Childless Ones (eBook)

Cam Rhys Lay (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Auflage
436 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-7321035-1-1 (ISBN)

Infos

TWO WORLDS...TWO ALTERNATING NARRATIVES...A REALIST RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...AN EPIC FANTASY... In the 'real world,' we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood. In the 'fantasy world'-ostensibly written by Jack-a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story. Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another-often in surprising ways-ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.

Cam Rhys Lay was born in California and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Kansas. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he runs marketing for an education startup. This is his first novel. To learn more about Cam and his writing, go to www.camrhyslay.com.

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TWO WORLDS...TWO ALTERNATING NARRATIVES...A REALIST RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...AN EPIC FANTASY... In the "e;real world,"e; we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood. In the "e;fantasy world"e;-ostensibly written by Jack-a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story. Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another-often in surprising ways-ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.

Textauszug

TWO

THE MEMORY TREE

606 Years After The Fall

Autumn was Corinne’s favorite season, and were Erlan not dying, she would have been quite happy walking down the hill to the Center Road amongst the reds and yellows of the ancient trees. As it was, the crisp air against her skin, the sound of leaves rustling whenever the wind blew, failed to elicit their usual joy; now they just served as reminders of things irretrievably lost. She couldn’t dwell on any of this though. She had to focus on the tasks before her: reach the settlement, get the herbs, return to her husband.

By the time she reached the southern entrance, it was past midday. The journey would have taken three hours instead of six were Miranda still alive, but Erlan had had to put the horse down six months ago when she fell on the trail and broke a leg.

She knocked hard on the tall wooden gate, and the gray-skinned guard slid open the window to look upon her with his violet eyes.

“Gilmani kilbathur,” she said, the standard expression of salutation and one of the few things she could say properly in Mandrakhi. The expression essentially had the connotation of “hello” but literally meant, “the day stretches long.”

“Greetings, Golemen. What business do you have with us?” he said. Like all Mandrakhar, he spoke quickly. Over the years, Erlan had learned to slow down his speech for her sake.

“I come to trade.”

“Have you any coin? I don’t see any goods about you.” She pulled a pouch of silver from her satchel and showed it to him. His eyes narrowed with suspicion. The Mandrakhar here were cautious—perhaps with good reason. Many humans hated them, thought them the spawn of the Demon, and would just as soon see them gone from the Westwood. Still, usually whoever was guard—seeing that Corinne was a woman traveling alone—would open the gate without too much hassle. “What do you come to trade for?”

“What do I come to trade for? What business of yours is it? Should I also tell you that I plan on having tea and a meal and using the latrine?”

“I care not if you eat or whether you use the latrine. But I stand sentry, which makes it my duty to ask questions. I wish to know what you come to trade for. You need not answer—only if you wish to enter.”

Corinne was tired, in a hurry, fed up.

“Fine,” she said. “If you must know: moonroot. I have come to buy moonroot.”

He gave her a triumphant glance, as if he’d caught her in a lie. “Moonroot? What need does a human woman…” he stopped speaking as it dawned on him. “You…I know you…they talk of you.”

“The Whore of Sleeping Giant?” she said, as if it were a title of great distinction. “Yes, that’s me. Now open the gate.”

The settlement was built in the oldest part of the Westwood. Many of the trees were the width of Corinne’s cottage and it was said that most were nearly a thousand years old. The buildings at ground level were made from bricks of baked mud and straw. Even the gate and the wooden buildings up in the trees were made only from branches that had fallen on their own. The Mandrakhar revered trees and considered it an unthinkable act to cut one down unless it was blighted.

Fifteen years had passed since Corinne had first come to the settlement, yet she still remembered the day clearly. She had twisted her ankle on the journey through the mountains, and so Gareth had carried her on his massive back. She was only a girl then, but even had she been full-grown, he would have had no problem bearing her. They had been walking for days with little food, but as they reached the northern gate, a sense of wonder fell upon them and they forgot their hunger, their wounds, the war. Darkness had descended on the forest; yet within the settlement, lantern bugs filled the air, flying in irregular patterns, illuminating the trails. The actual buildings of the settlement were modest compared to those of the cities and towns Corinne had seen on the way south—most little more than huts. And yet the trees, the gods’ own towers, held a magnificence that was unmatched by even the most ambitious of man’s architectural achievements. And then, in the very middle of the settlement, Saloryn Bai, the Memory Tree. It was not the tallest tree, but it was a sprawling, massive thing with an endless network of roots and branches, many themselves the thickness of tree trunks. The leaves of the Tree each emanated a faint, golden glow.

