The lines around Enuwal’s eyes eased. “Of course.”
She hesitated only a moment before stepping forward to meet the Jegudun. His talons glinted in the light. He flashed his teeth at her, which brought her to a halt. Then she realized it was not a grimace, but a grin. She covered the last few steps between the two of them.
He was smaller than she’d expected, the height of a young child. The apex of his folded wings rose above his shoulders. Thick, powerful muscles covered his arms and legs. She tried not to think of what those talons and teeth could do to her.
“His name is Vacir,” Enuwal said.
Malia nodded a greeting at the Jegudun. She clutched Enuwal’s hand in her left, then she held out her right hand to the creature.
He took it gently. His palm was leathery, and the down on the back of his hand soft.
“What now?” she asked.
“Just relax and let him in your mind.”
Malia swallowed the knot in her throat. “Will it hurt?”
“Not at all.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Something tugged at her mind. She tensed, remembered what Enuwal said, and then let go.
She knew she didn’t leave the cave, and yet she stood somewhere outside the cave in the early morning. A Taakwa army spread before her. And standing in front of them was … her.
She watched herself. She was in Vacir’s memory.
Did she always stand so tall with her shoulders pulled back? Had she always exuded such confidence? When she spoke, the men listened. Some clearly wore skeptical expressions, but they all listened.
The memory faded, and another took its place. Vacir and other Jeguduns stood scattered in the woods as Taakwa joined them. Malia watched herself go from one Jegudun-Taakwa pair to another, bringing them together. They trusted her as they would have trusted any clan mother.
Then the tug on her mind let go, and she stood in the cave again.
Vacir withdrew his hand and backed away. He watched her and waited. Enuwal and Rasmus watched her and waited.
For the first time since she’d awakened, the fog had cleared enough to show she could get back some of her memories, albeit in a way she wasn’t expecting. And she’d really been part of the battle whose scars marred the valley and her. Maybe she wasn’t broken after all. Or maybe she was, but at least she could put herself back together.
She thought back to earlier that day when she and Enuwal had walked along the river. Her hands still yearned to plunge into the soft soil around the bank and draw out suitable clay. But now her heart longed for it also. It was time she trusted herself. It was time she reclaimed herself.
She let a smile creep onto her face. To Vacir she said, “Thank you.”
Then she led them all from the cave out into the mid-afternoon sunlight and her new beginning.
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Wait, there’s more!
Rebecca Roland’s next two books in the Shards of History series, Fractured Days and Shattered Fates are available now. Check out Rasmus’s tale in Rebecca Roland’s four-story collection The King of Ash and Bones, available now, and read the opening pages of Fractured Days in the back of this book. You can also sign up to receive emails when new books in this series come out by going to rebeccaroland.net and signing up for the newsletter.
Acknowledgments
The Odyssey class of 2007 critiqued the short story that eventually led to this novel. Many thanks for the insights of Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Steve Clancey, Michael Potts, Erica Hildebrand, Eric James Stone, Ellen Van Hensbergen, Colleen Robbins, Ronya Fullerton McCool, Samantha Weiss, James Schuyler, David Roberson, Vashti Bandy, Barbara Barnett-Stewart, Jean Marie Fuhrman, and Todd Vandemark. Thanks, in particular, to Ronya for whispering the word “novel” in my ear when I was already thinking about it. Bok-keerk!
Thanks to Susan Sielinski for keeping us all (somewhat) sane in 2007 and for making wise suggestions on the novel at The Never-Ending Odyssey (TNEO) in 2008.
Speaking of TNEO 2008, I’d like to thank those who commented on the first few early chapters: Liz Hirst, Jim Hall, Rich Bradford, Tori Witt, Maggie Della Rocca, David Lowrey, and Ed Heiland. I also owe a big thank you to those who read larger chunks of the novel in 2009: Jennifer Brinn, Susan Winston, Abby Goldsmith, Rita Oakes, and Colleen Robbins. I’d like to especially thank Luisa Prieto for the guidance that led me to a better ending and Susan Abel Sullivan for her cheerful encouragement.
