Table of Contents
Praise for Blood Indigo
Title Page
Dedication
Blood Indigo
The storyKeeper Speaks…
1 – Alekšu
2 – Tokela
3 – Anahli
4 – Madoc
5 – Into outLands
6 – Hearth
7 – Outlier
8 - Birth
9 – Council
10 - Indigo
11 - Dancer
12 - Trickster
13 - Breaking
14 – Daughter of Wind
15 – Accords
16 – Trial & Trust
17 - Shelter
18 – Son of the Lost
19 - Wyrhling
20 – Falling Weir
21 - Shaper
22 – Fates & Dreamings
23 - Exile
24 - Hunted
25 - ShamanKin
26 - Vortex
27 – Eyes of Stars
Want to find out what happens next?
Author's Note
Cast of Characters
About the Author
Independent Publishers ROCK!
Copyright Information
The Hoop of the Alekšu’in
is off to an amazing start
with
BLOOD INDIGO
“Sullivan’s commitment to creating a world unlike any we’ve ever experienced is astonishing… It is hard to write about this book; one must really read it to understand its power and gorgeous complexity.”
Ulysses Dietz
“Sullivan drops you right into the action...”
Library Journal
~~~~~~~~~~~
Dedication
For my grandmother, who taught me about our People long before I even realised I was being taught.
~~~~~~
Yakoke, svpokni,
Chim anoli shuk anumpa sv bvnna.
~~~
Buíochas, seanmháthair,
Lig dom scéal a insint duit.
The storyKeeper speaks…
“When Grandmother grows weary of us, grows tired of the ever-creeping, cloying moss upon Her many-tiled belly, She has but to draw into Her shell and gather unto Herself. And wait, through beginnings into endings...”
Listen, my cousins, for this is all true! These, the words of our Ancestors, had their beginnings from the words of Šaákfo, spoken as the tailed Star danced over Grandmother’s belly. The stories passed down over wintering counts, told and repeated even as I tell and sing these stories now.
Once, so long yet not so long ago, after Winnowing tilted our lands into a dark and insular time, but before Reckoning showed us the error of our fears, there was a beginning. There are always beginnings, you might say, and a’io, everything begins, everything ends, riding the Hoop as we ride our grazingKin beneath Sun’s grace. But this beginning? Ša came stalking-quiet, and we had our backs turned, foolish. Frightened. Like chukfi in ša’s burrow, we lingered content, safe and ignorant, digging new warrens, making pellets and babies…
Ah! You ask! But answers are always layered like Earth beneath our feet. Changing kindles beginnings. Little changes, they seem, at the first. Singular motions, ripples in cavern pools, new footprints upon a well-worn path. Singular motions, each revealing a new path. Recognise them, my cousins. Remember them.
See them:
Here is one of the Beloved shrugging off complacency and fear, grasping the mane of a spoiled horse to sing ša calm. Here is a daughter feeling betrayal and rebellion beneath ways long twisted and hidden—forbidden! Here is one made outlier and outcast, who Saw in Stars what others feared to. Here is a chieftain’s son, changing into something he was taught to fear and hate. Here is a child captured in the raiding, loosed to find her true Clan and set her People free. Here is a too-proud elder who believes he alone knows the secrets, yet merely clasps sand in open fingers. Here is a changing-spirit youth, callow yet powerful enough to shield ša’s People. Here is a son of two worlds, craving the belonging but having to turn away, accept instead of deny, believed Shaper when he was, instead, Catalyst.
All these our People, all of them our cousins—and with so many paths it would seem they’d never converge, a’io?
Yet all these paths, all these singular motions, one then the other, falling like drops of Rain to gather and runnel, feeding River. We might act alone, we might take a solitary path, yet every act cannot help but come together and inform the whole. Enrichment, or betrayal, all affects all. We know this. We are one with our Kin, be they two- or four-footed, winged or finned or footless, rooted or carried upon Wind. Our People wander the plains, settle into Forest boughs, glide across deep-packed snow, ride River and brave Sea… but all of us remain together on Grandmother’s belly. Our separate motions are as one. We are made one even as we travel the Hoop like those of our own tribe ride our Kin into Wind’s blessings.
These ones we See, these ones whose singular, seemingly insignificant motions we will remember? Ah, those were indeed the beginning, my cousins. They were the beginning of the ending…
1 – Alekšu
“Listen! It is time to Dance!”
It was not the first time Palatan had stood upon the Breaking Ground to challenge.
Deliberate, stripped to clout with the copper and malachite banding his arms, while waves of heat whispered his name and glided across the dried grass and red dust, setting the surrounding hillocks a-shimmer. Dry, reflecting parch and gilt against his eyes, scorching shivers across the oiled, deep bronze whipcord of his shoulders, prickling the numerous, narrow plaits gracing his left temple. Waiting, with blood striping the Marks upon his cheekbones and long dried into skim and flakes; spilt from over his heart and onto the hard, sandy ground, it had likewise baked into sludge.
Palatan welcomed the blaze, humming sweet behind his ears and flaring tendrils to swathe his heart.
He knew Fire.
“Come out, Alekšu! The Dance must be made. It is our way.”
His voice rang against the hide several strides away. The door didn’t so much as quiver.
Silence. Sun rose higher, and in Her wake trailed a faint, ghostly triad: Brother Moon with younger siblings clinging to one hip. Still Palatan waited, unmoving. Circuit blooded, ceremony observed, with their tribe gathering, albeit sluggish.
Not many dared test Alekšu. All who had? Had failed.
Yet hope began to speak: first one drum, then another, a gravid heartbeat of necessary support. Physical prowess, after all, merely whet one edge of this blade. The Dance was beginning, whether acknowledged or not…
“Come out, old one!” Palatan called. “Lest I Dance without you.”
Without me? You do not even know the steps. Mockery curled silent behind his eyes, the soul-talk more yawn than acknowledgement. I grow tired of
