A Changed World

By Noel-Anne Brennan

A Changed World, 368 pages

It is after the Change, a drastic alteration of climate and environment brought about by global warming and chemical buildup in the environment. Sage has lived in the mountains and plains of North America all her life. She grew up in a poor village family, and would have been given as a concubine to the sons of a wealthy family when she turned fourteen. Rather than accept this fate, she ran away, and lived a hard a life on the plains until she was accepted by an all woman Wander Band. When her apprentice is stolen she is drawn into a journey that takes her across a changed world. In the process she saves a village girl, partners with a mountain lion and meets Thomas, a man from the eastern coast who has far too many secrets. Together this odd group must brave dangers to right some terrible wrongs and to save the world from a threat it does not realize exists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sander Press
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536572841

Noel-Anne Brennan

Noel-Anne Brennan has spent most of her time reading fantasy and science fiction. She has been writing it since 1986 when "Winter Reckoning" was published. She was a finalist for the Romantic Times Award for "The Sword of the Land" in 2003. She has also written poetry and non-fiction. She teaches Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Rhode Island, and lives with her family in southern Rhode Island. Occasionally, in her spare time, she sleeps.

Book preview

Chapter One

She came down from the mountain in the autumn.  The trees were changing and the land was preparing for winter.  They were preparing up on the mountain too, which was why they had sent her.  The Great Hills Band needed supplies from the valley-dwellers and the townsfolk, the changed survivors of the old civilization.  Sage was the best trader they had, the best among all the bands, for that matter.  She could deal with the villagers with a good assurance of both safety and profit.  It was not that she was completely safe, far from it; no band woman was ever completely safe.  But towns and the all-women bands needed each other, and more than that, the villagers knew she had been a townswoman before, in a different valley, and they were willing to let certain things pass.  In short, they liked her.

Sage hummed to herself as she made her way down the path, leading her string of three pack mules.  She looked forward to seeing a town again; she always did after being with the band.  In spite of the five years she had been with the Great Hills Band she did not fit in entirely with the all-female society.  She owed them her life and she had fought to be one of them and to be accepted but a part of her would always belong to the villages.  She hated that part of herself but she couldn’t deny it.

Sage was twenty-three years old, as near as she could figure it.  She had light coffee-and-cream-colored skin, a feature which helped to protect her from the increased ultraviolet radiation of Post-Change times.  Her black hair flowed out in a voluminous and unruly cloud when she did not tie it back with a leather thong.  She refused to keep it cut close to her head the way band women did, another of her differences.  Her grey eyes were nested in a network of fine lines despite her youth, a result of her years in the hot sun of the plains.  Her long knife, made of good pre-Change steel, ornamented with a crescent moon on its carved bone handle, fitted into the leather sheath in her high boots.  A necklace of carved pebbles hung around her neck and pieces of carved bone and feathers hung from her pierced ears.  Beneath her soft leather shirt, on her left shoulder, was the blue crescent moon tattoo of a band woman.

The pack mules did not need encouragement; they made their sure-footed way behind her, laden with furs and meat from the women’s community.  These goods would be traded for grains, preserves and dried vegetables from the town of High Pines, toward which Sage traveled.  Preserving fruits was an art Sage remembered from her childhood.  She had tried to convince her band to practice it, offering to teach them,  but the Band Mothers had refused.  They were too afraid of village ways, even of something that simple, and of what those ways had made of the women who lived in the villages.  Sage, born in a village, had known better than to try to insist.

The sky was beginning to film with clouds and Sage frowned anxiously.  It was a little early for snow, but it had happened before in the mountains in this season.  She wanted to be back in the band’s winter camp before the snows.  It was very different from the desperate life she had lived on the plains for a few years, before the Great Hills Band had taken her in.  Now she was back in the mountains of her childhood, traveling on band business to a town similar to the one she had fled seven years ago.

