Dreamleaks 3: The Lady of Derrenth

I never had a home as a child. Not one that lasted long enough for us to call it a home, at least. See, my parents traveled all the time, and that meant that my sister (Diana) and I (Stuart) had to go with them. If they were acrobats or rock stars or something, the cool factor would have made up for all the other ways this stunk a bit. But they weren't. They were financial consultants or something. I never understood the details as a kid. And now, I just preferred not to find out.

But there was a time when we found a home, however briefly. Not on purpose, though. It was a summer twenty years ago, when I was twelve and my sister ten. For three glorious weeks, we got to stay put in the tiny seaport of Deacon's Wharf. My aunt and uncle had a house there with a couple spare rooms, and financial consultants or something are not the type to turn down free stuff, so there we stayed. Its probably the lost childhood talking, but I remember Deacon's Wharf as some idyllic small town, like something out of a history book. Our cottage was barely a block from the beach of an enormous bay that the entire town had been built around. As the land rose up near the bay into a series of cliffs, the town followed. I could still remember the bustling main street far above the water, and the trains that made their way to town, their plumes steams visible from miles away.

We had our fun in Deacon's Wharf and the beaches. No to mention staying a real house for a while, playing with the toys that my cousins had long outgrown. But we knew it wouldn't really be a home. Not for us. My parents warned us that as soon as their business in town had finished, we would take the next train out, no questions asked. That fact haunted us the entire time, an ambiguous deadline that we could never forget. Never, that is, except when we went into the woods.

If the town came from ancient history, that forest came from a storybook. I've been in a lot of forests after that summer, both as a kid and after I grew up, and none of them felt like how a woods should be. Too many bugs and thorns, too many boring fields and brambles. Being in the Derrenth Woods, the one next to Deacon's Wharf, felt like being in another world. One that never would let you forget that you were an alien, that you were not meant to be here. But, if you meant it no harm, the Derrenth Woods would welcome you as a guest into its home. Or should I say her home.

The first time we saw her must have been at least a week after we arrived. By then, any moment we could get away from our parents, we went to the woods. Sometimes we ate lunch there, but mostly we just explored, climbing trees, and discovering the wood's mysteries. This time, its mysteries discovered us. The Lady of Derrenth (that was all the name she ever gave us,) had bright green hair with streaks of red. But it never looked dyed or artificial; nothing about her ever looked that way. I wondered sometimes how it would have looked if we met her some other season. Would it have turned more orange and golden in the fall? Or would she go bald in winter? Kind of glad I didn't get an answer on that one.

Not that her hair was her only unusual trait. She always wore a shimmery blue-green dress, one that flowed like nothing I had ever seen before or since. It was like water made into fabric. The only other glowing she wore were shoes, if you could all them that. More like hardened mud semi-encased in a shell of wood.

The Lady of Derrenth was sort of like that herself. She had a hard or stern look about her, but she never treated us as anything less than kindly. Especially Diana, though that hadn't been any surprise. When we first saw her, leaning on a tree and staring into a pond like her life depended on it, I just watched her, shocked and entranced. My sister, however, skipped right up to her and shook the Lady's hand. “Hi, I'm Diana!” she chirped. “What's your name?”

The Lady looked as surprised to see us as we were at seeing her, but she managed just the faintest of smiles. “It's strange to receive visitors,” she said, notably not answering my sister's question. “Most of your people have learned to avoid the woods.”

My sister gave the Lady a funny look. “Oh, we just visiting some relatives while my stupid parents have to work,” said. “Why wouldn't people want to visit here? This place is awesome!”

The Lady's smile grew wider for just an instant, and then vanished entirely. “Not all that inspires awe also brings joy,” was all she said. “But you are kind. I thought we had visitors in these recent days, and it is good to meet you. But I fear I can't be the best host. The fall comes soon, and with it the harvest. I have much work to do before then.”

