QSFer Elizabeth Spencer has a new queer YA fantasy steampunk book out (ace): Those Who Went Before.
The Lady in White and the Hunter of Night is Helvensgate’s most beloved children’s tale. It tells of two lovers, blessed by magic, whose quest ended with them sleeping for centuries, hand in hand, until they can be together once more.
All of it is wrong.
A thousand years ago, Adecca was sent away to serve the spirits of the dead; Mikael was exiled after being cursed by the Wood. They were each other’s best and only friends—or so Adecca thought—until, with one unexpected kiss, Mikael enchanted them both with eternal sleep.
Now Adecca has awakened, and the world is nothing like she remembers. The empire’s machines move of their own volition, a man-eating forest is growing into the city, and conflicts between the empress and the engineering guilds is spiraling out of control.
Still, Adecca could have everything she ever wanted—a home among people, actual friends!—and all she must do is ignore the supernatural mysteries writhing beneath Helvensgate and pretend she is madly in love with Mikael.
Clearly something must be sacrificed for this world to be at peace. But does it always have to be her?
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Excerpt
The villagers gave Adecca wonderful things for her funeral. They made her a feast of elk, bread, and cheese, and even a little dried fruit. They dressed her in a soft tunic, a skirt hemmed with a hundred tiny bells, and the most wonderful, cloud-soft fur coat she had ever touched. Then they painted her eyelids, lips, and the curves of her cheeks black—which made her look very adult—seated her in her litter, and carried her down to the river.
She loved every minute of it.
The entire village came to see her. There was music and singing, bonfires and food, and so, so, so much dancing. (Adecca wanted to dance, too, but they wouldn’t let her off her litter.) She did not smile and wave—even though she wanted to—because she was dead, and being dead was supposed to be solemn. She kept her excitement on the inside instead.
Her mother was waiting for them at the river. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were a raw, unhappy red. She was trying to do her duty, so she wasn’t crying, but she was only barely succeeding. She was standing beside the funerary boat, her shoulders low and her eyes focused far away, as if she was imagining running into the mountains.
Four villagers guided Adecca to the boat—the same number who would have carried a dead body, if she hadn’t been able to walk—and sat her inside. The elder approached, torch in hand, and waved it here and there. If she was any other dead, he would have set it alight so she could start her journey down the water; Adecca had to imagine it. (All the while, she tried not to smile at his twin grandsons, Gerat and Eshma, who were two of her very best friends. Gerat had joked earlier that the elder might really set the boat on fire if Adecca didn’t act serious enough, but he only looked uncomfortable now.) When the ritual was done, the villagers handed her mother a lamp, a rope, and the oars. Thence they shoved them into the current.
Adecca waited until they were in the middle of the river to say, “You don’t have to cry. I’m not afraid, I promise.”
“You’re not supposed to talk,” her mother snapped.
The river fought her mother at every stroke—it was late winter, and the melting snow had driven the river-spirit Alde into a frenzy—but it was not a long trip. Her mother ran the ship aground on the rocky shore of the Island of the Dead. It took her three times to light the lamp, and then she stood there, still and unmoving, staring at the island trembling from something that wasn’t the cold.
“The dead won’t hurt you,” Adecca reassured her. “You can walk on the island. The spirits said so.”
“I know.” Her mother looked so afraid; she sounded so angry. She swept a finger in front of her eyes to ward off angry ghosts before she walked ashore.
The Island of the Dead was a sacred place where the living were not meant to tread, and where the souls of those who had passed could travel between the world of the living and the world below. Even though Adecca could see it from the village, if she squinted very hard, she had always wondered what the island was truly like—if the animals were possessed by wayward souls, or if the trees, which looked so real from afar, were all skeletal-dead—but it looked very… plain. There were river-sounds and bird-sounds like any wild place; the forest was overgrown and wild and probably spirit-touched, but it was still budding and green.
There was one rock-lined path that led through those deep, dark trees, and it led up a very steep hill. At its top were all the sights from every epic-tale she had ever heard about the island: eight burial mounds, tall and proud, adorned with moss and flowers and ringed with sacred ropes. In the middle of them, like the iris of a giant eye, was a hole into the earth. Adecca could almost see the hint of solid ground below.
Her mother tossed one side of the rope into the pit, braced herself, and nodded toward the depths. “Give me your boots and your coat.”
Adecca had expected more ceremony than that. “I’m supposed to dance for her.”
“Yes. Down there.”
“But it’s cold.”
“It is. The Dusk Mother does not like dead skin. Take off your leather.”
“But she’s a spirit of the dead—”
“Adecca.” They were not discussing this anymore.
Adecca handed them over and shimmied down the rope. When her feet hit the ice-cold rock, her mother pulled the rope up.
Only the thinnest sliver of light touched the floor of the cave. There were tunnels down here, or an impression of them, but they were barely brighter than the inside of her eyelids. High above, her mother had started crying again. She sounded strangely muted, as if the caves swallowed the sound like they devoured light.
Author Bio
Elizabeth F. Spencer writes fantasy, steampunk, and the very occasional science fiction, usually of the sort that includes brave young people, elaborate magic, a handful of explosions, and some really delightful hats.
Her first book, Justice Unending, was published by Evernight Teen in 2016, and her short fiction has appeared in Triptych Tales, Triangulation, and Spellbound Magazine. Her next book, Those Who Went Before, will be published in early 2025.
When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s still working with words, because she happens to be a full-time editor. (Just not for novels. That’s how she stays sane.) She otherwise has three very fluffy cats, bakes way too much bread, and spends all her non-writing time reading books, playing videogames, and learning how to do way too many random crafts.
| Author Website | https://www.efspencer.com/ |
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