I owe a special thanks to David J. Corwell and Peter Simonson for their comments on various parts of the story and for the flexibility in their schedules.
For Scott Micheel, Sarah Bartsch, and David Arnold, thanks for all the Sunday morning conversations over coffee. I miss you guys.
I'd like to thank Xavier Anderson for allowing me to bounce ideas off him regarding forest fires. If I screwed up anything fire-related in this story, it's due to incomprehension on my part.
It’s been a pleasure working with Eileen and Elizabeth of World Weaver Press. Thank you, ladies.
Endless thanks to Jeanne Cavelos for sharing her passion for crafting the best stories possible.
Thanks to my parents for buying all those books for me when I was a kid and for always letting me go out to play with my imaginary friends.
And finally, thanks to Nate for being my biggest supporter. Let’s keep dancing, baby.
If I’ve failed to name somebody, mea culpa. I owe you a drink. Or chocolate.
About the Author
Rebecca Roland is the author of the Shards of History series, The Necromancer’s Inheritance series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction, and she is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net (where you can sign up for email updates on this series by subscribing to the newsletter on the front page), her blog Spice of Life, or follow her on Twitter @rebecca_roland.
If you enjoyed this novel and want to give it to a friend, show your support of the author by purchasing an additional copy for each person you give it to.
Excerpt from Fractured Days by Rebecca Roland
Malia returns home the hero of a war she can’t remember. The valley burning under the Maddion’s invasion, the fate of her late husband, the way she resolved the long-time distrust between the Taakwa people and the wolfish, winged Jegudun creatures--all of it has been erased from her memory. Malia hopes to resume training as her village’s next clan mother, but when the symbiotic magic that she and the Jeguduns used to repair the valley’s protective barrier starts to consume more and more of her mind, she’s faced with the threat of losing herself completely.
A powerful being known as “the changer” might hold the solution to her vanishing memories. But the Maddion’s new leader, Muvumo, also seeks the changer, hoping the being will cure them of the mysterious illness killing off his people. Meanwhile, Muvumo’s bride hopes the changer can bring about a new era, one in which she and the other Maddion women no longer need to hold onto their greatest secret.
Fractured Days: Chapter 1
Fractured Days Excerpt Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Roland
Malia crested a rolling hill and stopped just before reaching the summit. Near the Big River, which flowed to her left, the bones of a dead dragon curved through the spring grass. On the other side of the rushing, wide river lay more bones. Their riders had been gathered into massive pyres and burned, but the dragons had been too large. They’d been burned where they had fallen when the magic barrier rose around the valley.
She had done this. She’d pulled the magic through her hands, and the Jeguduns’ hands, and repaired the shattered barrier. She’d killed thousands of Maddion me
n and their dragons.
And she couldn’t remember it at all.
She rubbed at her forehead as if that could shake loose the thick fog that hung around those particular memories. Anything that had happened to her in the seasons leading up to the Dragon War was gone. Vanished, as if she’d never lived that time. When she looked at her brother, Vedran, standing a half-pace behind her, it was as if he’d grown into a man overnight. He’d gone from a pesky, scrawny boy who left frogs in her sleeping pallet, into a braided man, carrying a hunting dagger at his hip, a bow and quiver against his back, and a dragon’s tooth on a leather strap around his neck.
Then there was the man who walked on her other side, also slightly behind. Enuwal, the healer. He’d prodded her on after she came out of the long sleep. All winter he’d given her work, both physical and mental, pushing her until she felt a semblance of normality. And now, proclaimed healthy, she was on her way home. She could return to her training to become her village’s next clan mother. She’d have to start over, or nearly so, but then again, almost everybody had to begin anew after the war, all because of the Maddion tearing down the magic barrier protecting their home.
