Below, you will find a sample of the first chapter of my new novel, tentatively titled, “Witch in Winter”. This is a pre-release, pre-editing copy and no permission is given for it to be re-posted or published in any other format or manner.
Enough of that. Hope you enjoy this sample chapter and I’m working hard to make it even better.
-Eli 7-22-18
Chapter 1
The sun stood a finger above the horizon for the first time in months as I raced Intuk and Sadi along the shoreline. After the dark times the days were finally long enough and the weather warm enough that the village elder declared the First Day holiday. The village woke from winters slumber to celebrate the return of warmth. Older children hopped from floe to floe, screaming with laughter as they ran along the ice breaking up off shore. Men pulled and slid their Umiak boats out of the water and over the ice to the shoreline. They had risen with the first light to gather the fresh catch we would share that night.
By the tall whalebone cleaning racks set up for the first time that morning, sea birds wheeled and called, sometimes dashing in to steal a bit. The women there gutted and cleaned the morning catch to get fresh food ready. Still mostly frozen white, the rocky coast was littered with the detritus and debris of the icy grinding that went on all winter. At a spit of land jutting out into the ocean just south of our village where the water never froze, you could sometimes find the things that were the treasures of children and that was where we raced.
“Zaaz,” Intuk shouted to me. “Gonna beat you to Smash Rock again. Girls can’t run like a hunter.”
Intuk had always been the fastest of us. A lithe boy with a big smile and a hunter’s pedigree. His wide shoulders, friendly smile and strong arms had half the girls in the village interested in him, myself included. Still considered one of the young ones, he wore his hair long in a boy’s braid that bounced along behind him as he ran. Having seen nine winters, next year he would make his first solo hunt. Setting off in one of the boats at the start of the season, if he brought back something worthy for the tribe he would cut the braid, burn it, and be considered one of the true hunters.
Over the dark months I had grown quite a bit, and was getting tall for a girl my age. My legs were longer, but weaker than they should be from a long winter mostly spent inside. I still had hopes of beating him up the spit. I stretched my pace farther and pushed as hard as I could, great breaths steaming in the cold. My twin braids of red hair streaming behind me as we ran. We flew down the beach side by side for a long stretch, Sadi following behind. It would be close this time, but Intuk slowly pulled ahead and it looked like he would win again. Getting to the base of the thin trail that led up the hill and out to the spit, he edged me out by a few scant paces. This path was so steep, narrow, and icy, there would be no place to pass on the climb. Recognizing the loss, I stopped to let Sadi catch up. Hands on my knees, blowing great frosty breaths into the crisp morning air, I looked back up the beach and watched her run. If I couldn’t win the race at least I could have her company as we climbed. Sadi was a girl of my own age, also of light brown skin and smaller than Intuk and I. At our nine winters she should be bigger, but her father was a notoriously bad hunter and brought home a smaller portion of the village’s catch. My mother said this was why she was scraggly and short. Sometimes I would slip her some of my whale jerky. I knew it wasn’t much, but she was my friend.
“Come on Sadi, we’re almost there,” I said to encourage her. She puffed and struggled on gamely and once she caught up to me I helped pull her through the steeper stretches of trail. Up and up we climbed the jagged spit till we got to the top. There, the path was thin, but straight and smooth out to smash rock, a flat table of rock in a small clearing at the end of the spit. Some trick of the wind always kept the rock clear of loose snow and only a thin layer of ice clung toto it. Over the summer birds would dig up clams from the beach and drop them upon the table to break them open and feast upon the meat.
North and east down below us we could see the Umiak boats of the fishermen dropping lines, none yet as far south as we. To the south we could hear the pounding of waves on the rocks. Standing proudly on Smash Rock was Intuk, whooping in his triumph, surrounded by the thousands of shells dropped by sea birds that gave the rock its name.
“Zaaz, where are you? Your skin is so white I can’t make you out in all this.”
Gesturing at the ice and white shells that lay everywhere in this place, Intuk laughed at his joke. My skin was always a source of humor to him. All the people in the village had the same light brown skin as he except for my mother and I. Compared to them we were pale and pasty and the fact had not always been easy growing up with. Mother would tell me that children can be cruel of those who are different, but that didn’t make me feel much better.
