1st 5 Pages July Workshop - Abdow Rev 1

Name: Emily Abdow

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Title: Knives and Ribbons

The toes of Esper’s boots, once her father’s, tipped over the cliff’s edge.

She leaned forward, peering down into the darkness, and shivered. So far up, it seemed almost soft. She hoped, for her father’s sake, that falling felt like flying.

From the royal city of Balmyra to where Esper stood, on the mountain of Deadener’s Peak, the people of Allaysia mourned. A knight had arrived at the iron gates this morning with the news: King Roran was dead.

At night, Esper’s sadness snuck upon her like an ambush. It drove her here, to the sheer, jagged drop; the only edge of the village not walled in by slabs of gray stone. She didn’t mourn for a king she’d never met, but for her father, Lord Aeric, who had served as King Roran’s chief advisor. When Lord Aeric perished in the first Bloodrose attack, King Roran waged a war against the red-cloaked rebels in revenge. With King Roran went a piece of her father’s legacy.

She wrapped her palm around the hilt of Kabar, her knife, feeling the familiar bite of the engraving on the hilt. She remembered the day her father had given her Kabar. She’d been only five.

He’d held the knife out, hilt first. A flower blossomed at the blade’s tip, stem snaking onto the hilt where thorns rose in angry points.

She’d opened her soft palms and cried out as the thorns pricked her skin, drawing blood. When she’d tried to let go he’d wrapped his hand around hers, forcing her fingers to the metal. She’d felt the press of his calluses, hardened patches in the pattern of her fresh wounds.

“As long as you wield Kabar,” he’d said, “I can keep you safe.”

That was the last time she’d seen him, twelve years ago. In those twelve years, her own palm had callused like his. When she missed him, as she did now, she clenched the hilt and dared her skin to give. But now she was too hardened to bleed; it was a hardness that ran soul-deep.

“Esper!”

The shout startled her. Her boots crunched as she tilted further than she’d planned. A pair of arms wrapped around her middle, hauling her back from the edge. His body was hot against hers, his skin sugary with the scent of his mother’s sticky snow candies. But tonight, she was in no mood for sweetness. She brought both elbows to his stomach, breaking through his embrace.

“Grower’s seeds!” she said. “Faean, you could have killed me.”

His green eyes widened. “Me?” he said. “Kill you?” He shook his head, his hair, sunrise orange, flopping against his forehead. “You’re the one trying to die the same way as your father.”

She gritted her teeth. “I would be proud,” she said, “to die fighting Bloodroses.”

Faean sighed. “I meant falling off a cliff.”

“He didn’t fall,” Esper said. “He was pushed.”

“Ah,” Faean said. His eyes glinted. “You’re waiting for a Bloodrose to push you. Let me go get my red cloak and—”

Esper slammed her shoulder into Faean’s chest. The impact sent him sprawling. His head knocked against a bulge of crystal root protruding from the mountain.

“Oof,” said Faean.

He deserved a knot on his head for his humor. He deserved worse. She pinned his elbows with her knees, her favorite victory position, and dug her weight into the bone of his joints.

Faean winced, face flushing and puffing.

“Spare my freckles,” he wheezed. “My mother says I’ve got the southern star above my left nostril.”

She pressed her knife to his pale throat. She wouldn’t cut him, of course, but she'd slap the silliness out of him with the flat of her blade.

“At least let me have one last dessert,” he begged. “I’ve got some pine sap on my chin.”

He stuck his tongue out, struggling to reach a sticky patch of amber on his pale skin, and her anger evaporated. She raised her knife, so it hovered above her best friend’s throat, now just a formality.

“Any last words?” she said. “Speak, before I flay you for my own dessert.”

Faean made a show of gasping for air. “Send Clara my love.”

“Grower’s Seeds.” Esper rolled off him, onto her back. “Couldn’t you pick better last words? How about, ‘Esper, you’re destined to be the greatest knight in Allaysia.’”

Faean rubbed the back of his head where a knot was already forming. “But you’re already so certain of that. Why waste my dying breaths making you more insufferable?”

Esper countered. “Why waste your dying breaths on a woman you’ll be too dead to marry?”

“It’s the same as wasting my living ones,” Faean said. He picked at his nails, gray with rock dust from the mines. “Clara will never choose someone from an outer ring. She’ll marry someone who reads, or Prince Rain himself.”

Esper hated when Faean talked like this, like he was worth less than those in the inner rings. His father had mined ore for barely five copper seeds a day before losing his arm in a mining accident. Now, Faean labored beneath the mountain, and his mother did her best to help by selling her sticky snow candies for a half copper each.

If Faean’s father could read, he could have made a living by lending seeds or recording trades. But reading was a blessing reserved for the innermost ring. Because one’s ring was determined by how many seeds one paid as tribute to the Grower, Faean’s family tree couldn’t be replanted in a ring closer to the Grower’s Tree.

“You won’t be in the outer ring forever,” Esper said. “Not once you become a knight.”

Faean was quiet.

“Come on.” Esper rose to her feet, holding out her hand. Faean took it and she pulled him up. The moment he steadied himself, she slid her fingers from his and delivered a blow to his shoulder. This one was not powered by rage but tempered. After all, she needed her training partner to be well enough so that she could batter him again tomorrow night.

They sparred, boots slipping and sliding on thick crystal roots. The roots flickered with silver ether, the world’s lifeforce, which flowed from deep beneath the mountain into the trunk of the Grower’s Tree.

Even by the cliff’s edge, Esper could see the great tree towering at the center of the village, a blur of bright silver light with a translucent crystal outline. She looked away, blinking, the shape seared into the underside of her eyelids.

Faean landed a blow to her jaw.

Her teeth snapped together, dark spots joining the light. She dropped to a crouch and spun, sweeping out her boot. Her foot connected with the back of Faean’s knees, and he fell forward, hands splayed against a root.

He was up before she could pin him. They circled each other, boots performing a memorized dance among the roots.

“That’s the only time I can get you,” Faean said. “When you’re distracted by the Grower’s Tree.”

“It’s blinding,” Esper said.

Faean raised an eyebrow. “Not if you don’t look.”

“Of course,” Esper said. “I’ll just ignore the divine source of life. The one so powerful only the Planters can be trusted to protect it.”

“I don’t trust the Planters,” Faean said, matter-of-factly.

Esper stumbled over a root.

Faean didn’t use her weakness to strike. “It’s time they shared their power,” he said.