the Eye of Ogin, a legendary object with the power to see Granashon wherever she might be, he vows to find it. With his dog Slukee and two newfound companions, Drallah Wehr of Winnitok and her talking raven Booj, Elwood sets out on an epic quest.

Legend states that the Eye was lost in the Great Swamp of Migdowsh, a land of nightmare ruled by a horrible frog demon known as the Otguk. The Great Swamp is far to the west, and a vast wilderness lies between the companions and their goal. Many dangers threaten them along the way—hungry nahrwucks, cruel green yugs and their Graycloak masters, a despotic girl queen and the powerful witch who counsels her—but by their wits and courage, as well as an unseen hand that seems to guide and protect them, the companions reach the Great Swamp at last. And then their troubles really begin…

Will they find the Eye and Granashon? Will Elwood find a way home? And how will he live with the terrible truth the Great Swamp reveals to him? Patrick Doud brings memorable characters, poetic language, and a driving narrative to this timeless tale that recalls classic epic adventure stories.

Read reviews of The Hunt for the Eye of Ogin on the News and Press page

Excerpts from The Hunt for the Eye of Ogin…

From Chapter 2, The Plum Tree

As they walked down into the vale a murmur of flowing water could be heard, and they came in the red dimness to a wide, deep creek. The path, broadening into a lane, took to its eastern bank. In the Y where the water and the path met stood an old stone cottage. The tile roof that once covered its one story was mostly gone, the doorway lacked a door, and tall reeds grew wild all around. A little plum tree still bearing purple fruit stood beside it.

Booj flapped over to the plum tree and landed on a branch. After leaning her pack and bow against the cottage, Drallah went to the tree, picked a plum, and brought it to Elwood, who was standing in the dooryard looking hungry and lost. Recalling his hunger, he thanked her, admiring the fruit’s dusky purple skin for a moment before taking a deep bite. It was deliciously sweet and juicy, but his pleasure quickly ended: the first bite had barely been swallowed when the rest of the plum slipped from his fingers. At the same time his legs buckled, and he would have fallen if Drallah had not been there to catch and lay him gently down.

It did not seem so to Elwood. For him, the cottage and the plum tree were forgotten the moment he swallowed the fruit. Instead, he sat alone in a desert of white rock and dust. Bodiless voices gibbering words he could not understand floated in the void overhead. There was nothing to do, and he was there such an immeasurably long time that he came to believe he always had been.

However long it was, eventually an object appeared in the desolate white distance. From so far away, he could be sure only that it was brilliant red in color, and that it was not moving. He began to walk toward it. This took a long time, during much of which he seemed to make no progress at all. Then abruptly his walking brought him to his goal: a giant flower of fiery red growing up out of the floor of the waste. The stem was so bowed by the flower’s weight that the ends of two long curving petals touched the dust of the ground. Like stairs, he climbed the petals into the flower’s heart.

Within the flower was a land where—he knew it immediately—nothing ever died, or quite lived either. Walking beside an endless stream that wound among trees as tall as mountains, he realized it was always twilight in that land, and he wondered where the light came from. Following a sound of women and men singing, he found in a glade carpeted in purple flowers four people who fairly shone with their own light. They welcomed Elwood by name, though not one he recognized, and spoke to him for a long time before finally wandering away. When they left, they took Elwood’s memories of them, and the desert of white rock, and the land inside the red flower. In place of these, they gave him knowledge he had not had before.

He was back at the creek again, looking down at himself lying on the ground. Drallah was kneeling over him and calling his name, and Slukee was vigorously licking his very white, peaceful face. So I’m dead, he thought, but the next moment the color rushed back into his cheeks. His eyes opened, and he was back behind them, staring out. Looking up at the faces of the girl and the dog, he became aware that Drallah was saying something in an urgent tone.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“No, I’m all right, I think,” he replied. Then he realized that she had spoken in her strange language, and he had not only understood her perfectly, but answered her as well.

From Chapter 3, Window Light

Once their clothes, hair, fur, and feathers were mostly dry, they gathered themselves to find the people of the house. Drallah lit two candlesticks in the fire, put them in holders she found on the mantel, and gave one to Elwood. They passed through the hall and started up the creaking stairs, Slukee walking a little in front, Drallah and Elwood side by side. Booj glided ahead to perch on one of the worn cobwebbed banisters. There was a wide landing halfway up, and from it the staircase divided in two to the left and right, each branch continuing up to second floor galleries overlooking the central hall. Over the landing hung a dark blue banner, upon which was embroidered a golden star cupped in a golden hand.

“I don’t know this device,” said Drallah.

It was very quiet, and Elwood realized the thunder and lightning had moved away. Drallah called out another strident “Hello,” making him jump.

“Warn me when you’re going to do that,” he whispered fiercely. His nerves were stretched taut: he did not want to meet anyone who lived in such a place, and would have preferred it out in the rain.

“Sorry,” she grinned, and pointed to the left-hand way. “The light we saw was on that side of the house.”

