SONG of LOCKE: Scroll 1-2

By J Washburn

This is a 250 page version, enough to get you deeply engrossed in SONG OF LOCKE.

Locke is an elfe who feels a deep longing for something—it’s a strange, magical feeling that he can’t quite describe. His sylfe Picke (who is a creature something like a fairy) dares him to follow a band of bloodthirsty warriors into the woods, promising they’ll lead to the thing Locke has been longing for. In spite of his doubts, Locke takes the dare, and the two of them find themselves on a wild adventure. Soon Locke must face snarling wolves, wield a magic blade, and risk his life to rescue a goddess—a girl he hardly knows but who he can’t stop thinking about—from the clutches of a fallen god.

* * *

In the spirit of Legend of Zelda and Peter Pan, SONG OF LOCKE portrays a detailed fantasy world, somewhat grittier than its forebears and drenched in human emotion. The tale has swordfights, witty banter, crushes, and even some subtle philosophy smuggled in. It’s an epic for everyone who loves good stories—for anyone who has longed for something that seemed forever out of reach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J Washburn
• Release date: Aug 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516316199

Book preview

MAP

Locke-Map-2-Small.jpg

View the map in greater detail.

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I traded all my mortal memories for the memories you’re about to read.

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—  SPECIAL OFFER  —

I’ll make you a deal.

I’ll send you the whole book for FREE.

Yep, I’m serious, all of SONG OF LOCKE for FREE. But there are strings attached:

I must make it clear—this is a temporary offer, and you might already be too late.

[e-mail] an email with the subject line Achievement Un-Locked.

In the body of the email, you must give me your word that you’ll read SONG OF LOCKE right away and then post an honest review.

Okay, that’s it. Talk to you soon.

— J

—  SPECIAL OFFER  —

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PRELUDE

Secesja-Font-Export-09.gif  COULDN’T SEE IT, but I felt it.

Tiny steps creeping and crawling across skin, like a cold wind.

I felt icicle fangs hungry for life, the color of shadow. I felt a soulless creature emerging from below the earth, a living agony, staring with deep voids where eyes should’ve been.

First just one. Then another and another.

They climbed into the wide world. Far away. And lurking somewhere nearby.

Lurking inside my throat. Strangling me with cold. I could hardly breathe.

I wished it were only a dream, but sylves don’t dream. It had to be real. A horrible reality surrounded us.

Numa? Demigoddess of Air. I know you hear me. My breath puffed into chilly white mist. My eyes shone upward as I peered, listening for her. Please?

Everything had fallen quiet, horribly quiet, like the death of music. Even the scurrying creature held still. As it did, it vanished like a prowling wildercat in deep grasses. I hated stillness. Stillness meant death.

It’s me, Picke—your son. And there’s this… I reached three slender fingers and a thumb toward the sky. "…this evil."

My wings struggled against the chill, pushing far beyond my armspan. I breathed frantically, trying to maintain motion.

If I had hands, I would fight. If I had feet, I would run. I looked at my tiny hands, so insubstantial—no stronger than a breath. Not strong enough. I looked at my toes, even more elegant, yet just as powerless. But I’m one of your sons. My fingers are wind, and my refuge is you.

The silence closed in tighter, so near I could barely move. It clamped down, held me tight. I hated it. Hated it more than anything.

I need you. To listen to me. To talk to me. To help me.

My ears pointed skyward as I strained for her answer. My glimmering blue hair floated like that of a corpse whose grave was the frigid sea, dancing in silence and slowing into stillness. I panted against the panic. An unbreakable grip cinched me so tight I couldn’t inhale. Perfect silence, perfect stillness, and perfect cold—they pressed in, leaving no room for anything else. Not even a being so small as me.

No music of trees. No sough of winds. No warmth of raindrops.

You spoke to me once, I groaned. I remember. Speak to me now!

I waited, and the silence smothered.

If she wouldn’t answer, I still had Locke. And I had one last bit of air. One last chance. LOCKE! I screamed.

