Pitch 23: Dive

Name: Lauren Spieller
Title: DIVE
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 56000

Pitch: 

Fifteen-year-old Kiro has been training to become a cliff diver since he was small, but his dream of completing this male rite of passage is put on hold when a strange girl demands to participate in the male-only dive.
 
First 250:
 

The cliff drops off so suddenly you could miss it in the dark. My people say many did, upon a time, but we’ve since learned to be mindful of the way the earth feels beneath our feet. The sharp dig of a jagged rock, the cool brush of a tall reed: they mean more to you when they are the last thing you feel before you take the dive.
         I have yet to take the sacred leap off the upper cliffs of Makai, but I learned these things from the words of men. Although I always long for the dive, never have I felt it in my bones as I do tonight, standing among my tribesmen, our torches held above our heads in prayer for my father.
         My brother steps forward, his face lifted to the winter sky. “We send the songs of our hearts to you, Chief Nagandi, and we ask that you carry them with you into the next world.”
Tan’s voice is strong and clear, but I know too well the sorrow that sits heavy in his chest. I wish to reach for his hand, but I’m too old for such displays, so I lift my torch higher. I should be singing the prayer along with my brother and our kin, but I cannot bring myself to voice these final words, even though a year has passed since my father died.
Instead, I stare at the grave faces of my fellows, lit by fire and moon.