Help my novel get edited/published
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It has been my dream ever since I was a kid to somehow bring my dark fantasy stories to life and now I finally have that chance.
I have a complete 188,000 word story written down. I have gotten the amazing Lisa Rojany from the editorial services of LA on board to make this story the best it can be. This money will go to her for an intense editing process.
As for the story, it has been raised in my head and heart for 10 years now. It took about a year and a half to write the first draft. The book features a burn victim child caught in-between a war of spirits and humans.
The world is made-up. It's the sort of book you'd expect a map to be placed on the front. There are castles, enchanted forests, guardians, winged beings, magic, and shapeshifters.
Your support will mean the world to me. Some people dream of becoming famous or travelling the world, but this is and has always been my dream since I can remember. It's the one certainy I always had.
Why is this so important to me? How did this get started? I did not always want to be a writer. There was a time when stories just buzzed around in my head like constant ghosts and I thought that was normal.
Eventually I could no longer ignore the stories. Reality needs them and they need to become real, if that makes any sense. That's how I decided to be a writer, because I needed a way to get these stories out.
Note: Anyone who donates at least 15 dollars will be guaranteed a signed copy of my book once it is published.
Here is 20 pages of the book as a book sample.
From Prologue:
A naked girl opened bright green eyes to see the pillars of trees in the sun. She heard the songs of chickadees and shivered from the morning dew on her skin.
Stretching, her body welcomed the warmth of sunlight trickling through the tree branches. Emptiness stirred her stomach and her heart pounded in her ears.
Cinnamon ferns, mealycup sage, white clovers, and five spot flowers grew on the forest floor around her. Colossal bonsai covered in patches of sheet moss twisted above her. Their branches hid treasures like moth and lady slipper orchids. Their roots twisted around patches of enoki mushrooms.
The girl relaxed, laying back against the tree she curled up under. Looking up, she watched clouds pass between lush leaves over the snaking branches.
She did not know what they were. She did not know what anything was, or even what she was. Her hands pet the grass under her, just beginning to understand touch: what form was hers versus the worlds.
Eventually she stood up and wandered. Whispers tickled her ears when a breeze passed through her hair.
Her hands gripped honeysuckle vines, saplings, tree trunks, and thorny rose bushes, anything to help her stand. Her legs trembled and begged her to fall.
When her feet tripped over roots, she fell on her face. She cried when her nose gained its own heartbeat.
After a day of wandering, she began to feel heavier and sat in a grove of clovers. The air cooled and the world darkened.
In a shivering ball, the girl tried to sleep through the night. She heard howls and crickets beyond further in the woods. Ants crawled over her feet and a wolf spider hid in her hair.
When the sun rose, so did the girl and she wandered again. At night, she fell.
Three days passed of her wandering before she stopped. After weaving through what seemed like a never-ending forest, she collapsed at a tree base. She breathed through a dried mouth and hugged her aching body.
Every movement began to hurt and she felt heavier each day. The emerald world around her had dimmed, becoming as still as a painting.
Animals watched her, but she never noticed. Squirrels flicked their tails in the trees to warn of her coming. A fox passed her as she slept in the night. Hummingbirds darted around above her like little fairies.
She felt as though her body was caving in at the center. Her forehead heated up and she had random waves from warm to freezing.
Despite the sun being up, this time she remained curled under the tree. Maybe if she waited long enough, she’d disappear like how she appeared. She did not remember ever awaiting to appear or anything before appearing, but it was worth a shot.
When night came, she felt like she was closer than ever to disappearing. Her body became numb and she found it easier to fall away from the world.
Rain fell from the dark sky and broke through the forest canopy, a tropical storm where no leaf could provide shelter. To the girl, it was like the entire sky fell.
Despite her numb state, her body began to violently shiver. She curled up as tight as she could, hugging her knees to her chest and tucking her head inwards.
The rain brought pain that pulled her away from disappearing. She tried to shut it out, tightening her grip on herself and shutting her eyes. Every pelted drop splashed from her shoulders to her face. Her hair dulled and sank until it pasted to her skin.
After rustles in the grass, the rain stopped hitting her. She could still hear it though. She could hear the sounds of it falling all around her.
Opening her eyes, she looked up at bright flame that blinded her. She blocked it with a hand to see a pair of red eyes looked at her beyond the lantern.
A wing as black as the night sky stretched above her, sheltering her.
“Who are you?” the winged man asked.
He was answered by chattering teeth and a pathetic look.
Keeping his wing over her, he kneeled and put his warm hand on her wet forehead. She got a closer look at him. A head of dark shaggy hair, brown skin, and a heart shaped face. He wore sandals and ragged pants. His chest and arms were bare and toned with muscles. He stood about six feet tall.
Retracting his wing, he gently scooped her up into his arms. His chest was the warmest thing that touched her since sunlight. She rolled her head against him and felt his heartbeat until she fell away.
The winged man’s hands pulled a rope in the night. A raccoon jumped at the sight of a bucket rising from the water and bound back into the darkness of the forest. Filled with river water, the bucket rose up towards the cloudy sky, towards the branches of an old oak tree. Past the tree’s leaves and through its shade, the bucket reached a window.
He un-wrapped the rope attached to the bucket before taking it inside. He pulled a fabric curtain shut to keep the cool night air outside.
The bucket water sloshed back and forth, dribbling some drops onto the wood floor as he walked into another room.
He heard a soft moan from the corner. Setting the bucket on a wooden stool, he turned to the shadows where the girl he found laid down.
“Are you awake?”
Shadows danced around the room as he took a lit candle from a table. Folding his legs on the floor, he positioned himself next to a layered heap of furs. His wings, dark as a ravens, folded at his back.
The girl lay with only her breath to move her. Her long golden hair had dried into a tangle, like seaweed on a shoreline. Her pale body was slim with various light brown moles on her body. She was like a flower bud right before blooming, hairless and flat chested, a child.
The spirit put his ear to her bare chest, her rib cage pressed to his cheek. She had become warmer.
Before, she was as cold as a river stone. At the mercy of the forest, she was lucky her limbs were not torn off by wolves.
He put his hand on her shoulder. With a light shake, her eyelids fluttered and opened slightly. He inched himself forward and moved some of her tousled blonde hair out of the way of her sight. Moving her hair revealed more of her eyes. They were like bright green leaves in the sun. She had a cute, round face. Based on her size and flat chest, the spirit guessed she may between the ages of ten and twelve.
“Hello,” he greeted. His own voice sounded odd to him, as he did not remember the last time he spoke to someone.
She focused to him.
“Right now we are in my nest, where I live,” he explained.
The nest was only a two rooms big. The smaller room was used for cooking and the other for sleeping and storage. The doorway was unevenly carved out with just a tattered blanket as a door to block the wind. There were two windows, one with a view of the river and the other that faced the inner oak tree.
There was no furniture. Not even a single chair. All the spirit had was what he had found with luck, blankets, pillows, bags, and tools. No one would bring furniture on a journey to the woods, only camping supplies.
The spirit could barely recall how he built his nest. He remembered using pieces of broken constructs he found around the woods, from wagons and homes long abandoned.
It was a pitiful place for a poor soul to wake up. The nest was little more than a shack. Despite the poor quality, the spirit never desired anything more than what he had.
Remembering his reason for waking her in the first place, he picked up the soup he set aside and brought the wood bowl close to her face.
She glanced at it before looking back at him.
“Do you want it?”
No answer.
“Can you talk at all?”
She just stared at him. Her gaze sent a chill down his spine. It was as though she did not peer at a person, but an object which she could just look into all day without shame.
“Can you nod or shake your head?”
She did not move. Maybe she went through something so traumatic that she was in shock? Her family or friends could have met a cruel fate by animals, venom, poison, or illusion.
He began to wonder if a spell was cast on her to make her behave in this way. It was possible in this place. She could have eaten berries from vines or fruit from the trees, having an influence grow from inside her stomach. Or some animal bite that cast a curse through the rivers of blood in the body?
The winged man scooped up a spoonful and brought it to the girl’s mouth.
Her jaw remained tightly shut. He thought of pushing the spoon against her lips, but that would just dribble into a mess.
“Hey,” he got a little harsher “I don’t know what your problem is, but if you don’t eat you will die. Look.”
He ate the spoonful of soup himself since she seemed to be paying more attention to him than the food. When she saw that, she began to stare at the soup. With more hope, he attempted feeding her again. This time she opened her mouth and took the spoonful. A drop of broth oozed from her mouth.
With that one slurp, she gained color. Her body shifted towards the spirit. Her bright eyes smiled at him. He kept feeding her till the soup finished. The girl took the bowl, brought it to her face, and her pink tongue searched the surface for more.
As he guessed, she was starving. He retrieved a cloth from his kitchen and wiped her face. She nuzzled against the cloth, seeming to enjoy the feel.
“Where are you from?”
Despite being fed, she did not speak. She laid her head back down on the mattress. Her arms closed into her chest and her legs curled as she shut her eyes.
