Starfall - Chapter I: The Light Festival

This is a sample from the first manuscript I'd ever completed, an epic fantasy of about 115,000 words. I'm in the process of slowly revising it after realizing that almost all of my plot points and character development was happening out of any type of sensible order. Oh, the things you learn writing your first novel.

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Aphis tried to swallow the lump in his throat. It held fast, like a stubborn rip of toast - barely chewed and hastily eaten. He could count on two hands how many times in his life he’d had enough to eat, much less choke on. Bread - its sour scent, its crackling crust, its bubbled flesh - was a happy memory that had stayed with him since he first came upon it at the Light Festival when he was five years old.

We had bread every day, once, his mother used to tell him. That had to have been a long time ago, in old Farellia, when their people still had a land to call their own. The time and place was as distant to him as the stories Gabar told by the fire every week. The Solinsaga, the rise of Prak, tales of the great empires of ages past - that’s all he knew of their old way of life. Inherited memories, passed down by people old enough to remember - or at least old enough to have been themselves told by others long dead, starved or killed by King Barrafel’s armies.

It was mid-morning as Aphis and Cole, his silver-haired adoptive father, made their way back from the hunt. Insects buzzed and clicked, awakening with the spring flowers that brought color to the valley after a long winter. The birds sang their songs, and a light breeze caressed the treetops. They didn’t have much, but there was enough beauty in their home to last a hundred lifetimes.

That same beauty went unnoticed by the Aphis, who traced the ground with his eyes, his feet reluctantly imprinting in the soft earth and lingering under the weight of a heavy disappointment.

“At least it was a clean kill,” Cole said. The tone he affected was the same one he used whenever things went wrong - but not so wrong as to cause more than a headache. Such encouragement stung the boy deeper than any of his fellow initiates’ frustrated insults ever could.

Aphis’ face stayed low, and he didn’t answer. The most he could give Cole was a fleeting glance at the very edge of his eyes, the only angle that he could make out from where his head hung in shame.

Cole had on the same, careful expression he always did. It was an even gaze that was at times kind, and others quietly fierce. It was a profile befitting a man who could cleave a bull horner in two if it gathered the nerve to get within arms length, the same arms otherwise being capable of great gentleness and grace. But there in the forest, returning from a hunt that, like much of their lives, hadn’t gone to plan, the old hunter’s mood matched the quiet dejection of his adopted son.

He didn’t pursue it any further.

“We’re almost there,” Cole said, as the light in the valley turned orange and the flowers began to close.

Aphis picked his head up to sniff the air. He couldn’t smell the village yet. He didn’t recognize where they were. Cole could have been blindfolded and drunk, but he’d always know exactly where he was in the forest. It just reminded Aphis of how much he didn’t know about the world - even just his own little piece of it.

Cole, on the other hand, knew everything. How to hunt, how to fight, how to survive. Aphis felt small walking next to him. Then, he felt small everywhere.

Cole broke the silence again. “You did well today.” He turned and smiled at the boy. “You should be proud.”

“I didn’t,” Aphis said. “And I’m not.”

Cole didn’t sigh or let the edges of his mouth and eyes droop. He just looked at his son and repeated what he’d said before. “You did well. Be proud.”

Aphis sighed. “They’re not going to make me a hunter because of today, and you know it.”

Cole looked ahead again and steered the cart to avoid a large rock in their path. He ran his fingers through his bright silver hair and scratched his head. “Just because you’re not ready doesn’t mean you didn’t do well, Aphis.”

Aphis’ head stayed low. With so many uncertainties in their life in the valley, this was just another one keeping Aphis from sleeping at night.

Cole’s gaze was leveled on the boy. “You can always hunt with Mirta and I. By next year, I’m sure you’ll make it.”

“I scared off the rest of the herd,” Aphis said, in disappointment. “I never do anything right.”

“Aphis,” Cole started. He didn’t finish the sentence.

The man never lied, but he was definitely careful with his words. It was why so many people in the village knew so little about him. He was an outsider; the Farellians had a lot of very old and painful reasons to be distrustful of outsiders. Cole was a gleaming exception - almost an icon amongst their people. His bright, silvery hair and abilities as a hunter - in spite of the same hair - definitely helped. Perhaps horners saw color differently than men.

