Cassica Book One: Sands
an excerpt

I love the smell of roast crow just after sunset.

It smells all burnt and crackly as I follow my cousin out of the carriage, both of our noses stuck high in the air-mine’s just there to get the very absolute most out of the crow smell, but as this is her first real time being outside of farm grounds, she wants to act as high and mighty as possible. Or at least, that’s what it is by my figuring.

I tell this to our servant and one of my best friends, and he agrees before closing the carriage door behind us and hurrying to collect our things. He gives me a half-eaten piece of candy that I forgot to finish off before so, thanking him mightily, I stick it in my mouth and wait for Emlia to get her purse.

“Tavale,” she says to the servant, while I stand behind her, just a-licking happy on my sweet. “It’s festival. This barely every happens”-unfortunately, because I wish I could eat roast crow every day-“so for today, don’t be our servant.” Emlia looks straight at the servant boy who’s just a little older than she is, not much taller, and who is dutifully holding her purse. “You’re fourteen, so have fun. Drink!”

“Drink!” I say, and make myself go all full of giggles so that I barely even hear what Tavale says next, and it doesn’t really matter to me anyway. So as soon as the candy has disappeared down my throat, I do a little burp and then clutch his arm. Even though it’s night time he’s not wearing any sleeves, silly boy. My mother always told me that’s the best way to get sick! “Tavale, you’re going to get a fever and you’re going to get the shakes and nothing in the world is going to heal you, I tell you. So you’d better get a coat on right now, sir, before-“

“Prana, Prana.” He ruffles my hair, which both my mother and Emlia say has gotten a bit too long, but I like it blond and dirty and mostly covering my eyes. “Silly boy, there’s a cure for practically everything.”

I frown. The air has started to bite, and is leaving little welts up and down my arms, and they make me very uncomfortable. “But you’re not listening to me. I think that-”

My mother comes out of the carriage just then, helped at the elbow by my father. Once she’s out and he’s out, he rubs at the dark rings under his eyes and leans against the door. Madda looks just as dark-ringed at her husband, then at me and makes her lips into a smile and hugs the baby at her chest. “Prana, don’t you want to see the lights and the sites?”

“The lights and the sites!” I bounce up and down a little and, after Tavale makes sure my parents will be okay-Madda still holding Pica like a fragile doll--, he and Emlia and I all go into the heart of the festival. Because back there was just the beginning, and I could tell because it was quiet. But the closer we get to the heart of it all the stronger the crow smell becomes, and the more I lick my lips and the louder the music gets and the more I want to dance and the more Emlia frowns and the more people are crowding around us, and the more I feel my blood pump and the more I want to just live.

“This is all so big! And so exciting! And so… Oh, look at all these merchants and shops, nothing was ever this polished on the farm. I’ve never heard music like this before! It’s kingly, but solemn and a little bit depressing, I think. What d'you think it'd be like to dance to this?" I go a little way ahead of the other two, dancing my way into the crowd of people, the likes of which I've never seen before and who make my mouth drop open and hang there. "The people, Em, the people! They're all so... Look at him, he must be a healer, because of those beads he's wearing! Those kids don't look like they're having any fun. Where do you think they're from, probably somewhere so far away that I'd have to walk forever to get there and I think that would tire out my feet a little, don't you? See them? Not my feet--"

"Which could use a bit of washing," says Emlia with a smile, and I must look all sad because she takes back her words soon. "You've just got farmer's feet, is all."

I let myself fall just a little back into step with them, just a little, because they walk awfully slow. "Maybe I don't want farmer's feet. Maybe I want an explorer's feet."

Tavale, still holding Emlia's purse because apparently she is not up to holding it right now, looks at me. "Explorer's feet? What do you suppose those look like?"

I shrug and then I turn my face to the sky again and I let my own dirty feet carry me by themselves. "I don't know. But maybe I want to travel over Parisum, and draw things. Everything. People, ones with big feathery hats and smiling faces, and mountains with ice fortresses on top, and the sky, when ships in the sky block out all the sun. And--"

I was going forward and someone else was going backward and now we smack right into each other, leaving my little boy dreams, as Emlia says when she wants to sound superior, all alone in the open for anyone to steal. My head hits the ground first. I barely register that it hurts.

People all around us, people that I don't even know, start putting their hands on me and lifting me up and letting me stand on my own dirty feet, and when I'm all up and dusted off I look at the other boy. But he's not looking at me, he's staring at something in his hands that makes me say, "Oh." Then there's this sort of sinking feeling in my stomach and I guess Emlia and Tavale come up behind me but I'm barely paying attention.

"Oh, how much did your glases cost? I can fix them right up, I can, I'll just need maybe some string and some plants, and..." I reach out my hands for the boy's glasses, which are broken right in the middle as ever straight I saw it, but he smiles a sad sort of smile and puts them away. Now I realize just how many people there are all around us. Enough that would have me counting for days, and enough that would have my dirty feet run me right into another boy and snap his glasses. I gulp, but it's kind of an excited gulp. Kind of.

My heart is still racing, and my thoughts too: Oh no, I did something really bad. He's not going to like me. Emlia and Tavale will be so mad at me, and so will everyone else back home. What if Madda doesn't even let me come home? Oh no.

And there, in the middle of everybody, I start to cry.