His back stiffened. The conclusion came to mind that the girl could be a wind-born human. Wind-born humans, unlike the blood-borns, had no origin. It was as though the wind itself brought their bodies to this world. Sometimes they came as children, rarely babies, but many times they were adults. No matter what body they had, their minds were clueless, speechless, almost like an infant, yet they learned very fast. The first humans were wind-born, and spirits like him taught them how to live in this world. They began to have babies, making the blood-borns. The wind-borns never stopped coming though.
But then how could he touch her? Nature made it so humans and spirits shocked each other if they tried to touch. He would have not been able to save her if that was the case.
He shook her to keep her awake. “Are you human?”
She opened her eyes and then closed them back again.
He became more and more certain she was wind-born. This girl may have just appeared here, far from other humans to take care of her. How rare were they? How many blood-borns and wind-borns made the human race? Wind-borns are likely to die often if they could just appear in the middle of nowhere without someone to take care of them.
The spirit rubbed his forehead. He could not remember meeting a human before. He himself was alike to wind-borns, with no past to recall. Maybe this girl was a strange spirit. It was hard to tell. Many things were possible in this forest.
Chopping through carrots and celery with a knife made of bone, the spirit prepared more soup. The cicadas and frogs sung through the night. With a new pot of soup, he returned to his bedroom and sat by the mattress.
The girl slept on her side. His hand scooped her head up and tucked a pillow under. He unfolded a cotton blanket and tucked it in around the mattress. His home was not the warmest place to be at night. A nest with two rooms and little to no furniture was not much of a home. Only curtains were used as doors and windows to block the night air.
“I made some more soup.”
She opened her eyes and sat up the moment she saw him holding a spoon.
“Guess you like my cooking?”
It felt strange to talk. The forest was full of life, but no people. Most were either smart enough to avoid the forest or foolish enough to die on the tree roots.
Once through the pot of soup, the girl lay back on the furs and fell asleep. Exhausted, the spirit settled himself to sleep in the corner of the room. He took a pair of his pants from a basket and used them to rest his head.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The spirit raised the human and the girl’s rib cage faded under a well fed body.
Her innocence charmed the spirit, as she touched everything out of curiosity. She often stared out his window with the view of the river, yearning to go out. She would hold his baskets upside down, pouring all his collections and tools out, sit down, touch and examine everything they contained.
Her fascination with his wings was one of the few things that bothered him. She loved to grab at them, often pulling his dark feathers out, causing him the same amount of pain as would yanking out someone’s hair. After many moments of her tugging out his feathers, he came up with an idea.
With one of his shed feathers, he made a bracelet. The bracelet itself was made out of deer leather. With a needle, he pricked a hole in the feather’s shaft and looped the bracelet through.
He tied the bracelet around her left wrist. “There, now you will always have a feather so you can stop plucking at mine.”
The spirit was no small bird, so the feather was quite a large accessory. If she raised her hand, his feather nearly reached her elbow. But the girl seemed to love it and never plucked at his wings again.
With time, he found clothes for her. Most were baggy dirt-stained shirts, pants too wide for the girl’s hips, and clunky boots.
It was quite the spectacle when she first put on clothes. The spirit had to help her, making her spread her legs out and raise her arms up. He crafted a rope from vine for a belt to tighten the pants to her boney hips. Once fully clothed, she looked down at her own body with wonder. She acted as though the spirit cloaked her with a robe made of jewels. She spread her arms out and skipped around the nest, her boots stomping up the dust from the wood. She looked like an ordinary peasant, but she danced with joy, believing she was beautiful. To the spirit, she was.
Her clothes came off the dead who risked exploring the forest. The spirit often found their corpses, killed off in a variety of ways. The forest was a warped place, not meant for social creatures like humans or certain spirits. There were plants the size of men with teeth like daggers. At times, music could be heard resonating in the wood, or the voice of woman singing a lullaby, but the spirit knew never to follow the sound. When the moon was full, wolves the size of small homes would sweep through, eating all they can sniff out. There were monsters that oozed like tree sap and brush that would be rooted one day, and gone the next. Serpents dropped from the high branches upon their victims, and there were frogs poisonous to the touch. For that, the spirit feared letting the girl wander outside the nest.
But there was also beauty, which was why so many came to explore the forest. Flowers with petals that shimmered like glass grew by the riverside. There were trees with deep-green moss and red orchids growing on their twisted trunks. Gentle creatures roamed like black deer, rainbow fish, humming birds, ferrets, butterflies, and rabbits. At night, the sky was speckled with planets and stars, enough to make the saddest or most angry person lose themselves in the sight. There were stones in the river which, if cracked, showed their insides filled with purple crystals. These things made the spirit want to take the girl outside.
Eventually the he took her to the roof of the nest. On a day with no clouds, he decided it was time for her to join him outside. The spirit held her in his arms, and flew her out to roam. When they took to the sky, her eyes expanded wide and her mouth opened breathlessly. Since then, she would often hold him, hoping he would fly her somewhere. The destination did not matter, as long as she could fly with him.
Letting her wander outside turned out to be a challenge as she constantly got herself into some sort of danger. Her weakness was her lack of fear, poking and prodding everything she came across.
She once stuck her hand into a hole at the base of an oak tree despite the spirit’s shouts. The girl flinched and pulled her hand out with a snake chomping down below her thumb. The snake’s broad head and tan color suggested a copperhead. The viper let go of her hand only for the human to try and grab it with her other free hand.
“HEY!” the spirit ran over and stopped her.
He sucked at her bite wound and spat a mixture of blood and venom onto the earth. The rest of the day he constantly checked her hand for swelling. She lived to see another day but she did barf after a trout dinner in the nest.
Another time the girl thought the berries of a rosary pea looked appetizing. She walked out of some bushes with a handful of the red bead shaped berries to offer to the spirit.
She must have been surprised when the spirit panicked, pinned her to the ground, and shoved his fingers down her throat until she barfed every berry out. Too young to understand that he saved her life, she avoided him for the rest of the day. When she finally approached him, he gave her some raspberries and a warm hug of apology.
There was also a time when she nearly drowned in the river by the oak tree. The spirit never understood how she managed such a feat in shallow water that only came up to one’s knees. He had to pull her face out of the river, resuscitate her and hope she learned a lesson.
One evening he lost her and found her stuck in a tangle of thorn vines that he had to cut her free from.
Then there was the time she found quicksand that the spirit did not even know existed. She had sunk down to her hips in the murky earth. The spirit was lucky he could fly and pull her out. He surrounded the quicksand with a fence of rocks as a warning for himself and the human.
She even got caught in one of the spirit’s own hunting traps a couple times. Luckily they were harmless and he could cut her down.
There were times that saving her hurt him. One of the greatest killers in the forest were the larger animals like wolves, bears, tigers, and certain snakes. They had incidents where the girl wandered off and bothered dangerous creatures. The spirit usually could scare off the lesser animals but the larger ones had to be escaped or killed.
Her brushes with death and danger never seemed to end.
The girl’s body became marked by the wild in the form of scars, more scars than normal for anyone. Most were on her legs and arms. She never seemed tough to the spirit, despite the harsh marks. To him, she always looked soft.
She developed a love for collecting things. Once there was a piece of rose quartz she found that she would not give up. She was very fond of bird feathers in particular. Sometimes she collected flowers. With no concept of death and decay, she would be confused the next day when the flowers wilted.
Eventually the spirit came to name the girl. “Wander.”
He became certain she was an abnormal human, since she bled red instead of black. Spirits like him bled black. They could touch, which regular spirits and humans could not. Wander could touch spirits, but bled and acted like a human. The spirit decided there was no use in questioning it too much.
The first time he heard Wander’s voice was by the river while they were washing clothes. For his own amusement, he splashed her with water. She flinched, her blonde locks dripping, her green eyes wide. Her moment of surprise transformed as a toothy smile flashed him. She splashed back in the face. Then…she laughed. At first her laughter scared him, hearing a voice other than his own. It was not some timid giggling; Wander’s laughter came out in a booming, abrupt burst.
Not long after her laughter, Wander’s speech began. She usually stated the obvious, like pointing at the nest and saying, “Nest.” She could tell the spirit when she was hungry or tired. He attempted to help her with the names of things.
“Forest,” he’d say.
“FO-rest.”
“No. For-EST.”
A day came when the spirit was given a name. “Masu,” she called him. Unlike her name, his was meaningless. He was unsure at first. Spirits often named themselves off of words like Lantern or Willow while humans named each other with gibberish like Johnathon or Megan. Despite it not being a word, Masu came to accept his humanistic name.
Eventually, he could not imagine living without her.
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From Chapter 9
The Harlequin Wilds reminded Vincent of a surreal dream. Not the sort of dream where one’s deepest wishes came true and not a nightmare in which every fear became reality. It was more like the bizarre dream that you’d try to make sense of for the rest of the day.
He only ventured through a small expanse. The moss, leaves, and brush were dark green like the end of a broccoli flower. The amount of moss that carpeted the trees seemed unnatural. Vincent wondered if trees could even be alive with that amount of green. Every tree seemed to have its own forest growing on its trunk and branches.
Earlier that day he heard a report from one of the scouts. Nobody seemed calm-minded when they returned from a walk in the woods. They constantly scratched at their own skin, kept peeking under their clothes as though looking for something. Their own bodies seemed to disturb them. One claimed that he ripped some moss from a tree trunk and it revealed not bark, but pulsating flesh. “They’re not trees,” he said. “It’s meat.”