Aphis bit the inside of his lip to still the trembles that appeared in his jaw. All the early mornings. All the runs that stole his breath and pushed his meager meals out of his stomach for a second tasting. The countless throws of his spear, the innumerable hours spent watching and waiting for openings to strike his prey and the scant few moments of opportunity that actually came to pass. They all disappeared with the horner herd he’d spooked.

“No one is ever ready, and no one ever gets things right the first time.”

Aphis gulped down all the words he didn’t have. He never knew how easy it was to choke on nothing.

“Look at me,” Cole beckoned.

Aphis did as he was told.

“You can do this, you just have to keep at it.”

A long pause hung in the air, a ringing emptiness that the creatures of the forest seemed hesitant to fill.

“The hunting path is long and winding; your life is going to be full of things that you’ll have to struggle through. All of ours are,” Cole finally said. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

The hunting path is long and winding, Aphis repeated to himself. He looked up at Cole.

“I’m still on the path.”

“Good boy,” Cole replied, tussling his hair.

Soon, they arrived in the village. Childrens’ voices rang out through the square, clamoring over the bustle of the various craftsmen, smiths, and artisans who were preparing for the festival.

“I’ll take these the rest of the way,” Cole said, slapping the lone horner carcass. It wriggled from the blow like a warm jelly. “Go home and get some rest.”

“Okay,” he said, grabbing his pack from the cart and slinging it over his shoulder. He began to walk to their cottage on the edge of the village.

“Hey,” Cole yelled before he was out of sight. “Be proud. First kill.”

It confounded Aphis, but where Cole’s reassurances often passed through the boy’s ears as if he’d never uttered them to begin with, the parting words did manage to bring a grin back to the boy’s face.

A measure of resolve returned to his step, and the smell of wild anise and clove entered his nostrils, mixing with the mintweed that the villagers cultivated on the walls of their houses. The sun edged closer and closer to the western horizon, ripening further into a soft, yawning hue the color of a ripe firefruit, and after a short walk he felt the soft earth of the only home he bothered to remember. He left his boots at the door, dropped his pack on the table. He climbed up to his bunk, rolled onto his back, and fell asleep to the night chorus of a thousand thumb-sized sawlegs bristling against the trees.

***

“There was a time when a great long Serpent ruled the sky.”

Old Gabar paced back and forth in front of the bonfire. The youngest of the villagers were leaning in, hanging onto the words as he looked each of them dead in the eye.

“And he loved to eat little children!”

Laughter rose from the circle as the mothers and fathers held their little ones. Those just old enough to speak were hearing, for the first time, the old legends that had kept their parents awake in the dark when they themselves were children.

Aphis, who leaned back on a grassy knoll towards the back, smiled when he heard the words - he was sixteen and a getting a little old for Gabar’s theatrics, but he could remember when they filled him with wonder.

“‘What shall we do?’ our ancestors asked. ‘How can we resist the wanton will of the old enemy?’”

Again, the skinny man ran his gaze across the faces in the crowd. Even the older villagers, who had first heard the Solinsaga before even Gabar had begun telling it, sat in a trance.

“And then,” Gabar said, throwing a fistful of charcoal dust into the fire, “a great light split the sky in half; the stars themselves fell and crashed thunderously to the ground.”

The audience gasped as tongues of flame lashed the air. He paused and leaned in, his eyes darting left and right as if he were revealing an ancient secret, and pulled a shiny prism of glass from his sleeve. Twisting it in his fingers, the firelight danced on its facets.

“Star shards, filled with the fire of the Celestials themselves,” he said. He looked out at the crowd. “And who would take up the power of the heavens? Do you know?”

“Solin the Starborn,” a child cried out.

Gabar nodded. “Yes, Solin: the hunter, the protector, the Starborn. And with the flame of the Celestials and his band of thirty men and women, he fought the Serpent for ninety days and ninety nights. The dust from their battle formed mountains - the clefts of his mighty sword, Terra’s deepest valleys. The sweat of Solin’s brows fed the oceans, and the blood of the Serpent, defeated in exile colored the dusk and dawn to herald his glory every day.”