Still, though Intuk may joke, he and Sadi had never been mean in their teasing. Mother came here to the north long ago. When I ask her why she came north she would show me the lights in the sky and say, “Why not come some place where the spirits dance the sky?” Another time I asked her and she just ladled some soup into my bowl, “Is not the whale soup particularly tasty here? Where else will you eat the like of it?”
Giving Intuk his due I switched to mothers story telling voice, “Behold, Intuk, a mighty hunter of the north, fleet of foot, and brave as a bear.” He bowed his head in acknowledgement, so I turned to the reason we were there, with, “Let’s see what the sea offers us today.” I pointed at the south side of the spit. The crash of the waves sounded strange today for some reason and I wanted to see what was an odd clattering I could hear. Each of us unwound a length of braided skin rope from our waists, tied them together, and put a loop around smash rock. Accessible only this way or by Umiak boat, there was a wide flat shelf down by the waterline on the south side of the spit that was the place we sought. Some trick of the current kept the ice from forming thick there. If any did, it usually broke up by First Day. One couldn’t even see the shelf unless you were right on the edge of the cliff, so steep it was. First Intuk, as was his right as winner of our race went down, then I, and then Sadi.
“Ha! We are rich! Have you ever seen so much wood? How can there be this much in the whole world?”
As I descended the rope I could see what lay on the shelf below us. He was right I felt as I surveyed the wreckage before us. The whole shelf was covered in the smashed remains of something big. Pieces of it still towered high as a man and I could see a long stretch of wreckage out along the spit. Once a year the village elders and some of the warriors would take a trade journey and come back with some staves, small wood boxes, and tools with wood handles, but nothing like this. The wood they would bring back were simple things. Here, there were pieces of wood bigger around than me strewn in and out of the water. What kind of trees could this kind of wood come from? This was likely enough wood to bring the whole village to scavenge.
Then, looking at the strange worked shapes of the wood brought back a memory. When I was eight, during the months of light we had seen something like this out far in the waters.
“Remember, a few summers ago we saw that thing out far on the water?” My mother had said it was a big boat from the south.
“Ahh! Yeah, I remember that,” said Inuk. “I think you are right,” he pondered. “Why a boat of wood though? Skins work just fine.”
“Mother said they sometimes came this far north gathering whales. I remember the village hunters were worried that if they started coming every year we wouldn’t be able to bring in any at the end of the summer hunt.”
“We have to go back and tell the village,” Sadi said. “This is.. it’s so much,”
Intuk nodded, “Soon! We found it though, so we get first pick.”
We made our way closer to wreak. Pieces of it towered over us–great wooden ribs curving to the sky. It’s not that there aren’t any trees near the village, but they are so few and far it takes days to get to them.
We each went our separate ways and began picking through what we found. There were boxes of huge size, some not broken with who knew what inside. Rope, in long tangles and covered in a layer of ice. Streamers of frayed white fabric still flapping in the wind. Periodically we would call to each other with some bauble we found.
I glanced over and saw that Inuk had picked up a hammered silver mug and was staring at it in wonder of the craftsmanship. Things of metal were rare in the village crude in construction. Yet even tossed by the sea this was still smooth and bright. Then Sadi called out as she was looking at a bolt of sodden fabric she had pulled from one of the broken boxes. Purple and gold and brilliant in the sun. All my life I had only seen people clothed mostly in skins and furs. I struggled to think of what one would use so much fabric for and why in purple?
I picked my way around a particularly large piece and found a small wooden box carved with strange symbols half buried in the sand. It was made of some kind of dark wood I had never seen and called to me in some way. Pulling it up out of the sand and surf I carried it a ways from the water, put it down on a big stone there, sat down before it. The carving was like nothing I had ever seen. I traced my fingers upon surface in wonder of it. It wasn’t just the symbols carved upon it, but now that it was free of the sand I could see the lid was inlaid with a complex pattern of pale blue stones forming a symbol I did not know. It spiraled in a circle, almost like a vortex made of icicles.