Vincent fingers touched a moss-infested tree. With a deep breath, he peeled the layer of green off.
Bark. Grey bark. No skin or veins.
He sighed with relief and returned to camp. The people Naktol assigned him to were based at the eastern edge of the wilds. None were dressed for combat like Vincent had grown used to. Their bodies were light with leather, like typical adventurers. The tents also lacked Naktol’s patriotic silver shades. These were brown and green, probably for camouflage.
Just walking past the shelters Vincent could hear the shaking voices of those that returned from the woods. These were only a fraction of the people that made it back. When asked what happened to the rest of their team, they’d cry and clamp up.
This mission was going to end in failure. Vincent knew it.
Not only had they not seen the guardian, they had not seen a single animal. The forest seemed void of any movement. The stillness gave Vincent chills.
He could only pray they’d give up the mission before it was his turn to lose his mind.
“Vincent!”
A still-sane scout jogged over. “Some bizarre people have come offering aid! We think they’re spirits! Neil is speaking with them.”
“Spirits? We can’t trust spirits.” Vincent continued walking towards his tent.
The scout kept to his side. The young boy’s crooked teeth bothered Vincent, like a warped structure. He tried not to look at them as the scout spoke, “One claims to know enchanted forests. I think she’s faceless, she’s completely covered up in a dark cloak and headscarf.”
“Wait. She wore all black?”
“Yes! The other was a dark fellow as well, tall, pale, sort of sketchy looking. Oh, and they have a strange pet.”
Vincent did not know what to make of the pet and tall one, but could the girl possibly be the one that attacked him in Inksgrid? Or are there more like her? The one he met probably died from that arrow the winged being shot. That damn monster rarely misses the heart.
He followed the scout to the edge of camp. It seemed everyone still able-minded had clustered to see the strange visitors as well, as Vincent stopped in front of a crowd all with their backs to him.
Vincent, not being the tallest fellow, had to stand on the tips of his toes to see over the shoulders of soldiers and scouts. Commander Neil sat on a stump conversing with, as the scout described, two dark figures.
One sat on their legs with hands folded in their lap, a bastard sword sheathed at their back. Of course the most noticeable attributes the person had was their cloak and veil. Only the hands could be seen. Even the faceless spirits don’t’ normally cover themselves to such an extent. Upon a longer glance, Vincent noticed the hands began to mess with something. Was that a black feather?
Behind the cloaked one was a lanky man. He remained standing behind her, leaning his left shoulder against a tree. His skin appeared as pale as paper, his dark eyes sunken. He chewed on the end of a dandelion stem, a nervous habit perhaps?
Vincent snapped himself into assertion. One by one, he tapped shoulders to get the soldiers and scouts to let him pass by until he got to the front of the crowd.
“I am not a spirit, see?”
The cloaked figure reached forward. As the hand extended away from the cloak, the arm was revealed. The skin of the arm looked like overcooked bacon. Any soldier or scout Vincent knew would probably flinch or back-up at the sight. Neil, however, kept his usual stern expression.
The commander removed one of his leather gloves and took the hand. Whispers erupted among the scouts and soldiers who watched. “She’s not a spirit?” “I think she’s burned….” “That’s a woman?”
The lanky man came next, bending over to offer his hand. Neil was able to touch him as well. More mumbles surged amongst the crowd.
Vincent noticed a creature sitting by the man’s legs, a black fox. Well, not entirely black, there were some orange, gold, and brown mixed into the coat. Vincent guessed the fox was shedding to a different color coat. Foxes reminded him of the marketplace from his youth. There was a salesman who kept various odd animals in cages to be sold: bobcats, peacocks, otters, snakes, and foxes. Vincent would watch their shaking bodies through the two rows of bars that separated them.
The cloaked one turned to glance at the crowd. Vincent saw the same eyes he met in Inksgrid, bright green like the sun shining through two pairs of leaves. Seeing them left him with no further doubts.
“Commander!”
Neil and the strangers looked at Vincent. He marched forward, his hands in balls and his heart racing.
“I know this woman sir. I met her in Inksgrid. She attacked me and was responsible for a fraction of soldier deaths.”
“You did what!?”
To Vincent’s surprise, it was the lanky man who reacted first.
The cloaked girl stood up, “They—you all were attacking me! They were attacking Masu!”
“And they were defending themselves from him!” the man said.
“What was I supposed to do?!”
“I can’t believe this.”
The cloaked girl turned to Vincent. “Masu. You know him as Aura’s Wings. He’s my friend. Aura is controlling his mind. That’s why I attacked you. I was trying to protect him.”
Vincent folded his arms. “That monster has a death count of humans high enough to fill a city. That’s your friend?” As the girl struggled to answer, Vincent turned to Neil. “I say we turn them away, kill them, or torture the girl for information. A friend of any Arm is an enemy to humanity.”
The tall man threw the dandelion away. He pushed the girl behind him. “No one is killing or torturing anybody. Look—we’ll just leave.”
Neil leaned back, “Yes. That would be best I think.”
The cloaked girl stepped forward but the man clutched her shoulder and whispered, “Don’t.”
Her wilds eyes met Vincent once more. Her eyebrows practically formed a V, furious, he could almost feel heat emit from her body.
The man took her hand and they walked away. The fox followed behind the flow of her cloak.
Vincent waited until their figures were completely swallowed by the forest. Once gone he said, “We should’ve killed or captured them sir. I have no doubt they will cause trouble.”
“I would say the same thing in your position. But you didn’t notice did you? The woman, her body is covered with burns. I saw them all over. Her legs as she sat down, her arms as she reached to me, her face as she moved her head around. When a human or spirit suffers that much injury and still possesses enough determination stare an army down: you don’t want to make enemies out of them. I may have been able to touch her, but that woman was not human. Some things can take the humanity out of people.”
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Once they had gone far enough that the humans couldn’t hear them, Under dropped Wander’s hand.
“I can’t believe you killed people who were trying to protect themselves,” he said.
“I couldn’t tell the difference between good and bad in that town. Everyone was trying to kill each other. Masu was caught up in it. He was the only thing I knew I wanted to save.”
“Well, we tried your plan. Now I say we give Myth’s plan up and move on our own way.”
“You should do that. I’m going into the wilds alone.”
“What? No!”
“You and I want different things. I want to save Masu and you…. Well, Myth also said you’d be in danger of Aura’s mind control. I don’t want you involved in that.”
“Without me you’d be dead.”
“I’ve survived before without you.”
Under squinted and looked over her body.
“You should want to kill Aura,” Wander said. “Aura killed Alice. She killed your friends. If she did that to Masu….”
“I don’t like fighting and killing people. It’s not right. If I kill Aura, wouldn’t that make me more like her? Revenge is a cycle. If I killed Aura, someone close to her will seek to kill me, and then someone close to me will seek revenge. Violence just doesn’t work.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“You don’t think critically Wander! Your mind is still maturing. You’ll understand in maybe ten years. Killing Aura won’t bring Alice back. Nothing will.”
“I’m sorry,” Wander said. “I feel it in my gut. I have to do this. I’m going to get to the guardian before Red does. At least that way, Aura will be less powerful. If she is less powerful, less people may die.”
“Fine. I’m going with you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I want you to be safe, so I’m coming.”
“I—“ Wander tightened her veil around her face. She realized she wanted him to stay. Since when had he become a comfort? He was too good like Roslyn and Masu. Like them, Under managed to crawl into a warm space in Wander’s thoughts. But what if he ends up like Roslyn? Like Masu?
No. Under was different. He wasn’t a child. He was a shadow. He was smart. He saved her life more than once. Aura wouldn’t be in the forest to take his mind either. For the moment, he could stay.
“Alright. Let’s go. We’ll enter the wilds at a different side from the humans.”
Wander could tell when the Harlequin Wilds started. There was a feeling in the air that reminded her of home. It felt like wonder. It made the mind feel dreamy, like more could make sense. At the moment the sensation felt light, but it thickened in the west.
Under did not seem to notice the feeling. He tilted his head as he tried to figure out where they were on the map. “How do you know where we’re going?”
The fox trotted ahead of them, sniffing at the moss covered soil.
“I can feel it. The enchanted woods feel the same as home.”
“So we are in them?”
“Not so much yet.”
They stopped together at an edge. The soil ended with vines blanketing the forest as far as they could see. Every rock, tree, bush, and patch of ground was covered in both vines and moss. Some branches were broken under the weight of the greenery, dangling in mid-air, still captive by the vines even then.
When she stepped forward, Wander’s foot sank half a foot under the vines. Raising her foot back up almost caused her to trip as the creepers tucked themselves over her foot and wouldn’t let go. In her next steps, Wander made her feet stomp on top of the vines instead of dipping through them. Moving was simpler that way.
“Is this is some sort of invasive species?” Under wandered over to examine a tree. His eye fixed in on a pale flower that sprouted from the moss.
“This isn’t like the Emerald Wilds,” Wander hugged herself. The fox had to leap through the earth draped in green tangles, like Ms. Flinsler’s needle weaving up and down from two pieces of cloth.
