Chapter One
Whispers of Power
Liam peered back at the forest. Even on that bright day in winter, the forest was thick enough to feel dark, with branches and vines making the sunlight patchy and the shrubbery and bush rising like walls on either side of the path. The tall trees with their rough old bark almost looked like faces.
It did not help that the forest was talking to him.
Arwen always reminded him that even the slow trees were alive, breathing, creeping, even thinking, but up until that point, they’d never spoken to him.
Liam turned away from the forest, telling himself it was the loneliness getting to him. The lighthouse had been quiet since dad had died - Grandpa wasn’t much of a talker anymore.
Before he could start his walk again, a slight breeze muttered through the tree branches behind him, causing their limbs to rub and creak against each other. He’d heard that sound countless times before, but today, he had heard something different. It was like a voice within the creaking. There it was again! As if a thousand voices were whispering at once, each one so small that it would be impossible to hear on its own, but together they could not be ignored. The voices had come from within the trees, from within the sounds of creaking and the low breath of the wind. He whirled around and stared at the forest. He couldn’t make out the words… or maybe just not understand them, but they were definitely saying something… and the same something every time too. The wind ceased, but Liam still felt strange. He was sure he had heard the words. He scowled at it, hoping maybe showing his disapproval would quiet it.
He had been walking in those woods every morning for a month now, but they hadn’t spoken to him until that day. He hoped they wouldn’t again. Among his few responsibilities as Keeper of the Light, bearing the fire to the newly dead was one of them. Every day for the moon cycle after the Darkness claimed a life, he must take a fresh torch of Astrum up to the graveyard and light the fire in the crypt. The Darkness must not awaken the dead. But winter was ending, so he hoped fewer would die by Darkness over the next couple of months.
That had been his father’s duty when he had been Keeper of the Light. Now it was Liam’s. Liam, the Keeper of the Light, at fifteen, making him the youngest in recent memory.
Liam scampered up the hill and towards the graveyard. The graveyard was not primarily headstone but small stone buildings. Standing in the morning sun were the neat rows of tombs, their stone tile roofs glistening in the sun. Each one was built out of large stone bricks that at one point had been bright gray but now were stained with moss, lichen, and ivy. Liam had not much visited the graveyard before his father’s death, but it was beautiful. Technically, as its overseer, he was now responsible for its upkeep. Though that seemed nonsensical to him since he lived farther away from the graveyard than anyone.
Liam walked up the white gravel path leading between the buildings, his boots cracking and popping against the small stones. There were plenty of things about Lownires traditions that seemed nonsensical to him, like how inexperienced children were made Keepers when they would have preferred to do anything else.
Liam walked between the tombs, trying not to think about how every single person he’d ever known, knew, or ever would know would end up in an urn in one of these little buildings. No one in Lownire ever made it farther than these buildings, and nor would he.
The blue fire torch he held in his left hand flickered brightly. Astrum was strange like that, letting off less heat than normal fires and more light. He glared at his torch, feeling a rising anger inside of him. Its light held back the tide of Darkness that threatened to overwhelm the little village of Lownire, but that same light held him in like a cage.
Liam arrived at the center of the graveyard. The field of the Offerings. A flat meadow with knee-high grass at the highest point on the hill. In the summer, it was filled with countless white wildflowers. But now, it was yellow grass sparkling with dew. Sticking out of the grass was line upon line of small headstones made out of white granite that glistened in the sunlight.
On each was carved the name of an Offering. Four stones ago stood the one name that gave him pause. ‘Arwen, Daughter of Rohiesa and Thomas, Keepers of the Light.’ Liam stared at it for a moment. He’d seen it every day for a month now, and it still gave him pause. There was his sister. Of course, there wasn’t a body under the grave. The Offerings were taken by The Beast, leaving no trace. The stones were merely a memorial.
Liam turned from the headstones and looked out at the valley.
Most of the valley below him was dominated by the leafless limbs of trees and was split in half by the coastline. The ocean curved in, like a half-moon, to take its fair share of the center of the valley, leaving the arms of the mountains to extend out and become the high cliffs. Lownire sat in the direct middle of the valley, just touching both land and the sea.
Its city wall enclosed the tightly packed wooden buildings and cobbled streets. The town was a perfect circle, and the iris of this circle was at the center of the city, where the buildings gave way to a green field of short grass. The pupil of this iris was the marble Keep, and the funeral stone -- the stone Father had been burned on.
All around the village were a few acres of farmland. The circle of clear land gave the village some distance from the tall trees. The rest of the valley was forest, hills, and, eventually, mountains.
The easternmost tip of the city wall came up to and just ever so slightly kissed the sea, the wall there keeping out the ocean waves as well as the Darkness. Liam had never met anyone from Lownire who had ventured past the mountains to the West or the ocean to the East. Well, besides Uncle Hadrian, but he had not returned yet.
Across the valley, on the northernmost tip of the cliffs, sat Liam’s home. The lighthouse. Taller than even the largest oak in the forest, it sat triumphantly on the edge of a cliff. The rocky, moss-padded cliff shot out over the ocean, taller than any of the waves that crashed against it. The graveyard had the second-best view of the valley, and the lighthouse had the best.
Further to the West of the forest, Liam could see the beginnings of the Dark Wood. The mass of trees and vines was so tightly woven that even the light of the bright morning sun only began to flirt with its edges. The forest may be old and thoughtful, but the Dark Wood had real living malice in it. The tree’s gnarled limbs kept even the summer’s sunlight from piercing their shadows. It had been those Shadows that had killed his Father.
Liam looked away from the Dark Wood. Best not to dwell on the Corruption.
*
Questions:
1. Does the beginning feel like too much exposition, or does it effectively get you up to speed?
2. How are the descriptions? To long? To short?
3. As a beginning, does this pull you in?
Part two of chapter one:
https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/MaybeAnd...
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