I started writing a prequel story to my first novel, The World Between, near the end of 2021. I have not worked on it much in the last two years, but I have a few ideas on paper at this point, including a complete prologue. I shared the first section of the prologue last year (read it here). The following excerpt is from the second section. This work is tentatively titled The Land of Stars and Bones, though, as it takes shape, that title might change.

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Etheldra gazed upward into the night. Here at the edge of the woods, on the shore, the sky was wide and open. She marveled at its beauty. The waves crashed against the rocks to the north, the steady drumming of the water against the land an unending song. She lowered her gaze, squinting in the dark to the find the horizon. The stars sparkled on the surface of the ocean. It looked like one huge mass of endless depth and rebirth.

                Someone approached behind her. The soft scuff of their boots against the gravel where she sat drew her gaze over her shoulder. It was her brother, Arathel. “Were you following me?” she asked tenderly.

                “No,” he answered, coming to stand beside her. “I don’t have to follow you anymore. I know this is where you disappear to.”

                She smirked wryly at him, hiding it by ducking her chin. She could feel his pale eyes on her. She turned back to meet his gaze. He was worried. His brow was creased.

                “What troubles you?” she asked.

                “I came to ask you the same,” Arathel answered.

                She shook away what she had seen in the grove and what she knew it would mean for her future. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

                Arathel hummed, a note of understanding. “Is that the only thing that worries you?” he asked.

                Etheldra almost smiled, though she didn’t feel any mirth. “You know me too well, Arathel,” she said, looking up at him.

                “There is a new darkness spreading,” he replied quietly. His voice was like stone.

                She closed her eyes, blocking out the sight of her brother’s worried face. The wind tossed her hair over her shoulder. She fell deep within herself, listening for the sound of The Great Maker’s voice. The god’s slow whispers drifted through her soul. There was warning there.

                She opened her eyes. “It is no different than before,” she stated, though she felt more urgency from the god than she previously had. She turned to regard her brother, but Arathel had also fallen deep within. She reached for his hand and fell away again. The whispering moved through her. She let The Great Maker fill her with his desires and emotions.

                Run. Run!

                She crashed to the surface, breaking off her connection.

                “He’s afraid,” Arathel said definitively.

                The words crawled through her. “He’s a god. Why should he be afraid?”

                Arathel squeezed her hand, clutching it against him, as if it steadied him. “He made this world, Etheldra. But there is one who can unmake it.”

                She swallowed her fears noisily. “He is a lesser god,” she replied, not feeling the conviction that once armored her.

                Arathel released her hand gently, then lowered his eyes and kicked a stone at his feet. Etheldra watched it roll towards the water. It came to rest against a larger rock with a clink. “Sometimes,” he began slowly, “I wonder if there were other worlds that were swallowed by his darkness.”

                Etheldra drew a ragged breath, not wanting to hear his theories of previous lives, previous worlds, previous darkness. “There is only this world, Arathel.”

                “The Great Maker revealed to you that there were no other worlds?” Arathel asked pointedly. His eyes, so pale even in the darkness, seemed to implant doubt into her.

                “No,” she replied quietly. “Has he revealed to you that there were?”

                For a moment, she believed Arathel was going to tell her he’d had a revelation. She even opened her mouth expectantly, ready to exclaim. But her brother only shook his head at her. “No,” he answered. His whisper was nearly lost in the sound of the waves. “No, he hasn’t revealed that to me.”

                Etheldra nodded, relieved. She turned back to the stars, twinkling above and below the waters. “Sometimes,” she said softly, with a conspiratorial tone, “I think the stars are souls.” She waited for a reply, but Arathel did not offer one. Having confessed that much, she continued, “That’s why I come here. To try to touch them.”

                Her brother made a low noise in his throat. “They aren’t souls Etheldra. That’s just where the souls live.”

                She smiled to herself. “Has that been revealed to you?” she asked playfully.

                A short laugh escaped him. “This is why I think there must be other worlds. Why would The Great Maker keep so many souls among the stars?” he asked.

                She wondered about the question, and the answer, before replying. “You said it yourself. It’s where the souls live.”

                “Then why are we here?” her brother wondered aloud. He crossed his arms, and stroked his thumb and forefinger over his chin.

                Etheldra often wondered this too. “The Great Maker made us,” she answered weakly. “Pulled us from the stars.”

                “Is that why the darkness is chasing us?” Arathel pressed.

                Her stomach lurched at his question. His intense, piercing stare unnerved her. “We can put the darkness back where it came from,” she argued.

                “Every time?” Arathel asked.

                Etheldra looked away from him, trying not to remember The Great Maker’s frantic words. “We’ve always been able to,” she countered.

                Arathel kicked another rock in response. This one went further than the last and was swallowed up by the waves. “The darkness is trying to put us back where we belong.”

                Etheldra turned her eyes back to the shimmering expanse. “Don’t we belong here now?”