“What are we looking for again?” Under asked.
“The guardian. Myth said to look for an unusual animal. Aura sent Red to capture it and we need to save it because if Aura drinks the guardian blood then she’ll get more powerful. Then saving Masu would be harder.”
Wander’s next step had extra crunch than the rest. She picked up her foot and peered down at the darkness between the vines. Something was down there under the green. She looked up at the fox whose face ducked under the vines, sniffing. With hesitance, Wander’s hand dove under the brush. Her hands met with many fragments of something. The soil under the fragments felt lukewarm, like the outer edge of a bowl of hot soup.
She scooped the fragments and lifted her hand from the vines with haste. The back of her neck prickled. When her hands felt under the vines, she felt as through something living breathed against her fingers. Opening up her hand, she saw white pieces, tooth and bone. The teeth were easily recognizable, their roots cracked and filled with dirt. The bone shards were familiar. She’d find bones often in the Emerald Wilds. She must have shattered a skull or something with her foot.
She turned around, “Under, we should stick close together.”
Her heart fell away from her chest to see he was no longer there. There were no sounds or movement. She scared herself by taking a step forward, as though she attracted all attention to her. But whose attention? Even her own breath frightened her. She wanted to be silent and still.
But Under….
“UNDER!” She screamed.
Nothing. No, no no no no no. Her head roared with panic.
Moving with sudden recklessness, her foot tripped on a vine. Her body hit the earth. Her stomach and chest felt the vines and below, a crawling sensation, like millions of tiny insects crawled into her cloak. Vaulting back onto her feet, her hands swept through her clothes. Nothing.
She moved with inept grace towards were she last saw Under. No use. The entire forest looked the same. Glancing at a tree, she noticed a jade beetle. The bug immediately crawled beneath the canopy of vine leaves.
“HELP!”
Another voice erupted from the wild’s silence.
Wander’s body turned a full circle, trying to determine the direction the shout came from. The voice did not belong to Under.
The shout turned into a scream of desperation, “IS SOMEONE THERE?!”
The fox moved to Wander’s feet. She lifted the creature into her arms. Holding the fox to her chest, she felt more secure. “HELLO?” she called.
A man tumbled out into view, his arms outstretched for balance. He looked around with a reddened face. His clothes matched those the humans wore in their encampment. He had a head of curly red hair, freckled skin, and green eyes. He stood about the same height as Wander.
Wander stomped over to him.
“Oh God! Don’t’ tell me you’re a spirit!” he stepped back, his eyes moving from hers to the fox in her arms. “I-I’m seeing things again aren’t I?!” He rubbed his face. Wander noticed small sprouts grew out of his hands.
“I’m real. And I’m not a spirit.”
“If that’s true, then you have to help me. My friends are all asleep and I can’t wake them up! Also, these plants, they’re growing on us!”
He showed Wander his hands. The skin bumped up as the weeds burst forth from the flesh. They were bright baby green, curling, almost delicious looking.
“Why don’t you just take it off?” Wander asked as her hand neared his. With quickness and panic, the man took back his hands.
“DON’T PULL IT! Whatever you do, don’t pull them. Varnel did that and he…. The roots pulled his muscles, bone, and skin up with it!” The man’s teeth chattered. “B-But if you don’t pull them out then you will fall asleep and they’ll keep growing! This forest is a deathtrap. We are probably walking on corpses right now! That’s what all these plants are, they grew off of flesh. That’s why there are no animals. There is no life here besides these plants.”
“Have you seen a friend of mine?” Wander asked. “He’s very tall, has dark hair, and a long torn up coat?”
“No. I’ve seen others, but they weren’t real. The wilds show you visions. They aren’t real. Please! Help my friends! They are not far.”
Wander followed the man through the wilds. She ignored the occasional snaps and crunches under her feet. She lifted each foot high above the vines with each step she took. Looking at the man’s back, she notice a little yellow flower grew from the back of his neck.
“D-Do you hear those whispers?” he asked.
“No.”
He mumbled something that she could not hear. As they walked, his fingernails dug into his ears. Sometimes Wander did that too to get earwax out, but he tunneled to an extent that frightened her. She began to see blood on his finger as she buried his nails into his ear. He either did not notice or did not care.
“There. There they are!” His strides became longer and faster as he went to two bodies in the distance. They leaned against what could be a fallen tree; it was difficult to discern what it could be under all the vine and moss.
The man bent over, his fingers checked the pulses of their necks. He let out a groan of relief, “They’re still alive.”
Wander crouched in front of them. One looked peaceful. She even seemed to smile in her sleep. The woman had a clover bloom from her chin, some little white flowers from her neck, and moss on her forehead. “Her legs are hogtied by the vines. The plants curled around them like a goddamn snake,” the man said.
The woman’s eyes moved under her eyelids. Was she dreaming? Her lips parted a little as though she were about to say something, but there was nothing. Even how she laid down seemed serene, utterly relaxed with head dangling to the side and arms out with palms facing up.
The second one was a man. His condition seemed far more disturbing due to moss growing on top of his eyelids. A spider the size of a coin crawled through his head of brown hair. Out of his arms grew various weeds.
“This is…disturbing.” Wander never used the word before now.
“We should take them back to camp. I can’t carry both of them though, and I’m lost. The fog makes it impossible to tell where the sun is.”
“Fog?” Wander looked up and squinted at the sunrays. Even the sun could not erase how dismal the forest was, but it was there.
“The deeper we went, the foggier it got,” the man explained.
“You are near the edge of the forest.”
“What?”
Wander reached into her bag and took her knife out. The man crawled back with panic. She started with the woman, pinching the clover on her chin between her thumb and knife. She cut through the tiny stem towards her thumb. The clover fell to the ground, leaving a small green stub.
“Oh. You’re t-trimming them. That’s a good idea!” The man laughed nervously.
She remembered how delicately Masu tended to the berry bushes in the Emerald Wilds. He cut towards his thumb but never managed to cut himself. He never trusted her enough to give her a knife. “When you’re older,” he said as he’d wipe the blade on his pants and sheath it back in its case.
After cutting off all the plants from the man’s arms, her hands trembled when she reached to his moss coated eyes. The man noticed her uncertainty, “Best leave that as it is. Too risky.”
Wander turned to him and put her hand out. He looked at her hand and back to her face in confusion. Revelation finally came over him and he placed his hand in hers. She examined the sprout and placed it between her thumb and the knife.
The man regained some composure, his eyes less mad. “I’m Felix by the way. Felix Kroswin.” Wander got him to turn around to get to the flower at the back of his neck. He had many freckles, like a bird’s egg.
“I’m Wander.”
“Just Wander?” He gave an anxious laugh. “I really am going mad.”
He thought she wasn’t real. At least he gave her a chance despite that.
“You carry one, I’ll carry the other. I’ll lead you to camp. I know where it is, it’s not far from here.”
He whispered something to himself that she couldn’t catch. He lifted the woman into his arms. Wander pulled the moss-eyed man over her shoulder.
“Watch your step,” Wander said as she raised her feet high with each advance.
As they paced towards the encampment, she kept her eyes wide and moving for Under. How fast could someone get plant infested? She was wrong to let him come. Only minutes into the thick of the wilds, and he was gone. After she saved these people, finding him would be first priority.
Her steps grew more labored. She never imagined another human being to be so heavy. Masu made carrying her seem easy. As she carried the man, she noticed little white insects tangled in his arm hair.
Halfway to the camp, Wander heard a crash behind her. She turned to see Felix face down in the moss and vines. At first she thought he tripped. She stood there, thinking he’d pick himself up. When he didn’t, she set the man she carried down. She flipped Felix over to find he fell asleep. Some new fern-like plants had sprouted from his cheeks.
Her hands took his shoulders and shook him. “Felix! Felix! Wake up!” His head rocked. For a moment his face tightened, but returned its slackened coma.
“Dammit!” Wander stood up and looked at the three bodies around her. There was no way she could carry two. She was struggling enough with one. If only Under were here, then he’d be able to carry at least one of them.
She’d have to leave two of them. There was no doubt the plants would swallow their bodies while she was gone.
She drew out her sword and stabbed it into the ground as a marker.
Felix’s body seemed the lightest. She took him into her arms and moved in long strides towards the camp. She lost her balance a couple times, plummeting forwards and crushing Felix and the plants. He did not wake despite the abuse.
The fox kept a fast pace ahead of her. It knew where they were going. Wander could feel the sensation of the forest become dimmer. The forest thinned out and the amount of growth lessoned. The outer edges were only moss.
By then she could smell the campfires, the food, then even hear the people. She tumbled out of the woods. “HELP!” She shouted the moment she saw a tent.
Whatever they were doing before she came ended. The humans all reacted. They emerged from tents, stood up from sitting, some rushing to her, others running off to get someone else.
“Felix!” A man tore himself from the crowd.
Wander did her best to gently pass Felix onto the concerned man, bending her knees, and making sure Felix’s head was supported by the man’s upper arm. At the sight of his friend’s plant-infested condition, the man fell to his knees.
“What happened to him?”