“Can I help?” Diana asked. By this time, fear had started to override surprise. Yes, this had been a nice woods to explore, but if the townsfolk didn't come out here, maybe they did for a reason. My child side assumed that this woman was something fantastic, a creature of the woods. But at that age, my child voice had already started to fade, and my rational side worried that this was some crazy hermit. I considered grabbing Diana's hand and dragging her home, then telling our parents and possibly even the police who we saw. But I didn't. My child's voice hadn't been silenced completely, and so a part of me still wanted to believe.

But I resolved that as long as Diana was in the woods, I would never let her out of my sight again, at least not while the Lady was around. For the first couple of days, their activities seemed pretty innocuous. We watched the animals, sometimes staying behind while the Lady went out to greet them, or carved patterns into the ground. Or Diana would tie a string around a tree, one laden with decorations and even some of the Lady's hair. I had no idea what it meant, and the Lady never explained herself. Until that one day when we stayed in the woods until it had gotten dark. Not something we normally did, but then, it never got dark at two pm before.

This time, the Lady grabbed us and warned, “We have to leave, right now. The harvest has come.”

“What?” I protested. I barely ever spoke to the Lady before this, and I certainly never argued with her, but I could feel something off, like my worst fears were about to be confirmed. “It's barely August. Who harvests so early? And more importantly, who harvests a woods?”

“Only one being,” she assured me. “The Harvester.” She wouldn't explain further, just pulled us a long with a strength nobody could imagine such a frail woman could possess. Instead of taking us out of the woods, however, she pulled us farther in, well past where we had ever gone before, and then down – down into caves I didn't know this forest even had. We found ourselves in an underground cavern, one containing a tiny village and an enormous lake. An enormous lake, I should add, that floated above us.

“What's going on?” I asked, but the Lady didn't really have to explain. Besides the massive violation of physics going on above our heads, the village soon exploded with activity, as its people emerged from the houses to greet our host. Each proved my child-side right. I saw all manner of faerie creatures: tiny people with wings, people with bark for skin and leaves for hair, animals with the light of intelligence behind their eyes, floating beings of substances I had never seen before.

My question ceased to matter and I contented myself with stammering like an idiot. Diana just rolled her eyes and said, “What did you think this was about, dork?”

“Hey!”

The Lady held up her hand before the worst-timed sibling argument could begin. “Please, not here. We have enough discord in the Derrenth now anyways.”

“Do you mean the Harvester?” I asked. “What is he?”

The Lady shook her head. “I do not know, exactly. At first I believed it to be a spirit of your cities, one who sought the dominance of the artificial over the world of old. But now that I felt his nature, I felt a bit of our own within it. Perhaps it had once been of the forest, but the desire for power drew him to monstrous sources. Whatever the form of his power, he found it. When he first came to Derrenth, I gathered forces to drive him off. I was, I feared, to reckless and arrogant. I thought too little of his threat. You see, I had an army at my side. The Harvester only brought one.”

“What happened?” Diana asked.

“One,” she mourned, “had been enough. The Harvester's champion had skin as hard as metal, and no force could even hinder it. Worse, as it swept through our forces, it attacked the very spirit of its enemies, the thing that kept them alive. Without even being touched, my people – destroyed themselves. They plunged against each other, dove off cliffs, or simply dissolved into nothingness. I did the only thing I could and ordered a retreat. For all of that autumn and winter, the Harvester held dominance in our land. When spring came, he simply vanished, but I always knew he would return. And this time, he would not just claim this land as his. He would twist it into something new, something my people and I could not survive.”

I felt a shudder and saw the lake above us ripple. The Lady drew a breath. “It appears that he has left, for now at least. I should see you home. It would be wise if you did not return to the Woods again. Especially not tomorrow.”

“Why, what's tomorrow?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “The battle we had been preparing for will begin. I can't say we will win, only that we have no other choice. Regardless of what happened, I won't have you see the result.”

She led us out of the woods, which had again returned to light as if nothing had happened. But we felt an unease around us, one brought silence to the animals and left the entire woods as quiet as a tomb. When we got home, we promised each other that whatever the Lady warned us, we would return to the forest tomorrow, to see what happened and how we could help the Lady.

The next morning, the train came. I could hear the roar of the engine long before it arrived at the station. We had barely woken up when our parents ordered us to start packing. If they had their way, we would be gone in an hour.

