Chapter One

Six Moons Earlier

It was not the kind of day one expected to meet death. The first scream she heard was so distant and faint, she didn’t recognize it as human. Her own worries preoccupied her.

I could be taken for Initiation rites any day now, Dindi thought as she climbed the terraced fields of ripening corn. And all omens indicate I’ll fail miserably. Like my mother. And my grandmother. And every single person in my whole clan since the days of the Lost Swan Clan’s great-mother.

She wore a basket strapped to her back, she carried a clay pot and her ears still buzzed with a tiresome list of chores from her great aunt. Great Aunt Sullana had also added a number of shrill warnings, Don’t cavort with the fae, don’t dilly-dally, don’t forget to prepare for Barter Day, all of which Dindi intended to ignore. Oh, she would do her chores, eventually, and she wouldn’t dream of missing Barter Day – the Tavaedi Troop would dance, she mustn’t miss that – but she needed to practice. She told no one of her ambition to be invited to become a Tavaedi warrior-dancer, but she practiced alone every day.

Why does no one in my clan have any magic? I have to be different.

Another cry cut through the wind, but she dismissed it again. It must be a bird hunting – an eagle. Slight unease nagged her, so she went so far as to look up, and indeed, saw something large and winged circling higher up in the hills. Maybe a condor?

The fae scrambled to greet Dindi as she skipped through the terraced fields of ripening corn. The rolling green hills stretched out in every direction under a perfect blue sky marked only with the V of migrating swans. Everything smelled sweet and fresh. The corn was shoulder high, while inside the pale green husks, the kernels were like rows of white pearls flushing deeper and deeper gold with each passing day. Dindi half-skipped, letting her bare feet tap out random steps as if to congratulate the pregnant husks for coming along so well. Innumerable clouds of tiny willawisps hazed the fields like sparkling mists. Maize sprites clambered nimbly to the tips of the straight-backed stalks to wave at Dindi when she brushed by them. Pixies of every color fluttered on luminous wings around her head, making her dizzy.

“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!” they urged in a babble of flute voices.

Another scream curdled the air. Startled, the pixies and willawisps scattered.

That’s no bird.

Distance muffled the sound, so she tilted her head to listen. Definitely a woman’s scream, though from far away and further up in the hills. To her knowledge, no one else wandered the wild hills above Lost Swan Clan’s territory. A faery clan, extinct now, had once lived near Swan Rock. Their vengeful hexes haunted many caves and cliffs. More recently, Dindi’s grandmother, Mad Maba, had danced herself to death in those same hills.  A cursed region indeed – which made it the perfect place for Dindi to dance with the fae in secret. She was the only one imprudent enough to go there.

At least, she had been up until now.

The woman screamed again, in pain now. Angry at herself for her delay, Dindi ran uphill toward the sound.

Cultivated fields gave way to wild slopes of aspen and pine. There were no footpaths, only deer trails. In places, she had to avoid tangles of thorny brush, precipitous ditches, or bald patches of scree.

She reached Swan Rock, an odd boulder as big as a house. The rock seemed to stretch out a long neck and to overlook a cliff, like a swan. A white fir grew out of a crevice between two wing-like extensions on the broad rear of the boulder.

For a moment she hesitated. A windwheel blocked the path. It looked like a giant daisy, with six different colored petals. It marked the spot as taboo. Even Dindi avoided any place marked by a windwheel – she wasn’t obedient, but she wasn’t suicidal either.

Then the woman screamed again, and Dindi ran past the windwheel.

Closer now, Dindi could hear growls and sounds of struggle. She passed a shallow stream, another copse of trees and then – there! –on a barren, windswept hill, a bear mauled a young woman.

Dindi could recognize every member of the three clans in the area on sight; this woman was a stranger. She wore black leather legwals and black breastbands but both were hemmed in brightly colored beads, and her elaborate necklace of animal canines had also been painted many colors. An odd sort of black feather cape swept behind her. Her skin was paler than bone, her hair darker than obsidian. A quiver of arrows hung from her hips, but though she clutched a bow already notched with a stone-tipped arrow, her weapon was useless to her at such close quarters.

The bear was huge, as tall as one man standing on another man’s shoulders. Instead of brown or black fur, as most of the local bears sported, this bear had shaggy golden blond fur. With a mitt as big as a man’s head, the bear swiped at the woman. The bear’s claw grazed the side of her face. Four parallel gashes sprayed blood as she fell. The loose pebble scree on the hillside did not offer a soft landing, but may have saved her life, for she skidded on the gravel and next swipe of claws missed her. However, she would not be so lucky twice. The bear prepared the throw its full weight on her.

Dindi had no weapon. She threw her clay pot at the bear.

“Fa! Over here, fur face!” Dindi shouted.

The distraction worked. First the bear reared up on its hind legs. Then it lunged at Dindi.

The woman in black scrambled to her feet and loosed a black-fletched arrow. The bear turned on her, but too late, an arrow had already lodge in its flank. Dindi realized it was not the first arrow to hit the bear.

The woman in black, deadly and graceful, unleashed another arrow into the bear. Another strangely human scream ripped from the muzzle of the bear. The bear rushed her again, but the woman in black spread her cape – no cape at all, but black swan wings – and lifted into the air.

“Not even your sisters can cure my poison,” the Black Lady said with a mocking smile to her victim. “Even if they would help you, which I doubt. Even now, your seaborn sister prepares to war against you.”

“Curse-bringer!” the bear shouted at her, sounding exactly like a woman. The bear screamed in agony, and Dindi recognized the scream she had heard. The bear turned to Dindi and cried, “Why have you helped Lady Death? Don’t you know who you are? She is your enemy as much as ours!”

The bear transformed into a beautiful golden, glowing lady, with butterfly wings – a faery. Even in her true form, however, her wings were torn, and her leg bled black ooze from the wound of a poisoned arrow. She flew away, crookedly, and Lady Death did not stop her. Instead, Lady Death turned on Dindi.

“And now for you,” Lady Death said.

What have I done? Dindi had already thrown her clay pot. She had nothing left to defend herself, if one even could defend oneself against Death incarnate. What have I done?

 

Just One Leaf

One of my favorite Tolkien stories is “Leaf by Niggle.”

It is about an artist who aspires to paint a beautiful forest, only to find his talent insufficient to the task. So he tries to focus on painting just one tree — perfect the tree, and then maybe, he will grow enough in skill to paint the forest. But the tree is too hard too, so he ends up concentrating on just a leaf. If he could only paint just one single leaf right!

He hasn’t much time because his pesky neighbor keeps bugging him (life) and because he has to take a trip (death). Life interferes with art. Death interferes with life. Art must be squeezed in between.

Like Niggle, I wish I could paint the forest, or at least a tree, but it is a struggle to even capture just one leaf.

I’ve been thinking about High Concept, and my Dindi series, and the desperate feeling that it falls far short of the forest I originally envisioned. I’m down to grasping at leaves.

It’s interesting to look at books which become bestsellers. What do they have in common? Actually — not much. Some of them are short and simple, about just a few characters; others are door-stop epics with a cast of thousands; some are beautiful, lyrical, literary and tragic; others are wham-bam action with 2D characters but 3D explosions. And on and on.

I’d say the one thing all bestsellers have in common is One True Thing. They don’t have to capture the be-all and end-all of human experience, only One True Thing about what it means to be human. One leaf’s worth of life — that’s enough.

Ah, but it is hard to capture One True Thing. It’s the hardest thing there is.

If only, if only, I could paint just one leaf.