Queer Sky: Queer Sky Collection, #1

By Kathryn McCloskey

 

 

This first volume of Queer Sky contains four short stories, an epic fantasy novella and the first three chapters of an upcoming novella.

 

The River in the Sky

The city has fallen. Soldiers march through the streets searching for anyone important. The royal family and council have been evacuated. 

Except Cassaline didn't leave when she was meant to. And now has information that could save or doom her city. The only way out is based on a legend from a millennia ago when Heroes walked the paths of the spirit realm. Those legendary heroes had knowledge and spirit guides while Casa has neither.

She's willing to die to save her home but is death the same in the spirit realm.

 

Dragon Peace

Dragons once ruled the world. Then humans ruled. Now neither do. The remains of the human empire lay scattered as do the dragons who destroyed it.

In the village of Hilltop Mal discovers an egg. She nurtures the dragon hatchling and finds peace away from the struggles of her village.

Until her father demands the dragon killed and threatens to report her to the guards. Mal's only choice is to run.

Except surviving for a short time in the wilds is very different from spending the rest of her life there.

 

Copy and Paste

The witches' enclave survives in seclusion from the modern world. They learned their lesson about helping humans centuries before when many were killed. Young witches are still sent for short periods of time as students. But they are expected to return and take their place in the coven.

Jess has the magic to help people but is forbidden from doing so. When a crime happens in front of her the temptation is too great to ignore.

However wanting to help and actually being able to are two very different things.

 

Transporter

At the edge of the galaxy an endless war rages. Every resource of the empire is dedicated to the war machine. Those who resist the draft live as scavengers between the front lines and empire controlled space.

Tak survives by raiding damaged abandoned ships retreating from battle. With her partner in crime Jer they strip the ships of any tech they can. But in the middle of a raid a military ship docks. And communications have been cut.

Tak needs to find Jer and warn them of the danger before the enforcers find them.

 

The Warrior's Way

In a world where warriors are revered as living legends. They fight back the monsters threatening the peace and deliver justice upon the people. Whether it's wanted or not.

Lyssa searches for redemption in the only way she knows how. As a warrior willing to die in battle to save others. Her journey as an exile takes her far from home. To lands she knows very little about.

So when she hears screaming she charges into battle. Except the enemies are ordinary villagers who are doing the work of their god. To them using unwilling sacrifices is not an evil act. But Lyssa has already seen where this road leads.

Slaughtering villagers will not redeem her of past sins, but if she does nothing innocents die.

The warrior's way is the first novella in a gripping fantasy adventure series set in a world of gods and monsters, where magic is untamed and the old ways are lost.

Bandit Road (The Warrior's Way #2)

Lyssa reluctantly agrees to be the warrior of Hulna. She protects the village from bandits and in return she has food and board. She could get used to this simple easy way of life.

But her desire for redemption urges her to move on. Leading these people to fight back would be repeating the mistakes of her past. 

As she tries to make a quiet exit a cry for help has her jumping back in.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Queer Sky
• Release date: Jun 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393645146

Book preview

The River in the Sky

THE CITY HAS FALLEN. Soldiers march through the streets searching for anyone important. The royal family and council have been evacuated. There should be no one important left.

Except Cassaline didn’t leave when she was meant to. And now has information that could save or doom her city.

The only way out is based on a legend from a millennia ago when Heroes walked the paths of the spirit realm.

Those legendary heroes had knowledge and spirit guides while Casa has neither.

She’s willing to die to save her home but is death the same in the spirit realm.

CASALLINE LANDED IN the dirt, the loose clumps rising at the force of her body and showering her in settling dust. She rolled onto her stomach, and tried to spit the mud from her mouth, while she blinked the grit from her eyes.

Both actions were futile, but that didn’t mean Casa could stand the taste or the scratching of her eyes and do nothing. Her hands sank into the soft earth as she tried to push herself to her knees.

In the distance jagged mountains stabbed at the sky, thinner and longer than any she had seen before. They didn’t look real but they didn’t need to be in the spirit world. She had to keep reminding herself of that. Nothing would act as it did in the real world, and those expectations could get her killed.

The sky was a dark blue, marked with wounds of lighter blue that connected to the real world. Through them flowed the spirits of the dead drifting to their last resting place.