High Pines appeared below her on the trail, a small cluster of houses.  Most were of log construction but a few sported such features as well-oxidized aluminum trim from pre-Change times, carefully maintained since such materials were no longer readily available away from the coastal civilizations.  Smoke curled upwards from chimneys and hung in the air, along with the shouts of children just released from class in the log schoolhouse.  It took Sage back to her own childhood, a happy time before she realized what lay in store for her.  Lost in reminiscence, she moved forward.

The sudden challenge and the swing of a rifle to block her path startled her.  She ducked, whirled and struck out automatically, realizing almost too late that it was only one of the village sentries.  It had been a simple challenge, not an attack.  Sage almost lost her balance as she reined in her response.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you, she said lamely, embarrassed.  She had no business letting herself off-guard, even in a familiar setting.

We’ve been expecting you.  The townsman frowned.

Sage flushed.  She could guess what he was thinking.  Most villagers had highly uncomplimentary opinions of band women, despite their mutual dependence.  She recognized the sentry now.  He was Red Bob, Joe Hanson’s son.  Joe owned the little store in the village and was a man of leadership and prestige.

My dad’s had a room ready for you this past week.  You’re cutting it a little close to the snow, aren’t you?  Hope you got what we need.  He eyed her laden mules.

Just like always, she assured him.  And it’s good quality like always.

The children giggled and shouted as she led her mules into town.  Little Sarah waved, only to be pulled back by an older brother.  The villagers took good care to guard their daughters, afraid that band ways were catching, like a disease.  In a way they were, thought Sage, but it worked the other way around as well.  Her mother had been a band woman who had forsaken her all-female band for the love of a village man.

Surrounded by a crowd of curious boys, Sage made her way to Hanson’s store and inn. The smells of cooking floated through the air, making her mouth water. She hadn’t stopped for rest or food since morning, and she realized just how tired and hungry she was.  She stopped in front of the long wooden porch to tie up her mules.

Don’t bother tying ‘em up, Sage; Jed will take ‘em right to the stable.  Sarah, come inside this minute and help me with the dinner!  Sage, do come in.  We’ve got your room ready and it’s almost time for supper.

Thank you.  I’ve been looking forward to your stew.  Sage smiled at Dorothy Hanson, Joe Hanson’s senior wife, the mother of Red Bob, the sentry.  Dorothy was a tall, strong woman with graying ginger hair pinned back on her head.  The backs of her hands and her face were puckered with shiny scar tissue where growths, caused by the increased solar radiation of post-Change times, had been cut out.  She was famous for her vegetable stew.

Sage followed Dorothy inside and went to the room provided for her.  She stowed her packs at the foot of the bed, knowing they would be completely safe as long as she stayed here.  Joe Hanson’s honor rested on it. She took the pitcher of water left for her and poured some into the dented metal basin so she could wash her face and hands.  After that, there wasn’t much to do.  Dinner would not ready be for a while, she knew, so she decided to take a brief stroll through the village to renew acquaintances in preparation for tomorrow’s trading.  She buttoned her sheepskin jacket against the chill of the fall evening and went out.

There were few people out on the streets, which was odd.  Most people would be home getting ready for dinner, but there always some people around.  Now the streets were almost deserted. Sage went back to the stables to check on her mules.  They had been fed, brushed and watered and she spent a few moments talking to them.  A sense of animal contentment came from them.  They liked her and trusted her and were happy to be safe and resting in the stable.  Sage smiled.  She had a rapport with animals and always had.  It was not a talent respected or even recognized by her band, but it gave her comfort.  She stood in the door of the stable watching evening gathering over the village like a mist, inhaling the smells of wood smoke, stable, and stored grain.

The people of the hill villages engaged in limited farming, enough to mostly support themselves, along with the meat, skins, herbs and sundries they traded for with the women’s bands, who roamed the plateau and the mountains and sometimes even descended into the hot and dusty plains.  The Change had altered the climate of this region.  Now instead of wide range lands there were small villages, widely spaced, both villages and fields guarded in spring, summer and fall by young men with bows and antique rifles.  The winters, although shorter than they had been before the CO2 buildup began that precipitated the Change, had increased in harshness and were their own defense.  There were vast spaces between towns, crossed in the warmer seasons by horse and mule.  The vegetable oil and alcohol driven vehicles of the coastal civilizations never came out this way, and almost all of the old roads had crumbled away.