The gallery at the top of the stairs was also carpeted in worn red, and there were several doors in its one wall. Drallah led them past these to the last door, which opened into a hallway. This too had many doors, now on one side and now on the other.

The hallway turned toward the front of the house. Rounding the corner, they saw a line of pale yellow light shining through the crack under a door. Drallah strode up to it. Slukee stopped, ears high and head cocked to one side, staring at the light. Elwood hung back with her, wishing they were somewhere else. Just as Drallah was about to knock, Booj, who was right beside her, softly but urgently said, “uk!” and she stayed her hand. Drallah questioned the raven with a look, and then put an ear to the door.

There was a voice speaking on the other side. It sounded impossibly far away, yet at the same time as close as the buzz of a fly settling in her ear. There was a strange echo to it, as though the person speaking were hollow, empty.

It was saying, “We dare not leave the Glass. We are weak yet.”

Another, similar voice angrily replied, “Gah! Raukbug. You heard them. You feel the beating of their hearts. The bloodbags are near. Do you want them to find the Glass?”

Drallah peered through the keyhole. She could see part of a long chamber filled with chaotically stacked papers and books awash in an eldritch yellow glow, but there was no one in her narrow line of sight.

A third voice entered the conversation like icy water flooding a lightless cavern. “Aufgawl is right … foolish to wander so far from the Glass … foolish to wander in the cursed wood … but bloodbags in the house must be found.…”

Slukee’s hackles rose all along her back, and she growled a low, deep growl. Elwood, who could not hear the voices where they were standing, knelt beside her, held her muzzle, and whispered, “Quiet!” in her ear.

Drallah turned her head at the sound. Elwood could see by the candlelight that her eyes were wide with fear. He mouthed the question, “What is it?” but she only put her finger to her lips for silence and returned to the keyhole. The discussion within was continuing.

“There, Raukbug. Hear the words of Latchfowell. We will not wait to spill the blood. Not since that squealer there have I.”

“… none may escape … tell others of us … none may escape …”

“It will be back to Wuth for us, like as not,” muttered the one called Raukbug.

Then, at the other end of the chamber, a vaporous purple-black figure came into Drallah’s view through the keyhole. Its shape was like that of a stretched, gangling man’s, the outline vague except for its long thin fingers that tapered into sharp points. The lower half was to Drallah’s eyes more blurred than the rest, so that it seemed to float in a gown of dark purple mist. The face was completely featureless, blank. It was rapidly approaching the door.

From Chapter 8, The Herb Witch

Noshkwa led them in a northeasterly direction. She seemed to be in quite a hurry, and not hindered in the slightest by all the different sorts of pathless terrain she bustled through. Bushes and trees seemed to make way for her, then immediately close up again once she had passed. On bluff or in wood, through bog or thicket, Noshkwa pressed onward as though ever on a straight and level road. Elwood had an especially difficult time, and the old woman scowled very darkly indeed whenever she had to stop and wait for him to catch up.

They had been traveling in this way for a little more than an hour when Noshkwa halted, tilting her head as if to hear better. They were in the midst of a thick hawthorn brake, and could not see far in any direction. Elwood, Slukee, Drallah, and Booj all strained their ears, but could hear nothing.

“What is it?” asked Drallah after they had been standing silently among the hawthorns for some minutes.

“Shh!” answered Noshkwa. “This is the place.”

Then they all began to hear the sound of something large moving through the trees not far away. Drallah quickly recognized that whatever it was, it went on two legs. She crouched and drew her knife, signaling Elwood to get down as well. The sound grew louder. Someone was crashing recklessly through the hawthorns, heading straight for them.

Presently a tall man who seemed on the verge of collapse listed and staggered into view. He was dressed in ragged mud-spattered buckskins, and clutching at his side. Noshkwa and Drallah rushed to help him.

“Ginnich Taw!” cried Drallah, recognizing him as one of the scouts who a month earlier had set out from Olguhm in search of Granashon. Plainly the scout’s errand had gone wrong: his buckskin shirt was stiff with drying blood, the broken stump of a javelin was stuck in his side, and his wrists were raw and bloody. He stared at Drallah in wonder, but did not speak.

From Chapter 9, Running

Slukee barked a sharp warning. A second group was overtaking the first, racing toward them from the northeast: five more yugs and a tall human, the latter outstripping the others with long strides. On his shoulders was a gray cloak that flowed out behind him as he ran, and in his hand was a bright sword. His pale features strained toward them, ferocious and hard, the eyes overshadowed both by a heavy brow and the skull of a big reptile he wore on his head.

Recognizing the man the yugs called Vank-mul by Ginnich’s description, Elwood gasped.

“I see him!” cried Drallah. Her bow twanged. There was a shriek, and the yug at the head of the first group fell on his face. “These are near enough; shoot them first.”

Elwood drew and released, but the arrow went wild. Drallah shot another arrow, and another yug fell. Trying to hide behind each other from Drallah’s deadly aim, the yugs jostled together as they ran, slowing their approach. Out of the corner of her eye Drallah saw that at least a dozen more yugs were answering the horn’s summons, running through the trees from the east. Elwood let a second arrow fly, and a yug—though not the one he had been aiming for—stumbled and fell with it stuck in his leg.