*BOOK SAMPLE END*
I have a complete 188,000 word story written down. I have gotten the amazing Lisa Rojany from the editorial services of LA on board to make this story the best it can be. This money will go to her for an intense editing process.
As for the story, it has been raised in my head and heart for 10 years now. It took about a year and a half to write the first draft. The book features a burn victim child caught in-between a war of spirits and humans.
The world is made-up. It's the sort of book you'd expect a map to be placed on the front. There are castles, enchanted forests, guardians, winged beings, magic, and shapeshifters.
Your support will mean the world to me. Some people dream of becoming famous or travelling the world, but this is and has always been my dream since I can remember. It's the one certainy I always had.
Why is this so important to me? How did this get started? I did not always want to be a writer. There was a time when stories just buzzed around in my head like constant ghosts and I thought that was normal.
Eventually I could no longer ignore the stories. Reality needs them and they need to become real, if that makes any sense. That's how I decided to be a writer, because I needed a way to get these stories out.
Note: Anyone who donates at least 15 dollars will be guaranteed a signed copy of my book once it is published.
Here is 20 pages of the book as a book sample.
From Prologue:
A naked girl opened bright green eyes to see the pillars of trees in the sun. She heard the songs of chickadees and shivered from the morning dew on her skin.
Stretching, her body welcomed the warmth of sunlight trickling through the tree branches. Emptiness stirred her stomach and her heart pounded in her ears.
Cinnamon ferns, mealycup sage, white clovers, and five spot flowers grew on the forest floor around her. Colossal bonsai covered in patches of sheet moss twisted above her. Their branches hid treasures like moth and lady slipper orchids. Their roots twisted around patches of enoki mushrooms.
The girl relaxed, laying back against the tree she curled up under. Looking up, she watched clouds pass between lush leaves over the snaking branches.
She did not know what they were. She did not know what anything was, or even what she was. Her hands pet the grass under her, just beginning to understand touch: what form was hers versus the worlds.
Eventually she stood up and wandered. Whispers tickled her ears when a breeze passed through her hair.
Her hands gripped honeysuckle vines, saplings, tree trunks, and thorny rose bushes, anything to help her stand. Her legs trembled and begged her to fall.
When her feet tripped over roots, she fell on her face. She cried when her nose gained its own heartbeat.
After a day of wandering, she began to feel heavier and sat in a grove of clovers. The air cooled and the world darkened.
In a shivering ball, the girl tried to sleep through the night. She heard howls and crickets beyond further in the woods. Ants crawled over her feet and a wolf spider hid in her hair.
When the sun rose, so did the girl and she wandered again. At night, she fell.
Three days passed of her wandering before she stopped. After weaving through what seemed like a never-ending forest, she collapsed at a tree base. She breathed through a dried mouth and hugged her aching body.
Every movement began to hurt and she felt heavier each day. The emerald world around her had dimmed, becoming as still as a painting.
Animals watched her, but she never noticed. Squirrels flicked their tails in the trees to warn of her coming. A fox passed her as she slept in the night. Hummingbirds darted around above her like little fairies.
She felt as though her body was caving in at the center. Her forehead heated up and she had random waves from warm to freezing.
Despite the sun being up, this time she remained curled under the tree. Maybe if she waited long enough, she’d disappear like how she appeared. She did not remember ever awaiting to appear or anything before appearing, but it was worth a shot.
When night came, she felt like she was closer than ever to disappearing. Her body became numb and she found it easier to fall away from the world.
Rain fell from the dark sky and broke through the forest canopy, a tropical storm where no leaf could provide shelter. To the girl, it was like the entire sky fell.
Despite her numb state, her body began to violently shiver. She curled up as tight as she could, hugging her knees to her chest and tucking her head inwards.
The rain brought pain that pulled her away from disappearing. She tried to shut it out, tightening her grip on herself and shutting her eyes. Every pelted drop splashed from her shoulders to her face. Her hair dulled and sank until it pasted to her skin.
After rustles in the grass, the rain stopped hitting her. She could still hear it though. She could hear the sounds of it falling all around her.
Opening her eyes, she looked up at bright flame that blinded her. She blocked it with a hand to see a pair of red eyes looked at her beyond the lantern.
A wing as black as the night sky stretched above her, sheltering her.
“Who are you?” the winged man asked.
He was answered by chattering teeth and a pathetic look.
Keeping his wing over her, he kneeled and put his warm hand on her wet forehead. She got a closer look at him. A head of dark shaggy hair, brown skin, and a heart shaped face. He wore sandals and ragged pants. His chest and arms were bare and toned with muscles. He stood about six feet tall.
Retracting his wing, he gently scooped her up into his arms. His chest was the warmest thing that touched her since sunlight. She rolled her head against him and felt his heartbeat until she fell away.
The winged man’s hands pulled a rope in the night. A raccoon jumped at the sight of a bucket rising from the water and bound back into the darkness of the forest. Filled with river water, the bucket rose up towards the cloudy sky, towards the branches of an old oak tree. Past the tree’s leaves and through its shade, the bucket reached a window.
He un-wrapped the rope attached to the bucket before taking it inside. He pulled a fabric curtain shut to keep the cool night air outside.
The bucket water sloshed back and forth, dribbling some drops onto the wood floor as he walked into another room.
He heard a soft moan from the corner. Setting the bucket on a wooden stool, he turned to the shadows where the girl he found laid down.
“Are you awake?”
Shadows danced around the room as he took a lit candle from a table. Folding his legs on the floor, he positioned himself next to a layered heap of furs. His wings, dark as a ravens, folded at his back.
The girl lay with only her breath to move her. Her long golden hair had dried into a tangle, like seaweed on a shoreline. Her pale body was slim with various light brown moles on her body. She was like a flower bud right before blooming, hairless and flat chested, a child.
The spirit put his ear to her bare chest, her rib cage pressed to his cheek. She had become warmer.
Before, she was as cold as a river stone. At the mercy of the forest, she was lucky her limbs were not torn off by wolves.
He put his hand on her shoulder. With a light shake, her eyelids fluttered and opened slightly. He inched himself forward and moved some of her tousled blonde hair out of the way of her sight. Moving her hair revealed more of her eyes. They were like bright green leaves in the sun. She had a cute, round face. Based on her size and flat chest, the spirit guessed she may between the ages of ten and twelve.
“Hello,” he greeted. His own voice sounded odd to him, as he did not remember the last time he spoke to someone.
She focused to him.
“Right now we are in my nest, where I live,” he explained.
The nest was only a two rooms big. The smaller room was used for cooking and the other for sleeping and storage. The doorway was unevenly carved out with just a tattered blanket as a door to block the wind. There were two windows, one with a view of the river and the other that faced the inner oak tree.
There was no furniture. Not even a single chair. All the spirit had was what he had found with luck, blankets, pillows, bags, and tools. No one would bring furniture on a journey to the woods, only camping supplies.
The spirit could barely recall how he built his nest. He remembered using pieces of broken constructs he found around the woods, from wagons and homes long abandoned.
It was a pitiful place for a poor soul to wake up. The nest was little more than a shack. Despite the poor quality, the spirit never desired anything more than what he had.
Remembering his reason for waking her in the first place, he picked up the soup he set aside and brought the wood bowl close to her face.
She glanced at it before looking back at him.
“Do you want it?”
No answer.
“Can you talk at all?”
She just stared at him. Her gaze sent a chill down his spine. It was as though she did not peer at a person, but an object which she could just look into all day without shame.
“Can you nod or shake your head?”
She did not move. Maybe she went through something so traumatic that she was in shock? Her family or friends could have met a cruel fate by animals, venom, poison, or illusion.
He began to wonder if a spell was cast on her to make her behave in this way. It was possible in this place. She could have eaten berries from vines or fruit from the trees, having an influence grow from inside her stomach. Or some animal bite that cast a curse through the rivers of blood in the body?
The winged man scooped up a spoonful and brought it to the girl’s mouth.
Her jaw remained tightly shut. He thought of pushing the spoon against her lips, but that would just dribble into a mess.
“Hey,” he got a little harsher “I don’t know what your problem is, but if you don’t eat you will die. Look.”
He ate the spoonful of soup himself since she seemed to be paying more attention to him than the food. When she saw that, she began to stare at the soup. With more hope, he attempted feeding her again. This time she opened her mouth and took the spoonful. A drop of broth oozed from her mouth.
With that one slurp, she gained color. Her body shifted towards the spirit. Her bright eyes smiled at him. He kept feeding her till the soup finished. The girl took the bowl, brought it to her face, and her pink tongue searched the surface for more.
As he guessed, she was starving. He retrieved a cloth from his kitchen and wiped her face. She nuzzled against the cloth, seeming to enjoy the feel.
“Where are you from?”
Despite being fed, she did not speak. She laid her head back down on the mattress. Her arms closed into her chest and her legs curled as she shut her eyes.
His back stiffened. The conclusion came to mind that the girl could be a wind-born human. Wind-born humans, unlike the blood-borns, had no origin. It was as though the wind itself brought their bodies to this world. Sometimes they came as children, rarely babies, but many times they were adults. No matter what body they had, their minds were clueless, speechless, almost like an infant, yet they learned very fast. The first humans were wind-born, and spirits like him taught them how to live in this world. They began to have babies, making the blood-borns. The wind-borns never stopped coming though.