Sage had never been to a coast.  To see the ocean was a dream of hers, one she never expected to fulfill.  What she did expect was to spend her life traveling between villages, trading for her band.  It was better than what she had grown up expecting: to live her life in a village like this one.   

After her parents died she had come under the care of a cousin.  As a poor relation she knew she could not expect to marry, even as a second or third wife.  She knew she would be given as a concubine, not a bad fate if she were sold to the right man.  She had been beautiful, and she was smart, so perhaps she could have manipulated her way to marriage, given time. It was the best she could have hoped for.  Family was as important here, in its way, as it was in the ruling coastal families.  No man would be interested in marrying a poor woman with weak kin ties.  There were always many more women than men, ever since the genetic plague.  Many boys died in infancy while girls survived, but when the girls grew up to become women many of them could not bear children.  Fertile women were valuable.

Sage’s most likely destiny had been as a concubine to the three sons of her guardian’s employer as soon as she reached the legal age of fourteen.  On the morning of her fourteenth birthday while the faint light of predawn misted the fields, before she could be fitted with the leather bracelet marking her new status, she had left the village forever, heading for the hot and dangerous plains.

She had never regretted her decision, not even in the worst of times when she had been reduced to starving and stealing.  Certainly she did not regret it now.  She was self-sufficient, a band member, and she was working hard to make herself fit in.  Some day, if she mastered the abilities the bands so valued, the ability to reach the minds of other band women, her place would be forever secure.

Her reverie was broken by a scream.  It came from down the road beyond the stables, from the direction of the town hall, the building that had been a courthouse in pre-Change times.  Sage vaulted over the low stable door and was off down the street before she had time to think.

More screams split the air as she ran.  Sage hated pain; she had known it too well.  She entered the courthouse and skidded to a halt at the edge of a small crowd.

The crowd consisted entirely of men.  At the center of the crowd was another man, bound tightly to one of the building’s ornamented pillars.  The prisoner’s clothes had been ripped partially away.  There was a small fire built on the floor, and two of the townsmen were applying smoldering wood brands to the flesh of the prisoner, to the encouragement of the onlookers.  Every time the red-hot wood touched his flesh, the man bound to the pillar screamed.

Sage pushed her way to the front of the crowd.  Even as the crowd began to murmur, realizing who she was, Sage reached the torturers.  She tore the brands from their hands as they stared at her in astonishment.

There was resistance; one of the men swung a brand at her.  She dodged, pulled his arm up and across her shoulder and sent him sailing over her head, to land heavily in the crowd.  She pulled the knife from her boot and stood between the prisoner and the crowd.  The men looked back at her, frustrated, bewildered, angry.

What’s the matter with you? she snarled.  What could merit this treatment?

Stay out of this, wanderer.  It’s not your business.  He’s trash!

He’s a human being! Sage glared at the speaker, who backed away and dropped his eyes.  Whatever had altered with the Change, some of the old values remained, and a few of the men had the grace to look sheepish.

He’s a horse thief! someone called from the back of the crowd.  We caught him in the pasture!  Stealing a valuable horse was one of the worst crimes.

There was a murmur of agreement.

She’s right.  That’s no way to treat even a thief.  It was Joe Hanson, just come in from the street.  Joe was getting past middle age, a stocky man, and he was puffing a little from his run.  We can hang him in the morning, if he’s guilty.

The men began to turn away, the threat of immediate violence ended.  Joe Hanson began to kick out the fire, shaking his head.  Sage sheathed her knife and turned to look at the man she had rescued.

Susan!

Sage swallowed hard, staring into hazel eyes, looking at a round babyish face she had never thought to see again.  Had hoped to never see again.  She was tempted to ignore him, to pretend she hadn’t heard and turn away.  She didn’t.