                “But you feel that longing to return. Don’t you?” Arathel asked.

                She closed her eyes, listening deep. The whispers of The Great Maker soothed her. “I don’t even remember it,” she said smoothly, a whisper as soft as the breeze. “I don’t remember being anywhere but here.” Sometimes she thought she could remember sailing among the stars, but it was more like a half-remembered dream than anything. She knew memory was not solid. It changed just as her desires did, and her imagination filled in the gaps.

                  When she opened her eyes, Arathel was deep within himself. She tried to hear the voice of The Great Maker moving through him, but it was too faint. She waited, content to listen instead to the voices on the wind. It carried a song to her, the music of a flute underneath a female voice. The celebrations would last long into the night, as they always did. She wondered if Harendil, her husband, was still among the revelers. She tried not to think of him dancing. Her hands went to her stomach for just a moment and she pressed against her flesh, feeling for the hard knot within. Was the soul of the child inside her already there, or was it still above her in the sea of stars?

                Arathel cleared his throat. “Are you ill?” he asked.

                She dropped her hands. “I am pregnant,” she said, not looking at him.

                “Ah,” he answered. She turned her head towards him, brows furrowed in confusion at his knowing sigh. “It makes sense now. Why you have been coming here more often lately.”

                She nodded. “I’ve always liked the shore,” she began, “but the last few moons have had me wondering. And this is a good place to wonder.”

                “What are you wondering?” Arathel asked.

                She looked back to the sky. She could almost imagine that she could see the stars swirling. “How any of us came to be,” she replied.

                “You mean, how your child came to be,” Arathel replied, his voice exuding confidence that his thinking was correct.

                She smiled at him, then turned her eyes out to the ocean, listening past the waves to the music of the flute ululating from the woods. She looked again for the horizon, but could only see one great expanse of darkness, dotted with light. “Yes,” she admitted. “This child is what has me wondering about these things.”

                Arathel, sensing perhaps that she was not moving from the beach any time soon, slowly lowered himself to the stones next to her. He stretched out his legs in front of him, and leaned back on his elbows, staring up into the stars. They were both quiet for a time, listening to the sound of the water. “Last time the darkness came, I didn’t think we could beat it back,” Arathel confessed.

                The wind gusted, blowing her loose hair away from her face. Etheldra felt the agreement bubbling up within her, but she did not want to release it into the world. “He was strong. He gets stronger the longer he waits to try again.”

                Arathel hummed in thought. She could feel his vibrating anxiety at her words. She shivered, her skin prickling with fear. “How long has it been, do you think?”

                Etheldra’s people did not count time. They kept track of seasons and celestial bodies, but did not keep records. She thought about how many children had been born to her family since the last time the darkness came. “Amdril has had five generations of children born from her line,” she said, referring to their cousin, who had been carrying a babe the last time the darkness came.

                “That’s…twice as long as it was before,” Arathel said, thinking aloud. He shifted, and the pebbles crunched. “Is that right?”

                Etheldra closed her eyes, thinking of their family tree. “Before that, the darkness came after I had bound myself to Harendil, but we had not married yet.”

                “That was before Mother Fianel gave birth to Elundiel,” Arathel added.

                The confusion of how to count generations was why no one bothered to keep records. Etheldra and Arathel were older than Elundiel, their father’s youngest sister. Mother Fianel, their grandmother, had gone on to have two more children, both boys. Amdril’s oldest children were older than either of these uncles. Why bother keeping records of it? It was too confusing.

                Etheldra nodded. “And the time before that?” she asked. “Was it shorter?”

                Arathel shook his head. “I was a child,” he answered. “Almost too young to remember.”

                She had been young too, but she remembered vividly. The sky had caught fire one night, raining down flames of chaos into the deep ocean. The steam had threatened to choke the life from her. She recalled how raw her mother’s face had seemed, when she opened the door of the cottage, to find Etheldra and Arathel hiding under the bed where she had left them. Arathel had been very young, not quite old enough to have his own bow, though their father had given him one anyway. He clutched the weapon tightly, determined to defend her should he need to. But he was a child, and he had cried as the darkness covered the world.

                Etheldra pushed aside the memories wearily. “When he comes again, he will be much stronger.” She fell into the slow murmuring of the god who dwelled within her. Run. Run. Run.

                Arathel laid his hand on her shoulder, linking into her communion. His hand fell away a moment later. “I don’t understand. Where is there to run?”

                Etheldra shook her head, an admission that she had no answer for him. Her eyes went back to the stars, to the souls swirling above her in the sky. In the distance, drums began to beat. Etheldra smiled to herself. The celebrations would not be winding down any time soon. She turned to her brother. “You can go back to the glade if you wish,” she said.

                Arathel rose from his recline on the beach, hunching forward instead. “And leave you here?”

                She rose to her feet, brushing the back of her skirts free of debris. “I’ve done enough contemplation here tonight.”

                She followed her brother, a half step behind, back home to the safety of the woods.