Author: Emily Astillberry
Publisher: Blossom Spring Publishing
Publication Date: December 16, 2024
Pages: 615
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Speculative Fiction
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Isabel Bliss is a reception class teacher. She experiences other people’s emotions and can influence how they feel but she doesn’t truly understand her gift and has been encouraged, by her mum, to hide it from others. She often feels lost and alone.
When a child in her class experiences chronic distress that only she can perceive, Isabel uses her ability to relieve his suffering, but his situation continues to worsen. Eventually she is forced to take matters into her own hands, escorting him home where she finds horrific signs of abuse. She saves his mum’s life and his father is arrested for the brutal torture he has inflicted upon his family.
A wealthy family moves to town and Isabel meets the two sons. She recoils from Daniel, who is hateful, rude and emotionally deficient but is inexorably drawn to Scott, who awakens something magical, deep inside her. They are like her. They are fluencers and have the ability to sense, read and willfully manipulate emotional energies. Isabel confronts her mum and uncovers hurtful lies and deceit within her own family.
She falls deeply in love and ultimately discovers the untold potential of her gift and the passion and power that dwells within.
Read a sample here.
The Essence of Bliss is available at Amazon UK and Amazon US.
First Chapter:
20 Years Ago
It began with mild agitation, a vague feeling of unease, which quickly shifted to anger, and within seconds, the placid, even temper of a six-year-old had been transformed into outright fury, a rage so intense that it had no business taking hold of a child. As the anger threatened to overwhelm me, a commotion approached from down the corridor, and I knew instinctively that the violence within me was somehow emanating from the approaching furore.
A truly wretched looking woman was being wheeled into the X-ray department on a mobile bed covered in hospital sheets that had been devastated by her struggles and lack of control. The sheets were smeared with a revolting murky brown and indefinable mixture of bodily fluids. The woman was accompanied by two uniformed police officers who were doing their best to keep her contained, but she was fighting them like a feral cat, all hissing and spitting and claws. She was handcuffed to the bed but still thrashing madly around, pulling the handcuffs tight against the metal rail and flailing her unrestricted arm and both legs ferociously.
She had dirty, greasy blonde hair and her unkempt fringe was falling into drawn, sunken eyes ringed with deep, dark purple bruises. Her skin was yellowing and the few teeth that remained had decayed to black. Her language was shocking. I had never heard such profanities in my life.
“When are you pigs going to give me something for the fucking pain, you cruel fucking bastards?” she demanded.
“You’ve had all the pain relief you can have. You’re causing the pain with all the thrashing around you’re doing. Just sit still and be quiet, Kathleen,” one of the officers replied.
“Well, it wasn’t enough, was it?” Kathleen spat back. “Because it still fucking hurts! And if you hadn’t handcuffed me to this pissing bed, I wouldn’t be fucking thrashing around now, would I?”
It was her anger. The pure, unadulterated rage inside me was emanating directly from Kathleen. I didn’t understand it, but I knew that I needed to get away. I needed to put some distance between myself and the source of the emotions before they got the better of me and I started to shout and scream, breaking Mum’s rules. I had to keep my temper under control. I had promised, but the all-consuming ferocity was coursing through my body, and I had the irrepressible urge to kick something or someone, to lash out, to cause pain or to shriek out my manic fury.
I had to get away from the emotions that were attacking me, corroding my control, my personality, so without thinking, I ran quickly down the wide, colourless, featureless hospital corridor in the vague hope that I could put enough distance between myself and Kathleen, to be free. I turned a few corners, a sharp left, a not so sharp right and through multiple sets of double doors. After a minute or two, I stopped and looked around. I had absolutely no idea where I was or how to get back.
I took some deep breaths, tried to ignore the ringing in my ears and reminded myself that the extreme emotions coursing through my body did not belong to me. I just needed to get my breathing under control and get back to Mum. She would panic if she came out of the X-ray room and realised that I was gone. She’d only left me for a few minutes to get Stephanie’s arm looked at, and I wasn’t supposed to move.
I just needed a minute. I leaned against a door, which gave way at my touch, opening into blessed darkness, and I slipped inside, closed the door behind me and sagged back against it in relief.
It was cool inside the room, cool and quiet, and I was finally able to take a breath. As my rapid breathing slowed and the rush of blood in my ears quietened, I became aware of another somebody in the room, their breath coming in uneven, ragged wheezes punctuated by a harsh gasping cough. An elderly woman’s voice called out hoarsely with great effort.
“Is someone there?” she croaked. “Nurse? Are you there?”
I froze.
“Please?” she begged. “If someone’s there …” She was wracked by a coughing fit. “Could you please help me with a sip of water? I have a cup but can’t … not on my own.”
I couldn’t ignore such a plea. I could feel her desolation and frustrated helplessness. Her loneliness called to me. It penetrated my mind, filling the gap that Kathleen’s anger had left behind, and I instinctively moved closer so that neither of us were on our own. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and sniffed. I peered into the murky room and could make out the bed and the shape of a small human under the covers. I padded softly towards the bed and the old lady turned her head slowly to face me.