Not any more.  I’m called Sage now.  I’m a wanderer.  Of the Great Hills Band.

Sage swallowed again. It was Hank, the youngest son of her guardian’s employer.  One of her reasons for running, for leaving the village of her childhood.  Hank, who had never treated her badly as his brothers had,  but who had made it plain that he couldn’t wait for her fourteenth birthday.

You know this man?  Joe Hanson was regarding them both grimly.  A few of the remaining men gathered around again.  Sage was tempted to lie.

I knew him once, she said finally.  Long ago.  She hoped her lack of elaboration was comment enough.  Joe Hanson  took it that way.

Best you stay out of this, Sage.  He put a hand on her shoulder in a friendly way, turning her away from the men who were closing in again, now that there was something more to see.  Folks don’t like interference from the wanderers in town business, however much we need you.  And however much we like you, Sage.  It was a warning, although a friendly one.  Then Hanson raised his voice, turning back toward the other men.  We will take care of this in the morning.  No more torture.  Give him his clothes and lock him up.

Men moved in to do what he said.  Hank was cut down from the pillar and led away.  Sage heard him moan.  The crowd, what was left of it, drew away, following the prisoner.  Sage stayed beside Joe Hanson as he left the building.  As they left she saw a flash of movement around a corner.  It was little Sarah.  Sage did not doubt that the child had witnessed the whole thing. 

Hanson mentioned the incident again only once more, obliquely, on the way back to his place.

You keep good relations, he said, between your band and my village.  We need each other, village and band.  You see to it, Sage.

Sage nodded to him.  You get no disagreement on that.

He clapped her lightly on the back and they went inside, into the smells of wood smoke and vegetable stew.  After tomorrow, after the trading, Dorothy and her co-wives could make meat stew and meat pies.  Sage’s band always had more meat to trade, and High Pines was always eager for it.  The villagers always had a little meat, but there were feasts after the wanderers came to town.

After dinner Sage settled into a corner by the fire, listening to the men talk of village matters.  Dorothy Hanson directed the junior wives, who bustled around refilling mugs of beer.  They did not take part in the discussions and retired to just outside the doorway where they could keep watch to see if the men needed anything.  Sage sat quietly, listening to talk of the crops brought in just in time and a road mended, of a marriage set for the next moon, and of a girl from the nearest village, almost two days’ hard ride away, who had been sold to the Markham twins for a concubine.  There was some discussion of her attributes and whether or not the Markham boys might lend her out, after the newness wore off.  No one mentioned the horse thief locked up in the courthouse. There was mention of the rumors of a sorcerer out on the plains, a man with Change-induced magic powers.  These tales had begun a couple of years back, but the stories were increasing. After a time, when the wives came in with yet more beer, Sage slipped quietly out of the common room and went quietly up to her room.

The moon was full and high, shining through clouds like a lamp through cloth, and it sent a misted light through Sage’s window.  It looked as though the snow would hold off for a while yet.  She should have time to finish her trading and get back up the mountain.  A premature snow storm could force her to stay longer than she wanted in this strange and yet too familiar village.  She thought longingly of of the log lodges of her band’s winter village,  nestled in a tiny valley up the slopes.  There would be fires in the hearths and songs for the lengthening autumn nights.  She had a brief thought for her childhood dream of the seacoasts, but she put it quickly from her mind.

After Sage was in bed she couldn’t sleep.  She closed her eyes, but Hank’s face formed in the darkness.  His eyes looked pleadingly into hers.  At last Sage grunted in annoyance and swung her feet over the side of the bed.  She pulled on her boots and crept to the door of her room, opening it a crack.  The house was dark, and there was no more noise or laughter from below.  She closed the door and moved to the window.  She swung herself quietly over the sill, ignoring the limbs of the twisted pine that leaned close, and dropped quietly to the frosty ground below.

She moved silently through the shadows and hazy moonlight to the courthouse, easily avoiding the few men who patrolled the night streets.  Once at the courthouse she slipped through the halls down to the basement cell block.  Now her only problem would be Hank’s guard.  There wasn’t one.  Apparently the villagers trusted their locks and bars and assumed that no one would want to free a horse thief.

