Awaken

Awaken

Book One of the New Bloods
Trilogy

Michelle Bryan

Copyright 2014 by Michelle Bryan

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art and Design by Laura Gordon
(www.thebookcovermachine.com).

ISBN: 978149300866
(paperback)

ISBN: 9780993698507 (e-book)

This is a work of fiction. Characters,
settings, names and occurrences are a product of the author’s
imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or
dead, places or settings, and or/occurrences. Any incidences of
resemblance are purely coincidental.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my husband
Ernie, my son Adam, and best buds Glenda and Paul. I would not have
made it this far without you. Thank you all for my own
‘awakening.’

Chapter 1 Rivercross

Chapter 2 The Sand Lands

Chapter 3 Mountain Gulch

Chapter 4 The Raiders Camp

Chapter 5 Gray Valley

Chapter 6 Iron Bones

Chapter 7 Littlepass

Chapter 8 Sanctuary

It’s still dark outside, not quite
morning, but I lay wide awake. The sun has yet to rise and start
heating up the day. Today is my born day, my eighteenth year. I am,
as Miz Emma would say, officially a grown woman. I don’t feel no
different. I get out of bed, pull on my tunic and trousers, braid
my hair, wash my face in the basin of water beside my bed. My
morning ritual. Born day or not I still have traps to check. My
worn leather boots are laying under the bed where I dropped them
last evening. I pull them on and lace ‘em up real tight. I can hear
gra’da snoring on the other side of the tin wall that separates my
bed from the rest of the shanty. I grin to myself. With that gods
awful racket it’s no wonder I cain’t sleep. Quietly, so as not to
disturb him, I tiptoe around him sleeping on his cot in front of
the cold hearth. I don’t want to wake him. He’s been having
troubles sleeping as of late.

On the wooden table next to my
waterskin and hunting knife sits a surprise. Waiting there for me
to find is a small bowl of sweet bush berries and a faded blue neck
wrapper. My born day gift. It brings a smile to my face. Gra’da
never forgets. The calico cloth looks a mite familiar though. I
think it was once maybe a piece of Miz Emma’s apron, but it don’t
matter. I know he would have made her a fair trade for the cloth,
maybe some jerky or dried taters, something from the cellar.
Although these days there weren’t too much left in there, it was
running mighty low.

I wonder to myself how he had gotten
the berries. You had to walk a fair ways now for berries and ever
since gra’da fell off of the shanty while fixing the roof his leg’s
been bothering him something fierce. My guess was he talked Ben
into fetching ‘em. However he got them they look mighty tasty. I
pop one into my mouth and bite and the sweet flavor bursts across
my tongue. I cover the rest in the biscuit cloth, saving them for
later tonight but the wrapper I tie around my neck. It’ll
definitely come in handy today out in the sand lands. The cloth is
real soft and smells like washin’ soap. I hold it up to my nose and
take a deep breath. It’s then I realize Gra’da is watching me,
smiling under his bushy gray whiskers. I ain’t even noticed the
snoring had stopped.

His hair is all sticking up from his
sleeping.

“
You found your gift alright
then,” he says and I smile.

“
Aye. Its lovely gra’da,
truly is. Thank you.”

I go to him, kiss his wrinkled cheek,
pull his blanket over his shoulders.

“
Sleep now,” I say. “It’s
still barely mornin’ yet.”

“
You taking the bow?” he
asks as he watches me walk back to the table.

I nod as I put the knife and waterskin
in my slingbag and hook the bow and quiver over my
shoulder.

“
Just in case. You never
know when you’re gonna sight a wild rabbit or such,” I
say.

“
Well don’t stray too
far…there’s been some sighting’s of a couple of wild wolflings
roamin’ to the north. You don’t wanna run into them.”

I nod again at his words. “Aye, I heard
‘bout that.”

“
Be careful girlie,” he
says.

