THE DAUGHTER OF THE SEA AND THE SKY
By
David Litwack
Copyright
www.EvolvedPub.com
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The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky
Copyright © 2014 David Litwack
Cover Layout and Formatting by Mallory Rock
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ISBN (EPUB Version): 1622534301
ISBN-13 (EPUB Version): 978-1-62253-430-2
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Edited by Lane Diamond
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eBook License Notes:
You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
Other Books by David Litwack
THE SEEKERS
Book 1: The Children of Darkness
Book 2: The Stuff of Stars (Coming Nov. 30, 2015)
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Along the Watchtower
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www.DavidLitwack.com
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What Others Are Saying about David Litwack’s Books
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The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky:
“...a fully imagined, gripping read.” – Kirkus Reviews
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“Tender yet tense, it is a story that explores the issue of faith and reason, and the wisdom and discernment to choose between right and wrong. David Litwack's exquisitely crafted story is thoughtful, passionate and simply delightful.” – the GreatReads (Amazon Top 500 Reviewer)
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“Author David Litwack gracefully weaves together his message with alternating threads of the fantastic and the realistic... The reader will find wisdom and grace in this beautifully written story.” – San Francisco Review Book Review
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“...an enthralling look at an alternative world... thought-provoking, beautifully written and highly entertaining.” – Jack Magnus, Readers’ Favorite
Dedication:
For Peter and Kevin,
and sons and daughters everywhere.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books by David Litwack
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1 – A Boat Where None Should Be
Chapter 2 – The Department of Separation
Chapter 3 – Jason
Chapter 4 – A Different Promise
Chapter 5 – The Nature of the Spirit
Chapter 6 – The Blessed Lands
Chapter 7 – An Episode of Irrationality
Chapter 8 – Choices
Chapter 9 – Bittersweets
Chapter 10 – A Most Unusual Case
Chapter 11 – A Seedy Café
Chapter 12 – The Northern Kingdom
Chapter 13 – Sebastian
Chapter 14 – Glen Eagle Farm
Chapter 15 – A Boat Gone Missing
Chapter 16 – Benjamin
Chapter 17 – The Spirit of the Wind
Chapter 18 – The Daughter’s Tale
Chapter 19 – Dust in a Sunbeam
Chapter 20 – A Distant Shore
Chapter 21 – A Serpent in the Garden
Chapter 22 – Embers
Chapter 23 – The Blessing of the Wind
Chapter 24 – The Admiring Host
Chapter 25 – Madness
Chapter 26 – Blind Spots
Chapter 27 – A Call to Action
Chapter 28 – Peripheral Vision
Chapter 29 – First Snow
Chapter 30 – The Secretary of the Soulless
Chapter 31 – A Good Civil Servant
Chapter 32 – A Refuge for Lost Souls
Chapter 33 – A Call to Arms
Chapter 34 – Enemies
Chapter 35 – Allies
Chapter 36 – Talk of War
Chapter 37 – A State of Siege
Chapter 38 – Lost and Found
Chapter 39 – As Simple as Stones
Chapter 40 – A Trailer in the Woods
Chapter 41 – Confrontation
Chapter 42 – In the Land of the Stranger
Chapter 43 – A Scene from the Apocalypse
Chapter 44 – The Asylum Gate
Chapter 45 – A Meeting of Worlds
Chapter 46 – The Apocalypse at Hand
Epilogue
About the Author
What’s Next?
More from David Litwack
More from Evolved Publishing
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein
Prologue
The Minister of Commerce trudged up to the steel hut at the peak of the land bridge, a path he’d climbed a hundred times or more. But never before had it felt so steep.
The land bridge was a patch of red clay kept stripped of vegetation by the two governments, though few plants would have grown there anyway. A black metal barrier topped by jagged spikes surrounded the compound, with the sole access through two gates, one to the east and the other to the west. They called them asylum gates because any refugee who passed through them, even by a hair’s breadth, had the right to request asylum from the other side.
At the crest of the hill stood the meeting center, a white and green structure, once shiny and new, now faded almost to gray. Small wonder. It had been built fifty-two years ago as part of the Treaty of Separation. Perhaps the time had come to dismantle it and build a new one, or at least bake on a new layer of paint.
It straddled a negotiated boundary and provided the only contact between the minister’s people and the soulless, races that had kept apart—except in time of war—since the Great Sundering. At least that was the story preached by the senkyosei from their pulpits. According to them, Lord Kanakunai, creator of the Spirit, in response to the folly of reason, had sundered the world into two identical landmasses: The Blessed Lands for believers, and The Republic for the soulless. These He separated by a great ocean, leaving only this slender spit of earth at the top, like a windpipe connecting the nodes of the lungs.