She was tiny, shrunken and almost skeletal. She gave the impression of being made out of a thin, almost transparent material, as if she wasn’t quite solid, quite real. She was old beyond anything that I could have imagined, and her thin, wispy silver hair framed her fragile face in soft waves. There was such sadness in that face, such desperation, and yet her eyes still held the echoes of a life lived full of love and joy, laughter lines softening the suffering in her eyes.
I helped her take a couple of small sips from her cup and she nodded at me that that was all. She let her head fall back onto the pillow. Her eyes closed, exhausted by the effort.
“Thank you,” she managed to croak, her eyes still closed.
“You’re welcome,” I replied.
There was a chair at the side of the bed, and I sat on it. I felt certain that my presence could be a comfort to this stranger and so sad that she was in a room in the semi-darkness all by herself. I wanted to be near her. I wanted to take away her pain. Her desire for company mirrored my own, or perhaps I was actually experiencing her emotions in my special way, but whatever the reason, I sat on that chair next to her bed and remained there. She lay in the bed next to me, her breath coming in long, ragged gasps, and neither of us spoke for a while.
After a few minutes, the old lady opened her eyes again. She looked at me, and there were tears shining on her lashes.
“I’m so scared,” she whispered.
I was scared too, but I tried to be brave for her. She needed me to be brave.
“What are you scared of?” I asked.
“I’ve never been afraid of dying,” she confided so quietly that I had to lean in to catch her words. “It’s not really the dying … even now,” she went on, “It’s being alone, you know …? After … forever. I’ve never doubted before, but now I’m scared. I’m scared he won’t be there waiting for me. What if he’s not there? What will I …? What if he’s not there?”
Tears began to spill down her cheeks, and her left hand moved unconsciously, searching for something. I instinctively grasped her trembling hand and held it gently in my own, soothing with human contact, skin on skin, resting them on the bed by her side and lightly squeezing in reassurance. I had never endured the pain of loss or the fear of dying myself — few children have — but I felt her pain. I absorbed her emotions and sensed the agony of grief and longing, the war between loss, hope and fear. It hurt my chest with a tightness, an ache, that a child should never even imagine.
Despite experiencing her emotions as if they were my own, they did not cripple me. They did not belong to me, and they were not violent emotions like the anger that I had felt only minutes before. This frightened old lady needed me to be strong, and so I said the only thing that I could say, the simplest of statements and exactly what she needed to hear.
“He’ll be there.”
I declared it with absolute conviction. I closed my eyes and willed her to believe. I gathered my inner strength and forced myself to believe in the miracle that I promised her. I found an inner peace and imagined that peace flowing from me into this frail, frightened creature.
Gradually, I felt the old lady’s fear begin to ebb away. She absorbed the peace that I offered. Her hand stopped shaking and her breathing became more even, somehow easier. A stillness crept over her as she embraced the certainty that her soulmate was waiting for her beyond this mortal plane. I don’t know how long I sat there for, holding the old lady’s hand in mine, but after a time, her hand became slack and there was no more pain, no more fear, nothing.
I was utterly exhausted, drained of energy. I knew that I should get up and leave the room. I knew that Mum would be frantic, furious, but somehow I couldn’t even seem to rouse myself to move. I needn’t have worried because she found me. She always found me.
I felt her before I saw her. I always did. I felt them both. There was a fluttering deep within the recesses of my mind that bore their mark, their signature. She burst into the room with Stephanie in tow, a beautiful red cast on her arm, and Mum was crying and she was shouting, and she stumbled towards me and smothered me in hugs and kisses and remonstrations and declarations of love. After the panic of the last few minutes and the relief of finding me unscathed had passed, she took in the scene before her and she scooped me up out of my chair, took my place and held me on her lap. She held me so tightly that I thought that I might burst, but I held it together because I knew that she needed this.
A minute or two passed and Mum began to calm down. I gestured towards the old lady in the bed, thinking to explain my situation, thinking that she would be pleased with me because I had done something with my gift, something right.
“She needed me, Mummy. She needed me and I made it better for her. She was so frightened, and I made the pain go away.”
Mum held my face away from hers so that she could look me straight in the eyes. She shook her head, brooking no argument.
“I love you, Isabel. I love you so much. You’re a special little girl with a special gift, and I am so proud of you, but this …” She shot a glance at the figure in the bed, “No. Just … no.”
“But …” I tried to explain.
“No, Isabel. No buts. The world isn’t ready for you yet. The world isn’t ready for this … for you … for what you can … please, Isabel, trust me on this. Your life will be better without … without this.” She gestured between me and the body on the bed.
“You can be normal, live a normal life. You have to choose that life. Not this. Never this. No more, Isabel. I mean it. No more.”
About the Author:
At home, in a very old cottage in the country, Emily has a husband, 5 children, a dog, a cat, an axolotl, 2 giant African land snails and a varying number of rescue hens, so finding time to write can be a challenge. She is happiest outdoors, growing fruit and vegetables in the garden, walking the dog and family holidays usually involve walking up mountains in summer, skiing down them in winter and sleeping in a tent whenever possible.
Emily loves spending time with her large, noisy, chaotic family, cooking meals for friends and playing board games. She always has at least one book on the go and has always dreamed of writing her own novel. She now dreams of writing more.
Visit her website at https://emilyastillberry.com.
You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.
The Essence of Bliss is her latest book.