I heard his footsteps. He was walking away, abandoning me in the Shadowlands, leaving me surrounded by evil. Just like Numa.

I couldn’t breathe.

He was my life. I had to go with him. Had to follow. I tried to dash after him, but I could barely move. I hit solid, unmoving ground, and he was on the other side. I pounded against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

He had to stop! To wait! I needed to scream!

But I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

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SCROLL ONE

LOCKE-Scroll-1-elementals-sylphes-diagram.jpg

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1. THE HERO

Secesja-Font-Export-12.gif OCKE?"

With closed eyes, he inhaled gently, right on the edge of snoring.

Locke, wake up!

He still didn’t answer.

A bird twittered, calling for dawn.

The chill that had stolen my breath and kidnapped the music—it was gone. Or it had withdrawn a little. Leaving nothing but… ahhh, what was it? An acute and close feeling: something I could sense through Locke. Something small, directly on his skin. A scratching. Like crumpled paper against his ribs.

Can’t you feel that? I asked.

He lay there like a corpse, sprawled on the bed, mouth hanging open. It was like he had the strength of ten men but for sleeping.

The feeling itched. It’s driving me crazy!

His soft breathing continued.

I wanted to smack him. But even if I could’ve, my tiny hand wouldn’t have done much good. Breath was more powerful anyway. "Wake up! What if it’s a wraith!"

That did it. He rolled to his side, eyes closed, scratched his ribcage, but found nothing.

The itch seemed to go away. Hmm. Maybe I could wait till morning. Then I could tell him about the cold, dark silence. Besides, he’d be more fun if he slept longer. I hated when he wasn’t fun.

It scratched him again—crawling down his side from his ribs toward his belt.

Locke, wake up! I blew on the wheat-colored hair hanging over his eyes.

I don’t feel anything, he mumbled, taking a blind swipe at me. Go back to sleep.

I don’t sleep, I said. I never sleep. And it’s still there: I feel it. So uncomfortable, like a leaf had crawled down his shirt. It itched my curiosity like crazy—I needed to know what it was. Locke, please, wake up!

He rolled to his back and reached his fingers to scratch beneath his belt. Picke, you’re a—

BOOM! With one arm he threw off his blanket, and with the other he launched himself out of bed.

His feet touched the floor, his pants came off, then he was airborne, landing at the far side of the room on his tiptoes with his shoulders scrunched toward his neck as if that might defend him. He panted.

I laughed aloud—I couldn’t help it—a crisp sound, cutting across the darkness, a sound few melodies could rival. If only the world could see you now!

Locke stared at the giant bug crawling on the rim of his trousers. A boatsinker, he said, like spitting out dirt. He brushed his hand where six spindly legs and a set of pincers had been. They’d touched his fingers, but I felt it with him. The bug wasn’t even that big—the size of me maybe. We’d seen worse. And yet Locke stood like a midnight sentry, wearing his braies, hair a mess, fists clenched, poised to run from any thumb-sized threat that might dare to rear its ugly head. He brushed a hand across the back of his neck and shoulders then swept both hands down his shirt repeatedly.

Oh my! I shouted, and I even drew back a little.

Locke followed my gaze—and his elfe eyes saw the black shapes of bugs clinging to the walls and pitched ceiling above and all around him. Hundreds of them. Yyyyuuuhhhh… he began, but whatever he was about to say was swallowed deep in his throat by another shudder.

Something very strange is happening, I said.

I’m getting out of here!

It’s still the middle of the night!

I don’t care. I hate bugs.

What about wraiths?

He hesitated, looking toward the window. Not a glimmer of light came from outside. The winds that had rushed all night were now silent too. I’ll risk it, I guess. Come on. He turned to the door.

Your pants!

"I am not—"

You can’t go out there without your pants. It’ll be morning soon.

He sighed. Alright. He crouched and squinted. Pinching the leg of his pants, he jerked them like cracking a whip. The bug thudded against one of the dark walls. Locke stood, holding the pants at arm’s length.

