The Near Lands -

[Abby Cummins]

First chapter below. This chapter serves to introduce the protagonist, give a little bit of background about her, and set the tone for her attitude. It also introduces the concept of magic, grounds the reader in the first of three main settings for the work, and sets the main conflict in motion. I'm also attaching this via PDF in case that's easier to read, because the formatting on this forum is a little wonky whenever I try to copy and paste my work into it, and I cannot get it to single-space for the life of me. Apologies in advance for my technological inadequacy

1. 

When Bryn woke in the morning, she was already late. Did it even count as morning if you’d only slept two and a half hours?

         She stumbled out of bed and discovered that her ankle hurt. Really hurt. She could barely put weight on it. She’d collapsed in her jeans, too tired to deal with undressing, and now peeled them off to glimpse the damage.

         Even she had to admit it was pretty bad. Swollen to twice its normal size, puffy around the edges, hot to the touch. She’d scraped it up good. She didn’t feel any broken bones when she probed at it, but what did she know? She’d never broken an ankle.

         It must have been from jumping out of the window at Ottessa’s Trinkets. The drop was farther than she’d gauged. She had landed crooked, when she thought back on it.

         Just what she needed. How was she supposed to wait tables?

         Her consolation was the dragonfly pendant, now tucked safely into her box of treasures, and the knowledge that she’d gotten out of Ottessa’s Trinkets without anyone catching her.

         She showed up to her shift anyway, limping the whole way. She didn’t know the daytime bartender well yet -- she’d only been working here for three weeks, after all -- but he seemed nice. She petitioned him for a swap, begging for mercy.

         “Luke, I feel like such an asshole for even asking,” she said. “It’s just that I really need the money. I swear I’ll do all the barback work.”

         Luke stared hard at her for a minute. They worked at Hardigan’s, an Irish pub that sold breakfast but did most of its honest business in booze and bar food. This shift was usually dead anyway, no matter if you were waiting on the booths or bartending. Bryn was here as a new hire, and still paying her dues on the shifts no one else wanted. She had no idea why Luke volunteered for this time slot so often, but he normally manned the bar from open till four.

         “Fine,” Luke said finally. “What’d you do, anyway?”

         “Twisted my ankle on the stairs. It didn’t seem that bad last night.”

         Bryn dragged one of the barstools behind the register so she could take her weight off the ankle. Her gut ached for a shot of whiskey. That’d take the edge right off, guaranteed. 

         "You hear all the commotion downtown last night?” Luke said.

         “No,” Bryn said, without batting an eye. “What happened?”

         “Someone broke into Ottessa’s. Stole some jewelry or something.”

         “Oh, wow. I didn’t think things like that happened in a small town like this.” She reached for a rag to wipe down the bar.

         “Oh, please. We’re suburban, not immune to crime. Somebody stabbed a psychic at one of her readings last month not that far away from Ottessa’s.”

         “Stabbed a psychic?”

         “Yep. Some little old Korean lady, read tarot or something. It ended up being the daughter’s ex-boyfriend.”

         “Must have been before I moved here.”    

         "Maybe. Where are you from?” Luke glanced at her. He’d never asked her this many personal questions before. Someone was feeling chatty.

         “Florida,” she said. “Beach town. Waitressing gigs were always good near the water. All that salt air makes people hungry.”

         “I’ve never been to Florida,” said Luke.

         “I don’t recommend it,” she said. “Couldn’t stand the humidity or the jackass frat boys. Or the alligators.” She shuddered. Primeval, lurking monsters. One used to sun itself on the lawn across from her apartment complex, and she’d watch it warily from her bedroom window, transfixed by its alien eyes. “I only stayed there for six months.”

         “Where were you before that?”

         “Texas.” She reached for the paring knife and started to slice limes to paper-thin slits. The bar was still empty, but she wasn’t feeling any more inclined to talk about her past.

      "Moved around a lot, huh?” Luke plopped down in one of the chairs and swung it around so he could sit backwards and face Bryn while she worked. He had exceptionally long legs.

         “Not always.”

         “Where’d you grow up?”

         “What’s with the Twenty Questions?”

         “What’s with all the avoiding answering them?” Luke grinned. “You’ve been here for the better part of a month, but no one knows anything about you.”

         “That’s so not true.” Bryn’s knife slipped, and she hissed, put her hand to her mouth to suck at the sudden splash of blood.

         “You okay?” Luke jumped up.

         Before she could answer him, the bell on the door jingled and the day’s first customer walked in. They heard a low exchange with the hostess, who was unusually sober for someone who always got high in the bathroom on her lunch, and then the customer headed into the restaurant and hooked toward the bar.

         She slid a coaster over to him.

        The man looked at her. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, the pupils and irises bleeding into each other. His hair was dark and trim—too long for the military even though he had a martial demeanor. She didn’t know why, but something about him made her blood run cold.        

         "Can I get you a drink?” she said.

         The man placed his hands gently on the bar in front of him, as if putting down weapons.

         “Coffee,” he said. “With a double shot of Jameson’s.”

         “Coming right up,” Bryn said. She couldn’t stop staring at his hands. His fingers seemed, just for a moment, to have an extra joint. Obviously impossible.

         He locked his cool gaze onto hers. She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and turned quickly to grab fresh coffee. Her ankle screamed.

         “What’s wrong with you?” the man said.

         Bryn’s spine iced up. She poured carefully. The familiar scent of coffee grounded her. “Sorry?” she said.   

        "You're favoring your left leg,” the man said.

