Emerson Ormond

Chapter One I am still finishing up the hemming on Mari’s stack of tunics when Thea bursts through the door, her small frame quivering with sobs. I toss the fabric from my lap and crouch beside her, stroking her knotted blonde curls as she wipes her nose across her sleeve. “What’s wrong?” “The-the…” she tries to get the words out between gasps, but all that erupts from her mouth is another incomprehensible wail. My heart swells and pushes up into my throat. Tears come easily to my little sister, but her raw eyes and red-rubbed nose are beginning to frighten me. I know. “The… soldiers… are here,” she squeals out between cries, confirming my fears “The raiding ones!” But they were just here four days ago. No wonder she’s terrified. The “raiding soldiers,” as we’ve called them, always mean trouble. They scavenge and abuse, looking for extra supplies and funds beyond the monthly taxation that already turns out our pockets and leaves every woman struggling to put a full meal on the table each night. “They took Roe!” Thea’s face scrunches at my quizzical look, and she lets out another loud sob. “I saw them take him, Fayre! They took him and they’re looking for others!” Merek! I’m up, flurrying about the room as she sobs to stuff the unfinished tunics in my bag and rake a brush through my hair. I throw off my laundering smock and snap open the top button of my dress. Whatever works. My heart is pounding so fiercely in my chest, I fear I’ll faint before I make it out the door. “What side did they come from?” “The west,” she whimpers, “I think.” I sip in a breath. So they didn’t find him. He’s safe. He has to be. I didn’t warn Merek about the soldier’s arrival, not this time. He wouldn’t have had time to find cover if they passed through the eastern woods, if they saw the ravine tucked between the layers of hunched trees. I pray Thea is right. “Fayre!” Thea snatches my hand as I stoop to lace up my boots. “Didn’t you hear me? They took Roe!” I pass a hand over her cheek before resuming my laces. “It’s his time,” I mutter. Thea shakes her head violently and practically screams. “No! He’s not a sixth-year till the snow flies!” Her bottom lip puffs out as she trembles. “You’re mistaken, dear.” But if anyone, Thea would know. Roe’s a friend of hers, a scrappy little boy who always wanders over to our cottage around midday looking for extra food from Mari. He’s got the biggest dimples you’ll ever see and Mari says she simply can’t resist the freckles that splatter his face like stars. Thea usually ends up roping him into her game of house; he’s the father, she’s the mother, and the little ones Mari watches for the village women during cotton-picking hours are the children. “They took Silas too early,” Thea whines. Silas… another one of Thea’s friends, who left for enlistment last month. “His Ma said he still had four months left. Now he’s gone, and so is Roe!” Her wail shakes all four feet of her. I try to swallow, but the air lodges like dry cornmeal in my throat. She can’t be right. The women here won’t fight the soldiers over much, but they’ll spit tooth and nail to protect the precious months before their sons’ enlistment. Birth papers are safeguarded like silver in the Oustridian parts, only flashed when a soldier tries to lay his hands on a boy too early. They couldn't have taken either of the boys before their time. But then again, Silas was another of Thea’s friends. He, too, was recruited to play “father” of her corn husk dolls and the little ones months before the soldiers took him. Thea would have known the exact date he became a sixth-year. It’s all the little boys ever talk about here, for fear or excitement or sorrow. If they’re taking boys too young, what would they do with Merek if they found him? As soon as it comes, I push the thought away. Today is not that day. And it won’t be for Roe either. “C’mon.” I grab Thea’s clammy fingers in mine. “Let’s go get Roe back.” Thea’s sob of relief turns into a squeal as I tug on her arm and we hurry out of the small cottage. I shove open the door, squinting in the light that blankets the outdoors. The noon-day sun glints off the freshly watered plants in Mari’s garden, sinking into the surrounding cobbled paths and patchy grass. Without the little ones scampering around the front yard, our home seems so peaceful. The solemn serenity of a widowed woman whose only son went to war. