Gods of Earth
Authors: Craig DeLancey
BY CRAIG DELANCEY
Novels
Gods of Earth
Evolution Commandos: Well of Furies
(Predator Space series)
Short Fiction
Julie is Three
The Dark Forward
Non-fiction
Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal about the Mind and Artificial Intelligence
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 by Craig DeLancey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
ISBN-13: 9781477849156
ISBN-10: 1477849157
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2013946390
Cover Illustrated and Designed by Mark Winters
For Aletheia
CONTENTS
P
ROLOGUE
W
ALKING
M
AN
CHAPTER
1
“W
ake up, witch boy!”
The voice called to Chance Kyrien, intruding on his dream. It was a strange dream, in which he wandered alone through his house, from room to room, finding his whole family absent, and not a single candle lit against the coming dusk. But also a pleasant dream, for he walked out onto the porch, and there stood Sarah Michael, dressed in her Ranger garb, twin swords on her hips, and she strode toward him, smiling her crooked smile, her dark hair loose on her shoulders—
“Witch boy!” the plaintive voice repeated. “You can’t sleep through your baptism.”
Chance woke and sat up, making the ropes of his bed creak under the straw mattress. His brother Paul stood in the door to his room, smiling broadly, shirt untucked, shoeless, and with the suspenders of his pants drooping around his knees.
“The witch boy rises!” Paul said. “I thought maybe you were dead.”
“Go away,” Chance said. “Why’d you have to wake me? I was having a dream.”
When Paul just laughed at him, Chance got out of the bed and fetched his pants from their hook by the window. He leaned against the wall and pulled them on.
“And why are you up?” Chance asked him. Usually Chance woke an hour before Paul. And the morning had hardly started: through the rippled glass of his bedroom’s one window, yellow and red streaks of sunrise spread in the sky. A robin gave its dull dawn cry in the oak outside. His mother noisily tended the hearth below, stoking the ashes into a breakfast fire.
“Today is your birthday,” Paul said. “I can’t call you witch boy after they baptize you.”
“No one can call me witch boy,” Chance said.
“Well now,” Paul said, “perhaps I should say,
if
they baptize you. Never know—someone might denounce you.”
Chance scowled at his brother. “That’s not funny.”
Paul waved at the air, as if brushing away the thought. Paul was six months younger, but a head taller, than Chance. Some Sundays, Chance felt pain to stand with his family at Church and think how easily anyone could see that he, Chance, had been adopted. His mother and father and brother each had fair skin, broad shoulders, blue eyes, and flaming red hair. Chance was slight, with black hair, and eyes so dark that the pupils faded into the irises.
“That’s enough about you,” Paul said. “And enough about your day. Let’s talk about
my
day. I won’t be able to help in the vineyard. Not today. Nope.”
“You’ve never been a help in the vineyard,” Chance said. “Not any day. Nope.”
“There’s a reason,” Paul continued, ignoring him. “A good reason. Sarah’s father, Mr. Michael, stopped and talked to me in town yesterday.”
Chance took down his shirt and, holding it open, frowned at Paul. “So what?”
“So what? I tell you what. Sarah’s father invited me to have dinner with Sarah today, at noon. Dinner. With Sarah. And you know why, don’t you?”
“I know it ain’t because you look to be starving,” Chance said.
“I reckon Mr. Michael wants her to settle down with a man who will have a nice vineyard of his own. Not some farmer scratching potatoes out of a rocky old field.”
Chance turned red, and his mouth worked up and down as he struggled to find words.
Paul smiled and rocked back on his heels, nodding happily at the effect of his news. He opened his mouth to say something gloating, but just then their mother called from the kitchen below. “Boys!”
Paul laughed and hurried down the hall. His footsteps thudded loudly on the stairs.
Chance held his shirt still before him as he stared at the empty doorway. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, he thought. Maybe Mr. Michael would have invited me also if I had seen him in town yesterday. But then again, maybe not. Mr. Michael never said a word to Chance, other than a grudging “heya.”
Chance pulled his shirt on. No, he decided. Paul made that tale up. To tease me on my birthday. I’m seventeen today. A man. I’ll be confirmed and baptized. Everyone in the Valley will have to accept that I’m a Puriman. And today father will tell me of my inheritance. And then, after the ceremony, I’ll see Sarah Michael. And I’ll tell her I love her. I’ll finally do it.
To Chance, over these last months, it had seemed this day would never come. Their vineyard’s long growing season had stretched out eternally, as the grapes grew heavier and heavier, but never darkened or turned sweet. Chance tended the vines, working from sunrise till sunset, and yet each summer day had endured while the sun lingered on the hilltops, as if to resist carrying him closer to his birthday.
But now, suddenly, autumn had come, the grapes were dark and sweet and almost ready to harvest, and Chance had come of age. Between him and his baptism there lay only his morning chores, and then the rolling out of wine barrels for their guests, before he bathed and put on his Sunday clothes. Soon, the barn would fill with neighbors and Elders. And Sarah would move through them all in her trim Ranger clothes, hands resting on her sword hilts, her crooked smile flashing as she approached.…
Chance walked out into the hall. He hesitated, halfway to the stairs, as he passed the open door to his brother’s room. Paul’s Sunday suit hung on a dowel by the bedside, freshly cleaned and pressed. His shoes sat side by side, neatly polished, facing the door, as if impatient to walk out.
It was true, Chance realized, with a sinking heart. Paul had been invited to dine with Sarah. His brother would not have risen early, laid out the suit, and polished his good shoes for a joke.
Chance stared at the suit a long time. His brother’s braying laugh echoed up from the kitchen.
Alright, Chance thought. If he wants to play a trick on me, I’ll play a trick on him.
Chance went straight to the suit. He seized in one fist the black pants and coat, and in the other the white shirt, pulling them roughly off the dowel.
He retreated to his room and closed the door. He loosely tied his brother’s suit around his neck, pulled on his shoes, and then slid his window up. His bedroom was tucked under one corner of the roof. A massive elbow branch of an oak reached just outside. It had been a while since Chance had leapt to it, to sneak out on some night or other after his parents had gone to bed. The branch looked farther now than it did at night. He sat on the windowsill, fed one leg and then the other through the narrow opening, crouched in the frame, took a deep breath, and jumped.
His hands caught on the rough bark, and held. Swinging from branch to branch, he worked his way down to the ground. He ducked behind the trunk and scanned the surroundings. No one watched from the windows of his house. No one passed on the packed dirt road at the bottom of the hill. His father did not seem to be out yet: the door to the horse barn remained closed. Chance ran.
He had just rounded the corner of the barn when his mother stuck her head out the back door. “Chance!” Her voice echoed up the hill. She must have called for him in the house and, getting no answer, concluded that he was working in the vineyards, as he often did before breakfast. Well, Paul would tell her otherwise now. Chance kept the horse barn between himself and the back of the house as he ascended between rows of vines, staying out of sight.