Well? I asked.

I’m not putting these on yet. Let’s go.

Grab your moccasins and bag too; then we can go straight to the ferry for work.

He grabbed his things, and I followed, hovering over his head. He stepped outside into the cool night and climbed off the wide, wooden deck that made the floor of his room. He descended the ladders fastened to the ancient blathae tree, past the empty rooms of all seven of his older brothers till he reached the main floor of the treehouse.

I eyed the hoard of bugs we found there too. Why so many?

A black shell cracked beneath Locke’s heel.

I scowled.

Locke shrugged. Maybe he’ll come back and tell us what death is like.

You’re horrible.

Okay, I’m sorry. I know life is precious and all that.

It’s not trivial. I envy life.

"You’re living."

Not like you—with skin and a heartbeat.

Locke dodged between bugs then stepped his way down the main rope ladder, feeling the usual dread and trying to ignore what would greet him below. I don’t know why this bothers you so much. You’re just as living as me.

No. I’m primeval. Like your soul.

Well, that’s better than living. He stopped on the ladder and stared directly at me. You don’t have to be afraid of death.

I’m afraid of something worse.

He dropped to the ground, landing bare feet in the cool grass. Before moving on, he glanced over his shoulder reluctantly, as if some invisible power had forced him to look—at the silent green door. Nothing’s worse than death.

He stared blankly as his thoughts wandered away. The green door rested amid the giant roots of our tree, which spread wide before sinking beneath the ground, creating a hollow cavern. Wooden walls and that heavy door filled the gaps between roots, all covered in thick vines, moss, and mushrooms—a coating of life. We hadn’t gone in there for seven years, not since Locke’s father had blockaded the stairs and locked the door. We didn’t want to either.

As Locke wandered among frightening memories, the feeling—the nightmare or whatever it was—leaped back in front of me. Yes, there’s something worse than death. I remembered Locke walking away from me. The place without music.

He looked at me with fear in his eyes. What’s the matter?

I feel… something evil. And it scares me.

He glanced around, half expecting to see a wraith somewhere inside the cove. Thoughts of spindly legs and sticky shells creeped around the back of his neck. As he brushed them aside, he looked skyward, expecting to find a glimmer of hope peeking through the foliage overhead—something that could lift the heaviness we felt.

Dread spread over me.

Picke, it’s so dark, he said. I can’t see a single star.

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2. WANDERLUST

Secesja-Font-Export-01.gif  RUSTLE OF LEAVES made Locke dive for cover, but it was only three small rabbits racing to their burrow.

I laughed. Are you more scared of a wraith or getting caught in your braies?

He scowled at me. Be quiet.

We wandered east between trunks that towered like massive legs of giants. Twigs and branches littered the ground, brought down by the strong winds the night before. Now a gentle wester wind coaxed us along.

As we entered the grove of climbing trees, Locke cocked an ear, as if to hear the whispering sylves of the elves who died on this ground. Now no mischief, he said. Not here. I mean it.

Locke pressed his fingertips into the bark of a young tree whose branches hadn’t yet grown out of reach. Wedging his big toe into a lower groove, he climbed. His thoughts turned toward the bird demons that had burned this area, toward the battle that split the delta and created the Fifth River—unlucky. In daylight, shafts of sun would reach through and touch the glade in spots. But today we saw only a dim shadow of that scene, and the stillness weighed down, monumental and heavy.

You can feel it, the echo of legend. He whispered like a child, and his very words seemed to reverberate. They fought because a rise in evil called for the rise of good.

As he looked at me, I floated like the feather of a fledgling. My wings hung on the wind, weightless tendrils of bluish white. And my curiosity still itched. "Did you feel something—I don’t know—dark in your dreams?" I often wondered about his dreams; it was the one place where I couldn’t follow him, a place of bizarre magic.

I dreamed about someone, he said.

Tryse?