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Mari so willingly watches the village women’s children. No matter how misbehaved, how sick or snivelly, the chaos is always welcomed over the quiet. But for me, leaving the quiet fills me head to toe in a sudden dread. Thea’s grip on my hand tenses as we rush past threadbare homes and pastures toward the markets. I should have made her stay in the cottage, I realize quickly. She’s the first to scamper into the darkest closet of the house when the soldiers come–the monthly taxers or the raiders alike–even though I’ve told her she’s much too young for them to pay her any mind. We round the bend of the street corner, entering the chaos of the markets. Women push past us on all sides, carting sackcloths, grains, and measly coppers to appease the soldiers, who feign dissatisfaction at whatever they’re offered. Thea’s squeezing my palm so tight, the blood isn’t flowing to my fingertips anymore. “Relax, will you?” I chide. “Where’d they take him?” Her lower lip warbles. She doesn’t know. But just as I ask, a woman’s wail pierces the clearing. I jerk my head up and see the caravan ahead, the soldiers stamped in front of it, hands hovering over their sheathed weapons. My heart palpitates to the drum of one name, even as the woman mournfully cries for another. Merek. Merek. Merek. It’s a familiar fear, the feeling of my chest shrinking, clamping tight over my pounding heart. But the terror never eases, no matter how many times I’ve seen the caravans, no more than the salt of my sweat never ceases to sting my eyes in the cotton fields. He’s safe. He’s hidden. He knows the plan for when they come. It’s the same story, the same reassurance I tell myself, but the words wrap me with about as much comfort as a chilled morning shroud. It’s always been true. He’s always been safe. So far. Now it’s my fingers that tighten around Thea’s small hand. I loosen my grip at her yelp, apologizing. She stares up at me, her fierce blue eyes swimming and gleaming in the sunlight. “He’s not in there,” she whispers. “There’s only two boys they’ve taken and they already fined a different mother for being overdue.” A tear beads and drips down her cheek. The little smile she shows me as I feel the breath ease back into my lungs is wise beyond her years. Gone is the overtired girl screaming you only care about him! or the pleading cry to come with me on my daily ventures to visit him. Here and now, seventh-year Thea knows he is just as much a part of me as she, and that losing him would render my very soul split in two. The shriek of a blade leaving its sheath sings through the markets. The woman bustling about stop and stare at the scene in front of the caravan, where two soldiers have shoved the sobbing mother to the ground and threatened her with a sword lest she come closer. I slip away from Thea and rush toward the woman, stopping and falling down beside her. I don’t know what I’m doing as I reach out to rub her shoulders, trying to offer any semblance of comfort, but even so I am appalled that she only yanks away from my gentle touch. She jerks a crooked finger up at the soldier. “He’s a thief!” she howls. Beneath the shadow of his helm, I could swear the soldier grins. “He took my boy too early! He’s not due for months yet, and I got the papers to prove it!” The woman raises her other fist, clutching tightly to a folded worn document that must prove her helpless plea. I look past the soldiers into the caravan, where two boys are huddled inside. One sits in the back corner, his head up, silent tears dribbling down his chin. He’s terrified, but unwilling to make a scene. He’s overdue at the garrison as it is, and is smart enough to know that resisting will only make more trouble for him and his Ma. Roe, on the other hand, is shaking like a sheaf of wheat in the wind and crying audibly. His face is a mess of tears and snot, and he’s wet himself, a dark splotch spreading over his grain-sack pants. The distance between Roe and his mother is only a few feet, but it might as well be miles away for the soldier that stands between them. I rise on shaky knees and glare up at the man who holds the sword. “Let him go.” There’s a trill in my voice and in my body, and not to my surprise, the soldier only laughs. I say it again, more determination clipped in my tone. “He’s not due at the garrison yet. Let him go.” The soldier beside the one holding the sword scoffs. “You want fines for insubordination, girl? Or just a good cuff to the face?” I want to squeeze my eyes shut and disappear. But all I can think about is Merek. If I can’t defend Roe, who they have no right in the world to rip from his mother’s outstretched arms just yet, how will I ever be able to defend my friend? “We’ll go to the courts,” I say, the lie hot on my face. Like the monarch would ever care to waste three of his precious minutes hearing the plea of an Oustridian mother, much less offer her son three spare months away from the training grounds. The soldier knows it too, and he steps forward with a humored snort, rolling his wrist like he’s prepared to strike. But it’s another pair of hands that rests on my shoulders: the gentle, weathered palms of my Mari. I could sob for relief and anguish that she’s here to whisk me away from the soldiers. “That won’t be necessary,” she says in her cracked, sing-song voice. “Go get your sister, Fayre.” In her stormy gray eyes and the wrinkles that purse around her face, there’s a message beneath the gentle tone. Go get your sister and take her far away. Now. As I slowly back up, Mari stoops to pick up Roe’s weeping mother. To her touch, the mother doesn’t shy away, although no one ever resists Mari’s comfort. I watch my adoptive mother help the