But then how could he touch her? Nature made it so humans and spirits shocked each other if they tried to touch. He would have not been able to save her if that was the case.
He shook her to keep her awake. “Are you human?”
She opened her eyes and then closed them back again.
He became more and more certain she was wind-born. This girl may have just appeared here, far from other humans to take care of her. How rare were they? How many blood-borns and wind-borns made the human race? Wind-borns are likely to die often if they could just appear in the middle of nowhere without someone to take care of them.
The spirit rubbed his forehead. He could not remember meeting a human before. He himself was alike to wind-borns, with no past to recall. Maybe this girl was a strange spirit. It was hard to tell. Many things were possible in this forest.
Chopping through carrots and celery with a knife made of bone, the spirit prepared more soup. The cicadas and frogs sung through the night. With a new pot of soup, he returned to his bedroom and sat by the mattress.
The girl slept on her side. His hand scooped her head up and tucked a pillow under. He unfolded a cotton blanket and tucked it in around the mattress. His home was not the warmest place to be at night. A nest with two rooms and little to no furniture was not much of a home. Only curtains were used as doors and windows to block the night air.
“I made some more soup.”
She opened her eyes and sat up the moment she saw him holding a spoon.
“Guess you like my cooking?”
It felt strange to talk. The forest was full of life, but no people. Most were either smart enough to avoid the forest or foolish enough to die on the tree roots.
Once through the pot of soup, the girl lay back on the furs and fell asleep. Exhausted, the spirit settled himself to sleep in the corner of the room. He took a pair of his pants from a basket and used them to rest his head.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The spirit raised the human and the girl’s rib cage faded under a well fed body.
Her innocence charmed the spirit, as she touched everything out of curiosity. She often stared out his window with the view of the river, yearning to go out. She would hold his baskets upside down, pouring all his collections and tools out, sit down, touch and examine everything they contained.
Her fascination with his wings was one of the few things that bothered him. She loved to grab at them, often pulling his dark feathers out, causing him the same amount of pain as would yanking out someone’s hair. After many moments of her tugging out his feathers, he came up with an idea.
With one of his shed feathers, he made a bracelet. The bracelet itself was made out of deer leather. With a needle, he pricked a hole in the feather’s shaft and looped the bracelet through.
He tied the bracelet around her left wrist. “There, now you will always have a feather so you can stop plucking at mine.”
The spirit was no small bird, so the feather was quite a large accessory. If she raised her hand, his feather nearly reached her elbow. But the girl seemed to love it and never plucked at his wings again.
With time, he found clothes for her. Most were baggy dirt-stained shirts, pants too wide for the girl’s hips, and clunky boots.
It was quite the spectacle when she first put on clothes. The spirit had to help her, making her spread her legs out and raise her arms up. He crafted a rope from vine for a belt to tighten the pants to her boney hips. Once fully clothed, she looked down at her own body with wonder. She acted as though the spirit cloaked her with a robe made of jewels. She spread her arms out and skipped around the nest, her boots stomping up the dust from the wood. She looked like an ordinary peasant, but she danced with joy, believing she was beautiful. To the spirit, she was.
Her clothes came off the dead who risked exploring the forest. The spirit often found their corpses, killed off in a variety of ways. The forest was a warped place, not meant for social creatures like humans or certain spirits. There were plants the size of men with teeth like daggers. At times, music could be heard resonating in the wood, or the voice of woman singing a lullaby, but the spirit knew never to follow the sound. When the moon was full, wolves the size of small homes would sweep through, eating all they can sniff out. There were monsters that oozed like tree sap and brush that would be rooted one day, and gone the next. Serpents dropped from the high branches upon their victims, and there were frogs poisonous to the touch. For that, the spirit feared letting the girl wander outside the nest.
But there was also beauty, which was why so many came to explore the forest. Flowers with petals that shimmered like glass grew by the riverside. There were trees with deep-green moss and red orchids growing on their twisted trunks. Gentle creatures roamed like black deer, rainbow fish, humming birds, ferrets, butterflies, and rabbits. At night, the sky was speckled with planets and stars, enough to make the saddest or most angry person lose themselves in the sight. There were stones in the river which, if cracked, showed their insides filled with purple crystals. These things made the spirit want to take the girl outside.
Eventually the he took her to the roof of the nest. On a day with no clouds, he decided it was time for her to join him outside. The spirit held her in his arms, and flew her out to roam. When they took to the sky, her eyes expanded wide and her mouth opened breathlessly. Since then, she would often hold him, hoping he would fly her somewhere. The destination did not matter, as long as she could fly with him.
Letting her wander outside turned out to be a challenge as she constantly got herself into some sort of danger. Her weakness was her lack of fear, poking and prodding everything she came across.
She once stuck her hand into a hole at the base of an oak tree despite the spirit’s shouts. The girl flinched and pulled her hand out with a snake chomping down below her thumb. The snake’s broad head and tan color suggested a copperhead. The viper let go of her hand only for the human to try and grab it with her other free hand.
“HEY!” the spirit ran over and stopped her.
He sucked at her bite wound and spat a mixture of blood and venom onto the earth. The rest of the day he constantly checked her hand for swelling. She lived to see another day but she did barf after a trout dinner in the nest.
Another time the girl thought the berries of a rosary pea looked appetizing. She walked out of some bushes with a handful of the red bead shaped berries to offer to the spirit.
She must have been surprised when the spirit panicked, pinned her to the ground, and shoved his fingers down her throat until she barfed every berry out. Too young to understand that he saved her life, she avoided him for the rest of the day. When she finally approached him, he gave her some raspberries and a warm hug of apology.
There was also a time when she nearly drowned in the river by the oak tree. The spirit never understood how she managed such a feat in shallow water that only came up to one’s knees. He had to pull her face out of the river, resuscitate her and hope she learned a lesson.
One evening he lost her and found her stuck in a tangle of thorn vines that he had to cut her free from.
Then there was the time she found quicksand that the spirit did not even know existed. She had sunk down to her hips in the murky earth. The spirit was lucky he could fly and pull her out. He surrounded the quicksand with a fence of rocks as a warning for himself and the human.
She even got caught in one of the spirit’s own hunting traps a couple times. Luckily they were harmless and he could cut her down.
There were times that saving her hurt him. One of the greatest killers in the forest were the larger animals like wolves, bears, tigers, and certain snakes. They had incidents where the girl wandered off and bothered dangerous creatures. The spirit usually could scare off the lesser animals but the larger ones had to be escaped or killed.
Her brushes with death and danger never seemed to end.
The girl’s body became marked by the wild in the form of scars, more scars than normal for anyone. Most were on her legs and arms. She never seemed tough to the spirit, despite the harsh marks. To him, she always looked soft.
She developed a love for collecting things. Once there was a piece of rose quartz she found that she would not give up. She was very fond of bird feathers in particular. Sometimes she collected flowers. With no concept of death and decay, she would be confused the next day when the flowers wilted.
Eventually the spirit came to name the girl. “Wander.”
He became certain she was an abnormal human, since she bled red instead of black. Spirits like him bled black. They could touch, which regular spirits and humans could not. Wander could touch spirits, but bled and acted like a human. The spirit decided there was no use in questioning it too much.
The first time he heard Wander’s voice was by the river while they were washing clothes. For his own amusement, he splashed her with water. She flinched, her blonde locks dripping, her green eyes wide. Her moment of surprise transformed as a toothy smile flashed him. She splashed back in the face. Then…she laughed. At first her laughter scared him, hearing a voice other than his own. It was not some timid giggling; Wander’s laughter came out in a booming, abrupt burst.
Not long after her laughter, Wander’s speech began. She usually stated the obvious, like pointing at the nest and saying, “Nest.” She could tell the spirit when she was hungry or tired. He attempted to help her with the names of things.
“Forest,” he’d say.
“FO-rest.”
“No. For-EST.”
A day came when the spirit was given a name. “Masu,” she called him. Unlike her name, his was meaningless. He was unsure at first. Spirits often named themselves off of words like Lantern or Willow while humans named each other with gibberish like Johnathon or Megan. Despite it not being a word, Masu came to accept his humanistic name.
Eventually, he could not imagine living without her.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From Chapter 9
The Harlequin Wilds reminded Vincent of a surreal dream. Not the sort of dream where one’s deepest wishes came true and not a nightmare in which every fear became reality. It was more like the bizarre dream that you’d try to make sense of for the rest of the day.
He only ventured through a small expanse. The moss, leaves, and brush were dark green like the end of a broccoli flower. The amount of moss that carpeted the trees seemed unnatural. Vincent wondered if trees could even be alive with that amount of green. Every tree seemed to have its own forest growing on its trunk and branches.
Earlier that day he heard a report from one of the scouts. Nobody seemed calm-minded when they returned from a walk in the woods. They constantly scratched at their own skin, kept peeking under their clothes as though looking for something. Their own bodies seemed to disturb them. One claimed that he ripped some moss from a tree trunk and it revealed not bark, but pulsating flesh. “They’re not trees,” he said. “It’s meat.”
