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| cover art by omar rayyan |
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MOONSILVER
Heart's journey begins
here. It takes place in
a magical place at a
time when the magic is
disappearing.
Welcome to Heart's
adventure...
CHAPTER ONE
Heart Avamir was tired.
Everyone else had gone home.
It would be dark soon.
The stiff wheat stubble had scraped her hands bloody.There were long scratches on her bare feet.
Heart smiled. Her sack was half full. The harvesters had hurried through the fields this year, missing more grain than usual.
Lord Dunraven wouldn't like the gleaners finding so much fallen grain. But the people of Ash Grove were happy. They would have more bread this winter.
Lord Dunraven didn't need their little bit of gleaned wheat.
He owned every wheat field, every barley field, every hillside.
He owned the forest on the other side of the Blue River.
The bridge that crossed Blue River and the road that led to Derrytown belonged to him, too.
Lord Dunraven owned towns and villages.
He owned everything.
Old Simon cleared his throat and spat. "What’s that?" he asked, pointing.
Heart faced the sunset. Something was moving at the far end of the field, near the edge of a grove of old oak trees.
"A deer?" she answered.
"Looks like a cow," Simon said.
Heart squinted. "I can’t tell." The animal was moving farther into the deep shadows.
"Whose cow would be out for wolves to find?" Simon asked. He tied up their wheat sacks with twine he kept in his pockets.
"I’ll go see," Heart said.
Simon nodded. "Hurry back. No playing."
Heart glanced at Simon's angular face and thin gray hair. She wished that he loved her. But she knew he didn't.
Simon was not her father, after all. Nor was he an uncle or a grandfather or any kind of family.
Five years before, Simon had found her sleeping in the high grass by Blue River. He had come upon her that morning the way someone stumbles across a nest of quail eggs.
Simon had told her about it. He'd been gathering firewood among the cottonwood trees by the river. She had been wrapped in a beautiful blanket, her hair knotted and tangled.
“Can you see what it is?" Simon shouted.
Startled from her thoughts, Heart whirled around.
"Not yet!" she shouted over her shoulder. Whatever the animal was, it was deep in the dappled shade now.
Walking slowly toward the edge of the woods, Heart tried to recall something—anything—from before the morning Simon had awakened her in the tall grass.
She couldn't.
She never could.
Her first memory was this:
Her eyes had flown open and her breath had come quicker than a startled rabbit. And Simon had been there, leaning over her, with his sharp-nosed face, his dark eyes and dark clothes.
And that was it.
Heart could remember everything back to that instant, perfectly. But then her memories just ended.
Simon had called her Girl for weeks. He had not named her. Ruth Oakes had done that. But he had fed her. She was alive. She knew she should be grateful.
But the all the other children in Ash Grove knew their parents. They knew their grandparents and their great grandparents. They didn't trust a girl without memories. They wouldn't play with her, or even talk to her.
"What is it?" Simon called. "Why can't you see?"
Startled again, Heart stopped, peering into the dusky shade under the oak trees.
"It's a horse!" she called back, surprised. No one in Ash Grove owned horses, except Tin Blackaby. "A mare!"
“Then it’s Blackaby’s,” Simon called. “Leave it alone!”
Heart nodded. She felt sorry for the horse.
Blackaby was Lord Dunraven's steward.
He counted out crops and chicks and sheep and corn. He weighed out the peppers and onions people raised to sell to the Derry town merchants. He told people how much they had to give to Lord Dunraven and how little they could keep.
He was not kind. He worked his men and his horses hard.
"Blackaby's men will come," Simon shouted. "They'll think we're trying to steal it."
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