Home. She recalled Selu, her village, but would it look the same? The people wouldn’t, or at least, not all of them, just as Vedran looked to her as if he’d aged overnight. Her stomach was a mess of knots. With sweaty palms, she gripped the leather strap of her travel sac, slung across her torso. Selu lay just over this rise. A few tendrils of cooking smoke rose in the distance. If she took a few more steps, she’d see the village. Then, she only had to get through the evening meal with her mother, perhaps with the clan father, and she could rest. It wasn’t only the day’s fatigue, or even the trail’s fatigue, that exhausted her; it was the weight of all that had happened to her, and the daily battle to try to reclaim any lost memories she could. Maybe, once she was home, she could push this fog aside and remember. Enuwal and the Jeguduns claimed it wasn’t possible, but nobody had ever before worked magic like she had. Maybe…
She took a deep breath.
“Are you all right?” Enuwal asked. He was tall and lanky, with gray touching the hair around his temples, and lines that cupped his mouth. His eyes, the color of rich soil after a rain, flickered as he studied her face, his brows furrowed. He stood close. Malia enjoyed it when he stood close to her. She enjoyed it even more when he touched her, sending shivers from the base of her neck to her fingers and toes.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted.
“Well, I’m starving,” Vedran said. “I can’t wait to get home.”
When the wind blew just right, it brought the smell of roasting meat and baking bread, and a hint of something sweet. Malia’s stomach grumbled appreciatively.
“You’ll be fine,” Enuwal said. He took her hand and squeezed gently, then let go.
Malia nodded. “Of course. It’s just been a while.” A long while, if she included the time missing from her memories.
She adjusted her tunic and her skirt, plain deerskin for travel. Beneath her skirt, she wore a thin leather belt that held her dagger, its weight comfortable and familiar against her hip. She patted her dark hair, tucking a few loose strands behind her ears, and ensuring the rest of it remained in a knot above the nape of her neck.
Then her hands went to her necklace. Two Jegudun feathers hung from it. One was worn, old, sable. She’d earned it when she began her training as clan mother. Putting that necklace on for the first time was one of the last memories she had. She recalled the surge of pride when it settled against her skin. She could hardly wait to resume her training, to prepare to lead her village.
The other feather was a dark, glossy gray. It belonged to a Jegudun named Tuvin, who had shown her the truth about his kind and the real history of her people, the Taakwa. Those memories lingered behind the fog in her mind, but always the feather brought a bittersweet ache to her heart.
Last, her hands went to the beads hanging from her hips, red mingled with black; red for her clan, and black to indicate she was in mourning. Her husband, whom she didn’t remember at all, had died during the war. She wasn’t sure how to mourn a man she couldn’t recall. She’d brought him up several times with her mother and Vedran, and each time they’d carefully changed the topic after a brief mention of his hunting prowess or how he helped provide families with meat during the previous summer’s drought. Maybe they were scared of hurting her somehow, or maybe, given her feelings toward Enuwal, they thought it unwise. She just wanted to give the man’s memories their proper due.
“I’m ready,” she said. She straightened, pushed her shoulders back, and took the last few steps that carried her to the hill’s summit. Her legs ached from days of traveling. She wasn’t sure if she’d sleep in her mother’s home tonight, or her own. Hers would be strange to her, but maybe it would help. Maybe it would bring about some flicker of recognition.
Selu stood in the bottom of a shallow bowl, surrounded by grass on three sides, and crops on the fourth. The crops stretched to the Big River, some lines already green with leafy plants. Usually, men worked in the fields from dawn to dusk, but although there was still daylight, the fields were empty. The knots in Malia’s stomach twisted tighter.
“There’s something wrong,” she said. “Where are all the men?”
“I’m sure nothing’s wrong,” Vedran said, but he was frowning.