A cheer and a prayer rippled through the audience. One of the children stood up, unsatisfied. “What happened after he beat Gurral?”

“Fear his name,” said every villager who caught the child’s slip. His mother pulled him onto his lap and scolded him for naming the Scourge, while the boy’s older brother anxiously covered his face, knowing he’d be blamed for teaching his little brother the forbidden name.

Gabar smiled his easy smile, as if the child had done nothing wrong, and looked toward the sky. Streaks began to appear, one or two at a time. Then dozens. Soon, every upturned face was lit with the pale blue glow of the meteor shower. The children ooh’d and ahh’d. If Gabar had one skill, it was timing. He looked up at the shooting stars, and then back at his fellow villagers.

“After the Serpent, the Corruption, the Old Enemy left Terra, Solin bequethed his power to his five captains, founders of the Great Houses of ages past: Supinda, master of starmancy; Gallan, the fleetest rider of the lands; Barzan, whose sword knew no equal; Vilitsa, tamer of the seas; and Farell, chief slayer of the old enemies’ winged beasts, our great ancestor.”

The Farellian village’s hunters, who were huddled and half-drunk at the periphery of the crowd, let out three cheers in tribute to Solin’s performance and his patronage of their namesake. Or perhaps they paid homage to Gabar, one of the few links they had to a gloried past that was so far gone that it may as well have been just another one of the man’s stories.

“But where did Solin go, Gabar?”

Gabar pointed to the distance. Not at the edge of the square, nor the trees beyond them. Nor the other side of the Starfall Valley, or edge of the outlands, where the nameless cliffs met the western seas. He pointed far beyond. “To the Far Shores, where he still watches us,” he said. “One day, he will welcome us, when we reunite with the stars themselves.”

It’s a nice story, Aphis thought, in spite of himself and his mood. The shooting stars glinted off his grey eyes like sparks; as fine as it looked, that year the Celestial Lights seemed dull and untouchable. He wondered if that’s what getting older meant.

For an entirely different reason from his own, the children of the village weren’t satisfied with Solin’s disappearance; why did he not reappear to save the Farellians now?

“What really happened to Solin?” they asked, in a dozen ways.

Gabar smiled. He wasn’t just a storyteller. He was their chronicle. He was their past. He was their link to the old ways, until he chose someone to replace him.

Though, if it were the case that all Gabar did was tell stories, Aphis knew he’d have been a happy man all the same. It was strange to the boy that Gabar could be so at peace with the the world, and their people’s place under the constant harassment of King Barrafel; especially since, if the stories were true, the Farellians had been Solin's favored people.

“That, children,” Gabar began, after searching the sky, looking for a thread in the massive patchwork of shooting stars. “Is a story for another night.”

The children groaned and whined, pestering the old man, asking for something - anything - else he could give them to whet their imagination.

While Gabar parlayed for his sleep, the villagers cheered Solin’s victory and began to sing his hymn, as they did every year to welcome the Light Festival. Though the sun had been down for nearly two hours, the star fire was bright enough to light the whole valley.

Aphis could still hear the children's voices over the Solinsong. “Please, Gabar, tell us another one,” they said. It wasn't long past that Aphis counted himself among the children who begged for another tale about the Great Houses or their clashes with Prak, Lord of the Beasts. Even the frightening ones about the Red Eyes would do on a slow, hungry night. There were a lot of those when he was growing up.

“Another time, children,” Gabar said with a smile. “This old man isn’t as strong as Solin, and he needs his sleep.”

The children would have to wait for the next bonfire.

But that mean that the Light Festival could officially begin. It was a special time for them all. For a week, they forgot their troubles and replaced them with stories, music, and dancing. They probably ate more than they should have - especially in the lean years when the hunters just couldn’t bring in enough game. Even under the shadow of the imperial inspection, which came every year on the second day of the festival, the air carried a rare joy through their lives.

