Chapter One
The LONG QUIET
“Do you remember Orcshire?” she said.
The woman’s old voice was husky, rusty, little used. She spoke to no one, so it seemed.
In truth, she spoke to a tree. Its bark went blue beneath a moonful night.
She put one wrinkled hand against the blue-brown bark, listening for something like a heartbeat. Her calloused palm knew how to listen.
“Mm,” she grunted, unable to tell. She kept her hand there, imagining there was a line of energy, out of her palm, into the tree.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
At first, she spoke the words like a poem.
“Orcshire Valley in the Spring
Means moonlight, rinsing everything.
Full as a coin, and dry,
Dry as a bone…
A sprawling web, speckled
With dots of Dew
Is quivering in the night.
And purple trees…”
She closed her eyes, palm still pressed against the now-ancient bark.
“…Bear golden apples,
Golden cherries, too. Can you see it?”
No answer.
“A hundred fragrant promises
Come drifting down, down,
Down the mountain, west wind hissing—
& off the sea comes salt-kissed mist.”
Then she sang it, like the song it was. She sang it from the top, changing the words ever so slightly.
* * * * / * * * *
1. “Orcshire Valley in the Spring
Means moonlight, rinsing everything.
Full as a coin, and dry, dry as a bone…
Purple trees glisten.
The wind’s got a chill,
A memory of winter;
There’s frost on the sill.
Look at the moon…
At least that’s the same.”
2. “Orcshire Valley in the Spring
Meant boats were skimming down the stream.
Magic in each living thing.
Magic in the way we sing.
What did we sing? The cedars were
Swaying!
What was the song?
How did it go?
‘Come home,’ to the salmon!
‘Bloom wild,’ to the berries.
‘Stay dead,’ to the demon-I-didn’t-know!
‘Back soon?’ to the faeries…”
3. “Orcshire Valley in the Spring,
Means moonlight rippling in the clean
Bubbling stream, the red wind was
Hissing… I was a kid, waking up.
I was a kid…
Was I ever so young?”
* * * * / * * * *
That’s how Nala would remember it.
In those days (the early chapters of her life) Orcshire Valley was a peaceful place. It was a place where things grew, and nothing ever really happened. It was the kind of place that was wet year round, but the air never got humid or heavy. Summers were lovely and brief, but Nala didn’t mind. She loved the rain. She was a rain dog.
The Valley was sheltered from the world, and its wars.
Nala was eleven.
She came from a long line of sorceresses, but her magic hadn’t happened yet.
Perhaps it never would, she couldn’t help but think.
Sour thought. Nala decided to think of something else.
The Spring of that year was a weird one. The normally noisy house (sequestered in the sprawling, semi-wild orchard at the foot of a mountain) was quiet. Weirdly quiet.
Nala’s siblings were finally all old enough to go on a real market tour, out east, to the dry side of the region.
Something in Nala doubted that there was a dry side. It seemed outrageous! The valley was lush and wet year round, and yet they all said that once you made it over the Wraithwood crags, it was all desert.
Impossible, Nala thought.
That was the year they all went. Mama and Nala’s Aunt Kairi (and Aunt Kairi’s four daughters, and Nala’s two sisters) had packed up the fruit carts so full they overflowed, and then they left. Their adventure had begun at the end of summer.
Autumn came.
And then winter.
Now, it was Spring, and they were all still gone. Weird. Nala had never known a long quiet before that.
It was weird for other reasons, too. Sleep, for example.
Sleep had changed for her. Nala loved loved loved sleeping in, or used to. And it used to be that she could sleep through anything.
But something had changed early last spring. She had a new dream, a terrible dream, a nightmare.
It had been unspeakable. Unsharable. Even thinking of it made Nala’s stomach turn hollow.
Once the dreams started, they did not stop. Worst of all, she had a private thought that…
No, she thought. My magic hasn’t happened yet.
But weirdest of all was the quiet itself.
At first, Nala had loved that quiet. She had cherished it, relished the solitude like an exceptional ripe raspberry. As the seasons turned, it was just Nala and her grandma, whose name was Akha, savoring the rare piece of peace that lay over the house.
They enjoyed a wet winter together, Nala and her gran. Most nights, the two huddled over the soup cauldron and traded stories and story ideas. Gran Akha was full of stories, and recipes, and loved to make up poems.
But after a full season, Nala was getting lonely. Her wish had come true, and now that she had enough quiet time to miss her family, she felt bad for ever wishing them away. Guilt was beginning to bloom, like mold, souring the sweetness of the winter’s vast quiet.
But the stories were flowing, and this was the year Nala learned how to cook. Gran taught her to clean a salmon (which she hated) and helped Nala make up her first poem (which she found exhilarating).
She only wished that Gran had taught her some magic. Nala was beginning to think her only power would be “having bad dreams.”
She never told anyone about the dreams, especially when they she had bad ones…
Mountain, and rivers, and dense trees kept the wide world long at bay. But so did all the magic.
There was magic in the flowers and the fruits.
There was magic in the birds, and bugs, and bitter winter air that bites.
And little did Nala know, a magic unlike any this world had seen in centures was sleeping in the root of her spine, just waiting for the right moment to wake.
* * * * / * * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE— Thank you so much for reading! Here is the next chapter, which is called…
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