Desert Song – Look Inside

“In many ways, Desert Song is a story about reckonings and how the violence of the past haunts us in the present.” – Rivera Sun on Desert Song

Desert Song: A Girl In Exile, a Trickster Horse, and the Women Rising Up
is now available through our Community Publishing Campaign.

CHAPTER ONE
. . . . .
The Ancestor Wind
by Rivera Sun

The Ancestor Wind
played across the mountains. It leapt the peaks and tickled the bellies of the
valleys. It was the breath of the world, from a newborn’s first gasp to an
elder’s last sigh. The Ancestor Wind filled the lungs of the living and lifted
the weightless souls from the old husks of their bodies. Carried by the wind,
the spirits of the ancestors roamed across the sky that stretched endlessly above
the desert. Unseen, they slid on the soft hiss of the breeze into villages to whisper
advice in the ears of their descendants. They howled warnings in the edges of
storms. They slipped into dreams and guided the fates of the people.

The Ancestor Wind
carried the spirits like an invisible, unruly horse leaping for the sheer joy
of motion, diving for the thrill of plummeting, laughing for the delight of
existing. The wind knocked the treetops dizzy and tried – in vain – to topple
the eternal stones. It ran unseen fingers through long pine needles and
chuckled over craggy boulders clinging to steep slopes. It dove through the
pass and skidded to an astonished halt.

A hundred . . .
a thousand . . . two thousand . . . three thousand or more
people marched steadily along the worn dirt road. The scent of the distant
riverlands clung to them, but their features marked them as sons and daughters
of the desert. The wind swirled in delighted recognition: the water workers
were returning at last.

For too many years, the
Ancestor Wind had watched these people leave, sorrow riding their backs as they
sold their labor to their enemies in exchange for the precious water needed by
their families in the desert. Just weeks ago, the river that once trickled in miserly
grumbles had suddenly swelled into full-bodied laughter. Set free from the dam
in the riverlands of Mariana, water surged into the dry fields of the desert. In
the silt-laden mouth of the mountain pass, astonished farmers sang to welcome
the water’s return before channeling it into irrigation ditches. The spring
would burst green this year, lifting that sacred color across the valleys and
plains.

Delighted at the return
of all things living and green, the Ancestor Wind sprang aloft, charging toward
the high white plumes of the towering clouds, dancing in the realm of light and
air. Then it dove back down to the people who walked in a long snake through
the Middle Pass. The wind rippled gleefully and wound through their heads and
shoulders, purring like a cat.

“The Ancestor Wind
comes to greet us!” a man cried.

A cheer rose at the
words of Tahkan Shirar, the man the Marianans called the Desert King. In his
own people’s eyes, he was not a king; he was their Harrak-Mettahl, their
honor-keeper, a role the Marianans had no words to describe. Tahkan Shirar was
craggy, like the mountains; bronzed by sun and experience. His grey-green eyes
shone like twin springs in the dry lines of his weathered face. His comment
echoed through the long line of walkers, bringing tears to eyes and smiles to
faces. Heads lifted. Hearts surged in
chests. Three thousand people raised their fingers to the wind to catch its
blessing. The scent of heat and bitter herbs flooded their nostrils. Memories
of their beloved desert swelled in their hearts as the wind touched their heads
in benediction. It rippled the copper hair of a young girl and paused.

This one was different.

The scent of water and
distant lands clung to her, along with hints of a childhood in the shadows of the
massive trees on the High Mountain slopes. The girl was formed by rain, moss,
dark pines, and black stones. The Ancestor Wind studied her. She must be the
one the black hawk had spoken about, the girl raised by the Fanten women, but
not a Fanten; trained among warriors, but not a warrior; child of the river
queen, but not accepted as their royal heir; daughter of the desert who had
never seen the sands; the one whose name meant not this, not that, but everything possible in between: Ari Ara
de Marin en Shirar, the Lost Heir to Two Thrones.

A mass of copper curls
flung out wildly from her head. Wiry muscles ran tight to bones. The girl was
strongly built, lean rather than willowy. At twelve-and-a-half, her features
had the look of stretched canvas. It was the mark of growth. Caught between
ages, Ari Ara still laughed with her child’s honest peal of delight, but
also tripped over feet that had grown longer than her experience. When she
thought no one was watching, her blue-grey eyes tracked the motions of the
older girls, surveying the terrain she would soon trek across.

The Ancestor Wind saw
all of this in a swift sweep of scrutiny. Before the girl’s curls had settled
from its ruffling touch, the wind moved on to her companions. A riverlands
warrior with night-dark hair chatted companionably with the youngest sister of
the Desert King. She had been gone six long years. The scents of fog and moss
clung to the dry iron of her desert blood. Beside her walked an old warrior. The
wind swirled in surprise. Years ago, this scarred, grey-haired man had come to
these lands bearing peace and love. Years later, he returned, heralding war and
death. Now, Shulen walked beside Tahkan Shirar like a friend. The desert
dwellers smiled at him, welcoming him instead of fighting him, celebrating him
instead of fearing him.

Confused, the wind
swept up to the high crosscurrents to ask the messenger hawks for news. While
the wind raced the clouds, it carried the tidings to the mountains peaks: the
Desert King was returning with his people and his daughter . . . and
he brought the water and an old enemy with him.

Further west along the
snake-bends of the pass, a woman built of rage and muscle, bitterness and blood,
tilted her head to the wind. Strands of auburn-dark hair whipped her cheeks and
clung to the hard facets of Moragh Shirar’s face. The wind whispered its
secrets in her ear: water, her sister, her brother the Desert King, her
long-lost niece . . . and him,
the enemy.

Her lips pulled back
from her teeth in a snarl. Under her, a roan horse stilled, hide rippling with
tension, preparing for the battle cry he sensed building in the storm of the
woman’s fury.

Shulen the Butcher had
returned, the man whose heart was hard enough to bash in heads, whose very skin
protected him like stone armor, whose hands were stained with the blood of her
people . . . including her beloved’s.

She would die before she
let his feet touch her lands. Let others sing his praises for finding her
brother’s daughter. That did not excuse him from losing her in the first place.
Let fools forgive and forget how he had led the War of Retribution, charging into
battles based on lies. The death of his wife and child along with the
riverlands queen was no excuse for the murder of her people.

Moragh Shirar wheeled
her horse in the direction of the wind’s whispers. She was a taut arrow of
sinew and strength, green eyes narrowed under her mane of hair, muscles
clenched with long-held hate, throat roughened with battle cries. When she
rode, the warrior women followed, leather tunics supple and tough, skin
weathered by the elements, lives armed with ferocity and courage. These were
the Black Ravens, sisters cloaked in mourning black, harbingers of war, talon
and beak ready for vengeance, the emblem of two wings emblazoned on their
backs.

Moragh and her riders galloped
onward. Shulen the Butcher would pay for his crimes.

Above them, the ravens
wheeled. Their caws sent a shiver through the wind.