Excerpt from Chapter II: The Game
That night, as they lay in the warmth of their sleeping pods, milkweed silk at their backs, bellies full of fish and pheasant and dandelion wine, Espinn tried not to think about Wynthie looking up at him through the water. He loved the River, had never felt a fear of it in his life, even in spring when snowmelt rushed over the stone flats and filled the kettle holes to flooding. He wasn’t sure why it had troubled him, seeing her floating there, but it had.
Tree crickets filled the night air with sound. Espinn counted their chirps to help himself sleep. Slower now: The cold season wasn’t far off. Then a raspier sound reached him, and his whole body tensed before he realized it was Wynthie, whispering to him in the dark.
“What?”
“I said, what would you do if everything changed?”
“What are you talking about, Wyn?”
“I mean…how can we know that everything is okay, that everything will just go on like this?”
Espinn wondered if she realized she had frightened him earlier. He tried to speak confidently. “We’re safe here, Wynthie. The Glenlands have hardly changed at all since I was little.”
“Since before I came?”
Espinn winced. “Yeah.”
“But we can’t really know. Can we?”
He felt her waiting for his answer. The cricket song sputtered, then started up again.
“No,” said Espinn quietly. “I guess we can’t.”
Excerpt from Chapter IV: The Arrowhead
Lillooet bolted up the switchback stairwell to his family’s dwelling built under a huge slanted overhang striped yellow and gray with watermarks. He would grab some supplies—enough for a few nights at least, for he estimated it would take him about that many days to reach the River alone. He could hunt along the way and wash his clothes in streams; his pack had to stay light, his pace steady.
“What are you doing?” said a small voice.
Lillooet jumped clear off the ground, dropping his quiver, which he’d been hurriedly stuffing with arrows. “Pemet! Where did you come from!?”
“I’ve been here,” he said, impishly. “It was you who just came from someplace.”
“Right.”
Pemet sat with his legs draping either side of the terrace wall, fashioning something out of feathers.
Lillooet squinted at him. “What are you doing?”
“Asked you first.”
“I need a walk,” he said, picking up his quiver.
“That’s a lot of arrows for a walk.”
“I want to hunt something. I haven’t gotten a hare in a while.”
“How will you get it back alone? You need the trolley for a hare. Or at least five more hunters.”
“Well, I’m not done packing yet, am I?” Lillooet turned to his little brother, eager to cut off the cross-examination. “Your turn. What’s all that? Making yourself wings?”
“Nope. These wings are for this lizard,” said Pemet, holding up a baby whiptail, which pedaled its clawed feet helplessly in the air.
Lillooet couldn’t help but laugh. “I wouldn’t want to be that lizard.”
“This lizard’s lucky! She’s the only one who will know what it feels like to fly.”
“Before she gets totally flattened.”
Pemet shrugged, still serious. “Some things are worth getting flattened for.”
Lillooet shook his head and finished loading his pack. The Sun was moving quickly.
“So,” said Pemet, staring at him now. “See you at supper then?”
“Sure.” He took a breath. “Hey, Pem? Do me a favor and be careful, okay?”
“You’re the one going out hunting with enough arrows for a week.”
“I’m serious, Pemet.”
“So am I.” His brother blinked, biting the inside of his cheek.
Lillooet tried an easy smile. “Don’t worry, I’m alright. Father just made me angry this morning. I need a little space. I’ll see you later, okay?” And he turned before his brother could throw him off again, skipping every other step back down the switchback to the head of the canyon trail.
Excerpt from Chapter VIII: The oracle
Espinn could tell the ghost was asking a question, but he had no idea how to respond. Slowly, he turned his head to face…emptiness. “There’s nothing here.”
“I beg your pardon! I am indeed here,” said the voice. “It’s you who are not looking properly.” And sure enough, there she was: a spider the size of a thimbleberry, dangling delicately from a strand of translucent silk. “It took me awhile to know what sort you were,” she said, extending one filament-thin leg toward the Woodsare, “but now I understand completely.”
Espinn wasn’t sure, but he took her leg between his finger and thumb and exchanged a miniature shake. Lillooet did the same.
“You are the Young Sort!” she declared, as if unraveling a great mystery. “Be sure not to miss it! Young is the sort of Sort we don’t value till it’s gone. You should be it to the best of your ability while you’re in it, because before you can say Jack Robinson Crusoe Mogli Bilbo Rip Van Gulliver Winkle Huck Finn, old Young will go elsewhere and merely visit from time to time to describe some other thing you’ve become…Young Adult, Young at Heart, Young in Spirit, or, on a good day, Youthful, all of which are really just creative ways of getting to Old. My advice? Just be who you are when you are, and you won’t have to worry so much later about having spoiled it. Take it from me, I’ve been to all the Whens and met every sort of Who, very few of whom had the presence of mind to accept the natural physiological geometry of their particular space-time continua, which gets a bit tiring after a millennium or two, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
The spider’s eight reflective eyes twinkled at the Swephens, who stood there completely baffled.