Corinne hadn’t seen Gareth and Saleya for more than a year now. They’d been the closest thing to parents she’d ever had if you didn’t count the Sisters in the orphanage—and she did not. Their own son, Joram, named in honor of Corinne’s grandfather, would be nearly five now.

The village where Gareth and Saleya lived was only a few miles from Corinne and Erlan’s cottage, but it was hard for Saleya to travel since she didn’t walk well. As for Corinne visiting, ever since the other villagers had learned of Erlan, she wasn’t much welcome in the village. Depraved elf slut, they called her. Abomination. Tree harlot. This last one made her laugh.

She made her way through the settlement to the herbmaster’s shack. A few of the Mandrakhar stopped and stared at her. Corinne assumed they knew who she was. Unlike Gareth and Saleya’s fellow villagers, the Mandrakhar said nothing, but Corinne saw the same spite in their eyes. Not so long ago she had been welcome amongst them—not simply another Golemen, foreigner, but someone who was accepted, loved even.

But then she committed the greatest sin of all: she married one of them.

The Mandrakhar staring at her from near the well—with her long black hair tied back, exposing her acuminated ears—was Pelaeus’s granddaughter. When Corinne had first arrived, Pelaeus appeared to be only a few years older than her, and now her granddaughter looked only slightly younger. In another ten years, the granddaughter would be old and withered, whereas Corinne would still be of childbearing age.

Gareth had first tried to explain it to her back when they first arrived here. The war was still on then, and Gareth, Saleya, and Corinne, along with forty other refugees, had been allowed to stay in a small encampment just inside the gate, amongst some of the largest trees in the settlement.

These trees are over a thousand years old, Gareth had said. They experience the years different than us. The seasons to the tree are a blink of an eye—a decade of our years like a single season to them. To the Mandrakhar we are, in a way, like the trees. A generation of theirs will pass before you are a woman. And yet, while the Mandrakhar are a young people, they are also—the ones who live in this settlement, at least—very old. It is said that when one of them dies, their bodies are brought to the Memory Tree and all of their life, their memories, are preserved in it. Then when their young come of age in their fourth year, they are connected to the exposed roots and all the memories of all the Mandrakhar who have died and contributed to the Tree are passed on. And so, in a way, these Mandrakhar all live forever.

But a person is more than their memories, her nine-year-old self said. If I die, even if my memories live, I am still dead.

In a way yes. But also in a way no.

So I will hardly be grown up and Pelaeus will be an old woman.

He nodded.

It seems very terrible to me.

A lot is terrible in the world. But this is no more terrible than the fact that we too—myself, Saleya, and even you—must one day pass from this world. You cannot be sad for them. The trees, after all, do not weep for you or me.

And why did you say ‘the ones who live in this settlement’? Are there other Mandrakhar?

Yes, there are other settlements. And long ago, each had its own Memory Tree. Yet over the centuries the other Trees have sickened and died, whereas this Tree remains—the last of its kind.

Most Mandrakhar didn’t talk about the Tree. Even Pelaeus, who’d been Corinne’s best friend, would change the subject whenever Corinne asked. “I have difficulty explaining,” she’d say. Erlan was the only Mandrakhar who’d ever spoken directly to Corinne about the Tree and the memories he’d received from it. According to him, the memories from the Tree—or yulthanispel, as they called it—weren’t the same as one’s own memories. They were partitioned off in the mind. It would be difficult to function if one couldn’t tell what had actually happened to them versus someone else hundreds of years before. Also, these memories were vague and distant and lacking...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.10.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 1-7321035-1-8 / 1732103518
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7321035-1-1 / 9781732103511