Don’t say her name!

Ooops. We were supposed to call her the Nymfe—the mythical creature who vanished in the night. The nickname was Locke’s idea. Mostly he meant I was supposed to call her that, because, as he said, "When you say a word, it sticks like sap that won’t get off your hand no matter how much dirt you rub on it. My words just disappear, but yours are like a substance." It was because he didn’t understand sculpting the air into words. Anyway, I took it as a compliment, and I tried to not speak her name. Sometimes.

He pulled himself into a standing position on a wide branch. But, yes. Her.

I smiled.

He smiled back with his usual reserve, not ready to set loose his emotions, as if he couldn’t admit the immense joy and pain hidden inside. I’m still in love with her—in my dreams.

Our mind swirled in a brief memory, like a gasp of air: They were together again—two kids in love—and they’d never grown distant, and she’d never gotten married and become an adult. And never had a child. His expression rose and fell as the memory first lifted him in the air and then dropped him flat on his back. He still tried to hold the memory’s breath, to keep her smile just a moment longer, but it left as quick as it came. She was gone.

He brooded. It makes me want to sleep forever.

You nearly sleep forever already! I grinned, laying my hands bare in disbelief.

He blinked at my irreverence. Well maybe I will—if you don’t shut up—and leave you stranded here.

Don’t even joke about that. I frowned to show him I meant it; after last night, I felt particularly sensitive about it.

The sky spread overhead, dark like a storm, too dark to see what hid in the empyrean beyond. Locke made his way down a long branch then leaped to the lower bow of another tree. "What about your dream?"

The birds seemed too silent, as if they knew something we didn’t. The Fifth River split off from the Great River just ahead, but we couldn’t hear its usual music either.

I don’t dream.

No, I mean the dark feeling you mentioned.

I followed him as he made his way higher. I felt a cold presence, like a bunch of wraiths. Then I got trapped in a place without music. I left out the part where he abandoned me.

It’s called a nightmare.

"No, it wasn’t. This was real. Something happened last night, something bad, and it created this horrible—something—a feeling of darkness."

That sounds like the opposite of what I’m trying to find here. He motioned with his lips to the glade of climbing trees.

I’m trying to forget it, I said.

No, if it’s real, you shouldn’t ignore it. It could mean something.

"Maybe I don’t want to think about it. Why are you always so eager to think about things?"

Locke pulled himself up to a flimsy branch, so high that the trunk swayed as he held on. An ocean of nighttime treetops lay before us. I loved it, being so high and unbound.

Wrapping the crook of his arm around the trunk, he pulled out his pinkalue and tapped it on his thigh. The twins, his older brothers, had given him the wooden instrument. It wasn’t as well crafted as the bone flute their father had forbidden them to touch, but it had a warm sound. Locke blew into it, and the melody flowed pure and haunting. Somehow every song the pinkalue made seemed a tribute to the wanderers, to the lost, and the lost loves. Maybe because it had belonged to the twins.

We swayed at the top of that tallest tree, as close to the sky and as far from the ground as we could get. The pinkalue, not needing to compete with light, sang all the brighter, every note a miracle against a black backdrop, wrought by the fingers of my elfe. I was in love with the music. If only he could be as daring in life as he was with a melody.

There, Picke, that was it. He paused to look at the pinkalue. That thing I long for. The thing without a name. Sometimes it’s in a story like Song of Martigane. Sometimes it’s in my dreams of lifting off the ground in flight like a bird demon. And sometimes it’s simply a melody.

Sometimes it’s touching Shaye’s knee. I grinned. He didn’t like me saying her name either.

Yes, but leave her out of this.

He put the instrument back to his lips and played scales that led us closer to that unnameable something, or to the fragments of that something. Maybe it wasn’t any of those things. But it came through them. It was a song we’d never directly heard but which echoed in so many things.

He looked up. Sometimes it’s the stars. I wish we could see them. He shook his head. Sometimes it’s Tryse. Or heights. I don’t even know what I want, but I want it so bad.

