Work In Progress: Screechers, Chapter 1

Welcome to the land of Shaava 🦂

As I talked about in this post from two months ago, Screechers is a book I have been working on since 2010. Thirteen years! The book has gone through so many intense transformations in that time, and I have grown so much as a writer.

My plan in the last few years has been to take this book and start over—much as I did with The Luminaries. Same world, same characters, same general stakes and set up…but a new plot.

Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see what the new plot might be. Ha! And since I have this “polished” first part of the book, I thought I’d share it with all of you here.¹

I’m exceptionally nervous to share this with you. Partly because I think it can be better, and it hasn’t been professionally edited (only copyedited for the now defunct Ampersand app). But as I’ve mentioned before, I’m trying to get comfortable sharing the “less than perfect” and the best way to do that is to just…share more.

So below, you can read chapter one of Screechers. A story I still love, despite the years and years of trying to get it right.

Enjoy!

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Oh, and one more thing. I know I have said that Screechers is adult fantasy—and that is definitely what I thought I was writing years ago! But after reading it now, I can see this is actually young adult.

The YA version I first wrote in 2011 never got lost, even as I expanded the world, added POVs, and complicated the overall plotting.

It’s interesting for me to see that now. A few years ago, I still wasn’t able to look past what I wanted the book to be, but now I have the distance and knowledge to see what is actually at the heart of this story.

It’s a tale of a young woman who wants to save her sister in a dry, desert land where gods are real, monsters roam, and absolutely no one can be trusted.

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Chapter 1

Sometimes, it was so easy to forget everyone had died.

In fact, if Echo stared at the boiling soup just so, she could pretend Mother might be walking in at any moment. That she would scold Echo for stirring too slow. “That rice’ll stick to the bottom,” she would say. “Faster, Echo. Stir it faster.”

Echo stirred faster. Thick, salty fumes twined up her nose. Sweat beaded down her face. The kitchen was always hot, always sticky by midmorning, but with the stove’s hissing flames and soup’s rolling steam, it was twice as hot, twice as sticky.

A beam of sunlight shot through the window over the sink. With it came a gust of ocean wind, whistling high. It hit the soup’s steam, carrying it up, up, and around, and then the cruel sun revealed the contents of Echo’s pot: a whole lot of liquid and a whole lot of nothing else. No rice to stick to the bottom, no Mother to come sauntering in.

Just like that Echo’s dream evaporated. Her throat clenched shut.

Sometimes, it was so easy to forget everyone had died.

Most of the time, it was all she ever thought about. She and the other surviving kids couldn’t live off salted broth forever, and at this rate, if Echo didn’t get the vegetables growing soon, then they would join the rest of their families in Shaava’s embrace. It had been two weeks since the screechers had come, since they’d killed Echo’s parents—killed everyone’s parents. Two weeks since she and the other twenty-five kids had boarded up the rotting corpses or burned the ones too mutilated to move, and two weeks since anyone had eaten a real meal or bothered with a bath.

“No,” Echo muttered, teeth grinding in her ears. “I will keep us fed. Faster, Echo. Stir it faster.”

She stirred faster.

The wind wasn’t impressed. This time, it kicked through the window and dove for the low table in the corner, hitting long-dead roses that lay atop it. They scratched and rattled, scolding Echo for ignoring the truth: death awaits everyone.

“Yeah,” she told it. “I know.” And she did know, but for some reason this wind… it just wouldn’t let her be. Always, it thrust its way into her space, always, it thrust its way into her thoughts. Sometimes, she thought it was angry with her—that it wanted her to work harder. More gardening; less sleep. More pushing the kids; less coddling. Then other times, she thought the wind was calling to her. Begging her to leave the outpost, leave the kids, and risk everything in the world beyond.

Except there was no beyond. Blessing was the most isolated outpost in all of Shaava. There was nothing south of it but the White Dunes, the twelfth and final of the Shaavan Deserts. There was nothing east but wave and tide. West led to the Red Mountains, womb of the screechers, and north… well, north was civilization if you had an armored caravan and if you had enough fuel. Blessing had neither.

With a deft flick, Echo turned the stove knob until the flames’ hissed off. That cooking gas wouldn’t last forever, but that was a problem Echo would deal with when it came. She gave the broth a final stir, right as footsteps pounded on the sandstone steps to the apartment. Echo knew that bam-babam-babam rhythm—it was her little sister.

