1st 5 Pages September Workshop - French Revision 2 + Pitch

Christa French
YA

PITCH

Cate’s magic is the worst. She loves singing and dancing through the Free Cities with her traveling caravan show; magic threatens everything. Unlike normal, cookfire-and-candle magic, Cate’s manifests as wildfires. Or earthquakes. Or blood rain.

When her mother dies, Cate starts to lose control. She has to find a magic teacher, fast, and there’s only one place to look: the magician-priests of the Union – terrifying, self-mutilated, and morally opposed to such frivolities as singing, dancing, and freedom. But when Cate travels to the Union and meets her first priest, she finds the last thing she expected: love. And also that the Union is about to invade her homeland.

Cate must fight for control – not just of her magic, but of those who would use her for it. As the world erupts into war, she must make peace with her own destructive power in order to protect those she loves.

UNION is a young adult fantasy novel about making one’s place in the world, complete at 79,500 words. It will appeal to readers of Kristin Cashore, Rae Carson, and Sarah Maas.


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REVISION

I’m dreaming of my mother when fire wakes me.

My wagon is blazing, flames spread beyond saving anything but my own skin. My eyes burn; smoke strangles my screams. A crockery jar explodes, sending jagged shards to slit my cheek. The canvas cover is in tatters, burning to bright ash, revealing the night sky. And there, unmistakable even in the roaring chaos of the fire, singing through my veins as the last of it leaves my body, is the magic.

I wrap the blanket around myself and launch over the side of the wagon to the ground. Someone screams, and I hear running feet. I'm rolled over and over inside my cover. I struggle out, coughing and disoriented, a circle of indistinct faces staring down at me. Then I scramble up in panic and lurch back toward the wagon. Mama hasn’t been able to walk by herself for a year. I have to get to her.

“Cate! No!” Hands clutch at me, but I break free.

“I have to get Mama!”

“Cate!” The new voice stops me. It’s Nerissa. My best friend scrambles between me and the wagon and plants her feet, palms digging into my shoulders. Her dark hair rises behind her like flame, caught in the updraft. “Stop it! She’s not in there! Catey! Look at me!”

I blink. Try to wake up.

My mother is not in the wagon, I remember, because she is already dead.

I let Nerissa pull me back toward the others. The rest of my caravan stands a safe distance from the flames, contortionists, fortune tellers, animal trainers, and musicians all staring at the blaze that used to be my wagon. Behind them, just visible in the pre-dawn light, rise the great stone faces of what we on the island call the Gathering of the Gods: a host of well-worn statues, some lovingly preserved, some mysterious with age. Among them stands the Lady of Mist, goddess of the dead, at whose feet I personally vomited earlier tonight.

Nerissa says, "Calm down, Cate. You have to calm down.” She’s right. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to let the searing emotions of the dream fade into the night.

“Are you all right?”

I am not. I’m still wearing my green dress, slightly drunk on the wine of my mother’s funeral celebration. I have burns I can barely feel. And everything I had left of my mother is charring to cinder.

Because I can’t control the magic.

Someone tugs at my skirt. It's Boggle, the goblin who rides with our caravan. The top of his head only comes to my knees, but I see his knobby black body plainly in the firelight. He butts his head against my legs and winds around them, humming and hopping a cheerful dance.

At least someone likes my magic.

***

In the morning I sit a fair distance from the cook fire, wrapped in one of Nerissa’s blankets, and let her brew raspberry tea for both of us. Boggle sits close by, eyeing Nerissa’s proceedings and smacking his lips.

Nerissa would be with me anyway, but as of last night she’s officially also here as my babysitter. No one has decided yet what to do when I sleep, but in the daytime, they rest of the caravan will be taking shifts to stay near and keep me calm. To stave off magical catastrophe.

I pick at the dressing on my burns and wish the air would stop smelling of smoke and ash. At least, I tell myself, it only burned my wagon, and not anyone else’s. At least it wasn’t worse.

At least this time it wasn’t blood rain.

Minor fire magic is normal. I’ve met plenty of people who could heat a pot or kindle a cookfire, and our sword-swallower lines his blades with magic flame for his act. I’ve heard there are a few wild magicians in the Union – but to Unionists, Free Cities folk are all godless heretics, in need of salvation by punishment. The only wild magician I ever knew was my mother; and by the time my own wild magic showed up, she was too sick to train me.

My friend Carolaine stumbles up, still strapping on her knives, and heaves down next to us. She came all the way from Kern for the funeral, and she’s not used to the caravan's famous white liquor. Nerissa has been at the stuff since she was ten, and she's sipping more from a hip flask right now. I’d join her, but I can’t afford anything that might make me lose control.

“You look like you’ve been wadded up in a pocket,” Nerissa tells Carolaine, smoothing her own pretty blue dress. “Don’t traders learn how to drink?”

Carolaine doesn’t answer. Instead, she palms a knife and whips it into the dirt between Nerissa’s feet. It shocks me out of my self pity, and I let out a startled laugh. Nerissa sticks her tongue out at both of us.

“Kern girls learn other skills,” I snicker, picking up the knife, feeling its heft.

“You should let me teach you,” says Carolaine, her frown making it clear I’m not holding the blade right.

“I could use knife tricks in my act,” chirps Nerissa. Carolaine glowers at her.

“Weapons are not for tricks. They’re for self-defense.”

“Oh, no,” I laugh. “We don't defend ourselves with knives. Nerissa and I are caravan girls! We entertain! When that doesn’t work, we lie. And when that doesn’t work, we run away.”

“Is that your plan for the magic?” Carolaine says. "It's getting worse, Cate."

Carolaine doesn’t pull punches. That’s more fun sometimes than others, and this one lands hard. I hand the knife back. "It’s never happened in my sleep before."

"She was upset last night," Nerissa says, and scoots closer to me. She glares at Carolaine. This is like a starling glaring at a hawk. "It was her mother's funeral. That doesn't happen all the time."

"No," I say. "Carolaine's right. It's getting worse."

Nerissa bites her lip. After a moment, she offers Carolaine some tea, but the bigger girl waves it away. Nerissa gives me a cup, hands Boggle a smaller one, and drinks the rest herself, adding a generous splash from her flask.

Carolaine asks, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know,” I say, and that is the truest sentiment I’ve uttered in weeks. I’ve been trying to be strong and sometimes succeeding, but right now I’m lost. I press my eyes closed, trying to clear them. They burn from the smoke. “Mama was so sure she could teach me to control it, but at the end . . . well, Nerissa knows. At the end she couldn't remember my name."

Carolaine half-rises, then shakes her head and sits again. It seems like she wants to comfort me but doesn't know how. I smile at her, putting my caravan-girl charm to good effect. Carolaine calls this “lying with your face,” but right now I don’t care. I can’t handle her sympathy on top of everything else.

"It's okay. I said goodbye to Mama before last night." At least that much is true. My mother was a shadow for the last year, a mumbling skeleton who had to be protected from herself. I’m glad, for her sake, that she’s gone to the Other Land. But for myself . . . I could use a little help.