The Land of Song calls us, the place where the Kyrose created us, where everything is music. I knew he didn’t believe, but I blew on the idea, trying to get it to catch fire.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, as if surprised by my insight. Maybe. He let this answer drift for a moment, then played through another melody, one that shone like copper, and the longing grew.

What if your thirst can’t be quenched anywhere, I said, no matter where you go or what you do?

Don’t say that.

I’m just saying, well, maybe it’s bigger than all this around us—maybe you’re not meant to find it in this world.

He gave me another surprised look, which I didn’t exactly appreciate. It’s funny, sometimes you speak so eloquent I almost can’t recognize you.

I smiled. That was better.

But since when did you care about anything bigger than right now?

I shrugged. "I don’t know. I don’t think I do. Let’s go. Let’s do something about it right now."

This is as high as the tree goes, Picke.

That’s not what I mean.

I’d go after it if I knew what it was, he said, but I can’t wander after nothing.

The searching itself might help. Who cares what you find.

You’re always so eager to move. I just want to know which direction is right.

Come on, I sunk below him, hoping he’d follow. Let’s go before the storm breaks.

We made our way west and slightly north, toward Twiche’s ferry and the roaring waters we crossed many times each day. In the darkness, the trees hung like gargoyles with terrifying claws.

Locke and I gasped.

A gruesome mass of dead boatsinkers and other bugs littered the ground. A dark oily liquid smeared the path, each of them having spilled their blood generously, as if a whole swarm had been murdered mid-flight. Other bugs milled around the edge of the massacre, but it seemed they found no nutrients worth salvaging.

Who would do such a thing? Locke’s face showed his disgust, and he hated bugs.

Some sorcerer wanting their blood? I searched our mind, trying to fit the pieces together. "Oh. Not the blood. Animals have ondines as elementals—in their blood."

You can kill a kynde and take its elemental?

I don’t know. Don’t think so. I looked further ahead as something caught my attention. You hear that?

Locke paused and looked toward the dark sky. No.

The air was dead, devoid of sound, like my nightmare. Exactly.

No rivers? he asked.

No water, no birds, no nothing. Not even a cricket. I darted ahead to see.

On the brink of peril, Locke decided to put on his pants. Wait! he yelled, watching his back for wraiths, and hopping on one foot. He rushed to catch up.

We raced back and forth between trees. The dock clunked hollow as his bare feet drummed against the familiar wood. He leaned over the railing, and we looked down at the black river—a dark snaking shape, with not a single glimmer on the crest of a wave.

It’s… too dark. He lobbed a kohkoo nut toward the center of the river below.

It thumped down.

Not a splash, a thud.

Our Fifth River wasn’t just silent—it was gone. The nut had impacted with mud!

You’re not going to be ferrying a soul today, I said.

What ghule did this? asked Locke.

I had no answer. The dark feeling, which had almost been washed away by our conversation, now flooded back over me. I can’t breathe.

Stop it, Picke. You’re scaring me. He breathed in deeply, which helped, and took another glance over his shoulder, which didn’t. It’s nothing. You’re overreacting. Maybe Murke and Turke dammed up the river…

The whole river? I asked.

I dunno. I guess they’re not smart enough to do something like that.

And even if they were, how could they pull it off overnight?

I’ll bet this is why the bugs came into the treehouse, he said. Do those clouds look extra dark to you?

What do you mean? I asked.

It should be light by now.

They’re just storm clouds.

Thick enough to let the wraiths stay here in daytime. He stared at me, waiting for a hopeful reply, but I had nothing. My dad said something about this. The Night of the Wolf, a prophecy of darkness and drought and the end of time.

You think this is the end of time?

No, I don’t believe in prophecies. But…

But what?

It does seem a little strange.

I can’t breathe, I repeated.

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3. THE DARE

Secesja-Font-Export-03.gif ALM DOWN, PICKE. We’re fine."

He said this