“Yes, I entirely agree,” she said. “That’s enough talk for now.”
Excerpt from Chapter XV: The Return
Their breath hovered in the morning air like ghosts of the words they might have said. Gronin wept silently. Lillooet stood still, enjoying the comfort of Philomel’s hand on his head. Espinn stared out over the staggering terrain, so unlike his own home.
The Queen broke the spell: “Welcome, all of you. Come.” She gestured to the place where they should stow their sled. Then, instead of walking back across the land bridge, she turned and led them down a steep but well-worn path into the interior of the Clifflands. All around them, canyon walls the color of honey, of dying leaves and sunsets studded white where the snow had made purchase, created an intricate architecture of fissures and crags, ledges and slabs so stunning and spacious that Espinn had to stop walking and brace a hand against the rock beside him to look around. He had to be deliberate about where he put his feet.
His Isling companions strode easily along the path—a mere etch in the side of the cliff face. Even Old Gronin, who had been away for so long, moved with the intuitive grace that indicates bone-deep familiarity with a place. Espinn saw in a new way what the division of the tribe had done. Beyond the prejudice and fear, beyond the provocation of hostility, it had shaped their brains and bodies differently. It had shaped how they walked, how they thought, how they saw the world and moved about in it.
Excerpt from Chapter XVIII: The Gorge
No sooner had they reached the Gorge’s mouth than its walls began to echo with frenzied shouts and warnings. The Swephens grouped behind the sled, pushing Korred forward as a sign of neutrality and contrition (the bloody arrow was impossible to miss). Goblins of every shape and size leapt from the shadows of cracks and caves, advancing like a nest of upset spiders. They clambered over rocks and along a rough system of tracks scored into the walls like veins.
In the midst of the bare-limbed throng, a Goblin more imposing than all the others, bedecked with bones and snake rattle chains and smeared from head to toe in white paste, rode toward them astride a slavering wolverine.
Korred gripped the sides of the sled and dropped his gaze.
“I sssee you have failed usss,” said the ornamented Goblin, who must have been the king, though it seemed too civil a title for a thing so brutish. The wolverine spat and snarled.
Korred’s only movement was a twitch of the muscles in his back.
The King Goblin’s hollow eyes, accented by dark smears of wood ash, fell to the face of Old Gronin. “You tressspass, old man.”
“We wounded your kinsman in self-defense,” said Gronin.
“He is no kinsssman of mine,” said the King, dismissively waving a crooked hand with nails as long as daggers.
“We have no quarrel with you; we merely want to—”
“I don’t care what you want!” The wolverine bared its teeth on cue. “You are not welcome here!”
Silence as hundreds of menacing eyes glinted from the walls of the Gorge.
“Korred will die if his wound is not treated,” said Espinn as bravely as he could. “We will heal him if you let us pass through your territory unharmed.”
The King’s eyes narrowed on the Woodsare. “Did you ssspeak to me?”
“I did, sir. What is your answer?”
At this, the Goblin King laughed, tossing his matted, freakish hair and opening a mouth full of blackened teeth. His tongue was also black and honed, as if it had been sharpened with a tool to a point. Espinn dared not avert his eyes for fear of seeming a coward, though he would have preferred to erase the sight from his memory forever.
“Heal Korred, our Korred, in exchange for passssage through the Gorge?” the King sneered, his nails clicking ominously against an amulet around his neck, which Espinn could now see was a vertebra from the spine of a sizable animal.
Korred suddenly slumped to the side, his head and torso landing in the snow. Old Gronin stepped forward to check his pulse, then propped him back against the bundles. “He’s passed out. Your choice, Oluf.”
By the way the King glared at Gronin, it was clear that addressing him by name was not permitted, or perhaps reserved for a select few. But Old Gronin seemed to know what he was doing.
“Let him DIE!” roared the King. “You’d be wise to leave before a sssimilar fate befalls you and your impsss.”
Espinn sensed Lillooet clenching his jaw, resisting the urge to kill Oluf right there, to knock him off his mount with an arrow to the temple and be done with him.
Gronin summoned Lillooet to his side, his eyes still locked with Oluf’s. “Finish him!” he commanded, pointing at Korred, his voice booming down the Gorge.
Lillooet hesitated, trying to interpret his grandfather’s bluff.
“You heard me!” barked Gronin, sternly.
Lillooet moved to the side of the sled, flicking an uncertain glance at Espinn. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and secured it against the bowstring. His fingers trembled as he draped them around the shaft, brown knuckles whitening. He stepped back and raised his weapon, aiming it at the unconscious sentry. His eyes moved hopefully to Gronin and then less hopefully to Oluf, searching for a shred of mercy. Finding none, he focused again on his target. Measure for measure, the Isling pulled the serving, keeping his arm steady as a sweat broke out along his hairline. The silence in the Gorge was deafening. Lillooet breathed through parted lips. He blinked against the sweat trickling into his eyes.
Then he closed them, remorsefully, as his fingers released the arrow.