{"id":714,"date":"2008-10-25T22:05:16","date_gmt":"2008-10-26T03:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/\/?p=714"},"modified":"2008-10-25T22:05:16","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T03:05:16","slug":"auralias-colors-by-jeffrey-overstreet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/?p=714","title":{"rendered":"Auralia’s Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is time to play a Wild Card<\/span>!<\/strong> <\/span>Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour<\/a>. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his\/her book’s FIRST chapter!<\/p>\n

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s Wild Card author is: <\/strong><\/div>\n
Jeffrey Overstreet<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

and the book:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Auralia’s Colors (The Auralia Thread Series #1)<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

WaterBrook Press (September 4, 2007)<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jeffrey Overstreet lives in two worlds. By day, he writes about movies at LookingCloser.org and in notable publications like Christianity Today, Paste, and Image. His adventures in cinema are chronicled in his book Through a Screen Darkly. By night, he composes new stories found in fictional worlds of his own. Living in Shoreline, Washington, with his wife, Anne, a poet, he is a senior staff writer for Response Magazine at Seattle Pacific University. Auralia’s Colors (The Auralia Thread Series #1)<\/a>is his first novel. His second, Cyndere’s Midnight<\/a> continues The Auralia Thread Series.<\/p>\n

Visit the author’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Product Details:<\/p>\n

List Price: $ 13.99
\nPaperback: 352 pages
\nPublisher: WaterBrook Press (September 4, 2007)
\nLanguage: English
\nISBN-10: 1400072522
\nISBN-13: 978-1400072521<\/p>\n

AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:<\/span> <\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Old Thieves Make a Discovery<\/p>\n

