Brownbird's Luck
Book I of The Land Behind the Veil
Sample
Deila wanted to see. She left the shutters open in her room that night, watching the fields until she dropped into sleep.
She had a dream she'd had many times, but clearer this time than before. She was standing in a meadow, lush with grass and splotched with flowers. Painted daisies, buttercups, bluebells, hollyhocks, primroses, and dozens of flowers that Deila couldn't name surrounded her. There were so many flowers that she couldn’t move without stepping on them. The flowers’ perfume and glowing colors made the place seemed unreal even as a dream. It was a green, fertile place, totally opposite of the flat, arid land she knew.
Deila stood in the middle of a circle of strange, tall people with long hair the color of wheat-gold, bronze-gold, beaten-gold, and white gold. She was taller in the dream, too — nearly as tall as Mr. Hiles — for she stood at eye level with them. The strange people danced, humming a melody that seemed to thrum from their skin, as well as their noses and mouths.
She watched them unafraid. In some odd way, they were more familiar to her than the flatlander farmers and children she’d grown up with. She stood calm and still while a handsome young man with wheat-gold hair placed a silver cloak around her shoulders. The youth wore a golden collar, reminding Deila of the finery worn by Belden noblemen. The cloak was finely woven mesh that warmed her skin yet was cool to the touch, like metal. It fitted itself around her arms and waist, then closed tight, forming an impenetrable barrier.
A word trickled through her mind. Chain mail.
Had the strange people said that, or had she imagined that the shirt was a type of mail from her history lessons?
The shirt tingled against her skin as if alive. She lifted her arms, spreading her fingers before her face. The people answered her gesture, spreading their slender fingers before their angular faces as if forming masks.
The handsome youth swept his arm to the sky.
"Go."
“Go?”
She moved her hair aside to be sure she’d heard correctly. Did they want her to leave? Had she done something wrong?
Her tresses felt odd. She pulled a hank forward, then dropped it in alarm. This wasn’t her hair! This hair was thick and wavy. This hair was the burnished gold of autumn wheat. This wasn’t her limp, brown hair.
She pushed it back, frowning as her fingers felt something sharp. A leaf caught in her tresses, perhaps? No! Her ear. Wait. This wasn’t her ear, with its oddly bumpy shape. This ear was smooth and its top came to a definite point.
She looked up, her mouth forming words of wonder without sound. The young man wearing the golden collar smiled and pushed his hair aside so she could see that his ears were pointed too.
"You are one of us," he murmured.
He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his gauze tunic, turned, and showed her the back of his left shoulder. A little white scar, shaped like the crescent moon, marked his smooth flesh. Deila pushed back her tunic, but her left shoulder was bare.
"It will come," the elf said. "Be ready. Now go. Seek your gift."
Deila blinked. The elves were replaced by a night sky sprinkled with stars. A crescent moon, heading toward the full, floated overhead. A pure white unicorn galloped into view. It reared and neighed, the curve of its horn matching the crescent moon's shape.
She woke, right hand clutching her left shoulder. She pulled her hand free and felt her ears. Bumpy and irregular as always. She lit her candle and sat, looking into the small mirror on the wall above her greasewood dresser. Her face was round as ever, her dull brown hair hung limp and straight to her elbows. She reached for a comb, then stopped. Something was tapping on her window. She'd fallen asleep with the shutters open, and little white moths bumped across the glass, attracted by her candlelight.
She heard another noise. A horse's whinny. She looked toward the barn. A strip of gray lit the predawn sky. The whinny sounded again. Was it Molly? Or … or the thing Mr. Hiles had spoken of — the dark creature that wandered the night, stealing flesh and blood and leaving only the hides of its victims?
Something glowed in the fields, as if someone was moving through the flax holding a lantern. The tall stalks parted. Was the sharecropper coming to speak with Da? No. The glow was too big to be a lantern. Another fire?
She shivered. Blinked. Rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't still dreaming. The glow took shape, becoming horselike, its rider holding a flaming sword. No, there was no rider—the sword grew from its head. Wait — there were two shapes — one gold, one silvery white. The gold shape slipped into the barn, opening the locked door with a touch of its horn. The other stood guard. Deila heard another whinny. This time it was Molly's neigh.
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