Vincent fingers touched a moss-infested tree. With a deep breath, he peeled the layer of green off.
Bark. Grey bark. No skin or veins.
He sighed with relief and returned to camp. The people Naktol assigned him to were based at the eastern edge of the wilds. None were dressed for combat like Vincent had grown used to. Their bodies were light with leather, like typical adventurers. The tents also lacked Naktol’s patriotic silver shades. These were brown and green, probably for camouflage.
Just walking past the shelters Vincent could hear the shaking voices of those that returned from the woods. These were only a fraction of the people that made it back. When asked what happened to the rest of their team, they’d cry and clamp up.
This mission was going to end in failure. Vincent knew it.
Not only had they not seen the guardian, they had not seen a single animal. The forest seemed void of any movement. The stillness gave Vincent chills.
He could only pray they’d give up the mission before it was his turn to lose his mind.
“Vincent!”
A still-sane scout jogged over. “Some bizarre people have come offering aid! We think they’re spirits! Neil is speaking with them.”
“Spirits? We can’t trust spirits.” Vincent continued walking towards his tent.
The scout kept to his side. The young boy’s crooked teeth bothered Vincent, like a warped structure. He tried not to look at them as the scout spoke, “One claims to know enchanted forests. I think she’s faceless, she’s completely covered up in a dark cloak and headscarf.”
“Wait. She wore all black?”
“Yes! The other was a dark fellow as well, tall, pale, sort of sketchy looking. Oh, and they have a strange pet.”
Vincent did not know what to make of the pet and tall one, but could the girl possibly be the one that attacked him in Inksgrid? Or are there more like her? The one he met probably died from that arrow the winged being shot. That damn monster rarely misses the heart.
He followed the scout to the edge of camp. It seemed everyone still able-minded had clustered to see the strange visitors as well, as Vincent stopped in front of a crowd all with their backs to him.
Vincent, not being the tallest fellow, had to stand on the tips of his toes to see over the shoulders of soldiers and scouts. Commander Neil sat on a stump conversing with, as the scout described, two dark figures.
One sat on their legs with hands folded in their lap, a bastard sword sheathed at their back. Of course the most noticeable attributes the person had was their cloak and veil. Only the hands could be seen. Even the faceless spirits don’t’ normally cover themselves to such an extent. Upon a longer glance, Vincent noticed the hands began to mess with something. Was that a black feather?
Behind the cloaked one was a lanky man. He remained standing behind her, leaning his left shoulder against a tree. His skin appeared as pale as paper, his dark eyes sunken. He chewed on the end of a dandelion stem, a nervous habit perhaps?
Vincent snapped himself into assertion. One by one, he tapped shoulders to get the soldiers and scouts to let him pass by until he got to the front of the crowd.
“I am not a spirit, see?”
The cloaked figure reached forward. As the hand extended away from the cloak, the arm was revealed. The skin of the arm looked like overcooked bacon. Any soldier or scout Vincent knew would probably flinch or back-up at the sight. Neil, however, kept his usual stern expression.
The commander removed one of his leather gloves and took the hand. Whispers erupted among the scouts and soldiers who watched. “She’s not a spirit?” “I think she’s burned….” “That’s a woman?”
The lanky man came next, bending over to offer his hand. Neil was able to touch him as well. More mumbles surged amongst the crowd.
Vincent noticed a creature sitting by the man’s legs, a black fox. Well, not entirely black, there were some orange, gold, and brown mixed into the coat. Vincent guessed the fox was shedding to a different color coat. Foxes reminded him of the marketplace from his youth. There was a salesman who kept various odd animals in cages to be sold: bobcats, peacocks, otters, snakes, and foxes. Vincent would watch their shaking bodies through the two rows of bars that separated them.
The cloaked one turned to glance at the crowd. Vincent saw the same eyes he met in Inksgrid, bright green like the sun shining through two pairs of leaves. Seeing them left him with no further doubts.
“Commander!”
Neil and the strangers looked at Vincent. He marched forward, his hands in balls and his heart racing.
“I know this woman sir. I met her in Inksgrid. She attacked me and was responsible for a fraction of soldier deaths.”
“You did what!?”
To Vincent’s surprise, it was the lanky man who reacted first.
The cloaked girl stood up, “They—you all were attacking me! They were attacking Masu!”
“And they were defending themselves from him!” the man said.
“What was I supposed to do?!”
“I can’t believe this.”
The cloaked girl turned to Vincent. “Masu. You know him as Aura’s Wings. He’s my friend. Aura is controlling his mind. That’s why I attacked you. I was trying to protect him.”
Vincent folded his arms. “That monster has a death count of humans high enough to fill a city. That’s your friend?” As the girl struggled to answer, Vincent turned to Neil. “I say we turn them away, kill them, or torture the girl for information. A friend of any Arm is an enemy to humanity.”
The tall man threw the dandelion away. He pushed the girl behind him. “No one is killing or torturing anybody. Look—we’ll just leave.”
Neil leaned back, “Yes. That would be best I think.”
The cloaked girl stepped forward but the man clutched her shoulder and whispered, “Don’t.”
Her wilds eyes met Vincent once more. Her eyebrows practically formed a V, furious, he could almost feel heat emit from her body.
The man took her hand and they walked away. The fox followed behind the flow of her cloak.
Vincent waited until their figures were completely swallowed by the forest. Once gone he said, “We should’ve killed or captured them sir. I have no doubt they will cause trouble.”
“I would say the same thing in your position. But you didn’t notice did you? The woman, her body is covered with burns. I saw them all over. Her legs as she sat down, her arms as she reached to me, her face as she moved her head around. When a human or spirit suffers that much injury and still possesses enough determination stare an army down: you don’t want to make enemies out of them. I may have been able to touch her, but that woman was not human. Some things can take the humanity out of people.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Once they had gone far enough that the humans couldn’t hear them, Under dropped Wander’s hand.
“I can’t believe you killed people who were trying to protect themselves,” he said.
“I couldn’t tell the difference between good and bad in that town. Everyone was trying to kill each other. Masu was caught up in it. He was the only thing I knew I wanted to save.”
“Well, we tried your plan. Now I say we give Myth’s plan up and move on our own way.”
“You should do that. I’m going into the wilds alone.”
“What? No!”
“You and I want different things. I want to save Masu and you…. Well, Myth also said you’d be in danger of Aura’s mind control. I don’t want you involved in that.”
“Without me you’d be dead.”
“I’ve survived before without you.”
Under squinted and looked over her body.
“You should want to kill Aura,” Wander said. “Aura killed Alice. She killed your friends. If she did that to Masu….”
“I don’t like fighting and killing people. It’s not right. If I kill Aura, wouldn’t that make me more like her? Revenge is a cycle. If I killed Aura, someone close to her will seek to kill me, and then someone close to me will seek revenge. Violence just doesn’t work.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“You don’t think critically Wander! Your mind is still maturing. You’ll understand in maybe ten years. Killing Aura won’t bring Alice back. Nothing will.”
“I’m sorry,” Wander said. “I feel it in my gut. I have to do this. I’m going to get to the guardian before Red does. At least that way, Aura will be less powerful. If she is less powerful, less people may die.”
“Fine. I’m going with you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I want you to be safe, so I’m coming.”
“I—“ Wander tightened her veil around her face. She realized she wanted him to stay. Since when had he become a comfort? He was too good like Roslyn and Masu. Like them, Under managed to crawl into a warm space in Wander’s thoughts. But what if he ends up like Roslyn? Like Masu?
No. Under was different. He wasn’t a child. He was a shadow. He was smart. He saved her life more than once. Aura wouldn’t be in the forest to take his mind either. For the moment, he could stay.
“Alright. Let’s go. We’ll enter the wilds at a different side from the humans.”
Wander could tell when the Harlequin Wilds started. There was a feeling in the air that reminded her of home. It felt like wonder. It made the mind feel dreamy, like more could make sense. At the moment the sensation felt light, but it thickened in the west.
Under did not seem to notice the feeling. He tilted his head as he tried to figure out where they were on the map. “How do you know where we’re going?”
The fox trotted ahead of them, sniffing at the moss covered soil.
“I can feel it. The enchanted woods feel the same as home.”
“So we are in them?”
“Not so much yet.”
They stopped together at an edge. The soil ended with vines blanketing the forest as far as they could see. Every rock, tree, bush, and patch of ground was covered in both vines and moss. Some branches were broken under the weight of the greenery, dangling in mid-air, still captive by the vines even then.
When she stepped forward, Wander’s foot sank half a foot under the vines. Raising her foot back up almost caused her to trip as the creepers tucked themselves over her foot and wouldn’t let go. In her next steps, Wander made her feet stomp on top of the vines instead of dipping through them. Moving was simpler that way.
“Is this is some sort of invasive species?” Under wandered over to examine a tree. His eye fixed in on a pale flower that sprouted from the moss.
“This isn’t like the Emerald Wilds,” Wander hugged herself. The fox had to leap through the earth draped in green tangles, like Ms. Flinsler’s needle weaving up and down from two pieces of cloth.