woman up with as much tender care as she once held me, wipe her tears, and lead her away silently as the caravan doors shut the boys inside and the soldiers take their leave. The silence that hung for the mournful scene dissipates as the caravan rumbles away from the village and the soldiers riding on the footboards turn their heads. Women resume the bustle of buying and selling, carting grain for a copper, and shoveling a mid-day meal of pottage and bread into their mouths before venturing off in groups to work in the fields. Even the birds call back and forth to one another as the chatter rises like the curling wafts of steam from the large pots of pottage cooking over the fire. Mari and the woman are gone by the time Thea comes to find me, and I have to shake myself back to reality when I feel her press up against my leg. “Fayre,” Thea says, and her little hand stretches toward my cheek. “You’re crying. You never cry.” It’s not true–I cry often enough–just not in front of her. Sure enough, my eyes have welled up and the tears I tried to suppress are finding their way to my nose. I offer Thea a sad smile and slip her under my arm. We walk, close together and quiet, back to the house.

(I could not get the copied text to un-bold) Story Statement: A young girl must harness the war god’s power and lead her country’s dwindling army to victory. Antagonist Sketch: The Commander The Commander is the fearless leader of Carran’s military. He is unwilling to accept defeat or weakness in his army, even with the diminishing numbers of soldiers and surging attacks of the enemy. Together with the monarch, he is persistent on winning the war despite victory being so out of reach. The man is teeming with hubris, arrogance, and misogyny. Based out of the country’s singular surviving garrison, he trains his soldiers to follow his example and hold their own in battles with enemy numbers far surpassing their own. Fayre is everything he hopes to gain for his army and everything he despises. The Commander is hell-bent on victory and power, but unwilling to praise or recognize Fayre for her progeny or salvific powers. In his denial that a small peasant girl could be what his country needs for victory, he becomes his army’s worst enemy. He is callous toward her and others, and has little patience for her weakness. For the calculated, formidable man that he is, he makes rash decisions regarding Fayre which cost him dearly. Breakout Titles: An Army of Sword Lilies: Sword lilies have a symbolic meaning in the story. Shown to Fayre when she was a young girl by her Mari, she has always known them to represent the loss of an innocent life. Many characters come to be known as “sword lilies” as they pass in the trilogy, leading off with Merek, a young crippled boy who was killed in war. The Masked Progeny: Fayre is the descendant of Falak, the revered god of war. Yet, for both the Commander’s revulsion to a young girl being his country’s salvation, and the fear that if Fayre is discovered by enemy powers as the fulfillment of the prophecy to Carran’s victory, she is disguised as a male servant-at-arms, and made to wear the mask that all slaves do in her society, mirorring Vale, goddess of servitude. Genre and Comparables: Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone: Both novels immerse the reader into a world ravaged by war but filled with the hope of redemption by a girl who must learn to harness her powers to save her country. Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes: Both are set in fictional medieval worlds that bring readers into the hardships of war and slavery, begging the question: is victory and power worth the lives of those who suffer to obtain it? Core Wound and Primary Conflict: (Two options… undecided) Logline 1: In an attempt to protect her crippled friend from the horrors of the war front, a young girl is discovered to be the progeny of the war god, and must brave the world of men and war to lead her country’s dwindling army to victory. Logline 2: Discovered to be the progeny of the war god with the power to bring down armies, a young peasant girl is forced to brave the world of men and war and lead her country’s soldiers to victory. Two levels of conflict: INNER CONFLICT: Fayre battles herself, and the war god’s power growing inside her. While she desires strength and the capability to win the war so that she can return home and protect her family and Merek, she is horrified at the idea of bloodshed. With every opponent she strikes down, she feels a chasm growing between who she once was and the killer she is becoming. Fayre understands that the enemy soldiers she battles wanted no more part in this war than she. She agonizes over every attack, and the lives of innocents that will end by her hands. Hypothetical: Fayre is told by the Commander on an overseas journey to Aerilon borders that the only way to protect Terrin and her family back home from harm, she must fight and lead her army to victory, cutting down all in her path. As the boat surges onto Aerilon sands, she is in turmoil