Vank-mul the Graycloak had almost overtaken the first group of yugs. There was only time for one more arrow, or perhaps two, before they reached the companions. Drallah sent one glancing harmlessly off an iron cap, and Elwood’s flew wide. As Elwood fumbled in his quiver for another, Drallah set a fourth to the string and drew it back, taking aim at the green throat of the nearest yug.

As she did, a sudden wind came tearing through the woods from the north, shaking the trees and nearly sweeping them off the dead trunk. Upon it was driven a great cloud of thick black smoke from the burning. Turning their heads in wonder, the yugs were seized with panic when they saw it. The first of them broke against the fallen tree and fled madly to either side, their quarry forgotten. The dense black cloud came on, gushing through the woods like a giant amorphous beast of prey. It caught the second group of yugs in its midst. Their cries ceased the moment the smoke obscured them from view. The yugs approaching from the east quailed, turned, and ran back the way they had come.

Not heeding the poison cloud, Vank-mul pressed on for the windrow. Drallah could see his eyes now, and there was murder in them. She took aim, hesitated, then let her arrow fly just as he was overtaken by the smoke and she could see him no more. Not waiting to learn whether she had hit the Graycloak general or not, she grabbed Elwood by the shoulder.

“Come on,” she shouted. But he did not hear her, or feel her hand, transfixed as he was by what he saw: the figure of a warrior formed of smoke, and something more than smoke, towering above the black cloud’s peak. Her eyes burned with green fire as she searched the earth below, stooping to smite the yugs with the tall spear she grasped in her hands.

“Granashon!” Elwood cried. The wind ceased as suddenly as it began. The smoke-cloud halted, hanging in the air just before the fallen tree they stood upon.

Drallah heard a booming cough amidst the smoke. “Come on,” she repeated, dragging Elwood from where he stood. With a start he looked around him, and then back up into the smoke. The warrior was gone.

He stumbled back down to the ground with the others. Hastily the companions extricated themselves from the windrow, and ran west.

From Chapter 15, Tornonk and Nemoor

Slowly he rose to a crouch, his muzzle wrinkled and his teeth showing as he breathed in through his nose and mouth. The companions, who did not hear or see anything untoward in the forest around them, remained where they sat, perched, and lay. Each of them had been carried far from the fireside by Tornonk’s song, but now all watched and wondered what he would do. Slowly and lightly the fox truan stepped away from the fire and placed a hand on the ancient pine, his neck stretching forward and his tail stretching back. Then he darted out of sight behind the bole of the tree, and the companions heard fierce growls and scrabbling in the earth. A few moments later Tornonk reappeared clasping a plump fox in his arms, her eyes wild and her teeth bared as futilely she tried to squirm free.

Tornonk put the fox down by the fire. Pinning her there with one hand, he threw a blanket over her with the other. Full of wonder, the humans, the dog, and the raven regarded the fox truan and the fox in silence. Still pinning her to the ground, Tornonk spoke softly to his captive.

“I know you, vixen. Now show your true face!”

The fox ceased struggling, and after a few moments something strange began to happen. The air above the blanket began to stir, its movement visible like a faint bow of color-tinged heat rising from sand. The lump of the fox beneath her shroud expanded upward, and suddenly a woman stood where the fox had been. Wearily she drew the blanket around her bare, plump shoulders. It was Nemoor.

From Chapter 19, Among the Brawbwarb

The floor on which Elwood lay glistened with water drops, and smelled a little dankly—though not unwholesomely—of moist, deep earth. Upon it were shining gentle alternating lights of chill blue and warm orange. The only sound was a faint drip, drip.

He woke and began to cough up the portion of the Swamp he had swallowed. While his lungs and throat were clearing, and his nasal passages were smarting with the water that had gone up his nose, he became aware in a vague way of his surroundings and state. He was alone in what seemed an entry-less, windowless chamber, his waterlogged clothes clinging to his skin. His cap was gone. He could recall sinking in the mud as he and the others ran from the Graycloaks, but not how he had come to this place. Then he remembered that, as he sank, something had grabbed him by the legs.

He heard another sound: sploosh, sploosh. Turning toward it, he saw that the floor sloped almost imperceptibly down to a pool at the far end of the chamber. There was no telling its depth from where he lay propped on one elbow, but that was not his first concern; emerging from the pool, the shifting blue and orange light shining upon its dripping skin, was a giant frog. Elwood watched in terror and amazement as the creature pulled itself out of the water with long, splayed fingers. Then it sat or squatted on its big hind legs, folded its hands over its round pale belly, and looked at Elwood out of huge orange eyes set in salient bumps at the top of its head.

The Otguk! Elwood’s thoughts screamed. The Otguk’s got me! On hands and heels he scrambled a few feet farther away from the frog, frantically looking around the room for some escape.