Content Notice: The Once and Future Queen was written with adult audiences in mind. It includes violence, intense themes, profanity, and sexual content.
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Copyright © 2024 by Paula Lafferty
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Erewhon and the Erewhon logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN 978-1-64566-289-1 (hardcover)
First Erewhon hardcover printing: January 2026
eIBSN 978-1-64566-292-1 (ebook)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in China
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025940234
Interior design by Kelsy Thompson
Frontispiece by Aftyn Shah
Map by Chaim Holtjer
Images courtesy of Adobe Stock and Noun Project
Author photo by Jill Anderson
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CONTENTS
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Meeting Vera
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
To my mom and dad, who never cracked open the countless notebooks of story snippets I left strewn all over the house. Who always bought me new notebooks even though I never finished a single story in one of them in all my childhood. While I believed this moment an impossibility, you believed it was an inevitability.
And to Erin, who read every notebook she came across and shamelessly came to me demanding to know what came next. You are the reader I write for.
To the best of her knowledge, Vera was twenty-two years old. And by the time she finished tying the laces of her running trainers on this early October morning, she had ten hours and fourteen minutes remaining of the life she knew in a little town called Glastonbury in the southwest of England.
Glastonbury’s highest buildings topped out at three stories. And still, when the air was just right, wind whipped down the High Street as if in a tunnel. You could almost smell that something there was not simply ancient but sacred. Many tourists have driven near to Glastonbury with the aim of passing by, but were drawn in. All it took was coming close enough to town to see the Tor, the mystical hill that rises above the landscape with its singular stone tower (just ruins, really) perched at the peak.
A passerby aims to pass by, sees the Tor, is drawn in, goes home, and says to the people they love the most, “You have to come and see it, too.” And so, pilgrimages to this place began some 10,000 years ago. To even the slightly attuned spirit, Glastonbury positively hums with sacred energy, a mystery never to be solved and always held like a breath of anticipation.
The only poor soul who would say in skeptical disbelief, “A hill? You want me to come see … a hill?” simply hasn’t seen it yet or, bless them, they have a disposition entirely the opposite of curious. Boring, even, one might say.
The Tor draws a soul in, the wind whips up some untapped and wildly alive place, and the whispers of pilgrims who’ve walked these grounds echo up through the feet with every step. You drink the waters of the well, and the work is done. Transformation—and something else, too, is ripe for the picking.
Pick a legend: pagan gods and goddesses, King Arthur, even Jesus himself. Their stories all have some home here, along with ordinary, everyday people. Some who live in Glastonbury sell supplies for the household witch, artifacts and gems said to contain deep magic. Others craft handmade goods or brew spectacular coffees. Some sell carpet or repair automobiles. Whether they deal in what might be called mundane goods or not, it can’t be helped. Wherever you live, whatever air you breathe, whatever oddball people might pass through, it all becomes ordinary.
And the extraordinary existence of living in Glastonbury amongst the Tor and the legends and the mystical air is all but forgotten in the business of living a life.
Alas, the price we pay for proximity to wonder: it gets cheap.
It was for precisely this reason that as often as she could manage it, Vera would set her alarm before sunrise and jog up the steep path leading to the top of the Tor. She craved the wonder and was willing to pay for it with her footfalls and sweat. She wasn’t particularly fast, and sometimes the steeper stretches were more of a trudge, but she loved the predictable race against the sun’s morning appearance. Vera woke with just enough time to dress and scurry downstairs from the innkeeper’s quarters at the George and Pilgrims Hotel before bolting out the front door.
