To Carry the Horn

His eyes popped open in the dim light cast by the banked fire. For a moment the bed felt strange and then he remembered—Angharad’s house—and there she slept, turned away from him, breathing slowly. He was wide awake and on the alert.

What woke me? The snow was deep on the ground, muffling any outside noises. No cars were here to disturb him, and he was still getting used to the absence of the sounds of human civilization. He cataloged what he could hear—the tick of the embers in the fireplace, the occasional creak of the floorboards as they adjusted to temperature changes, Angharad’s soft breaths.

Then it came again. Muffled barks of excitement. He looked over at his dogs by the fire. Sargent, the yellow feist, was motionless except for his chest rising and falling, but Hugo, the bluetick hound was quivering in his sleep, his paws twitching as he ran. He panted and yipped, his eyes closed. No wonder it woke me, he thought.

George had no trouble interpreting the real sound behind Hugo’s dream, the loud, deep bays as he followed a hot scent. That cry would ring off a hillside, but here it was, indoors, just a remnant to wake him in the night.

To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwyn by Karen Myers, Perkunas Press, Paperback, 404 pp, $17.99It’s too easy to sum up To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwn as “Harry Potter goes foxhunting,” but for adults who grew up on the Harry Potter series—or who used to sneak to read their children’s books—author Karen Myers has created a grown-up fantasy for you.

Myers takes readers on a fascinating ride into a parallel world where she weaves figures from Welsh mythology into a well-written tale that involves stag hunting, a huntsman’s murder, and a large case of greed and envy. Huntsman George Talbot Traherne, a whipper-in with the Rowanton Hunt in Virginia, is catapulted into the Otherworld when he takes a tumble during a foxhunt on a mysterious estate. When he remounts, George finds himself in the midst of a stag hunt where the huntsman, Iolo, has just been murdered.