This week, I wanted to share a completely new angle on a story I’ve been writing for some time. I have a draft of this book done, but I don’t love it. I’ve learned so much about writing through my coursework, so this is a new swipe at the start. I’d love to hear what you think.
Part I: At the Witch’s Cabin
Where Asti and Barz meet Strum and Wyfara and Morwil, the witch, who gives Asti a quest. Asti would rather be retrieving her eye and unlocking the secrets of living again after death.
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“Asti,” Barz said.
“Barz?” the girl replied.
“I do not think this is a good idea.”
“I don’t think we got much choice, pal.”
The enormous man sighed from behind Asti. They padded down a dark forest path. Gnats hissed by. The girl kept tripping, but Barz caught her each time. She hadn’t adjusted yet to losing her eye. A witch had stolen it. Asti’d deserved that.
They were thieves; they stole from the long dead, the Od, who buried the secrets of their magic, the evidence of their friendships with the gods, deep underground in elaborate tomb-cities. Witches and other intelligent folk revered the Od, who’d been exterminated in a time so long ago no one remembered anyone who remembered them.
Asti and Barz stole treasures from Od ruins to feed themselves, and to fuel their curiosity: whenever Barz died, which had happened several times already, he came back to life. This was a remarkable trait. Asti wanted to know how he did it. She wanted to bring someone else back to life.
The path beneath their feet, they’d been told, led to a witch—not the one who’d stolen Asti’s eye, but one who might help them steal Asti’s back. Might. This path crept deep into the Watchwood, where maps ended. They had started on it in Creektown, a place which looked like an accident on the maps it appeared on and had a population of fifteen miners and their families, as well as occasionally Asti and Barz, and usually a woman named Tharn. Tharn had sent them this way.
Tharn had once been a knight for a king, but that king had died. Tharn had been part of killing him, but people didn’t know that, not even Asti, who idolized the woman. She imagined Tharn as an older version of herself—except Tharn had two eyes, could read, and knew how to wield a sword, but maybe, Asti dreamed, one day those things would be true of her, too.
After many hours of muddling along this path, something had finally happened: a red light appeared; impossible to miss because the forest was so, so dark. Barz was suspicious of magic. He kept a woodcutter’s axe on his hip. Now he reassured himself it hadn’t fallen off or a lostluck hadn’t stolen it.
“That’s got to be it,” Asti whispered. Her shins ached. She just kept her eyes on the light. Soon the trees thinned and she could smell smoke, then Asti could make out a hut. Trees had grown up next to and on top of the structure; one even poked out through the straw roof. An orange fire moaned through the one window, the source of the light. Good. Tharn had led them to the right place. Hot nervousness shot through Asti’s body as they approached the hut; her palms clammed up.
“Hoy,” she called out; she didn’t want to startle the witch, “hoy.”
A shadow dashed across the window, too quick to make out. The dark, wooden door, almost invisible between the trunks of two slimy poplars, opened. Asti could only tell because the darkness there got darker.
“Who’s there?” a woman called. She sounded younger than Asti had expected, and more timid.
Asti tripped over a rock as she approached the door. “Friends of Tharn from Creektown,” she whispered. “We’ve come to ask you a favor.”
“Who?” the woman called back. “Er, come in.”
Asti now could tell she was a girl, maybe Asti’s age, a young woman, old enough to be married but only so, perhaps. Smaller than Asti, who was herself not very big, with long drapes of matted and oily brown hair. She wore leathers. Asti stepped into the cabin, warm after so long in the miserable forest. When she felt the knife prick her side, she realized the woman who’d let them in wasn’t the witch.
“Who are you?” the girl asked. She still sounded fearful. Asti couldn’t see well in the room, where weird orange and yellow shadows flickered off a thousand strange objects. From behind Asti, Barz growled.
“It’s all right,” Asti said. “We don't have much, but take it.”
“I’m not a thief,” the girl snarled. “Who are you?”
“Asti and Barz,” Asti said. “We’re just looking for the witch, is she here?”
“What do you want with her?” As she talked, the girl’s knife stopped digging in to Asti’s side. Yet Asti remained still as she could.
“I’m hoping she can help me. That’s all. Is she here?” Asti said.
“No,” the girl whispered. “And we need her help too. Come in, slowly now. Do you have any weapons? Leave them there.”
Barz growled again. He was fond of his woodcutter’s axe. Asti glared at him—harder to do with one eye—though, and he complied. She had a dagger and a bow she wasn’t any good with. She left them where the girl had told her to, in the corner by the door.
