Chapter 1

Asara was fond of the canyon in the spring. The daytime sun warmed her bones after the freezing nights, but the stifling summer heat had yet to come. Wildflowers bloomed across the gorge and peeked out of unexpected crevices, and she would braid them into her hair as she hummed along with the Planet's voice.

It wasn't a place where the Cetra camped for any of the seasons, though her grandmother spoke of a time when they had. Back before humans had found their way into this land and begun to settle it, as humans did.

Asara didn't think it was so strange that they should want to anchor themselves to one place, to live with it and know its face in every season, but the elders insisted this was never the way of the Cetra. They cautioned that the longer one remained in one place, the more one came to believe that one could possess the land, and the stronger that belief, the dimmer the Planet's voice.

At times, Asara wondered if it was simple prejudice. She knew there had been conflict in the past. Not even so long before she'd been born, the Huagi tribe that had settled in the canyon had been hostile to her people, driving them out of what they called their territory, an arbitrary line Asara had been taught to identify in her first springs. The Huagi had warred with the Koset, too, and the elders would shake their heads as they recalled how the humans had taken the majestic red-furred beasts for simple predators.

Asara knew the stories, but they had been at peace with the Huagi her whole life. She had never known the canyon village across the river as anything but welcoming. The Koset hunted freely within Huagi territory, and sometimes they would even hunt together, the Huagi taking the skins and bones that the Koset had no use for. Asara had seen the Huagi adorn their hunting partners with feathers on the rare occasions they came into the village itself.

So the elders would hem and haw each spring when she decided to leave the camp to visit their neighbors, and they would caution her about the narrow-mindedness of humans, but Asara never minded them. If humans couldn't hear the Planet's song, then maybe that was why they settled it as they did: to bond with it in their own way.

The Huagi greeted her warmly as she reached their village. They delighted in the news that the Cetra had returned to their river camp for the warmer months, and they asked after her family and shared stories of their winter days. Nothing was said of trade so early, though Asara always brought baskets and kudzu cloth in anticipation of carrying home colorful beadwork and gourds of wine. She set them aside for later, and a family she was closer with invited her to join them for a meal.

The night chill set in quickly after the sun went down, but settled around the Huagi's bonfire with a blanket across her shoulders, Asara was warm enough. She knew from earlier visits that they kept the fire burning, always. They claimed to have brought it with them from their previous home, unextinguished as it passed from torch to fire. To them, it held the spirits of their ancestors.

Asara didn't have the heart to tell them otherwise. Besides, their ancestors were a part of the Lifestream and the Planet's song all around them, so they were only a little wrong.

Asara pulled the blanket closer about her and lifted her eyes to the sky overhead. The stars were coming out.

And then, it struck.

It would be a long time before Asara truly knew what had happened that night. The Planet screamed. Its scream was every nerve in her body afire at once. It blacked out all sight, all sound, all other sensation. She didn't know how long it lasted. She couldn't think to measure time.

At last she became aware of a hand on her shoulder, shaking her. A muttered voice. She blinked to clear her vision, but it was still dark.

The voice coalesced into her name.

"Asara? Asara! Please say something!"

It was Mazoto. She realized she was lying on the ground, and she slowly pushed herself up. The pain wasn't gone and the scream hadn't ended, but it had subsided into something she could bear. She tried to push it into a different part of her mind so she could think around it.

"Are you all right?" Mazoto asked her.

Asara opened her mouth to speak, but that was when she realized: the bonfire was out. It was dark because the bonfire was out.

She began to register other voices in the darkness, asking urgently if anyone could see embers, and where was the flint and the kindling, and hurry.

"What happened?" she asked.

As others approached with torches, she made out Mazoto shaking his head. "It's a terrible omen," he said. "You say you hear the dead. Are they angry with us?"

"No, I..." Asara swallowed. "I don't know what this is, but it reaches beyond this village. I must return to my people."

"Do you think they'll know?" he ventured.

Asara had no idea. She had never felt anything like this from the Planet before. Sometimes a ripple of worry in times of drought or hardship. Never this constant terror.

"Maybe the elders will," she said, because she wanted it to be true. "We'll do a Planet-reading."

"Will you come back to tell us what you learn?"

"...if I can," she answered.

Asara didn't know what had happened, but if the Planet were in such pain, then it would be the duty of the Cetra to do anything they could to alleviate it. That duty might carry her anywhere.

The scent of the bonfire lingered, but where it had been pleasant, now it seemed to sting her lungs. She watched as the Huagi tried frantically to revive it, until Mazoto led her away into the village. Others they passed whispered about retreating into the caves to shelter from the doom that had marked them.

Starting a new fire wouldn't be the same, and while she felt for them, Asara was certain something much greater had been lost that night.

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