Hank! Sage whispered at the bars on the thick cell door.  Moonlight streamed in through the single high window, only partially illuminating the cell.  Inside she could see the dim form curled up in a blanket.  He must be cold, she thought, without any real sympathy.  The form stirred and sat up.

Susan? he said loudly.

Quiet, you fool! she hissed.

He was at the door immediately, looking out at her, his face a mask of shadows and moonlight from the high window.  He seemed like some visitor from the toxic lands, and Sage shivered.

I’m thirsty, Susan.  Do you have any water?  At least he was keeping his voice low.

It’s Sage.  No, I don’t.  Did you really steal a horse?

It was mine.

Sage said nothing.

It was!  I got sick some weeks back, coming back from the coast, and I stayed at a cabin near here.  The folks nursed me but they took my horse and sold him to High Pines.  I swear it!  I just wanted him back!

Sage still said nothing.  She wanted to ask what cabin, what folks since she knew most of them.  But this was Hank, and she remembered what he was like.

You don’t believe me.

Sage sighed.  They’ll hang you tomorrow, she said.  She peered at him in the dimness.  I’m not here to help you escape.  I wouldn’t, even if I could.

Why are you here? 

His voice trembled slightly.  That bothered her.  Why had she come?  Why did she care what happened to him?

I guess I wanted to - I don’t know, finish something that should have been finished a long time ago.  To her surprise her heart was pounding and she felt short of breath.  The terror she had felt leaving town when she wasn’t much more than a child, the horror she had had of his brothers, of him, it all came back.  She had come, in part, to prove that the fear was gone.  It wasn’t.

Oh Susan.  Oh God.  I didn’t know you thought of me like that.  I never tried to touch you, not like my brothers!

It was true, he hadn’t.  But he had followed her with his eyes, and he had made it plain what he would do as soon as she turned fourteen and was given to him.  She said as much.

You couldn’t wait for me to turn fourteen!

It’s true.  I wanted you.  But Susan - Sage - I saw you leave that morning.  I saw you leave and I said nothing.  I didn’t stop you, didn’t call out a search, even though at sunrise you would have belonged to my brothers and me.

Why?  Hank had never been one for empathy or altruism.

I was going to follow you.  I thought we could go to the coast.  But I couldn’t get away, not that day, not until three years later.  I loved you - Sage.

Sage sighed.  She didn’t think he had loved her but she believed him about the rest.  He had wanted to follow her, to take her for himself, but something had prevented him.  It didn’t matter now.  He would die in the morning and she might as well absolve him.

You did your best, Hank, I suppose.

Oh Sage!  His voice broke.  Help me!  Please!  He began to shiver uncontrollably.

She hesitated.  Then she pulled off her thick jacket and stuffed it through the bars.  Put that on.

He tried, but it didn’t fit, and he ended up draping it over his shoulders.

I went to the coast, he said, his teeth chattering.  Have you been there?  When Sage shook her head, he held his hand through the bars to her.  She stepped back.

Get me out and I’ll take you.  I’ve been all the way to Saddle.  I’ll take you there; you’ll be safe with me.  His voice had a wheedling edge to it.

She was intrigued despite herself.  What’s it like?

They have paved roads.  And lights in some buildings that burn all night, just like the stories from before the Change.  The great carriers dock there, coming from the algae farms.  That’s what they eat, you know, that and fish.  And then there’s the ocean itself, green-blue water as far as you can see.  It’s salty; I tasted it.

It was what she dreamed of: the ocean that went out past the horizon, mile after mile, all the way to Japan and to China, just the way she had read.  And on the coast the remnant, one of the remnants, of pre-Change civilization.

All that wealth, she whispered.

There was talk out there of opening up the interior again.  That’s what they called it, ‘opening up the interior’.  But they didn’t.  They won’t.  There isn’t enough wealth on the whole coast for that.  And we have our own ways here.