Where she was from it was called the soul river. Other cultures had different names, but to her it looked like a river in the sky. It flowed in one direction and gave her vertigo when she looked at it for too long.

Casa kept her gaze on the ground as the dizziness passed and her stomach settled. This wasn’t a place for physical bodies, and as much as she needed to hide she couldn’t stay here long.

Behind her were shadows of trees and the older buildings of the city. They were little more than impressions on this realm, the longer something existed the more presence it had.

She didn’t know how long the trees had stood, but it was long enough that they had left their mark, even now when they were long gone.

The oldest buildings of stone were pressing into this realm and would soon replace the trees completely as their influence faded. Where newer buildings now stood there was only the impression of rubble from the older foundations.

There was even a splash of fading red in between the stones. The war had done enough damage to impact even here. She thought she was leaving it all behind, but it seemed there was no escaping.

When she looked back at the horizon, and it’s unnerving mountains, she could only wonder what in the real world had shaped them.

The view from the edge of the city was nothing like that. There were gently sweeping hills that led to the border, and then wild grasslands that led to the sea.

The terrain wasn’t completely unexplored, but there was no reason to expand that way when they had a war to fight. Only merchants who had contacts with the nomads bothered to trade, and they did so rarely.

The nomads didn’t build permanent structures, and as far as she knew there was nothing in the history books about buildings ever being there. What those mountains could be impressions of she had no idea.

Getting to her feet proved challenging, as the vertigo intensified and her body felt as if it stretched, like she would be pulled off the ground but her feet would be left behind. There was a terror that if she jumped there would be nothing to hold her to the ground.

But there was also a yearning to join the souls in the sky.

She hadn’t felt this uncomfortable in her body in years. Then it had been a crippling disgust with her body, that only got worse as she became an adult, and only ended when she discovered who she was meant to be. Now it was like her skin didn’t fit. Like her body was a very poor container for a soul that wanted to fly.

Casa gained her feet, but stayed crouched, with her fingers keeping contact with the ground. There was nothing to hold onto, but it felt like that touch was keeping her from floating away.

Crawling across the ground would do her no good. She needed to travel faster, and make sure she found the way out before her pursuers found their way in. Before the damage done to her body was permanent. Not that she even knew what that damage might be.

There was so little written, or even known, about the spirit realm that this had been her last resort as the city was taken.

She had chased rumours of a spirit guide to the slums, and had the briefest of consultations as the city’s walls fell, and enemy soldiers marched the streets. There hadn’t been the time for anything but the most direct of instructions.

If they interrogated the spirit guide to find her destination, and were waiting for her on the other side, then she’d be dead before she realised what was happening.

That was if she managed to get back to the physical world with her soul still attached to her body.

Lifting her fingers from the ground, in an attempt to stand, flipped the world. The pull from the sky was so overwhelming she felt as if she stood on an edge, and were seconds away from falling.

Casa scrambled to make contact with the ground.

The pull from the earth reasserted itself as she collapsed onto her arms and knees, but her relief was tempered as an urge to let go again called to her.

Then she had an idea. There were stories of how important skin contact could be when you bargained with spirits. There needed to be as little between them and your soul as possible, so they could see you as real. As like them.

Maybe the same was true with the actual spirit realm. Maybe it wasn’t about staying close to the ground, but being in contact with it.

There were many legends of heroes traveling among the spirits, but none of the stories specified how they had done it. Most people who entered the spirit realm never returned. It was a foolish thing to do, unless you had no other options left.

Casa sat down and untied her shoes, then peeled off her sweaty socks. Her bare soles sank lightly into the ground.

She got to her feet and slowly straightened her body.

There was a moment of panic as her feet sunk further, until they were covered in the soft dry mud, but it felt comforting in a way, as if she was being held to the ground. The urge to join the souls in the sky lessened, but was still there in the back of her mind like a curiosity.

Taking a step proved challenging.

There was a fear that she needed both feet on the ground, and raising one would be enough to undermine her stability.

She wobbled as she took a step, but made sure to skim her sole over the mud, never leaving contact.