Auralia lay still as death, like a discarded doll, in a burgundy tangle of rushes and spineweed on the bank of a bend in the River Throanscall, when she was discovered by an old man who did not know her name. She bore no scars, no broken bones, just the stain of inkblack soil. Contentedly, she cooed, whispered, and babbled, learning the river\u2019s language, and focused her gaze on the stormy dance of evening sky\u2014roiling purple clouds edged with blood red. The old man surmised she was waiting and listening for whoever, or whatever, had forsaken her there. Those fevered moments of his discovery burnt into the old man\u2019s memory. In the years that followed, he would hold and turn them in his mind the way an explorer ponders relics he has found in the midst of ruin. But the mysteryremained stubbornly opaque. No matter how often he exaggerated the story to impress his fireside listeners\u2014\u201cI dove into that ragin\u2019 river and caught her by the toe!\u201d \u201cI fought off that hungry river wyrm with my picker-staff just in time!\u201d\u2014he found no clue to her origins, no answers to questions of whyor how. The Gatherers, House Abascar, the Expanse\u2014the whole world might have been different had he left her there with riverwater running from her hair. \u201cThe River Girl\u201d\u2014that was what the Gatherers came to call her until she grew old enough to set them straight. Without the River Girl, the four houses of the Expanse might have perished in their troubles. But then again, some say that without the River Girl those troubles might never have come at all. This is how the spark was struck. A ruckus of crows caught Krawg\u2019s attention as he groped for berries deep in a bramble. He and Warney, the conspirator with whom he had been caught thieving so many years ago, were laboring to pay their societal debts to House Abascar. The day had been long, but Krawg\u2019s spirits were high. No officers had come to reckon their work and berate them. Not yet. Tired of straining for latesummer apples high in the boughs of ancient trees, they had put down their picker-staffs and turned to plucking sourjuice and jewelweed bushes an applecore\u2019s throw from the Throanscall. Warney was preoccupied, trying to free his thorn-snagged sleeves and leggings. So Krawg smiled, dropped his harvesting sack, and crept away to investigate the cause of the birds\u2019 cacophony. He hoped to find them eying an injured animal, maybe a broad-antlered buck he could finish off and present to the duty officers. That would be a prize grand enough to deserve preparation in King Cal-marcus\u2019s kitchens. Such a discovery might bring Krawg closer to the king\u2019s grace and a pardon. \u201cAw, will you look at that?\u201d Krawg flexed his bony fingers. The feathered curmudgeons flapped at the air over the riverbank, their gaze fixed on a disturbance in the grass. \u201cNow, hold on!\u201d called his even bonier friend. \u201cWhatcha got there? Wait for me!\u201d Twigs snapped and fabric ripped, but Warney made no progress.
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\n\u201cSpeak up now, what\u2019re them flappers squawkin\u2019 over? Are beastmen coming to kill us?\u201d \u201cStop spookin\u2019, fraidy-brain,\u201d Krawg growled, and then he gusted air throughhis nostrils. \u201cThere won\u2019t be no beastman savages out here in the afternoon.\u201d \u201cWhat is it then? Merchants?\u201d \u201cNo merchants.\u201d \u201cIs it a swarm of stingers?\u201d \u201cNope.\u201d \u201cA fangbear? River wyrms? Bramblepigs?\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t think so.\u201d \u201cSome young buster sneakin\u2019 up behind us? Come on now. What\u2019s got them birds so bothered?\u201dAccording to his nature, Krawg tossed back a lie. \u201cThey\u2019re just fightin\u2019 over a mess of reekin\u2019 twister fish they snatched out of the shallows.\u201d Groundwater closed over his feet as he made his way through the reeds on the riverbank. Increasinglyperturbed by the way Krawg was stalking their target, the crows descended to the branch of a stooping cottonbeard tree and pelted him with insults. As Krawg combed the grasses for an answer, Warney at last emerged fromthe trees with worry in his one good eye, gripping as if it were a hunting spear the long, clawed picker-staff he had used all day to drag down the higher appleboughs. Warney seemed barely more than a skeleton wrapped in loose flesh and a rough burlap cloak. \u201cWhat are they fussin\u2019 about now if they\u2019ve gone and eaten their fill?\u201dKrawg\u2019s vulturebeak nose twitched in the middle of the few undisciplined whiskers that grew where a mustache did not. He leaned forward, apprehensive, and saw not a pile of fish bones but two tiny pink hands reaching into the air. \u201cOne of the fish has got hands!\u201d gasped Warney. \u201cShush now! It isn\u2019t a pile of fish.\u201d Krawg took hold of the appleknife in his pocket. \u201cWhatever it is, it\u2019s harmless, I\u2019m sure.\u201dWarney glanced back at the woods. \u201cDon\u2019t forget to watch for you-knowwho. Duty officers\u2019ll haul us in, bottom \u2019n\u2019 blockhead, if they catch us messin\u2019with anything other than them berries. They\u2019ll ride their stinkin\u2019 lizards right through here soon. Come on now\u2026there\u2019s a nice bramble just back here. Youdon\u2019t want the duty to string us up in the hangers, do ya?