A heartbeat later, Nina skidded into the hazy kitchen and paused several feet away. Her cheeks were bright pink, her fingers squeezing her dress. The fabric used to be a sunny yellow, but days of wear had turned it dusty brown. Echo’s own dress had long since transformed from blue to gray. Laundry wasn’t exactly a priority since the attack.

“Well?” Echo arched one eyebrow, feeling like Mother at her sternest. Of course, if Echo was honest with herself, Mother had always been at her sternest.

Nina inched closer. Her umber-brown hair, frizzy and wild, stuck to her sweaty face. If Echo didn’t keep her own hair tied back, she’d look the same.

Nina shot a wary glance out the window. Echo followed her gaze. It was nothing but the usual clay buildings and empty alley outside, though. She huffed a groan. “Speak up, Nina. I got a lot of mouths to feed, and—”

“Arin’s giving the other kids rapture seed.”

Echo stiffened. “Rapture seed. You’re sure?”

At Nina’s nod, rage ignited in Echo’s neck. “Did you see the white seeds, Nina? Or smell the smoke? How do you know—”

“’Cos he said it!” Nina cried. “Spring-clear, Echo, he said, ‘You wanna try rapture seed?’”

The rage pulsed bigger, spreading through Echo’s shoulders. She took a step toward her sister.

“I told ‘em not to!” Nina went on, eyes pleading. “I swear I told Kezin and Tari not to, but they followed him to the bar anyhow.”

And with that, the rage erupted. It snaked down Echo’s spine. Hot. Hard. She flexed her fingers, wondering if this was how Mother felt every time she had caught Father smoking. Like she wanted to pummel in someone’s face.

“I’ll kill him,” Echo snarled. Nina winced, but Echo barely noticed. Her feet were already carrying her to the door.

Until the wind gusted in once more, grabbing at Echo’s hair as if to say, Aren’t you forgetting something? So Echo added, “Serve lunch.” Then she stormed from the kitchen and into the dim hall. Four long strides and she was through the bead curtain that hung over their front door. She pounded down the stairs and into the orange sandhall, where all the neighbors’ doors met and their shoes piled up.

Once, this space had been painted a welcoming sunset hue and decorated with Mother’s roses. Now it was stained with blood. The neighbors’. Her parents’.

Echo slipped on her sandals, careful to keep her gaze unfocused. No staring at one space for too long. She couldn’t pretend everything was fine if she had to see evidence proving otherwise. Finally, she burst out of the main beads and onto the street. The late-morning sun hit her eyes, sharp and blinding, but she knew where she was going. Arin’s father’s bar was just beyond the temple.

Echo would kill Arin. Slowly. Painfully. He deserved nothing less, the scorchin’ sea snake. Of all people, he should’ve known better. He was the oldest kid at the outpost. Almost nineteen and a whole six months older than Echo. That meant he needed to take charge. Not offer the kids slow deaths in mindless oblivion.

Echo’s feet pounded on the hard earth, kicking up yellow dust. She passed clay house after clay house, all of them boarded up. It was the only way to keep the children out and the smells of decay in.

Soon, the bar was within sight. The palm tree-shaped sign over the entrance was a dusty silhouette against the shining cliffs and harbor sun. When at last she reached the entrance and stalked through the bead curtain, she instantly choked. The air inside was almost solid with blue smoke. Her stomach heaved. She threw a hand over her mouth to keep in the gag. The last time she’d been here with rapture pipes alight, she’d come to retrieve Father before Mother cycloned into another screaming fit.

Her memories of this bar were not happy ones.

Waving a hand, she squinted through the haze. Black grime covered the floor. Thick dust layered the wooden bar at the back of the room, as well as all the bottles lining the shelves behind it. On the couch against the left wall sat four kids. Kezin and Tari were Nina’s age—only eleven—and the other two, both boys, were even younger. Just like his father, Arin must have wanted to start the addiction young.

Oh, Echo couldn’t wait to beat in his face.

A bead-covered door in the right corner led to a storage room, and since Echo didn’t see Arin’s lanky form anywhere, she assumed he was back there. She took advantage of his absence to march over to the wide-eyed kids. “Go home. All of you.”

They exchanged glances.

“Now,” Echo snapped, pointing at the door. “And I ain’t saying it again.”

Kezin leaped up first, shoving his blue cap low. “Sorry, Echo,” he mumbled. Then, as he scrambled for the door, the two other boys jumped up and followed. Tari, however, set her jaw. “I wanna try it.”

Echo gave her a withering glare. “Oh, really?”

“Yep.”

“You want to smoke that lung-scorching stuff and watch visions of things that ain’t there?” Echo planted a hand on her hip. Just like Mother. “And then you want to come out of your vision so desperate for more you’ll pay anything to get it?”

