Lake Okeechobee at dusk, sugarcane in the foreground and a moon over the water

A memoir · Ryan S. Mann

A Star Seedand a Witch

Name: A Star Seed and A Witch
Author: Ryan S. Mann

He ran until the land named the cost. The official house of the work — sample, first printing, and rights.

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The sentence

“If you do not provide, you will not thrive.”

A vision. A warning. A job.

A Star Seed

and a Witch

Ryan S. Mann

The first story

A life interrupted by the other world

A Star Seed and A Witch is the first story — a Star Seed through a Glades boyhood, a leaving, a first temptation, a brother’s wedding, and the sentence that arrived when the old life ran out of road. Chapter 1 is the door. The first volume stays with the boy and the land. Later volumes will follow when they are ready.

The full manuscript is not on the open web. What you can do here: read the authorized sample, join the first-printing list, or ask for rights in writing.

Inside the book How the rights are held

Boyhood

Brothers, a court, a Saturday

The ordinary life was never only ordinary. A cracked court at dusk. Trophies that still smelled like the lanes. Pizza on the floor. Lights wild enough to make a boy feel free. Then the cane road, the truck, the field, the fire.

Three boys playing basketball on a cracked outdoor court at sunset — The court

A boy bowling while his brother watches at a small-town alley — The lanes

Two boys sitting on a rug with game controllers, pizza open on the floor — The den

A boy in a white Jams T-shirt skating in brown quads with orange wheels — The rink

A small boy standing at the edge of a sugarcane road at sunset — The road

The patterns

A boy in a gifted classroom, light on the chalkboard behind him — GATE

A muddy pickup truck on a Florida backroad between cane fields at night — The truck

A boy riding a bicycle down a cane path under a full moon — The bike

Three muddy boys laughing in a golf cart tearing through a cane row — The cart

The field

Three boys around a campfire by the water, a football memory hanging in the air — The fire

Four boys sitting on a jungle gym with their backs to the sky — The perch

A boy watching an old television in a dark room — The screen

The first temptation

A warning that would not stay a joke

A cabin. Candles. A whisper in a city. She is not the last witch in the work. She is the first one he could see.

A young man and a woman at a candlelit table outside a cabin in the pines — The cabin

A young man on an observation deck above the city, an older stranger whispering at his ear — The city

The land

The Glades, the river, the old city, the islands

Pahokee, Belle Glade, South Bay. Cane and orange groves. The Kissimmee and Big Cypress Preserve. Lake Okeechobee. Saint Augustine, Big Pine Island, Sanibel and Captiva. Many possible grounds. The work could stand on any of them.

Luminous figures moving down a wet Pahokee street at night, cane at the edge of town — Pahokee

Black muck and sugarcane under a mill sky at Belle Glade — Belle Glade

The southern shore of Lake Okeechobee at South Bay, dusk over the water — South Bay

Tall Florida sugarcane moving in the wind on black muck soil — Cane fields

Rows of a Florida orange grove at dusk, fruit catching the last light — Orange groves

The Kissimmee River winding through bald cypress and black water — Kissimmee River

Bald cypress standing in dark water at Big Cypress Preserve — Big Cypress Preserve

A quiet colonial street in Saint Augustine at night, lanterns and palmettos — Saint Augustine

Mangrove shoreline and a weathered dock on Big Pine Island at dusk — Big Pine Island

A Sanibel gulf beach at dusk, sea oats and a pale moon over still water — Sanibel / Captiva

A small boy at the edge of a sugarcane road at sunset, the lake in the distance

The Wound

Chapter 1 is Willie Mae. He was five in Pahokee — third boy, dirty-blond, a Star Seed still banked. Heat came off the roads in waves. Green cane. Black muck. The iron memory of the lake. Willie Mae stood in that weather like a law. The wound was older than he was. The land had never closed.

The Seed

The light found him in a pew. Stained glass. Dust in the air. A glow at the sternum he could not explain and did not yet have to. He was a Star Seed only in the way a bruise is a color. He knew he had come from somewhere else. He did not yet know he would have to provide.

An outdoor gathering at dusk in a Florida orange grove, string lights hung in the citrus trees

III

The Gathering

Family found him again at his brother Kelvin’s wedding. Lights in the trees. A woman at the edge of the gathering who did not clap when the others clapped. Courtship put a shine on what ought to have stayed dull. He mistook the shine for permission. The land was watching. It always had been.

A man standing in the Gulf surf at Sanibel at night, a pale moon over the water and a faint star of light at his chest

The Sentence

The old life ran out of road. The moon was too large. The water was around his ankles. A sentence arrived that was not quite a curse and not quite a kindness — a job, if he would take it. If you do not provide, you will not thrive.

From the sample

The heat rose from the Pahokee roads in slow, heavy waves. I could taste green sugarcane, wet black earth, and underneath them the older iron of the lake’s long memory.

I was the third boy. Five. Dirty-blond. A Star Seed still banked.

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