         She set the coffee mug on the bar and grabbed a shot glass to measure his double. How closely was he watching her? “I sprained my ankle,” she told him.

         “Seen a doctor yet?”

         “No rest for the wicked,” she said with forced cheer, smiling stiffly as she poured the Jameson.  

          He accepted the mug, wrapped those long fingers around it.

         Part of the whole bartending gig entailed small talk with customers, and sometimes with customers you would literally never speak to on a normal day. Bryn was usually good at it, even though everything about this guy was off putting.

         “Long morning?” she asked the guy with the same forced smile. What was wrong with her today?

         “Long week. Long life.” He snorted. “Too long.” He took a long sip of what Bryn knew was scalding hot coffee, but showed no discomfort at all. Just swallowed and set the mug back down.

         “Uh, well, enjoy? Let me know if you need anything.”

         A few more guests trickled in after a minute or two. They ordered the more conventional brunch items, and Bryn busied herself with making mimosas and Bloody Mary’s, keying in the eggs benedict and Irish fry up orders from the bar.

         And the man just sat there and gulped his coffee, staring broodingly into the mirror that lined the back of the bar. He took great big mouthfuls of his drink but didn’t ever seem to need a refill.

         Then it got absurd. It had been more than an hour since he’d first come in. He’d been drinking steadily from his cup since then, but hadn’t needed a single top off.

          She paused in front of him. “How are you doing?”

         He met her gaze and the intensity in his eyes hit her again. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe a refill? Double shot again.” He pushed his mug to her side of the bar. As it slid over, Bryn watched it happen. Right in front of her eyes, the liquid in the mug drained as if by magic, and where a mostly full cup had been not a moment before, now he offered her a slightly stained but definitely empty vessel.

         Bryn stared. She could have sworn his eyes twinkled at her. Everything felt knocked off kilter. She pushed down hard on her injured ankle, sending a spike of pain through her nerves. It steadied her enough that she could grab the mug, the coffee pot, the liquor. What the hell?

         “You should really see a doctor, you know,” the man said.

         “Thanks for your concern,” she snapped, and shoved the guy’s coffee at him, harder than necessary.

         “It looks like you’re seeing things,” he said.

         Bryn stopped cold.

         “Not good for your health,” he continued, voice low. “Seeing things and stealing things. Both high risk.”

         “Excuse me?” she said.

         “You heard me.” His hand shot over the bar and caught her by the wrist. She jerked back, but he didn’t let go. “Be careful,” he said lowly. “They’re taking notice. And they want you back.”

         “What?” she whispered, eyes wide.

          "They sent the huntsman. He’s out of the Near Lands already. See a doctor, and then run.”

         At this, she yanked hard away from his grip. This time he let go. His nails scratched at the tender inside of her wrist. She stumbled, then fell, hard. Her arms windmilled and her ankle faltered beneath her weight before she landed square on her ass. Great; more body parts that would ache later. She scrabbled at the rubber mat flooring behind the bar, shooting upright.

         The mug sat empty and accusatory before her. The man was gone. His barstool was tucked in, neat and perfectly aligned, as if no one had ever been there. 

 

Bryn couldn’t remember the first time she heard about the Near Lands. Maybe in the first foster home. Maybe her real home, before that. What she did know for sure was that she’d been told the stories by someone else. The memories felt to her like drowning in white noise, submerging yourself in cicadas or static or waves.

         They all began with, “Once upon a time, in a faraway land,” but then they diverged. A quick summary of the tale you thought was coming, then a reversal. And what a reversal! The Near Lands were the antithesis of Fairyland. Grim and dark and bloody. These weren’t the sparkling, sanitized tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty for children.   

      Bryn told herself the stories over and over again. She’d never been so entranced by anything in her life, not even Barbie dolls or Power Rangers or Pokemon. Sometimes — like with the dragonfly story — she knew a new story, or a new detail about the Near Lands. They blossomed into being, out of nothing, like they’d always been there.  Many exasperated foster parents and case workers had marveled, What an overactive imagination!

         The obsession with a fantasy world had caused her a lot of problems. Enough that a normal person would likely have given up on the Near Lands long ago. Her few friends were a little creeped out by her intensity. Caretakers suspected her of having some kind of obsessive delusion about this alternative fairy tale universe. They gave her tests. They sent her to counseling, where a woman with cats’-eye glasses asked her repeatedly if the stories were metaphors for Bryn’s life.

         The way she knew these stories couldn’t be explained.

         They felt like gospel to Bryn. They made her feel loved; they gave her a feeling of purpose. She was a curator of lost objects. In a world where adults frequently forgot her, and other kids routinely shunned her, she was a guardian of lost words.

         In the fourth grade, Bryn’s class had done a unit on ancient Greece. In one of her worksheet packets, Bryn found a drawing of an old crone inside a cave, huddled over a steaming fissure in the earth. The caption said, “The Oracle of Delphi hears prophecies.”

         She’d known instantly she, too, was an oracle, hearing stories from another world.

         But she made the mistake of telling her teacher, and she was in mandatory sessions with her guidance counselor by lunch. She finally had to lie and tell them she’d just been trying to freak out the other kids. She’d wanted attention from the teacher. She would not lie again.

         Eventually she learned to keep it to herself. That was why she’d valued Ronnie so much when he first took her in. He told her other people didn’t matter, but if the Near Lands meant something to her, then they did. Once he’d won her loyalty, once he started pushing her into work, the flattery ended.

Near Lands Chapter 1 - NY Write to Pitch 2022.pdf