He returned his gaze to the shooting stars. When he was younger, the Light Festival would come, and the Celestial Lights with it, and he would track them every night for a week, trying to follow the streaking lights with his eyes as they cut across the sky before they disappeared past the horizon. He could do that until his eyes ached and his vision blurred. But, they were always too fast and numerous; so many of them that they illuminated the nightscape of rolling hills and forests that his people had called home since their last resettlement. His mouth would hang open in a dumbfounded smile so long that his spittle would creep down to the point of his chin and drip off into the ground, eventually crusting over so that his mother would have to wipe it for him. No matter his mood, something about the stars - the Far Shores - always called to him.

As more voices joined into the chorus of the Solinsong, the low buzz of the crowd began to crest. Aphis contributed as best he could, the vibrations in his throat stopping here and there as he tried to hit the familiar notes that were scattered in and out of reach of his changing voice. As the song crescendoed in the final verse, the oldest of the village opened their mouths wide, wailing in what sounded like both a celebration and a lament. As their breath gave out and their throats ran dry, the rest of the villagers finished out the tune with a resonant chant, the very same that drove the melody like the oars of a boat. They hummed as if the song would speed Terra along to its destination, and their problems would disappear. After the hymn ended, all that was left was the crackling of the fire and chirping bugs.

“Enjoying the view?”

Mirta put down her hunting equipment and laid down next to him, stretching out. The bonfire and starlight shone with the brilliance of the midday sun in her copper eyes. Even though he was watching the sky, he could still make out the bright orbs in the periphery of his vision.

“Yeah,” he said after a pause. He sat up and managed a smile for her. “Were you able to catch up to the herd?”

She nodded. “We’ll have meat for the festival.”

He sighed and kept staring at the sky. "Did everyone else make it?"

“Yeah,” she said, squeezing her little brother’s arm. “And next year, you will, too.”

He looked away and said nothing for a while, still unready for her sympathy. “At least the feast will go on.”

“It better,” she said. “The wagon broke an axle in the southern hills and we had to drag the horners back for the last three miles.”

They both watched the stars, the same as they did at this time on this hill every year since they were toddlers. He couldn’t count the times he fell asleep wherever they played, and Mirta would pick him up and carry him home.

She was physically stronger than most could tell without spending time around her. And she was a great tracker, and an even better shot. So much so that he’d heard some of the older hunters predict that, in a few years, she would be the best hunter in the village next to Cole.

Skilled as she was, it was still shocking to watch her slaughter game that was easily five times her size. Horners were much heavier than her scraggly brother, and she had to carry them from much farther out than the hill at the village center. The village was lucky to have her - at least as lucky as she was to be alive, when the Barrafelans came for her parents, years ago.

Mirta was swift and strong in a way that made Aphis wake up every morning to jog, exercise, practice with his spear, and track the small game without being spotted. This year he didn’t make the cut, but one day he would join the hunt. He promised his own parents, who were killed in the same attack.

“Well, the meat should be ready in an hour or so,” she mused. They sat there for a while before she asked. “Soak? I could really use one.”

“Sure.”

Aphis stood up, and held out his hand. She took it and hoisted herself, reattached her quiver and hunting knife, and slung her bow over her back. Then, they headed for the western trail.

***

Leaving the noise of the festival behind them, they set out towards the pool. It was a short but winding walk downhill from the village, through a path overgrown with tall grasses and densely packed saplings with hairy mosses hanging from them. Just before the trail reached a dead end, there was an opening in the trees to the north, thickly draped over by creeping ivies. It swung the trail back uphill. About fifty blind paces through the hanging leaves and branches, the hidden walkway opened up to a small patch of rocky terrain where the trees would not grow, framing a grove that surrounded a small, but deep spring. The water was always warm, and they always went at night.

In the time when he was old enough to chase Mirta but too young to keep up with her, much less catch her, Aphis had run into the woods alone. He remembered that he was crying, but didn’t remember why. Stern words from his father, or a spanking from his mother - who knew? The reasons were lost to fire, hunger, and time.

His eyes had been closed most of the way, and he’d navigated with his outstretched hands. He couldn’t run fast enough to hurt himself by tripping or bumping into any trees, and he was lucky enough that none of the wild animals in the forest took an interest in him.

