Sortilege

Sortilege is a gothic hybrid: two separate fictional tales, old and new, that intersect.

The modern story is about Em. Thirty-something, divorced, drifting through life, she returns to the town where she grew up. We get to know about the members of her inner circle, their lives and romantic entanglements. A tragic event occurs, affecting everyone.

The star of the (somewhat irreverent) gothic adventure is Mellanie, an ingenue out of the distant past. Spirited away from home by her wicked aunt, she languishes in a creepy old cliff-side manse. And though help is on the way before long in the person of the dashing Baron von Olmstead, he sets out in search of her with only a blind man as his guide.

Thereafter, what with witches, acrobats, visions, the underground sea, magic spells, Em’s tentative rambles, forbidden love, the Baron's quest, sudden death and manifest evil, the unforeseen will pop up in both tales, along with, now and then, a transformation.