Selu itself formed a large circle, with mud-brick homes two and three levels high. A smokehouse stood apart from the village. It was a long, squat building with tendrils of smoke rising from its flues, the wind carrying the smell of wood smoke and salty meat with it.
Additions had been made since Malia had last seen the village, or rather, since her memory left off. At some point, she had built one of those additions herself, on the occasion of her marriage. She searched her mind for any inkling of that time and came up against the same dense fog. A dull throb began in the back of her head. If she pushed herself any further, she’d end up with a headache, and the world would start to spin. She forced her thoughts away from the immediate past and toward the moment.
“Tulah beat us here,” Enuwal said.
Tulah, a Jegudun, perched on one of the village’s highest points. She let out a long whistle, then dove into the air. Her wingspan was wide as four men laid in a line, and her brilliant white feathers shimmered almost painfully in the setting sun. Most Jeguduns’ coloring ranged from light cream to ebony, but Tulah was the only one with feathers so bright.
Her wings beat the air and sent strands of hair whipping around Malia’s face, stinging her cheeks. When Tulah landed and tucked her wings behind her, their apexes rising above her shoulders, she stood no taller than a young child.
Her figure was human-like, short and stocky, and covered with white down. Her snout was elongated and wolfish, and sharp teeth lined her mouth. Tufted ears pointed forward, and her eyes, blue as a clear winter sky, shimmered with intelligence.
She waddled forward on short, muscular legs. Jeguduns were meant to grace the skies, not walk on the ground. She greeted them with a slight nod and a happy trill.
“Tulah, is everything all right?” Malia asked. “Nobody’s working in the fields.” And now that she noticed, no children played outside the village, and no women were coming in from gathering foodstuff in the woods or bathing in the river. It was strangely quiet.
The Jegudun nodded, then fell in with them as Malia led the way down the slope toward the nearest alley that led into the village center.
Home. So much was familiar, like the warm mud-brick walls glowing in the sun, the river rushing past and snaking out of sight around the next hill, the woods stretching west, mostly made up of pine, fir, and aspen. An eagle circled above the plains south of the village, then tucked its wings and dove. It came up a moment later with a small, squirming figure in its talons, most likely a rabbit.
A few narrow alleys led into the village center. Malia walked into the nearest alley’s cool shade, intent upo
n all that she had to relearn, and so it took her a few steps into the village center itself before she realized that the entire population stood within the clearing.
She pulled up, gasped. Her mother—Selu’s clan mother—stood in front of the crowd, hands clasped before her ample figure. She wore strands of all of Selu’s clans woven around her hips, along with a light skirt and tunic embroidered with leaping fish around the skirt’s and sleeves’ hems. Gray liberally sprinkled her hair, pulled back into a tight bun. Lines creased her forehead and her mouth. Malia had seen her mother after she’d woken from the long sleep, but her mother had left soon afterwards to tend to village business.
The crowd standing behind her was made up of faces both strange and familiar, and evidence of the Dragon War was everywhere. Many of the young men wore dragon teeth around their necks, as Vedran did. A young, braided man with burns on his right arm and neck stood tall, and approaching the crowd came an older man with a limp. Several women wore black beads mingled with their clans’ own colors. Some men wore tunics with black squares sewn over their chests. There were children missing. That family there. . . Malia struggled for the woman’s name. Jessa. Jessa had had five children. The oldest, a boy who would have soon earned his braid, was gone. A lump rose in her throat. The throbbing in the back of her head intensified.
Her mother stepped forward, shoulders back, a sober expression on her face. The crowd shuffled, a baby cried and was silenced quickly, but otherwise, utter quiet held reign.
“Malia,” her mother said. “Selu welcomes you back home. We are proud that the war’s greatest hero came from our very own village.”
She flinched at the words. Greatest hero? She recalled none of it. All she knew was what others had told her, and the memories the Jeguduns were able to share with her. And even if she could recall her actions, she wouldn’t have called them heroic. She had done what needed doing.
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