July 2026: Storytime BlogHop

The BlogHop is organized by authors from the forum you gain access to when you take at least one of Holly Lisle’s writing courses (hint: there’s even a free one). They’re the best courses in the world, especially the one about revision; they’re actionable and will get the promised results. Plus the forum is the best author forum I’ve ever participated in. So if you’re a writer and haven’t gotten any of her courses yet, give it a try. There are courses for every budget (and most students come back for more because they love them so much).

That said, this BlogHop story-poem is by Ruth Sard, one of Holly’s students. I’m not good analyzing poems, so I can’t give qualified feedback, but I really love this. So without further ado, here’s your quarterly story-poem:

The Willow Haunt
Ruth Sard

Three places where the wind didn’t blow.
The riverside where the sirens sang.
The castle where the dragons died.
The graveyard where the willow-witch mourned.

When the old king died his sons fought.
The youngest fell last. His sisters wept.
His head was impaled beside his elders.
Their crowns were broken and remade.

The King Of Thorns throttled rebellion before it birthed,
Scattered those who resisted like storm leaves.
Obedience rewarded with gifted lands tight held.
Loyalty rewarded with peasant despair.

Those who served saw gilded palms outspread
His hand stretched under his soldiers and his promise
“Submit, serve me, and be rewarded
Resist, and burn with your people.”

Year upon year his power widened.
Ripples upon a pond left by bloody stones.
Some resisted. Some fought. Some welcomed him.
All sent him servants, willing or otherwise.

His envoys discovered the Vale.
It was rich in things his kingdom needed.
People for soldiers, crops to feed them,
Wood and stone to build his wars.

He sent his soldiers. They failed.
The sirens of the river sang them freedom.
They fled his command and turned their backs.
Those that didn’t, drowned in dreams.

Arrows struck the sirens in their rivers.
Their songs silenced.

Beyond them lay the mountains where dragons flew.
Soldiers died to fire, to noxious breath, to claws and teeth.
He gave them shields and pikes.
Under them, miners ate its foundations.

The castle fell and with roosts destroyed
The dragons died.

Astride his horse the King hungered.
Before him stretched the Vale, wastefully unused.
Rivers gleaming with fish, fields with crops,
Forests his lands hadn’t known in decades.

Before him a woman stood.
“I am the Willow Witch, the heart of the Vale,” she told him.
“Its magic is my magic. Halt your soldiers.”
The King dismounted and knelt before her.

“We can strike a bargain,” he told her.
“My lands are poor and tired. Exhausted by strife and war.
Join me so they may flourish grow once more.
Wed me and I will care for you as you deserve,” the king promised.

“I am a willow-haunt,” the witch had said. “Vale-magic.”
“Keep your promises and we flourish together.”
“Break them and I will return though it takes a thousand years,
As long as earth remains, so do I.”

“I will build for you a home equal to my own,” he swore.
“I will give my own artisans to build it to awe lifetimes.
– everywhere my name is known it will be spoken of.
It will hold you safe.”

Silent artisans, made tongueless to keep his secrets
built stone upon stone, made gardens upon the walls.
Sweet words he wrote from beyond the river.
“I will enter only when you give me leave,” he promised

She trusted his truth, shared her power.
“I will treat your Vale as though it were my own,” he had sworn.
He had promised, and smiled, and his truth lied.
He treated her Vale exactly as he used her – as his to own.

The Willow Witch discovered there was no protection against the king.
The Vale was hollowed, the river emptied, the mountain castle cast down.
She was imprisoned away from the earth her magic spoke with.
The villagers heard her screaming as her tree was murdered.

The villagers remained. Fewer. Guarded.
The mines cut deep into the mountain flanks. Marble for the king’s palace.
The trees cleared for timber. Made Farmland.
The river netted. Fish made trade.

The old woman died a bare year after her willow was burned and salted.
With the last of her kind gone, the king declared the Vale ‘safe’.
His steward had her buried under stone, trapped.
The church watched her crossroads grave in case she rose.

They kept the soldiers in the village another year, to be sure.
The willow stayed burnt, the soil around it salted.
The king made the young men soldiers.
When spring passed he drove them to new conquests.

The steward grew old and died.
His replacement was young, enthusiastic, a disbeliever.
He had fought beside soldiers in the King’s name, carried war’s scars.
He only knew magic from his grandfathers stories.

Winter rain left graveyard bones mud-puddled in rotting caskets.
Even the crossroads burial showed.
The priest ordered everything cast into the pit behind the church.
It was too wet to burn now. It would be a job for summer

In the castle ruins, children, daring each other to bravery.
Spring brought its equinox. They wore traditional flower-crowns to celebrate.
The steward had the children beaten.
Their crowns were cast in the mud-filled bone-pit.

Summer heat. Cicada songs. Hay making. Harvesting grain.
Nets set along the river to catch fish to smoke.
The dockside net trapped a golden carp.
The villagers hid it in the church well.

Autumn, the river rising. Lowlands flooded.
The road shifted and churchyard wall tumbled.
The steward ordered the road straightened and repaired.
The graveyard swallowed the old road behind the wall.

Winter ice sealed the Vale. Gravestones were set aslant.
Ice lifted hillocks in the fallow fields.
Bone-pit and well tumbled into ruin.
Graveyard and road devoured when the river flooded.

Spring. The king died. He left no heirs.
His unslaked hunger to own, to feast, to claim all,
left loyalties brittle as bleached bones.
His flesh lay unclaimed, his grave unfilled.

In the bone-pit a willow sprouted.
The golden carp shed its skin and sang.
A carved statue from the castle unfurled wings and flew.
Free of the King’s haunting, the Vale woke.

 

Visit the others:
Lost in Time Wearing an Invisible Cloak by Gina Fabio
Open Wide by Amy Keeley
Awakening (part 1 of 3) by Barbara Lund
Happily Ever After by Angelica Medlin
A Meeting In The Dark by James Husum