The Witch’s Egg is a gorgeous intergenerational family story of promises made, promises kept, and a mother who would do anything to protect her daughters.
Witches and angels aren’t allowed to have children. When Urfi defies this, it’ll take her life’s work to make it right.
It was a spiderweb moon
And the imps did wonder
What dark delights wouldst the cat-witch conjure
By the Sardine Queen, by salt and the devil, by blackwormy earth, and by the deep, dark sea, the catwitch Urfi conjures an angel to love her and have children with her. But angels aren’t meant for love, and with the embryonic egg of their unborn children, Urfi flees from her partner’s violence, enduring terrible trials to find a new and safe home in the faery forest.
As her children, Isobel, Batzel, and Mazel, grow up with her, they find the horrors their mother endured during her flight to the forest returning to their lives — this time for the three of them to defeat for good. With secret magic, solemn bonds of friendship, and sisterhood, they can at last stand against the threat of the angels’ terror and insanity in this dark fairytale of motherhood, magic, and apocalyptic romance.
Specifications
The Witch’s egg bundle includes:
An A5 print
A5 black & white pen drawing:
make a request, or get drawn as a cat, dog or witch, or get a total surprise.
180 pages book, paperback with French flaps, 168 x 239mm
Donya Todd is an artist, illustrator & book-maker inspired by the magical, mystical, and macabre.
Donya has worked with Cartoon Network, Mercury Filmworks, Blank Slate Books, Guillemot Press, Image Comics, Blackwater Studios, Foyles, House of Illustration, Samsung, Tatty Divine, and more.
She has received the AOI Newcomers Prize, the Earl Richards Narrative Prize in 2009 and an Outstanding Achievement in Illustration in 2018, and has studied in Japan, Iceland and New York. Donya is also formerly an associate lecturer at The University of Plymouth and holds a First Class Masters Degree in Authorial Illustration from Falmouth University.
Donya says: “This book is a culmination of many projects and interests, cannibalised and conjured into a sweeping saga. It’s a dark fairytale following a journey into motherhood, and all the perils it brings – joy, fear, exhaustion, transformation and love. These feelings amplified and mutated into monsters, witches and ghouls made for a fun and cathartic outlet for me.”