Tari gulped. “Y-yes.”

“No, you don’t, Tari. You just—”

“Let her decide for herself,” a voice drawled.

Echo jerked her head to the bar. Arin was behind it, though she hadn’t heard the storage door’s beads clatter.

“If she wants to smoke,” he added, “then let her.”

He shuffled around the bar, a tall rapture pipe in one hand and a handful of white seeds in the other.

“Yeah,” Tari said. “And I do want to.”

Echo gritted her teeth and turned her hardest glare on the girl. But Tari didn’t back down—she just scrunched up her freckled nose and glared right back.

At last, Echo flung up her hands. “Fine. Go ahead and smoke, Tari. But know that if you do, you ain’t staying with me anymore. You can find your own food. Do you understand?” She waved to Arin. “I’m betting he won’t feed you.”

Now Tari’s resolve wavered. She gulped again, two times, and her gaze darted between Arin and Echo. After several long moments, though, she gave Echo a lazy shrug as if to say, I didn’t really want to anyhow. Then she bounded off the couch and toward the door. The beads clattered at her exit.

Arin heaved a sigh, and Echo rounded on him. But some of her anger dissolved at the sight of him. He was sad—really sad. “What’re you doing?” he asked. Defeat dragged at his words and at his shoulders.

He had been Echo’s best friend when they were younger. No one else had wanted to explore the caves, trek outside the walls, or swim to the edge of the harbor. No one but her and Arin. He’d been her first kiss too. The prettiest boy in the outpost, all the girls used to say, and even if he was her best friend, Echo had been just as smitten with him as everyone else. She had even hoped he might be her Hana one day—the person she could learn the ways of passion from. Not a permanent lover, but a friend to touch and experiment with.

But then last year, he’d started smoking with his older brother, and Echo had stopped spending time with him. She didn’t even like looking at him now. He’d changed so much. Grown taller and skinnier, while his skin had lost all its golden-brown glow after too much time indoors.

He sure wasn’t the prettiest boy any longer.

“What are you doing?” Echo finally demanded, forcing herself to meet his eyes. They were red, but not lost. “Those kids are only eleven years old, Arin. Some are even younger.”

“They can think for themselves.”

“Not if they’re addicted. How much are you charging them, huh? Are you trying to make a fortune before the next caravans come? Are you hopin’ to—”

He cut in with a snort. “No one’s coming, Echo, and you know it. Stop filling their heads with dreams.” He shoved her aside and scuffed to the couch.

“It’s not dreaming.” She marched after him. “It’s survival. It’s the truth.”

He dropped to the cushions. “Keep telling yourself that, but you’ll see the truth soon enough. The screechers got all the goats and sheep, the gardens are dying, and the next caravan ain’t due for six months.”

“Maybe,” Echo said through clenched teeth, “if you would help us instead of smoking your mind away, we could make it last.”

He set the pipe on the ground between his feet and packed white seeds into the bowl at the top.

“Look,” Echo went on, trying for civility now—and trying to keep her temper under control, “I know you’re sad. So am I! But we can beat this if we all work together.”

“You sound like Hand Mira.” He laughed, a hacking, humorless sound. “Trust in Shaava and eternity will be ours? Well, we know that’s not true. The screechers came and killed us. Do you think eternity waits for my father? For my brother? No. And it doesn’t wait for your family either—”

“Don’t,” Echo cut in, “say that about Shaava. She brought the screechers for some reason.”

“To kill our parents?” He glanced up. “To leave all the kids to starve to death? What kind of reason is that, Echo?”

“One we have to honor.” Her voice shook with conviction. “Just like we have to honor our parents’ memories by staying alive.”

He stuffed more seeds in the bowl. “Listen to you. What a bunch of goat shit, Echo. You’ll see. When starvation kills you off one by one, you’ll see.”

“Kills ‘you’ off? Not us? You got other plans for dying, Arin?”

“Yes.” His chin jerked up, and he stared hard into her eyes.

“Oh.” Echo rolled her eyes. “So you’ll die from rapture seed, is that it? Is that better?”

“It’s a lot better, and I’d rather spend the rest of my days locked in beautiful dreams. At least here”—he tapped his head—”my family is still alive.”

Echo’s fingers curled around her dress in a death grip, and tears burned in her throat. The ass. The scorchin’ sea snake ass. She hated him. Hated his blasphemy, hated his willingness to just give up, and most of all, she hated him for reminding her how bad things really were.