But as the senkyosei loved to say, only one side possessed a heart.
The Minister of Commerce’s first encounter with the soulless had been as a young bureaucrat coming to evaluate refugees requesting transmigration to The Blessed Lands. Back then, he needed two days to travel to the land bridge and would arrive tired and dusty, a supplicant. Today, he’d come with an entourage, and the trip had taken less than three hours thanks to technology he’d negotiated from the other side—a motorized wagon on a newly paved road. Importing such inventions had been one of his greatest accomplishments and had resulted in a better life for his people, but it had also brought great wealth for many on the other side. Now he was a peer in their eyes, no longer a supplicant.
When he reached the hut, he stood patiently, arms outstretched, as troopers from The Republic patted him down
, searching for weapons and, far more dangerous, any form of the written word. His own guardsmen would be doing the same to the soulless on the far side. Once he was cleared, he stepped inside.
Underlings from each race were still fussing over the position of the conference table. He watched the debate as the table was nudged first one way and then another to ensure precise placement over the boundary. The representatives of the soulless measured with their instruments, more needless wonders conceived through the worship of reason. His people took a different approach, eyeballing the line intersecting the floor and then praying they be granted their fair share.
When each side was satisfied, he took his seat and waited. This meeting had been set up at his request and so, by protocol, he’d been the first to enter. After a painful minute, a door on the opposite wall opened and two stout men marched into the room, taking up positions on either side of a padded leather chair. Though unarmed, they appeared more than able to defend themselves without weapons.
As he waited, his mouth went dry and his palms began to sweat. He took a sip of water from a glass on the table, and pulled out a handkerchief from his suit pocket to wipe his hands. He’d met many times with high-ranking officials from The Republic, those responsible for education, culture, or trade, but never before had he met a man who commanded an army.
Moments later the Secretary of the Department of Separation strode into the room, a bear of a man with the carriage of one accustomed to power.
The minister sat up straight and forced himself to look the man in the eye, to try to read his thoughts and more, to see the soul those of his ilk denied.
For this man controlled not only an army, but the fate of all the minister held dear.
Chapter 1 – A Boat Where None Should Be
Helena Brewster sat atop the rocks, five feet above the receding tide, and pretended to read. At least until Jason came jogging along the beach below. She planned to wait until he was a few steps away, then turn the page she wasn’t reading and let her eyes drift up to meet his. Perhaps his eyes would find hers, and for the first time since he’d reappeared, he’d stop and stay. But today, he seemed agonizingly late. To fill up the time and tamp down her anticipation, she practiced the motion, turning a page and looking up.
No Jason.
She understood the first day’s awkwardness, brought on by their unexpected encounter—they hadn’t seen each other in over four years, hadn’t been in touch for more than two. But the second day wasn’t much better. He’d been out of breath and tongue-tied; she’d still been numb from the funeral. It was the third day before they managed a brief conversation, an exchange of pleasantries unworthy of what had once existed between them.
Today she hoped for more.
She abandoned all pretense of reading and stared out to sea. There, through the fog brooding over the ocean, a boat appeared. What in the name of reason would a boat be doing here? Must be her imagination playing games with the fog while she waited for Jason to arrive.
She slowed her breathing as she’d been taught, to control the passions and clear the mind. Then she listened again for the beat of his shoes on the sand. Nothing but the slosh of waves breaking on the shore. She checked the high-water mark beneath her feet, calculating how much the tide would have to recede before exposing enough beach for a runner. Still a few minutes to go.
They’d gone to the same academy, she and Jason, levels one through eight, though it took a while before they became close. She sat near the window, he by the inside wall. She paid attention to the mentor, while Jason stared outside, seemingly building castles in the air. Each year, he managed to get assigned a row closer, and by the time they’d achieved fifth level, he sat next to her and passed notes, asking if he could walk her home after school. When she told him she was concerned they’d get caught, he changed the notes, ending each with the phrase: “Take a chance, Helena.”
In the spring of that year, she did.
From then on, he walked her home every afternoon along this very beach, but never beyond this point, too intimidated by the big houses on the cliffs.
That came to an end when their class advanced to secondary school. He’d gone to the communal one in the village, and she to the private one where children of the Polytech faculty studied. Yes, they tried to see each other every day, but she’d become obsessed with grades, trying to please her father, and he’d taken a job at a snack shop after school to save money for university. She’d gone to see him as often as possible, ordering a lemon-flavored drink and visiting during his break. It wasn’t much, but they were unconcerned; there’d be time when they were older.