I grin to myself at his worry…it was
the same thing everytime. I been doing our hunting for years. Think
he woulda got over the worrying by now.

“
I will gra’da…I’ll be back
before noon.”

I cover my head with my hat, pick up my
slingbag and head out. The sun is just starting to crest the
horizon but the morning is already warm. It was gonna be another
scorcher.

There’s another soul out just as early
as me. Shelly is already at the well in the center of the shanties
filling her cooking pot. She smiles at me as I join her to fill my
water skin.

“
Mornin’ Tara,” she says and
I nod a greeting. “Happy born day.”

“
Thank you,” I
say.

“
Eighteenth if I recall…gods
the time does fly by. Seems like it’s only been a few years since
your gra’da brought you home.” She shakes her head like she cain’t
believe her own words.

“
It’s gonna be a grand
celebration tonight for certain. It’s not every day you becomes a
woman now is it. Thomas was already out and found a nice big hunk
of prickly wood for tonight’s fire. He says the secret to a good
celebration is a slow burning fire and a fast burning whiskey.” She
laughs at herself. I laugh too though I don’t think it’s funny at
all but I don’t wanna be ill mannered.

“
Why I remember for my
eighteenth born day we…”

“
Ma….hurry up with the
water! I’m starvin’!” Young Thomas, one of Shelly’s two young’uns
yells at her from their shanty door. Thank gods, I think. Shelly is
a fine woman but once she starts talking she don’t know how to shut
up.

“
I’m comin’!” she yells
back. Then to me “I’ll see you tonight child.”

“
Aye, you will,” I say. I
cap my waterskin and watch her hauling the heavy black metal pot
towards the shanty thinking maybe I should help but then young
Thomas runs out to meet her. He grins at me and waves as he takes
the pot from his ma. I wave back. I like him…he’s a good
boy.

I don’t meet nobody else. The rest of
the shanties are all quiet and still. Everybody’s either still
sleeping or already out trying to garner some kind of offering from
this barren land. I don’t even meet Lou which I think is a mite
peculiar. He’s always up before dawn working on his copper still,
shining and cleaning. I truly believe he thinks more of that still
then he does his own shanty. Then again I guess you cain’t get
whiskey from a shanty, and Lou...well, he liked his
whiskey.

I trudge over the dry earth heading out
of the village, each step sending up a puff of dust into the air.
Ain’t seen no rain for quite some time now. We keep hoping. We see
dark clouds on the horizon sometimes and we pray to the gods that
they make it this far, but they don’t. They just break up and
disappear before they get anywhere near us. Gra’da believes the
rain will come. He says it always does, that the gods wouldn’t be
so cruel. I cain’t understand why he thinks this ‘cause if the
stories of the old folk is to be believed, the gods have always
been cruel.

The old folk believe that the land
wasn’t always this way, dry and barren. I grew up hearing stories
of how once long ago the land had been green and alive. How every
kind of plant imaginable had grown wild and that crops had covered
fields as far as your eye could see, just waiting for the harvest.
It was said that rivers ran swift and clear and were so full of
fish they looked like shadows moving in the water. They would tell
us young’uns of how the settlers long before us had built huge
buildings called shop markets filled with food and supplies and you
could just walk right in and take what you wanted! And that those
same settlers could travel over the sand lands, in a day no less,
in moving machines called ‘veacals’, and fly through the
air!

Those stories were passed down through
the years and I heard ‘em over and over again. And like every other
young’un I listened to them all wide eyed and reckoned every word
to be the gods honest truth.