She straightened her fingers completely taut. She had to let this go. She couldn’t save everyone, and it was clear enough that Arin didn’t want to be saved.

“If that’s your choice, Arin,” she said at last, “then all right. May Shaava protect you.” She spun on her heel and headed for the door.

“I’m not charging them anything,” Arin called.

Echo froze, glancing back. “What?”

He swiped a lit match over the bowl of seeds. “I said I’m not charging them. If the kids wanna come get glazed and die happily, then I’ll let ‘em.” He sucked from the pipe’s mouth, and the white seeds ignited. Then, as the smoke twined between his teeth, he said, “And Shaava protect you too, Echo. She’s gonna be all you have left when the end comes.”

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Echo marched to the church. Tears were the last thing she wanted, but they burned in her nose anyway. And no amount of rubbing at her prickling eyes seemed to help.

Curse Arin. Curse him for making her feel like this. She felt dirty. She needed to pray.

The church was the only brick building in their outpost, made from the white limestone of the north. Its two domed spires rose higher than anything. Reaching to the stars, their Shaavan Hand used to say. Echo stared with blurry eyes at the church’s wide, arched entrance. Fat beads used to stream over the door, but the curtain had been ripped apart during the screecher attack.

Yet who had done the shredding? Hungry, clawed screechers or desperate, fleeing outposters?

Echo’s parents had been killed in their sandhall, trying to protect Nina and her. But nothing could withstand the hate of a screecher. Nothing except Shaava, of course.

And though Echo hated to believe Arin’s words, she couldn’t help but wonder: Why them? Why hadn’t Shaava protected them?

She and Nina and their parents had gone to church every day at dawn, and they’d prayed with just as much ferocity as every other outposter. If not more. Echo loved Shaava. She loved Shaava more than she loved herself, and yet… that hadn’t protected her family from the screechers.

Echo blinked more rapidly. Droplets gathered on her cheeks.

High atop the church’s larger spire was the sunburst-shaped symbol of Shaava, wrought from gold. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. A testament to the metal-working skills of this outpost. A show of gratitude to the long-forgotten kings buried nearby.

The outpost was called Blessing because of the hoards of treasure discovered a few miles south—hoards the outposters kept secret and guarded with their lives. Hoards from dynasties so old, no one remembered them anymore. No one except the people of Blessing, for those hoards had kept their outpost prosperous and comfortable. Though only as long as no one else in Shaava learned about them.

At the center of the sunburst was a gleaming orange sunstone, the source of all power in Shaava, and a gift straight from the goddess. Even a stone as small as a fingernail held enough power in it to fuel a lamp for a year.

There was a rhythm to the sunstone’s shimmer, almost as if it pulsed and flashed with a life of its own.

“Why?” Echo shrieked at it. “Why us? Why?” Her vocal cords snapped. She clamped her lips tight and wiped her nose. She ought to be worrying about Nina and the stew, about the other kids who would be hanging around for lunch. But she just… she just couldn’t.

Echo spun away, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but the church. Away from the dark wood walls and bloodstained pews. Away from the steamy, crowded kitchen and the kids’ empty eyes.

She headed east, toward the cliffs that overlooked the endless ocean and sky. There was a small shrine at the tip of their peninsula, meant to be used for funerals, but what were Echo’s prayers if not pleas for the dead?

She picked up her pace, walking faster and faster until her knees kicked up and she ran.

Her worn sandals smacked on the smooth, dirt-packed streets, resounding off the yellow buildings like drumbeats. She swung her arms higher and faster, willing each footfall to carry her farther.

Just as her breaths grew short and shallow, she passed the last clay home. Then, reaching the greenhouse, she veered sharply left to run alongside the cliff. The ocean spanned for a turquoise eternity, and the wind licked up the jagged rock edges. It fought Echo, forced her to press harder with each step.

Well, the wind could fight her all it wanted—Echo welcomed the challenge.

Her lungs burned. She didn’t care. She pushed herself faster. Faster. By the Stars, look at her go, her father used to say. If anyone can outrun a screecher, it’s Echo.

Maybe it was true. Echo could certainly outrun all the other kids in the outpost. But as far as she could tell, speed was no use if she couldn’t outrun her tears.

She raced past the slaughtering hut and water towers, past more greenhouses and the sunstone farm, where they buried the rocks so Shaava could reimbue them with her energy. The ground grew higher with each step. She went all the way up and out until she reached the very tip of the peninsula.

A white stone hewn from the Shaavan north stood before the cliff. Echo skittered to a stop, throwing up her hands to catch herself before she fell. The rock was a whole head taller than her, and she dug her fingers into the diamond carved into its face.