After she moved away—she’d never questioned attending her father’s school—they stayed in touch for a while. Jason would drop a note, and she’d respond. Then, somehow, two years of silence ensued.
Now, after all this time, he’d reappeared, jogging by as she grieved along the cliffs, exactly a half hour past high tide. Like a fleeting glimmer in this darkest of summers. Like a miracle.
She shook her head. If her father were alive, he’d chastise her for such a thought. She could hear his voice, that of a true scientist—there were no miracles.
The ripple at the edge of the fog again drew her gaze. For an instant, it took shape, but quickly vanished, a reverse mirage, something solid where only water should be. She squinted, trying to penetrate the haze, and turned away to find something more substantial.
She traced the coastline instead. The land rose southward in a gentle curve toward the tip of Albion Point, and ended at the Knob, which stood like a clenched fist challenging those who sailed the Forbidden Sea. The northern firs that capped the rocky coast were broken here and there by a handful of dwellings. From this distance, they looked like great seabirds nesting.
The fog had shifted with the tide, enough for her to pick out her parents’ home, the white one in the center, overlooking them all from the highest cliff. It was where she slept for the time being, where she stayed alone and apart. Only the second floor of the house and the garret above it showed. With the rest blended into fog, the house looked like a phantom rising from nothing. It had felt that way since her father died.
Each of the four days since driving her mother to the farm, she’d come to this spot, always a half hour before high tide. To her left, the long stretch of beach ended at the cliffs. To her right lay an inlet carved into the rocks, where waves crashed with a roar that echoed off the walls. Her father used to call it the thunder hole. Sitting on this bench-shaped rock above it, she could dangle her bare feet in the spray, neither in the water nor out.
Her father had given her a silver anklet for her twelfth birthday, an age when she worried she might be too old to curl up in his lap. He’d claimed that if she sat on the rocks above the thunder hole at high tide, the spray would wet the chain and make the links sparkle. Two days before he died, he reminded her of the anklet and told her when the ocean brought the stars, she should think of him.
Jason, she assumed, came for more rational purposes—the breadth of the beach below, the firmness of sand compacted by the waves—to this spot, their spot, the last easy place to clamber up to the road before the cliffs. Old friends turned strangers, now reunited by the rhythm of the tides.
She glanced back out to sea and caught the beacon of the Light of Reason. The ancient tower stood on a craggy rock in the middle of the bay, ten stories high and always first to peek through the fog. She balanced the book on one knee and scanned lower, down along the horizon.
The mirage burst out and became solid—a boat where none should be.
The sail luffing in the breeze was a clumsy triangle with no arc, holding little air. The front was awkwardly shaped, more tub than prow, and it sailed where boats were banned—a ripe target for the shore patrol. If it had been launched by zealots overcome with missionary zeal, it was too small and ill-fitted, not salvation vessel, but death trap.
And it was drifting toward the rocky coast.
S
he turned to a new sound—Jason finally arriving on his tidal schedule. Soon he’d slow to a halt, measure his pulse with two fingers on the carotid artery, and gulp half a bottle of fortified water. After checking his time, he’d scramble up the rocks to her perch, flash that boyish grin she remembered so well, and ask how she was doing. She’d smile as she struggled to find words to make up for the years apart. When she failed to say much, he’d mumble some nicety, turn, and jog away down the steps and along the road to the village.
Or that’s how it would have gone, if it weren’t for the boat.
It drew closer now, gaining speed. The sea breeze had risen with the turn of the tide, and the resulting chop held the boat in its grasp, driving it toward the rocks below the cliff. Even if it were seaworthy, it was doomed.
Jason pulled himself onto the rocks and approached her.
She closed the book and set it down, forgetting to reset the bookmark, and pointed toward the boat. A kingfisher glided along the coastline and dove where she pointed, disappearing into the water.
Jason smiled.
She shook her head and tried to find her voice.
“A boat,” she finally said.
Now, Jason saw it as well. The sun glinted off something on its bow as it dipped into a trough. When it rose again, someone clutched the mast—a girl with golden hair.
Jason vaulted back to the beach and beckoned for Helena to follow. She moved to the edge, squatted, and jumped. He caught her by the waist and swung her to the sand.
In those few seconds, the boat crashed against the rocks. The crack of wood splintering rose above the sound of the waves.
The two of them raced into the surf as the girl with the golden hair thrashed about in the water, struggling to avoid jagged debris from the shattered boat. They waded in a few steps, braced against the undertow, and pressed forward again. Three more waves and they reached her.
Jason grabbed the girl just as she began to sink. Despite the buffeting sea, he carried her back to the shore without straining and lay her fragile form on a swath of grass beyond the rocks—a slip of a child no more than nine or ten years old.
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