Somehow, Mirta appeared. His whole life, she was never far behind. She’d left her house that night, too. Whether it was to find Aphis, or because she chafed under the expectations of her parents as they led the village in its most trying times to that date, he never knew, and she never told.

When she’d found him - tracking was never difficult for her - he was alone, shaking, sobbing, moaning. His hair made him look like he’d been wrestling with a briar bush. Red scrapes and scratches covered his cheeks, writing his confusion and helplessness all over his pale face.

“What are you doing here?” he’d asked.

“Looking for you,” she’d replied.

The light in her eyes that night said everything that she didn’t. She comforted him until he stopped crying. He fell asleep as she carried him back to the village. Neither of them saw the outside of their homes for weeks after it happened, except for the odd errand here or there, when their parents couldn’t be bothered. So, instead, they sat at their windows, waving and making faces at each other.

When their punishment ended, they returned to the secret spring. It was their place. They’d been coming back ever since, like lost dogs drawn home.

At this time of year they could get to it without having to bring a lantern to find their way – the Celestial Lights were as practical as they were stunning.

Aphis stepped up to the edge of the pool and breathed in as much of the warm air as he could. He loved the smell. It was just barely acrid enough to wake his senses, but with a warmth and humidity that could get inside of his body and expel even the coldest shivers with one draw. He removed his clothes to jump in. Mirta was already on the other side, neck deep.

“There’s nothing like this after a long hunt,” she said after dunking her head in the warm water and pulling her bright red curls back behind her neck. Her eyes stayed shut as she leaned on a smooth boulder and sunk just a bit deeper, so that her chin was barely above the water.

Aphis sighed again. “I wouldn’t know.”

Mirta opened her eyes and smiled one of her rare smiles - the easy, free ones that showed teeth, the kind she once gave freely before her parents were killed. “You’ll be able to join the hunt next year. You’ve gotten a lot stronger. You just need a little more time with me and Cole.”

He sighed. “I just feel like I keep making a mess of things.”

“Almost no one makes it when they’re only fifteen.” She rolled her shoulders back and kneaded out a knot in her right palm.

“Sixteen. And you did.”

She laughed and looked at him. “One, that was three years ago. Two, the whole village was starving, so the elders and the hunters didn’t have a choice. Three, I was able to last on the initiation because I didn’t need as much food or water as the bigger candidates. Four, Cole vouched for me, and that was almost enough by itself.”

Aphis looked up at the bright streaks in the sky, which were beginning to wane. They had about an hour of starlight left.

He looked down at his reflection, lit by the heavenly fire and shrouded by the steam rising from the pool. “I just wish there was more I could do.” He didn’t want to say that he knew he wasn’t as strong as she or Cole - a thought neither of them would stand for.

Mirta swam to him, put her arm over his shoulder, and gave him a reassuring shake.

“Don’t worry about it. You just need time. You’ll be more than fit next year.”

He looked up for a moment to give her a smile, one almost as rare as hers. “Thanks.”

Mirta looked at Aphis, whose gaze returned to the fiery sky. She turned her head up to join him. They stared for a few minutes and thought about all the stories. Every tale they knew began with that great maelstrom of light.

“Do you think they’re really up there on the Far Shores?” he asked.

She didn’t take her eyes away from the lights. The Celestial Lights were the spirits of the dead - their fire - breaking through the Deep Black to sail through the night sky for one week before returning to the Far Shores. She hugged her knees and let in a deep breath through her nose to clear her sinuses. And then, after a moment, she nodded. “The festival always brings them back.”

Turning to Aphis, whose eyes were still fixated on the lights, Mirta asked him the same.

“You thinking about yours, too?”

Aphis bit his lip and close his eyes to unlock the memories. When he was four or five, he would run into the house, tagging along after Mirta. His gait was that of the any child - poor, lopsided, and fighting against itself. But back then he had the heart of a runner, if not the legs. And Mirta, who was old enough by then to know how to work her body into her stride, would slow her pace just enough to put herself in reach, only to speed back up. He’d giggle and laugh in a fit, each cackle affording Mirta a moment to turn back and tease him.