“Come in,” the girl breathed. She’d sheathed her own knife but backed into the hearthroom, watching them as she went. Orange light filled this room. In the stuffy, late-summer air, the smoke from the fire couldn’t escape up the chimney; it filled the room so Asti’s eyes stung. The girl had piled a few sacks onto a single, broad chair in the corner beside the hearth, which made a good place for reading or casting spells or knitting, maybe. Laid down on top of the sacks was a lyre. It looked like the girl had dropped it there in a hurry, perhaps when she heard Asti call. Behind the chair, something metallic gleamed, but Asti couldn’t tell what it was; she was more preoccupied by another woman on the floor, laid out like a rug. A big, black fur swaddled her so Asti and Barz could only her head, crowned in ashy hair.
The girl knelt beside the woman on the floor.
“I’m Asti, and this is Barz,” she said. They lingered in the doorway, Asti leaning back against her friend, who breathed fast.
“I’m Strum,” the girl said. “We came here yesterday, I haven’t seen the shaman.”
Shaman was a backcountry word for witch, Asti knew. She didn’t know backcountry folks got a word like that from the Od, and a great deal of their wisdom; she thought, like most high and noble people, that she should pity the lives these humble folks lived.
“Who’s this?” Asti asked.
Strum looked up at Asti. She held the woman’s hand, which peeped out from beneath the fur. “She’s my friend.” Asti glanced up at the chair. She had realized the metallic object shining behind the chair had to be a sword. Strum’s gaze followed; the girl darted up, grabbed everything in the chair and shoved it all behind the seat. Asti watched her tug a cloak over the sword. Only the gleaming hilt peeked out, but Asti didn’t think Strum had noticed that. “Please sit,” Strum said.
“Do you have any food?” Barz grumbled.
“Barz—we have food, don’t—”
“There’s a garden around back,” Strum said, “some food in the cellar. I took a little. I hope the shaman doesn’t mind.”
“Excellent,” Barz patted his belly. “I shall go—”
“No you won’t. We have food. All you think of is your stomach.” Asti said.
“That is not true. I also think of hacking my enemies to bits.”
“Who are your enemies?” the girl asked nervously. She’d returned to her spot beside the unconscious woman.
“Demons,” Asti declared, aware of how unheroic they really were. What was the most dangerous creature they’d slain? A larkey, perhaps. But she wanted to sound impressive.
“Asti,” Barz had no sense of artifice, “you have only ever fought meeks. They are to demons as mice to bears.”
“Oh shut up.”
Strum smiled. Pretty smile. “Good,” she whispered, but Asti didn’t think she meant to be overheard. She smiled back at the girl, but self-consciously aware of the patch over her eye. Asti trusted women in the wild. Maybe she shouldn’t, but she did. If Strum had been a man, or the unconscious woman had, she wouldn’t have come into the hut. She would have assumed they’d murdered the witch, or worse, and that she and Barz were next. For those sorts of reasons, most women didn’t wander the wild. “We have to stick together,” Asti completed her sentiment out loud.
Strum smiled again, and Asti thought maybe the girl knew what she meant.
#
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Barz did wander off to the cellar and return with an obnoxious armful of food—cheeses, salted meat, cucumbers, old apples and potatoes—and though Asti also feared upsetting the witch, she hadn’t had cheese since she ran away from her life of nobility years ago. She’d always had to be stingy with the money they earned, which had never been much.
So they ate some, all three of them, in a circle on the ground beside the unconscious woman. Strum and Asti worked together to keep Barz from eating everything. Strum scooped up one unblemished wheel of cheese and dashed it back to the safety of the cellar before Barz had noticed it.
“Save some for her, Barz,” Asti said, indicating the unconscious woman. “She’ll need her strength if she’s hurt.”
“What is wrong with her?” Barz asked Strum when she returned from her mission.
The playful smile dropped off the girl’s face. “She was hurt.”
“I’ve mended plenty of this lug’s injuries,” Asti said. “I’m no witch, but maybe I can help.” She reached over and started to lift up the fur covering the woman when Strum seized her wrist.
“No,” she said. Her nails dug into Asti’s arm like a dog bite. The fire had burned low, the shadows blackened Strum’s face. “You can’t help.”
“Sorry,” Asti breathed. All the goodwill the three had built up sprouted wings and darted out the window. The stale summery room was suddenly too cold for Asti. “Barz,” she swallowed, “we should sleep. I’m exhausted, aren’t you?”
“I am wide awake.”
“No,” Asti murmured, “you’re not.”
“I am not?”
“Let’s go sleep somewhere. There must be a bedroom. Strum, I guess you’ll be sleeping in here?”
“Yeah,” Strum barely said. She didn’t look up at them. Asti and Barz crept out of the room. When they found where the witch slept, Asti let Barz take the bed. She curled up in the corner on top of a fur, her eyes focused on the doorway. Within instants, Barz’s horrendous snoring drowned out all the sounds of the forest, the birds and rustling trees, the laughter of coyotes, the chitters of a million different insects, but between his gasps, Asti thought, she could catch something that sounded like singing, and a lyre plucking.
What are your thoughts on this opening chapter?