It took a while to get used to her foot being sucked down with every step, but soon she was at a close to normal walking pace. She wasn’t confident she could run but walking was fast enough for now. At least she was moving forward.

She looked back briefly, to see if any of her pursuers had made it to the other side. There was no sign of them, or the unstable patch in reality she had dragged herself through.

It seemed that now she was away from it the area had settled down. Even her footprints had been swallowed by the ground. There would be no trace she had gone this way. Which may be good in that no one could follow her, but she also didn’t know if she’d be able to find her way back.

With every step the landscape around her changed slightly, until she was heading for a completely different destination than she had planned.

Trees grew among the mountains, only to turn into fields of flowers as she got closer, and then back to bare earth.

The only constants were the mountains and the river sky flowing over them.

She didn’t want to go back the way she had come, but if she couldn’t find the way out then she’d need to. All she had to go on was that she needed to head near the mountains, and find a beginning point of the river, where new souls entered and joined the main flow. Beneath was where she would find the most unstable point that would lead her back to the real world.

Casa wished she hadn’t spent so much time questioning the presence of mountains in flat grassland, and more time asking about basic survival.

Unfortunately unstable patches were also where the spirits gathered, to try to make their way through to the real world. There were stories of bodies being stolen, and the person coming back changed. No longer human, just a spirit inhabiting a body.

She took one last look back at the faded ruins of the city, where there was a possibility she could be safe, or at least the illusion of safety, and then turned her back on it.

The mud wasn’t as hard to walk through as it would have been in the real world. It slowed her down some, but unlike physical mud it only sucked her down so far, and didn’t try to keep her.

Casa had been walking for some time, keeping her eyes on the ground so as not to be distracted, only looking up occasionally to make sure she was still following the flow of the soul river.

It was then she noticed the mountains were no closer, even though the terrain had changed again, this time to rolling hills of grassland.

Behind her the city was gone. There was nothing to mark that it had even been there, and was the only sign she had to go on that she was making progress. She didn’t know if she turned around now, and walked back the way she had come, if she would find the city. Or would it be as changed as everything around her.

It didn’t matter. This decision had already been made and there was no getting out of it now.

She trudged on through the mud for what felt like hours. Her body wasn’t tired, she could have walked for hours more, but her soul was. Something inside her wanted to rest, to lay her body down and be sucked under the earth.

As she lowered her knees to the ground, she noticed the grass under them. The blades were so soft between her fingers they didn’t feel like grass at all.

It would be so comfortable to lay her head down, and rest for just a moment. She knelt there for some time, while she wavered on giving in. The grass led to a meadow of tall grass, that would be so easy to make a nest from, and so warm to curl up in.

The flow of the sky against the unnaturally still grass drew her attention. None of this was real.

There was no air here to blow the grass, no water, no food, and no rest for her body. Her body could only die here, and let her soul fly free.

She had too much to do for that to be an option. The information she possessed had to make it to her superiors.

Casa pushed herself back to her feet, with a determination that had seen her through so many other hard times, she took it one step at a time.

There was no way to know how long she walked, but eventually the ever changing scenery settled into a mix of forest and ruined buildings.

These were nothing like the foundations of the city she had left behind. They were smaller but more intact. A few still had roofs, but all were overgrown with plants.

As she walked among the buildings, making sure she always had a view of the sky, they never wavered in their presence. It felt like she was making progress. As if she could look ahead and plan a route through the structures.

That was when she noticed the movement all around her.

In a normal forest it would mean nothing. Wind, animals, all the other natural things that went on. Here nothing was natural. There were no distinct shapes to make out. No darkness for them to hide behind.

They didn’t have bodies, but they were there.

She had no weapons to fight them with, and wasn’t even sure normal weapons would work against spirits. All she could do was walk on, while very aware she was being followed.

It had to be a sign that she was close to her destination. If the spirits gathered where the souls of the living came through.

Above her the soul river picked up speed.

She was so close, but her feet were no longer being pulled into the mud as far as they had.

Either she was becoming lighter or the physical applied even less here than it had done previously.

She stopped lifting her feet out of the mud and instead pushed them through. It was harder but it made her feel safer.

The spirits around her gained form as she walked.

They were all different shapes and sizes. Some looked human, while others were representations of animals, but a