over every enemy she will have to kill, even though she knows Falak will give her the power to do so. She aims to “wound, not kill,” but her wish is futile in the chaos of the battlefield, and she starts to see herself as a cold-hearted murderer, believing her family back home would surely turn away from her after what she has become. SECONDARY CONFLICT: In order to prevent Terrin from discovering Fayre’s true sex, she must keep her distance from him even when her own heart–and his charm–betrays her. His goodness shines in stark contrast to the rest of her detachment’s cruelty, and his willingness to help her makes it difficult for her to push him away. Hypothetical: After a particularly brutal training session where Fayre took a number of beatings from fellow soldiers who disdain the slaves, Terrin insists on helping her to dress her wounds. During this moment, he discovers who she truly is without her mask, and is insist that he help her and get to know her more. Later that night, when Terrin approaches with his usual compassion, she feels she must push him away to prevent him from further harm if it were found out her secret had spread. He asks her for her true name and expresses his desire to aid her, and, although everything inside her urges against it, shows him unkindness and impatience to push him away. Setting Sketch: The story takes place in Carran, a fictional medieval country that has face severe devastation in the Great War, a war between three nations over borders which took place prior to the book’s starting point. War persists, between Carran and the enemy country of Aerilon, even as Carran is struggling to hold up their defenses. Due to the strain placed on Carran’s military, an enlistment was enacted forcing all males to begin training at the garrison at the age of six, and to fight as soldiers when they age until wartime ceases. Carran’s monarch is power hungry and unwilling to succumb to Aerilon’s power, however, so the hopes for the battle ending any time soon is futile. With all the men at war, the women are left in the villages to run businesses, carry out the agriculture and trade, and instruct the children. They worship a unique set of deities and (for the purposes of this story) the focus gods are Isolde, goddess of wisdom, Falak, god of war, and Vale, goddess of servtitude. Vale is depicted as a small girl who wears a cloth over the lower half of her face to represent her silence in submission. Any prisoner of war, convicted criminal, or disabled person is said to be “disowned” by the gods themselves and destined to live a life as a “Vale” slave, serving in silence and submission. Now that the country is in so much war debt, many male Vale slaves have gone to the frontlines to serve or fight there. Opening Scenes: Fayre’s village: Fayre lives in a peasant cotton-farming village. Although poor, the community gets along well and the women support each other. She lives with her Mari, an elderly woman who adopted several girls orphaned from the war, including Fayre. The women divide the work in the cotton fields, sewing tunics and preparing food as a monthly taxation to the war effort. The soldiers that come to collect the tax each month cruel and demanded, loathed by the community. “Night raiders” are only ever mentioned, but come to raid the villages and rape the women in order to keep population numbers rising with all the men at the war front. Merek’s Ravine: Merek’s ravine lays right outside the cotton village. In the warmer months, it is Merek’s (a crippled young boy whom Fayre is hiding away) home, where he hides away from the soldiers who raid the villages and come for taxation purposes. This is Fayre’s “home away from home.” It adds an element of excitement in her life, but also produces a lot of anxiety as she constantly wonders if the hiding spot will be discovered and Merek taken to live life as a slave or–gods forbid–a soldier. “Cormorant” Garrison: Nicknamed for its shape like the face of a cormorant bird jutting into the Ariat sea, the peninsula holds the army’s strongest–and sole–garrison. This is where all the boys disappear from the villages to for training, where the soldiers are housed and prepare for incoming attacks or are shipped out for an attack on Aerilon lines. The garrison is a buzz of energy and excitement entirely different from what Fayre is used to; teeming with males trained in the art of war, the society at the garrison glorifies killing and strength, even amid shrinking food rations, the improper ratio of armor and weaponry to men, and the fear of continued enemy attacks. Aerilon’s main city: The enemy city is walled in and heavily protected. Once inside, Terrin and his friends notice a stark difference between Aerilon’s cities and their own: men and women together, family units are whole, and there isn’t a draft ripping six-year-old boys from their mother’s arms. The war has still certainly caused devastation, with a draft requiring many males to serve in the war, but there is still the hope of a whole society within Aerilon’s city borders.