Unhooking the small toggle clasp on its front and opening the box, brought a strange pressure on my mind, almost as if something were trying to peek inside. Symbols carved on the inside of the lid seemed to glow and push upon my spirit. Inside the box was what I can only think of as a tangle of nothing. Insubstantial wisps of vapor, but tangled around themselves, moving chaotically within the box. A whispering that was at once familiar and new sounded inside my head. Like a horde of people all competing to be heard. Each voice twisted with the others, yet each voice different and distinct. It was like when the men at the village meetings fell to arguing. I concentrated and tried to pick out what they were saying.
“Is she, she? Could she be? Familiar spirit. So like her. So young, but the soul glows! It glows! To now? To wait? Waiting is all we have. Free us! Be us! Not ready, too young. Time, time, no time, time must be now… Cold, so cold. We are fading, must decide now! Join, but hide? Hide all we cannot, the signs there for those who look. Join is to warmth. To join and be ready. Help her? Yes, we will join…”
As the whispering came to its end the silence was filled with a feeling of change, as if all of my life hung in a balance of now. How did I, a girl of just eleven years know the heaviness and import of this moment? It was as if fate and chaos whirled around me. I could feel my heart beating louder and sounding like a drum within my head. Suddenly, the tangle of nothing flew at me and covered my eyes. Pain began in the skin around them, a burst of fiery pain that had me shrieking into the wind as I fought against the intrusion. My back arched and I rolled around on the ground. I grabbed handfuls of ice, sand, and snow and pressed them to my face to quell the fire. I screamed again and again till my voice rang hoarse. My friends came running in horror of what might be happening to me, but could do nothing to help. Next to me the strange box burst into flames and crisped to ash in moments. I rolled around and around, becoming covered in snow, sand, and ash. Slowly, in minutes that felt like hours, the pain began to recede and I came back to myself. I wiped the snow and tears from my face. Relief suffused me as I realized I was not blind and I could still see. I looked up at my friends and they gasped.
“What?” I asked, fearful of the answer. “Am I covered in scars? Burned?!”
“Its…” Intuk held up his hands, waving them in uncertainty before saying, “It’s your eyes.” He frowned. “Actually, not really your eyes, it’s the skin around them.” He pulled my face close. “It looks… it looks tattooed” For a long moment he said nothing. “Ahh, just the thing!” he said, pulling the silver mug from his pouch. He buffed it quickly against his furs and held it up where I could see a reflection of my face. I grabbed the mug from him and brought it close. Around my eyes the skin was dark and strange. It was almost I had been crying blood and it had sunk into my skin, one thin line trailing down my face like a tear. Bringing the mug as close to my face as I could I saw that it seemed to be a tight pattern of symbols and runes, fantastically tiny, drawn into my pale skin. Furiously I rubbed at them. I spit on my fingers and rubbed more, to no avail. Whatever they were, I was stuck with them for now.
I dried my face and took a few more deep shuddering breaths to calm my fears. What would they make of me in the village? Many of the other kids already treated me different because my skin was so different. Would this just be another weird thing about Zaaz or would they reject me? I felt my heart racing at the thought of being a real outcast, but then I thought of my mother. Mother would know what to do. She was the tale teller of the village and she knew thousands of stories and surely one of them must have something like this in them. There must be something she knew of to help. This was certainly something of magic and though no one else in the village knew it, mother knew about things like that. The best I could do for now would be to hold my fears in check and not let my emotions get the best of me.
“Lets… Let’s go back to the village,” I announced as calmly as I could, coming to my feet. “We need to tell everyone about the find.” Pointing up to my eyes, “I need to ask my mom what this means.” Some fear in seeing what had happened to their friend still in their eyes, they looked at me in wonder of the calm demeanor I put forth.
“How can you do that,” asked Sadi. “You were just… Well, I don’t know what happened to you, but you were in such pain. Now you just get up and say, let’s go, like nothing happened!”
I shrugged. “Crying won’t help. But you know my mom knows about strange things, so she’s the one to ask. Lots of people in the village have tattoos anyhow.” I didn’t mention that only men in the village wore them.
Looking about I quickly grabbed up one or two interesting looking pieces of debris and headed over towards the rope up the cliff. We made our way back up to Smash Rock and then back down the spit towards the village. Inside though, I could already hear my mother scolding me for opening the box. She would tell me that I should know better and I certainly should have….