He’d chase her around the kitchen as his mother and father prepared dinner. Each spent time going from the fire to the table, expertly dodging the two as they ran and tumbled about. His mother could run her fingers through his hair as he passed by without ever turning from the stove - they smelled like soothing herbs and sharp spices. His father seared chunks of horner flank in a pan to prepare it for stewing, his thick beard absorbing the smell of smoke, fat, and the hearth. They would finish cooking, and send Mirta home to her own parents with some fruit and a share of the meal as a gift for her family.

He could catch those scents on the wind, come festival time. He hadn’t felt that carelessness in years, but at least he remembered it.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “Every year, this time.”

They sat there for a moment to listen for the hum of their long dead parents, amidst the chorus of a million others, tearing open the heavens. Slowly, from the horizon up, the shower began to dissipate for the night.

“We better get back before it gets too dim to find our way.”

Aphis chuckled. “I’m pretty sure you could find your way back, just by smell.”

Mirta smiled. “The only reason I can do that is because you kept running off into the woods. If I didn’t get you back in the house by twilight your mom would beat both our asses red.”

He smiled at the thought of old punishments, the sour moments having ripened over the years into bittersweet memories.

They got out of the water slowly, the addictive warmth clinging to their skins and whispering to them in the mist to stay the night and shrivel. With their clothes back on, and Mirta’s hunting equipment in tow, they started toward the forest path.

“Hmmm?”

Aphis turned around. The meteor shower had flared back up like a lightning strike, turning a brilliant white - brighter than the sun - and radiating a heat that he’d only ever felt in the harshest of summer days.

Mirta pointed at a light. “Look!”

***

Aphis and Mirta watched as the bright light formed itself into a ball. It brightened and flared until it passed overhead, followed by a deafening thunderclap. A shock ran through the ground and a hot wind screamed through the forest, bowing and bending the trees in its wake, ripping leaves from the ivies and the bark from the saplings. The spring convulsed as if it were choking, and steaming dirt and charred plant matter rained down on the two as cowered, covering their heads.

Mirta brushed the detritus from her face and looked back at Aphis, and then back towards the path.

“Let’s go!”

She took off like she’d spotted a wild pygmy hog. Aphis bolted after her. As they got closer to the epicenter of the blast, the forest looked more and more naked – stripped clean by whatever it was that had crashed to the ground moments ago.

Before long, they stood at the edge of a steaming crater, about forty paces to the center. In it lay a single, faceted white stone the size of a child’s fist. It still glowed with a metallic heat, and Aphis and Mirta could still feel steam rising from the displaced earth in their faces. But while the night air began to cool again, the dull white light emanating from the stone persisted like a heart beat. Each time it subsided, it looked as if it was leeching light from objects around it, stifling them in shadows until it turned dull white again.

“Is this really happening?” Mirta, asked out loud in a muted half question, as she began to step closer.

Aphis caught up to her. He stood by her side, and felt the blood rushing in his neck. “It couldn’t be. They’re just stories.”

“A star shard,” she whispered.

Mirta slowly reached out her hand. The air around it was warm and thick with moisture from the torn roots sticking out of the shattered earth. She slowly placed the top of her fingernails to the stone, for fear of burning herself. It was warm to the touch, not as hot as it looked, but she pulled her hand away as the black aura returned to the stone for a second, sucking the heat from her body.

Aphis bent down next to her. She looked just as confused as he did. When it pulsed white again, he reached for the stone. Grasping it with just his fingers, he picked it up. It was surprisingly light. Not metal – but metallic in its coolness. It quickly warmed up to the heat of his sweaty palms. But when it turned dark again, it leeched the nervous warmth from his hands and sent shivers through the little hairs on his forearms.

And, just as quickly, the stone lit back up, and the feeling passed.

“What should we do with it?” Aphis asked, turning to Mirta, whose expression had turned grave.

She took the stone from him, and examined it, turning it here and there, peering from different angles hoping to see something she’d missed.

After a while, she looked at him. “We need bring it back,” she said, opening her hand. She placed it in her pouch and they set off toward the tree line. It wasn’t long before they began to hear curious voices close in on them from the forest.