by Halie Fewkes
“Hopefully more people find their way back to the Dragona as well. We’re going to need all the help we can get,” I said.
“Is there really nobody else here?” Liz asked.
Just as I replied, “Nobody,” a large girl appeared across the room, and those from the Dragona relaxed.
“Oh good life, there are people here!” Although relieved to see us, Terry’s eyes were clearly swollen and reddened.
“Is everything alright?” I asked as we migrated to her and she sat momentarily.
“Is everything alright? No, it isn’t. Sir Darius and I were put on the same ship, so when the Escalis were above deck we started jumping people back and forth to the shore. I was back on the ship when the Escalis got it figured out, but when Sir Darius jumped back in, they hit him over the head, and I think… I think they killed him. I took two more people out, but I was afraid to go back.”
“It’s alright,” I said, seeing the stress in her eyes. “How many did you get off the ship?”
“Sir Darius got fourteen, and I got fifteen plus myself. All but five of them will come to the Dragona, but only ten are actually mages. I couldn’t bring anybody else.”
“Ten mages is more than we have,” I answered her. She stood to leave, antsy about staying in one place too long.
“I’ll go tell them that there are people at the Dragona. If we all set off tonight, we should be here in a day and a half, maybe two.”
“You aren’t going to jump them here?”
Terry’s desperate laugh showed us her exhaustion. “I’m too tired to jump anybody but myself.” She leapt forward and disappeared.
“We should get rooms for everybody,” Liz said to me.
“We can do that,” I said, glancing to Archie because I couldn’t help notice most eyes in the room on me. I think I had just accidentally taken charge, and Archie just had that tiny smirk in the corner of his mouth that meant he was impressed.
Nobody really owned anything to move in, so rooms were claimed quickly and without chore.
Hardly half an hour passed before I was able to retreat to my own. I wasn’t about to fall asleep with all that had been going on, so I looked around my room and found my list of tally marks, a quill, and an ink well.
I sat down on my bed flipped my list over several times, then set it beside me. My room didn’t feel right anymore. My cave walls hadn’t changed while everything else had. It wasn’t fair.
I got up and left my room to find a better spot, but my feet ended up taking me to the Wreck. In the past, the Wreck had been the one place I could find someone to talk to at any time of the day or night. Now it was desolate. I wound between the tables, then climbed outside where the night air felt pleasantly cool on my skin and in my lungs. A second moon had risen to light the sky, giving me more than enough light to read by. I lay down in the grass and grabbed my list and quill.
Deaths that were my fault.
I finally dragged a line of ink across four others, giving West his spot as number fifteen. Someday, I would find out who the other fourteen were.
Lives I’ve Saved.
I had a few thousand tally marks I needed to fit onto this page, but I found myself distracted by thoughts of what was to come. Surely Sav and Gat were on their way to the Dragona in pursuit of me. I probably shouldn’t stick around because I was endangering everybody. Yet, if I were to leave, I would be leaving the Dragona even more shorthanded than it already was. And I couldn’t abandon Liz.
I looked up at the stars and pondered my recent choices, not sure I could keep making them. I had saved thousands of lives in Dincara. Traded my loyalty to save them. I hadn’t changed my loyalty though, had I? No, surely not. I had made the decision in Humanity’s best interest. But it had also been in everybody’s interest.
I flattened the parchment on my legs, Saved side up. Instead of covering the page in an indefinite amount of ink, I wrote one line across the bottom. A conclusion I hadn’t come to lightly, but one I finally decided I believed.
It’s worth the trouble.
I heard the scrape of boots climbing over stone, and I turned to see Archie emerging from the Wreck as well. Flak flew from his shoulder to land next to me.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked before he did.
“Getting out of my room. I couldn’t sleep with Gyr being such a deranged crow. Why are you out here?”
“I’m just thinking about things.”
“And I see you brought your list,” he said, sitting in the grass next to me. “What are you thinking about?”
I exhaled and replied, “Everything. Right now I’ve got my mind on the battle and our role in it. And how many times we might have to play that role again. And how we can possibly keep the Dragona up with this many people. I still don’t know what Sav and Gat want from me, and I wish I could just silence my thoughts for a little while. Get a good night of sleep without all the hopelessness, you know?”
Archie pulled up a few blades of grass and said, “Nothing’s hopeless.”
A cool breeze blew by and I heard a duskflyer begin singing in the distance, its song a low whistle in the wind. I brought my eyes up to the immensity of stars, swirled throughout the sky, and said, “You know, I used to spend hours every night, just thinking. Trying to remember who I was, then putting myself in danger when nothing else helped… I don’t think I’m going to try anymore.”
Archie smiled and said, “It never really worked, did it?”
“No, but that’s not why I’m stopping. I think… Well, I used to think that finding my memories would define me. I would have a background, make the decisions that the proper Allie would make, and I could be the person everybody used to love.”
Archie nodded and said, “They didn’t even know the real you though.”
“They didn’t. So all that time, I was trying to live up to an old lie, a mask I put on for everyone else. And I think it was all a waste of time anyway, because having those memories wouldn’t have changed the decision I made about Dincara. Memories or not, I’d still be determined to find this Epic girl, and that’s what I want to define me.”
