Excerpts from Book 1

- One -

Dagny spent hours watching her mother’s eyes. Watching for signs showing the least bit of life. Watching, and imagining her mother reaching for ghosts no one else could or would ever follow. And she did so always with the fool’s hope her mother might finally turn away from those ghosts to look, if only once, upon her daughter’s crestfallen face.

And so she did. On a Tuesday morning. Three years to the day. Dagny, so often her custom, knelt by her mother’s bedside. In that moment, and rather unexpectedly, the frail whisp of a woman spread her sunken lids wide, as if trying to push their contents towards the sky. Then, without a hint of warning, she turned to face her eldest child.

Her gaze finally seizing her daughter’s almond-shaped eyes, the mother reached back for the window and smiled, whispering, in the softest spritely voice Dagny had heard in her short, somber life.

Do you see, my sweet little girl?

Then her mother exhaled a last, shallow breath, and smilingly died.

And now Dagny saw. Or, at least, she thought she saw what she imagined her mother had seen. Would her final breath also follow? Whether or not it would, Dagny knew she wasn’t about to exhale with a smile.

Instead, she anxiously clenched her teeth while unhooking her feet. But as she slowly pried herself from the old mahogany bench, the silver-white light began to drift towards the child. Moving away from the kitchen’s cast-iron stove, the shape mimed the blurred lines of a person. Perhaps a poor imitation of one, ill-proportioned and bowed, but clearly a figure with what looked to be a head and two uncomfortably stretched arms.

Panicked, Dagny corkscrewed herself up and away from the chapped wooden table. Knocking the contents of her bowl to the floor, she screamed and ran for the hall.

- Four -

Dagny spent that afternoon and part of the early evening skimming through the book. Though she understood very little of the actual content, she had never known such a kinship with the woman she’d lost. She also found her mother’s sketches quite beautiful.

And then a thought rippled through her mind. Had her grandfather actually ever opened this book? Had he seen its vandalized pages? For her part, Dagny couldn’t care less. As she ran her fingers over the yellowing parchment and the fading black led of her mother’s drawings, she fiercely clung to the part of her mother which had died long before they’d met.

Sprawled out on the bear skin rug in her grandfather’s study, Dagny had tuned out the rest of the world. Hours passed as she mused over her mother’s scribbles and unfamiliar symbols of text.

Absorbed by her book, Dagny jumped, startled and short of breath, when her grandfather’s shouts finally reached her ears from outside.

Leaving the book on the study floor, Dagny leapt to her feet and burst into the kitchen. From the window, she watched her grandfather emerge from the woods. The old Dwarf again called for her in a hurried and broken voice.

Concerned by the unfamiliar panic of her grandfather’s tone, Dagny pulled her jacket and hat off their hook, slipped on her boots, and ran outside. As she got closer to her grandfather, the girl stopped dead in her tracks.

The old Dwarf stood at the edge of the wood, exhausted, his cloak covered in blood. Over his shoulder slung a wild boar, but much bigger than any hog Dagny had ever seen, whether on the screen, in person, or gracing a page. Her jaw dropped when she saw a third tusk growing out from the top of its blood-spattered snout.

Don’t just stand there, girl. Get me the sled from the shed. Quickly!

Her grandfather’s purpose and strength startled the child into motion. Dagny sprinted to the shed built just off to the side of the property, its rear turned towards the forest. A moment later she hurried back, pulling a large sled made of wood planks and steel runners, and tied to a thick, hemp-wound rope. As soon as she reached her grandfather, he clumsily threw the beast onto the sled before collapsing. His knees hit the snow-covered ground with a thud. For the first time since meeting her grandfather, Dagny saw weariness line his stalwart, grizzled face.

Are you OK?

The old Dwarf looked up at the child. Beaten down and just about ready to pass out, Dagny’s grandfather forced his expression back to one of resolve, and nodded. He then motioned for her to help him back up.

It’s nothin’. Just a scratch. That pig caught me off guard. Never saw the damn thing comin’. Clipped my leg right out from under me. I’ll be fine. Now stop gawking and help me get this beast to my shed.

- Nine -

Aina, slowly easing her own breath, walked over to the girl and sat down on the end of the bed. She then placed her hand on Dagny’s right foot. As she looked at the child with her comforting eyes, she noticed the faintest glow emanating from between Dagny’s fingers. The same fingers strangling the blue stone. But the Dwarf said nothing of the light, focusing her attention on Dagny’s anxious face.

Are you alright, child?

Dagny heard Aina’s voice as though from across a deep, far-reaching chasm, invisible and inhaling all sound and all life. She did not know how to respond. The screaming echoed in her head, and her heart pounded to the winged beat of an unsettling song, a song only Dagny could hear. All the while, her eyes darted back and forth from one Dwarf to the next trying to orient themselves as everything spun around the terrified girl.

Aina slid a little further up the mattress and wrapped her arm around Dagny as the other two Dwarves cautiously sat down on Durinn’s bed, and looked on. Gently stroking Dagny’s densely feral, dark hair, Aina noticed the girl’s breathing beginning to slow.

Removed from the initial shock of her screams, Dagny finally looked over at the Dwarf and burst into tears. Aina caressed the girl’s head.

It’s OK, child. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here.

Aina’s words gradually eased Dagny’s mind. And as her panicked thoughts dimmed, so did the light emanating from between her fingers.

Slowly, the Dwarf reached towards Dagny’s hand and massaged her palm away from the jewel. Durinn and Breda sat silently, though anxiously, on the edge of the other bed, and watched.

Dagny’s grandfather, his pipe in his mouth, recalled an old Slavic wood-carving of a pagan god chiseled into the bark of a cottonwood tree. The slopes and furrows shown particularly well along the brow and eyes of his medieval face. Only the smoke slowly seeping from his pipe gave any indication of life in an otherwise motionless gaze.

But within that stillness, the old Dwarf’s mind raced at a pace long forgotten. Not since his daughter’s disappearance had Durinn felt such unease. She two had her occasional unsettling dream not long before she chose to abandon him, and the pendant. But having witnessed Dagny’s waking, he couldn’t help but wonder whether or not the two were aligned.

As Aina comforted her, Dagny, recognizing the three Dwarves were patiently waiting to find out why she screamed, managed to organize her thoughts into some sort of coherent mixture of words.

I . . . I heard them screaming. Or . . . actually . . . I felt their screams. So faded. So much pain. So much fear. So many of them. Helpless. Betrayed. They begged, begged for help. But . . . I couldn’t help them. I was them. I was them! And I too couldn’t move.

Aina brushed Dagny’s hair with her fingers as Breda presently spoke.

Who are them, Dagny? And where?