Our own ways, repeated Sage.  Yes, we do.  Things don’t change much out here.  Whatever it’s like on the coast, nothing ever changes here.  She turned away.

It really is different there! Hank spoke urgently.  At eighteen everyone becomes a citizen!  Even women!  There aren’t any Wander Bands there.  Women don’t run off to join some unnatural all-female band - he broke off suddenly.

Sage turned to go.

Wait! Sage, wait!  Get me out, Sage and I’ll take you to Saddle with me!  You don’t have to help me escape.  Ransom me tomorrow.  It will be worth it to you.

Sage turned back and gave an astonished snort.  How wealthy did he think she was?

I mean it.  You will be safe with me.  You could learn how to read on the coast.

He remembered more than one of her dreams, she thought.

I already know how to read, Hank.  I taught myself in a plains library.  Some towns still have them.  And I can take care of myself.  I have for years.

But now you’re with a band.  I can’t imagine you like that.  You’d be better with me.  Have you come down for mating yet, Sage?

She knew what he was trying to do.  There was nothing  worse to villager women than the customs of the wander bands.  Wander women did not marry, did not have men, never lived with them, but they had arrangements with villages.  Every year in the summer the bands sent young women to chosen villages for mating.  The village elders shook their heads over the immorality of it, but they kept the agreements, and not just for the benefit of the young men.  Many a village elder had taken advantage of the arrangement to try to father a child on a band woman.

I’ve been down for mating.  I had a daughter.  She died.  Her voice was flat. 

Next time you might have a son.  Could you give him up to a village, never to see him again?  You wouldn’t have to, not on the coast.  And not if you were with me.  The unsaid words hung in the air.

If I have a boy I will give him up.  And if I want to go to the coast, I will go.  I don’t need you or your protection, Hank.  I take care of myself.  As I always have, she thought.

In one swift motion she reached through the bars and yanked the coat from him before he could react.  She shrugged into it and strode down the shadowed hallway.

You will never make it alone, Sage, never!

His voice had the raw edge of panic but she knew he was right.  Going to the coast alone was dangerous for anyone, but especially for a woman.  The Wander Bands never went so far.  She kept going down the hall and did not look back.

Out in the cold night air again she stood in the shadows trying to regain her composure.  The dream of seeing the ocean was alive in her again.  If she ransomed him he would take her to the coast.  Hank was self-centered and a cheat but he wouldn’t play her false on this; she could see to it. 

She shook her head and sighed.  She couldn’t do it it.  She was pledged to her band.  Perhaps this was why they did not completely accept her; they sensed in her a lack of total commitment, the desire to be gone after her own business rather than theirs.  Like mother, like daughter, perhaps.  Sage shook her head.  She would never partner with a man as her mother had done.  Never. 

A tug at her arm flung her into a defensive posture for the second time that day.  She clasped one hand across her assailant’s mouth.  It was a small person.  She drew him back into the shadows of the building.  Not him, her.  It was the child Sarah.

What, Sage hissed, are you doing out!  She did not release the girl but she took her hand from the child’s mouth.  It seemed there was no end to what could go wrong on this trip.

I was following you.  The girl was far more composed than she should be.  I heard you talking to the horse thief.  To Hank, she said, to leave no doubt that she spoke the truth.  I heard everything you said.  I know you ran away when you were fourteen.  Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

It doesn’t matter, you know.  Sage looked down at the girl.  I never did belong to Hank, and even if I had it still wouldn’t matter.  Once a band accepts you, that’s it.  No one has the right to make claims from the past.  It’s part of our agreement with the towns.  It’s why the Band Mothers are so careful about taking outsiders.

I know.  That’s why I followed you.  When you go back tomorrow, take me with you!

From sheer astonishment Sage released the girl.  She struggled to find words and failed.

I’m older than I look.  I’m twelve!  I’m not going to wait for what will happen when I turn fourteen!

Sage tried not to sigh.  "In two or three years, Sarah, your father will find you a husband.  You aren’t like me, like I was when I was growing up.  Your father loves you; you’re his oldest