\u201d \u201cGood creepin\u2019 Cragavar forest, of all the bloody wonders I ever seen\u2026 Looky!\u201d The braver Gatherer flipped his black hood back from his hairless head and bent to examine the child. Warney remained where he was. \u201cKrawg, you\u2019re givin\u2019 me the shut-mouth again. What is it, old boy?\u201d \u201cJust a creepin\u2019, crawlin\u2019 baby, it is.\u201d Krawg massaged the flab beneath his chin. \u201cMercy, Warney, look at her.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a her? How do you know?\u201d \u201cWell, howdaya think I know?\u201d Krawg reached for the child, then thought better of it. \u201cWarney, this must mean somethin\u2019. You and me\u2026findin\u2019 this.\u201dHe scanned the spaces between trees on both sides of the mist-shrouded river and confirmed that the only witnesses were crows and a tailtwitcher that clung upside down to the trunk of a birch. Warney splashed into the river shallows and prodded the submerged ground with his picker-staff before each step. The weeds around his ankles
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\nwhispered hushhh\u2026hushhh\u2026hushhh.The child convulsed twice. She coughed up droplets of water. And then she made a sound that might have been a laugh. \u201cNow that\u2019s odd.\u201d Krawg gestured to the child\u2019s tiny head. \u201cShe got brown and silver hairs. She\u2019s seen at least two seasons, I\u2019d say. Probably born before that hard freeze we had awhile back.\u201d\u201cYeah, gotta \u2019gree with ya there.\u201dWarney\u2019s eye was white as a sparrow\u2019s egg in the shadows of his hood. \u201cAnd she\u2019s not the spawn of those beastmen. Everything about her seems like a good baby girl, not some accursed cross between person and critter. Looks like she\u2019s been fed and looked after too\u2026well, until she got tossed intothe river, I suppose.\u201d \u201cGotta \u2019gree with ya there.\u201dWarney now leaned over the child, swaying like a scarecrow in the wind. \u201cShe\u2019s better fed than any of us Gatherers\u2026or crows, for that matter.\u201d The crows were quiet, watching, picking at their sharp toes. Krawg knelt and took to picking at his toes as well, poking at yellow places, which meant he was thinking hard. \u201cWe\u2019re too far east of House Bel Amica for her to belong to them proud and greedy folk. But how could she be from our good House Abascar? Folk from Abascar only step out of the house walls if King Cal-marcus tells \u2019em to. Too scared of beastmen, they are\u2026these days.\u201d \u201cGotta \u2019gree with ya there.\u201d \u201cDo you always gotta \u2019gree with me there?!\u201d Krawg snatched the pickerstaff from Warney\u2019s hands and clubbed his hooded head. Warney jumped away, growled, and bared his teeth. Krawg tossed the staff aside and rose up like a bear answering the challenge of a rat. Warney, like a rat realizing he has awakened a bear, fled back toward the quiet woods. \u201cNow don\u2019t you get it in your head to leave me here with this orphan,\u201d Krawg called, \u201cor I\u2019ll rip that patch off your dead eye!\u201d \u201cHave ya thought\u2026\u201dWarney paused, turned, and clasped his head with both hands, as if trying to stretch his mind to accommodate a significant thought. \u201cHas it occurred to ya that\u2026 Do ya think\u2026\u201d \u201cSpeak, you rangy crook!\u201d \u201cOh ballyworms, Krawg! What if she\u2019s a Northchild?\u201d Krawg stumbled back a step and narrowed his eyes at the infant. The tailtwitcher, the crows, and even the river seemed to quiet at Warney\u2019s question. But Krawg at last shook off worry. \u201cDon\u2019t shovel that vawn pile my way, Warney.You been eatin\u2019 too much of Yawny\u2019s stew, and your dreams are gettin\u2019to you. Only crazies think Northchildren are actual. There\u2019s no such thing.\u201d They watched the baby\u2019s hands sculpt shapes in the air. \u201cAnd anyway,\u201d Krawg continued, glancing northward at the sky purpling over the jagged mountains of the Forbidding Wall, \u201ceverybody knows Northchildren are taller, and they drape blankets over themselves.\u201d Nearby, branches broke with sharp echoes as something moved in the woods.\u201cGrab for a weapon,\u201d hissed Warney, \u201cbecause I smell prowling beastmen!\u201d \u201cDoubtful,\u201d said Krawg, but he bent his knees and sank into the grass. \u201cDuty officers then!\u201d In case their overseers were, in fact, looking for them, Krawg shouted, \u201cWe
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\nbetter get back to the patches, Warney! I sure don\u2019t see any berries out here.\u201d He lifted Warney\u2019s picker-staff and marched to join his friend in the trees. But Warney seemed stuck, as though the girl had tossed a rope and snared his ankle. \u201cYou know what they say. If a man leaves a good deed undone, Northchildren will come creepin\u2019 at night and drag him off into the curse of the\u2014\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not scared of you, butt-guster,\u201d Krawg whispered. \u201cNow hush before anybody hears you!