Then she crumpled to her knees.

She hadn’t cried since the attack. She had thought she couldn’t. Thought Shaava had given her some unnatural strength to ignore her gaping grief.

But she was wrong. Now that she lay here, pressed against the funeral stone with sweat and tears and ocean breeze, she didn’t know if she could ever stop crying.

She’d lost her gentle, absentminded father. She’d lost her strict, beautiful mother. She’d lost everyone in a single night of blood-splattered terror…

Maybe Arin had the right of it. Maybe dying the way you chose was better than wasting away all alone.

At some point, Nina found Echo. She must’ve heard her sister’s screaming at the church, heard her stomping past the house. Nina’s brown arms encircled Echo, and she squeezed as if she had to hold her there. As if Echo might vanish like a wind-tossed kite. But Echo wasn’t going anywhere.

The wind couldn’t have her just yet.

Nina didn’t cry, and eventually, Echo’s own sobs wore down. Her ribs hurt, and her eyes were swollen, hot. And worse, she didn’t feel a Landcursed bit better.

So she rested her chin on Nina’s head and breathed in her little sister’s smell, savoring the dimensions of it. Nina had taken to using Mother’s soap. The rose scent was both strange and completely wonderful, and beneath it was the salty baby scent Echo had always known.

“Oh, Miracle Baby,” she croaked into Nina’s hair.

“I ain’t a miracle now.” Nina pulled back, looking far older than her eleven years. Mother had always called Nina that—her Miracle Baby—because she had tried and tried for so many years to carry again, but Shaava hadn’t granted her another living child. Not until Nina, anyhow.

“Sure you are,” Echo said. “You’re my miracle now.”

Nina grunted. “I saved you some lunch.”

Echo nodded. She was hungry. She couldn’t deny that, but in the last few days, she was always hungry. And she knew that the meal awaiting her wasn’t going to change that.

She leaned against the stone and stretched out her legs. Her muscles were already tightening up from the run. Had she really just wasted the afternoon by hollering and crying? What a great leader she was.

She lolled her head back. The sun seared into her eyes, hiding the outpost before her. Only the sunstone over the church showed up, winking in time to her pulse, and for a few breaths, she could pretend there was nothing in the world but her and that orange rock.

Until something heavy landed on Echo’s lap. She blinked, her vision blackened by the sun.

“Read to me about Rimes,” Nina ordered.

Ah. Echo could vaguely see the gray textbook on her lap. She groaned, even though she wasn’t truly annoyed. Nina loved the book. She could recite its words by heart, and all the black-and-white photographs were covered with grubby, child-sized fingerprints.

Mother was from the Shaavan capital of Rimes. She had promised to take the girls for a visit one day, so when Father had found this history book forgotten in a caravan’s storage room, he’d offered the driver a small gold pin in exchange. Father always joked that the driver thought he was getting the better end of the deal, but in an outpost saturated with treasure, yet barren of books, it was really the Rhet-Petil family who’d won in the end.

Since then, Nina and Echo had systematically gone through the textbook, over and over, circling all the places they wanted to see one day.

A fresh lump grew in Echo’s throat. She shoved the book off her lap.

“Please, Echo?” Nina tugged her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees.

“No.” Echo couldn’t, even if she wanted to. It was just all too… too fresh. Still brewing behind her eyes and in her chest. “You do it, Nina. You know your letters as well as I do.”

“You’re better at reading.” Nina batted her lashes. They were long like Father’s. Everyone in Blessing had those lashes, except for Echo and her mother. Growing up, it had always been a great source of envy for her. But now, it just seemed silly. She could take pleasure in Nina’s lashes, and that was more than enough.

“Well, if you’re the weaker reader,” Echo countered with a half-smile, “then that’s all the more reason for you to read.” She opened to page fifty-eight, to a picture of an enormous, spraying fountain with three white statues. The Fountain of Stars. It had a big handwritten “1” scrawled beside it. “Start here.”

“Naw.” Nina scratched her nose. “Let’s start with the Emperor’s Palace.” She flipped ahead to an enormous domed structure atop a craggy hill, surrounded by lush gardens and sandstone walls.

“The palace,” Nina read slowly, “is home to the Shaavan empress and is the largest structure in Rimes...”

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1. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping you all would LOVE THIS VERSION SO MUCH and want me to finish it. I suspect this will not be the case…but I also admit I have lost all perspective on the story at this point. It’s frankly impossible for me to guess what your reactions will be as readers.