“What are we looking for again?” Under asked.
“The guardian. Myth said to look for an unusual animal. Aura sent Red to capture it and we need to save it because if Aura drinks the guardian blood then she’ll get more powerful. Then saving Masu would be harder.”
Wander’s next step had extra crunch than the rest. She picked up her foot and peered down at the darkness between the vines. Something was down there under the green. She looked up at the fox whose face ducked under the vines, sniffing. With hesitance, Wander’s hand dove under the brush. Her hands met with many fragments of something. The soil under the fragments felt lukewarm, like the outer edge of a bowl of hot soup.
She scooped the fragments and lifted her hand from the vines with haste. The back of her neck prickled. When her hands felt under the vines, she felt as through something living breathed against her fingers. Opening up her hand, she saw white pieces, tooth and bone. The teeth were easily recognizable, their roots cracked and filled with dirt. The bone shards were familiar. She’d find bones often in the Emerald Wilds. She must have shattered a skull or something with her foot.
She turned around, “Under, we should stick close together.”
Her heart fell away from her chest to see he was no longer there. There were no sounds or movement. She scared herself by taking a step forward, as though she attracted all attention to her. But whose attention? Even her own breath frightened her. She wanted to be silent and still.
But Under….
“UNDER!” She screamed.
Nothing. No, no no no no no. Her head roared with panic.
Moving with sudden recklessness, her foot tripped on a vine. Her body hit the earth. Her stomach and chest felt the vines and below, a crawling sensation, like millions of tiny insects crawled into her cloak. Vaulting back onto her feet, her hands swept through her clothes. Nothing.
She moved with inept grace towards were she last saw Under. No use. The entire forest looked the same. Glancing at a tree, she noticed a jade beetle. The bug immediately crawled beneath the canopy of vine leaves.
“HELP!”
Another voice erupted from the wild’s silence.
Wander’s body turned a full circle, trying to determine the direction the shout came from. The voice did not belong to Under.
The shout turned into a scream of desperation, “IS SOMEONE THERE?!”
The fox moved to Wander’s feet. She lifted the creature into her arms. Holding the fox to her chest, she felt more secure. “HELLO?” she called.
A man tumbled out into view, his arms outstretched for balance. He looked around with a reddened face. His clothes matched those the humans wore in their encampment. He had a head of curly red hair, freckled skin, and green eyes. He stood about the same height as Wander.
Wander stomped over to him.
“Oh God! Don’t’ tell me you’re a spirit!” he stepped back, his eyes moving from hers to the fox in her arms. “I-I’m seeing things again aren’t I?!” He rubbed his face. Wander noticed small sprouts grew out of his hands.
“I’m real. And I’m not a spirit.”
“If that’s true, then you have to help me. My friends are all asleep and I can’t wake them up! Also, these plants, they’re growing on us!”
He showed Wander his hands. The skin bumped up as the weeds burst forth from the flesh. They were bright baby green, curling, almost delicious looking.
“Why don’t you just take it off?” Wander asked as her hand neared his. With quickness and panic, the man took back his hands.
“DON’T PULL IT! Whatever you do, don’t pull them. Varnel did that and he…. The roots pulled his muscles, bone, and skin up with it!” The man’s teeth chattered. “B-But if you don’t pull them out then you will fall asleep and they’ll keep growing! This forest is a deathtrap. We are probably walking on corpses right now! That’s what all these plants are, they grew off of flesh. That’s why there are no animals. There is no life here besides these plants.”
“Have you seen a friend of mine?” Wander asked. “He’s very tall, has dark hair, and a long torn up coat?”
“No. I’ve seen others, but they weren’t real. The wilds show you visions. They aren’t real. Please! Help my friends! They are not far.”
Wander followed the man through the wilds. She ignored the occasional snaps and crunches under her feet. She lifted each foot high above the vines with each step she took. Looking at the man’s back, she notice a little yellow flower grew from the back of his neck.
“D-Do you hear those whispers?” he asked.
“No.”
He mumbled something that she could not hear. As they walked, his fingernails dug into his ears. Sometimes Wander did that too to get earwax out, but he tunneled to an extent that frightened her. She began to see blood on his finger as she buried his nails into his ear. He either did not notice or did not care.
“There. There they are!” His strides became longer and faster as he went to two bodies in the distance. They leaned against what could be a fallen tree; it was difficult to discern what it could be under all the vine and moss.
The man bent over, his fingers checked the pulses of their necks. He let out a groan of relief, “They’re still alive.”
Wander crouched in front of them. One looked peaceful. She even seemed to smile in her sleep. The woman had a clover bloom from her chin, some little white flowers from her neck, and moss on her forehead. “Her legs are hogtied by the vines. The plants curled around them like a goddamn snake,” the man said.
The woman’s eyes moved under her eyelids. Was she dreaming? Her lips parted a little as though she were about to say something, but there was nothing. Even how she laid down seemed serene, utterly relaxed with head dangling to the side and arms out with palms facing up.
The second one was a man. His condition seemed far more disturbing due to moss growing on top of his eyelids. A spider the size of a coin crawled through his head of brown hair. Out of his arms grew various weeds.
“This is…disturbing.” Wander never used the word before now.
“We should take them back to camp. I can’t carry both of them though, and I’m lost. The fog makes it impossible to tell where the sun is.”
“Fog?” Wander looked up and squinted at the sunrays. Even the sun could not erase how dismal the forest was, but it was there.
“The deeper we went, the foggier it got,” the man explained.
“You are near the edge of the forest.”
“What?”
Wander reached into her bag and took her knife out. The man crawled back with panic. She started with the woman, pinching the clover on her chin between her thumb and knife. She cut through the tiny stem towards her thumb. The clover fell to the ground, leaving a small green stub.
“Oh. You’re t-trimming them. That’s a good idea!” The man laughed nervously.
She remembered how delicately Masu tended to the berry bushes in the Emerald Wilds. He cut towards his thumb but never managed to cut himself. He never trusted her enough to give her a knife. “When you’re older,” he said as he’d wipe the blade on his pants and sheath it back in its case.
After cutting off all the plants from the man’s arms, her hands trembled when she reached to his moss coated eyes. The man noticed her uncertainty, “Best leave that as it is. Too risky.”
Wander turned to him and put her hand out. He looked at her hand and back to her face in confusion. Revelation finally came over him and he placed his hand in hers. She examined the sprout and placed it between her thumb and the knife.
The man regained some composure, his eyes less mad. “I’m Felix by the way. Felix Kroswin.” Wander got him to turn around to get to the flower at the back of his neck. He had many freckles, like a bird’s egg.
“I’m Wander.”
“Just Wander?” He gave an anxious laugh. “I really am going mad.”
He thought she wasn’t real. At least he gave her a chance despite that.
“You carry one, I’ll carry the other. I’ll lead you to camp. I know where it is, it’s not far from here.”
He whispered something to himself that she couldn’t catch. He lifted the woman into his arms. Wander pulled the moss-eyed man over her shoulder.
“Watch your step,” Wander said as she raised her feet high with each advance.
As they paced towards the encampment, she kept her eyes wide and moving for Under. How fast could someone get plant infested? She was wrong to let him come. Only minutes into the thick of the wilds, and he was gone. After she saved these people, finding him would be first priority.
Her steps grew more labored. She never imagined another human being to be so heavy. Masu made carrying her seem easy. As she carried the man, she noticed little white insects tangled in his arm hair.
Halfway to the camp, Wander heard a crash behind her. She turned to see Felix face down in the moss and vines. At first she thought he tripped. She stood there, thinking he’d pick himself up. When he didn’t, she set the man she carried down. She flipped Felix over to find he fell asleep. Some new fern-like plants had sprouted from his cheeks.
Her hands took his shoulders and shook him. “Felix! Felix! Wake up!” His head rocked. For a moment his face tightened, but returned its slackened coma.
“Dammit!” Wander stood up and looked at the three bodies around her. There was no way she could carry two. She was struggling enough with one. If only Under were here, then he’d be able to carry at least one of them.
She’d have to leave two of them. There was no doubt the plants would swallow their bodies while she was gone.
She drew out her sword and stabbed it into the ground as a marker.
Felix’s body seemed the lightest. She took him into her arms and moved in long strides towards the camp. She lost her balance a couple times, plummeting forwards and crushing Felix and the plants. He did not wake despite the abuse.
The fox kept a fast pace ahead of her. It knew where they were going. Wander could feel the sensation of the forest become dimmer. The forest thinned out and the amount of growth lessoned. The outer edges were only moss.
By then she could smell the campfires, the food, then even hear the people. She tumbled out of the woods. “HELP!” She shouted the moment she saw a tent.
Whatever they were doing before she came ended. The humans all reacted. They emerged from tents, stood up from sitting, some rushing to her, others running off to get someone else.
“Felix!” A man tore himself from the crowd.
Wander did her best to gently pass Felix onto the concerned man, bending her knees, and making sure Felix’s head was supported by the man’s upper arm. At the sight of his friend’s plant-infested condition, the man fell to his knees.
“What happened to him?”
*BOOK SAMPLE END*
Organizer
Allison Stalberg
Organizer
Greensboro, NC