“I think that’s always defined you,” Archie said with a smile, “trying to protect everybody around you. That’s how you were before you lost your memory too.”
Warmth overwhelmed my heart because that tiny drop of information meant oceans to me. I was exactly the same person I used to be.
“I’d really just love to have a conversation with my old self, more than anything, to find out what she knew.”
“It would be amazing to find out how you ended up defending Sir Avery’s daughter.”
“And I’d love to know what Sav still wants from me.”
Archie clenched his jaw and his fists at the thought of the Escali he hated, and I fixed my gaze on a soft patch of grass near my feet. Archie took a slow breath before saying, “Sav and Gat will keep hunting you until they get what they want.”
“They already have our Epic. I don’t know what other secrets could be nearly as valuable.” Archie set his hand on mine, and I lifted my eyes from the dark ground to meet his reassuring gaze.
“Don’t worry, Allie. We’ll find out.”
The End
The Secrets of The Tally Series Will Be Five Books in Total - so make sure you grab the sequels next!
Book II - Catching Epics
Book III - A Deal For Three
Book IV - Releasing Early 2020
Book V - 2022
Here’s the problem with a world of friends who help each other… I sit down to write my thank yous, and I don’t know how to make the page count less than that of the book. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone I have ever known, because your stories inspire me and your support is what keeps me writing.
Thank you to my family for, you know, putting up with me and feeding me and everything while Secrets of The Tally was being written. You guys rock.
Thank you to Robbie, Karissa, Corie, and Madison for be
ing my first readers, and to Jordan for being the first one to sit down and pick the entire story apart over a cup of mint tea.
To my mom, Hannah Dye, Hannah Richard, Matt Frye, Shell Adams, Katie Reed, Laura Abbott, and Jessica Colvin — thank you for the long hours spent critiquing and editing. And special thanks to Lauren Loftis who almost ended our friendship over the description of a fern in Chapter 1.
I had upwards of forty people read Secrets of The Tally before it was released, but Caleb and Josiah hold the record as the only beta readers who guessed Allie’s identity before she did.
I was also inspired by more teachers I can count, starting with Mrs. Cooper in 5th grade, who had the super power of making every subject fun. I started Secrets of The Tally the summer after her class and never looked back. Skip ahead nine years, and I had a long-finished manuscript I wanted to publish and a professor named Osiri, whose lectures were all about dreams and goals and entrepreneurship. I can say without doubt that without his class, I wouldn’t have flown to New York to meet with publishers and I would never have won the PNWA literary competition because I would never have entered. Sometimes all we need is that nudge.
Many thanks to everybody who supported me on Kickstarter to get our first print run off the ground — especially Thomas and Cody who loaned me their house and came out to do all the Kickstarter filming. We were climbing trees and steering bikes through the living room to get those shots, and it was fun!
Thank you to Ginger Anne London for the incredible cover art, and for all your support since the day I met you.
And thank you to YOU, dear reader, for picking up and reading a book without the seal of a large publishing house. It is my goal and dream to be a full time author, so if you liked this story, please please please consider writing a review for it on your favorite book-finding platform (Amazon, Goodreads, a blog somewhere), and hand it off to one of your friends to read.
See if they’re able to guess the Secrets of the Tally.
Pronunciation Guide
However you pronounce these names in your head is perfectly acceptable, but for the sake of resolving those inevitable arguments, here’s how I imagine a few of the harder ones.
Dincara – Din-car-uh
Dragona – Druh-go-nuh
Escali – Ess-caw-lee
Escalira – Ess-caw-lir-uh
Gataan – Gat-ay-an
Izfazara – Iz-fuh-zar-uh
Nessava – Ness-uh-vuh
Ratuan – Rat-yue-awn
Savaul – Suh-vall
Shadar – Shuh-dar
Tarace – Tare-iss
About Halie
“I started writing this series at twelve years old, with a character named Allie who just never left me. It’s been fourteen years now, and she still won’t leave."
The year is 2018, and I am in the middle of my Kickstarter campaign for Book III, A Deal For Three, as I sit down to write this new About The Author Section. WOW! It’s been a crazy three years since my first printing of Secrets of The Tally, and I am ECSTATIC to have such amazing fans who love these books as much as I do.
The dream has always been to write full time, and I finally took the plunge about six months ago when I quit my day job and jumped on a train to travel the whole United States, working solely on my books. I’ve always been a fan of adventure (and a HUGE fan of train travel), and couldn’t be happier with how the books have progressed in the past six months. I am so excited to be moving forward in the series, which will eventually be five books long, and hope you guys will check out Catching Epics and A Deal For Three. I’m sure Book IIII will be here before you know it. ��
This Book Funded By Kickstarter
(And 161 Backers)
Stuart Pollock
Kathryn Reed
Gerald Mickelsen
Linda Kramer
Annette Oppenlander
Sophie Ascaso
Colleen McInnis
Amy Fewkes
Sam Peilow
Lexi Ray
Dan Neal
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Allison Adams
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Macdonald
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Wendy Fewkes
Alissa Maley
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Kyle Schmidt
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Sandra
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Chelsea
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Scott
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Snorrason
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SchizoTyler
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Devon