I don’t rightly know if I believe ‘em
anymore. It was my eighteenth born day, I should not be believing
young’un tales, even if gra’da swore they were all true. He said
when he was a boy himself he saw one of their veacals, the flying
kind. Or what was left of it anyways. There weren’t much left of
anything from before the Shift. The Shift…that was what the old
folk called…well whatever it was that happened to the lands a long
time ago. Oh I ain’t that simple. I know there’s some truth to the
stories. I seen for myself ruins of old settler buildings, rotted
away and half buried by the sands. And just about two leagues from
Rivercross there was an old relic field that we call the pickin’
grounds. Found things there I cain’t rightly explain but they come
in real handy. Something awful bad must have happened to all those
folk for ‘em all to disappear like that. The old folk say it was a
great war that killed off most of the folk or changed them into
muties. The say the war broke the land too and made it the way we
know it, a dry, dusty barren land scorched by the sun and cruel to
every living creature that now walked upon it. If this was all true
and the gods allowed for all that to happen, then I don’t believe
they truly care if the rains come or not.

I pull the brim of my hat down a bit
lower to shield my eyes. The sun is climbing now in the cloudless
blue sky and getting brighter. I look out over the landscape that
lies before me, shimmering already in the morning heat. The hard
baked, cracked ground I’m walking on with its sparse scraggly brush
and stunted prickly trees that only grow to your waist is so unlike
the green wet lands of the stories that I cain’t help but laugh at
us young’uns for being foolish enough to believe them at all. Don’t
even know why the stories were knocking around in my head this
morning. Maybe ‘cause it was my born day and I was thinking about
tonight’s celebration.

Born days were real special in
Rivercross. We ain’t usually got much cause for celebratin’ so when
we do the whole village gets involved. There would be food,
storytelling, music. Gra’da or Thomas usually did the storytelling,
and Shelly, well even though that woman’s voice hurt your ears from
her talking, her singing could bring you to tears it was so lovely.
Lou would break out his brewed whiskey…that always made the old
folk smile. And just thinking about Miz Emma’s sweet berry bread
made my mouth water. She always made berry bread for everybody’s
born day, if we could get berries that is, and it was the best I
ever tasted. Well it was the only I ever tasted but that don’t mean
it weren’t the best. Gra’da always said there wasn’t none better in
the world but I reckon he ain’t been more than two days travel from
Rivercross then I have ever done.

Rivercross is my home. Lived here my
whole life. Not much to look at. Ten shanties built out of whatever
could be scavenged from the pickin’ grounds. Mostly plastic and
metal, a bit of rock, some wood if you were lucky enough to find
it. About twenty five of us or so lived here, mainly old folk.
Besides myself there were only three other young’uns. There used to
be more but sickness came about five years ago and took some of the
folk, old and young alike. Even gra’da fell mighty sickly. I tended
to him for days, wiping down his fevered face, holding his hand,
willing him to live. He had been the only lucky one, he had fought
it off. The others...they weren’t so lucky. It didn’t affect me
none though. I cain’t remember ever being sickly a day in my life,
but I do remember that. It had been a real bad time.

Rivercross was just a good a place to
live as any, I reckon, and better then some. We were family. We
looked out for one another. We grew what we were able, in the tired
soil. Sometimes if we were real lucky we’d get enough rain for a
fine harvest of taters or yellow corn. It was always a good year
when that happened. We foraged for some, hunted and trapped what
game we could find. Hunting had been a lot easier with gra’das iron
shooter but we ain’t had no lead slugs for it going on two years
now, so I did my hunting with my cross bow. Gra’da said I was a
natural with the bow and the snare wires we got off a trader some
time back. Cain’t rightly remember what we traded for ‘em but it
was the best trade we ever done. Dirt dog meat was the main source
of food for the folk of Rivercross now and my snare wires did most
of the supplying. I don’t mind. I look forward to checking my trap
line every morning, up and out before the sun got too hot and the
day so dry so that all you could taste was sand grits. It was quiet
and peaceful and allowed me time to think. And sometimes, when I
was just standing, listening, watching for the sun to rise, I could
swear the land would speak to me. Nuthin like real words….nah that
would be bat shite crazy. But I swear I could hear it waking from
its nightly slumber and welcoming the sun. I could even tell
sometimes when the rain was going to fall ‘cause I could feel the
lands eagerness for the water.