Behind the Story

A Story About...

This novel is about wars which have their roots in the long past. This is about hating people because you feel you should, for wrongs done in the past by other people. It asks whether it is a betrayal to accept death and life, and move on. In this story, everyone loses in some way or other. There is no winning in a cycle of hate.

A major influence while writing was Frazer's "The Golden Bough". I was reading through his exploration of the restrictions placed on rulers bound to their lands, such as the Mikado (who ate each day from a plate created just for him, and which was destroyed afterward, since it was believed that part of the virtue of the land as embodied by the Mikado would be transferred to the plate).

Drafting

"The Silence of Medair" is a good example of the disorganised way in which I write. Not for me a careful outline, nor any idea of themes or conclusions. With occasional exceptions, my novels are written from a scene or an image which I then do my best to explain.

Medair started out as a story called "Voices" and while it begins in the same place, with the same trigger event, it executes itself quite differently:

[Leave.] A jeering boy's voice, quite young.

Medair looked up. It was a reaction she had not rid herself of, though she knew there was nothing to see. "What now?" she asked, with ungracious irritation.

[Leave.] A different voice, still male, older, spite and antagonism more apparent.

It was a warm day, sunny and sluggish. All around her were the sounds of Spring turning to Summer. Birds. There were always birds on the high slopes. Bees, a soft, deep buzz accompanying their drunken movements. She could smell the flowers they visited. The breeze carried that scent as it whisked leaves into motion, whistled through branches and low over the grass. She sat alone, high, high on one of the slopes where goats had once been taken to graze. The whole world stretched out before her. Very directly down, past the wooded middle slopes and patchily cleared lower reaches, a river snaked through farmland left untilled before being swallowed by the forest which was so useful in promoting isolation. There was a dark blot on the curve of the north-eastern horizon, which she might be imagining, thanks to having passed through the distant city, beyond thick forest, growing back towards a size reminiscent of the ruins it stood upon. To the partly visible west, the land turned gold. Grasslands. She had once watched them burn from her high vantage point. Black smoke had muddied the sunset and a red horizon had lasted long into the night. Too long ago, the first time she had visited Bariback Mountain.

A very pleasant spot, one of her favourites. The purple and white flowers could not be plucked as keepsakes. They died within minutes, their scent fading to nothing. Only those who climbed to this eagle's vantage would ever know the scent of the Bariback violet.

She did not want to move. Did not want to put the discarded shirt, leather jerkin and boots back over her sweaty flesh. And only the high slopes had the pleasantly cooling breeze. But they rarely gave her direct orders.

"You want me to go back to the cottage?" she asked, with a resigned sigh, closing the heavy leather book she had lugged all this way.

[Dolt.] The Empress's voice. She had heard that one often enough to recognise it.

Medair waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. She debated ignoring them. Still, she'd never recapture that sense of peace now that they'd intruded. She'd spend the rest of the morning wondering what the order meant. Perhaps... She turned her attention to the trees of the middle slopes, but there was no spiral of smoke to indicate the cottage was on fire.

Sighing, she crammed her long, somewhat dirty, bare feet into socks and then boots, frowning at the worn spots which meant she'd soon need a new pair, wrinkling her nose at the musty scent. Picked up her jerkin and slipped her arms into it, but did not fasten it at the front, tied the shirt about her waist. The skin of her breasts was pale and untanned, very white in contrast to the dark leather. The purplish stain she'd tried on this jerkin had resulted in a mottled, uneven colour, but it was not displeasing. It matched her hair which, while not purple, was certainly mottled, shading from dark goldy brown at the newest roots to near white at the tips. The sun's work, bleaching colour from her hair even as it erratically darkened her exposed skin. All mottled this spring, from dark hazel eyes of green and blue and brown to the patched trousers, one of a pair which had suffered because she had neglected to think of what she would need to live away from others over a winter, without handy seamstresses and tanners to turn to.

It was a long way down the mountain. She meandered, a part of her watching for any hint of what might have prompted her pests to speak to her, but the oppressive warmth of the day - much increased out of the high breezes - made her disinclined to speed or effort. The book, one of the many which had made her winter home such a find, was even more of a burden than it had been during the ascent, the leather feeling unpleasant beneath sweaty fingers. But the grand and splendid solitude had been worth it, had become something she craved, needed, suffered without.

The possibilities of this story caught me. The woman was obviously used to the voices, she considered them a nuisance, but something she did not quite dare ignore. So she went down the mountain to her makeshift home, a hut abandoned after plague, and snatched up a dusty satchel which had apparently once been very important to her. From this she removed a ring which allowed her to become invisible, and she waited for her unexpected visitors: a group of people who had been sent to bring back "the one who lives on Bariback Mountain". Hearing this, the woman immediately stole the hunters' horses and left.

At that time I didn't know what her background was, but I knew she was the subject of a prophecy which claimed that she would be the pivotal advantage in an upcoming war, and that the voices which had warned her to flee emanated from an enchanted pack of cards which positively haunted her. By the next chapter she had some history. She was the hero who quested for the artefact to win the war, and found it. Only to return too late. Five hundred years too late, to be precise.

Twelve chapters later I realised the voices were completely irrelevant to the plot and edited them and their pack of cards out of the story.