\u201d The girl, aware that she was alone again, began to murmur as if talking with someone they could not see. The Gatherers watched her clap her tiny hands.A crow took wing from the cottonbeard tree and made a wide circle over the child\u2019s bed. \u201cThey want that fresh meat,\u201d Krawg observed. Warney nodded. \u201cGotta \u2019gree with ya\u2026\u201d His mouth snapped shut, and he winced. Krawg loosed a weary sigh, waved a scornful gesture at the birds, and returned to kneel beside the baby. Warney hopped back to peer over Krawg\u2019s shoulder. \u201cWhat\u2019s that she\u2019s lyin\u2019 in? That isn\u2019t a sinkhole.\u201d \u201cNo, somebody carved out this hole with their hands.\u201d \u201cNot with their hands, no. Look, Krawg\u2026toes. This Northchild\u2019s lyin\u2019 in a footprint!\u201dWarney\u2019s grin signified a victory. \u201cGotta disagree with ya there!\u201d The child had gone quiet and still. And that was what Krawg would remember for the rest of his troubled life\u2014the moment when her eyes gatheredsunset\u2019s burning hues and flickered with some element he had never seen; the way she rested, as though commanded to surrender by some voice only she could hear; the way he clenched his jaw, made his decision. A wave of wind carried a few slow leaves, a shower of twirling seedpods from the violet trees, spiders on newly flung strands, and a hint of distant music\u2014the Early Evening Verse sung by the watchman of House Abascar to mark the dusk of the day.\u201cOh, our backs are strapped now. They\u2019ll string us upside down for certain. It\u2019s late, and we\u2019re bound to be found missin\u2019.\u201dWarney\u2019s eye rolled to fix on the sun\u2019s fading beacons. \u201cLet\u2019s turn the baby over to the first officer we see, and maybe\u2014\u201d \u201cWhat do you think a duty officer sees when he looks at us, Warney? I\u2019mthe Midnight Swindler, and you\u2019re the One-Eyed Bandit! They\u2019ll say we swiped this baby from somewhere. We already been punished for our thievin\u2019. They made us live outside the walls as Gatherers, and there\u2019s only one shelf in the pantry lower than that: the dungeons.\u201d Krawg threw the picker-staff down\u2014 splack!\u2014against the wet ground. \u201cI can\u2019t hand her over, but I can\u2019t leave her either. If I do, some officer\u2019ll ride through here and stomp her into the ground. We\u2019ve got to take her. And hide her.\u201d \u201cBallyworms!\u201dWarney shuddered. \u201cYou \u2019n\u2019 me \u2019n a Northchild \u2019n\u2019 all!\u201d A commotion erupted just south of the marsh. First came a three-toned bellow, which the Gatherers recognized as the complaint of a vawn, one ofthe duty officers\u2019 reptilian steeds. Then came the din of crushed bracken and shaken trees. It was certainly an officer come to measure their progress. Krawg bent low and lifted the naked child by the arms. \u201cShe\u2019s harmless. Didn\u2019t cast no spell on me. Didn\u2019t drag me off into darkness. She isn\u2019t a
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\nNorthchild! There\u2019s no such thing.\u201d \u201cWell, let\u2019s hurry it up then,\u201d said Warney, grinning in spite of his fear. A few minutes later Krawg and Warney reached the shelter of thatched grass roofs and crooked mud walls in the woods just outside House Abascar\u2019s boundary.There, the kinder sort among the Gatherers would tend to the River Girl\u2019s needs and protect her from the dangerous sort. Warney clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling a laugh. \u201cDon\u2019t it bring back memories, Krawg? Sneakin\u2019 off with treasure like this?\u201d \u201cWarney,\u201d Krawg replied, \u201cwe\u2019ve never, never lifted treasure like this.\u201d Krawg and Warney weren\u2019t punished for carrying back the child. But they were \u201cstrung up in the hangers\u201d and dangled from their ankles there a full day, scraping the filthy gutters of their vocabulary, when it was discovered they had returned without their designated picker-staffs. Meanwhile, at the river\u2019s edge, water seeped from the soil into the footprint, turned to mud, and solidified. A mist rose, hovered over the place, then wisped away without wind to carry it. It would remain a mystery and a memoryto the three men who had found it there\u2014the two troubled Gatherers and one other. Just after Krawg and Warney had absconded with the child, a solitary rider emerged from the trees and sighted that damp impression in the grass. The young rider, small and eager, dismounted and studied the outline even as it began to fade. He pulled from the earth a riverstone and touched the face of it with his fingertips, where a dull magic blurred. The stone\u2019s color warmed, and it softened to clay under his touch. Sensing the magic, the crows on the cottonbeard branch shrieked and scattered. The boy etched a mark in the stone as similar to the contours of the footprint as he could\u2014a sculpture, an equivalent. Then he walked up and down the banks awhile, surveying the soil. When the vawn snorted impatiently, he returned and climbed back into his ornate saddle. The two-legged steed stomped off, happy to head away from the water and into the trees. No one knew of the rider\u2019s visit to the river. No one saw the record of his discovery, which he kept like a clue to a riddle. And he locked his questions up tight for fear of troubling the volatile storms within the heart of his father, the king.<\/p><\/div>\n

MY REVIEW:<\/h3>\n

I reviewed Auralia’s Colors in January. You can read my review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his\/her book’s FIRST chapter! You never know when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}