I couldn't let that happen. Before we even left our room, I told my sister, “Go. Get to the woods.”

“What?” she said. “What about you?”

“I'll do the only thing I can,” I told her. “Stall.”

And so, while she snuck out the window, I groaned and whined like the teenager I soon would be. I pretended to be asleep, I took a shower that was so long I think my bones wrinkled, and I insisted on one last breakfast, one last swim, one last everything before we left.

And … that's the story. If I was the hero, I would tell you how it ended. But I wasn't. I didn't greet the Lady, I didn't believe in her right away, I didn't offer to help. Diana was gone for the entire morning. When she returned, her clothes was shredded and she had a number of nasty cuts and bruises, but she didn't have any physical harm to show for it. Any anger our parents had built up faded when they realized she was missing and turned to relief when she came back okay. But I saw the look in her eyes on her return. Something had changed.

She refused to tell me what, or give me any details. When we finally had a moment along, all she would whisper is “We won.” That's all. We never returned to Deacon's Wharf as children again. And the few times I visited, I barely could look at the woods, let alone go inside. Diana, on the other hand – I think a part of her never really left the woods. When my aunt and uncle passed away, she bought their old home and started a new life there. But from what I heard, she barely even used it. No, she spent all of her time elsewhere. In Derrenth.

Putting it to paper.

      There are many ways a person can write a story.  There is no proper way or way that it has to be done.  Writing just more or less happens.
      I've found that the style I use best is the form in which you map it out first, find out where I'm going with the story before writing too much.  I started out with the 'write by the seat of your pants' style.  I couldn't figure out how I wanted to start my book so I started somewhere in the middle and just kept writing.
It wasn't until I took History of Theater in college that I figured out that I could start my book in the middle of the story.  The professor shared that when you watch a play you are witnessing a snippet of the character's whole story.  What he meant was that you weren't watching the character's entire life ie: birth, childhood, adolescence, and so forth.  So what you are seeing is the portion of the character's life pertinent to story of the play.
      Once I learned that, I decided that I would use what I've written as the beginning of my book.  From there I realized that I wasn't sure where I wanted the story to go.  Some writers are okay with that and it's fine.  My writer's blocks tend to deal with me not writing because I don't know what is going to happen in my story.
So my method is the story boarding style.  I have several white boards that I map the whole plot line of my book out on.  These plot points are not set in stone and I have changed them as I've gotten feedback and found out some plot points are weak or irrelevant to the story or characters.  You just can't set it in stone.  That will limit you too much, especially if your story takes a turn you hadn't anticipated earlier (which happens quite often).
      When I actual go to write, I pick a plot point that I feel like I can tease out into a scene.  It might be a large scene that is several pages in length or it could end up being only half a page just so I get the plot element into the story.  Once I'm done writing it down and typing it up, I go back to my white board and update the point with a little more elaboration so that when I go back to look at the board later I can remember easier how I expanded it.
      I am very visual with my planning.  I've drawn maps of the areas my characters have gone so that I can describe them better in the book.  When creating a new world it helps to remember where all your landmarks are in relation to each other.  Or while writing the second book of my series, I realized that I had a hard time remembering where certain characters were in their own story lines, relative to each other.  So I took one of my white boards and drew out a timeline for each character.  One time line above the other so that when I plotted the points of the timeline for each character, the points then showed, in more readily available format, where each character was.
     I'm not saying this is the best way to write a story, and I'm sure it doesn't work for everyone.  This is the way I set it up though and it keeps me on track.  That being said, I'm always curious about other writer's methods and ways I can try differently to keep the creativity flowing.

The Multiple Perspective Approach

There are various ways to write a book, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, a first-person perspective book is great for character development but the problem, as I see it, is that that is the only way a writer can show things happening in the story.  It seems to me that characters end up hearing things or being present to events almost haphazardly.  I know there are writers who do this well and can pull it off amazingly, but that's the case with all writing.  Some authors can pull off writing styles amazingly.

The omniscient third person where the narrator can tell the reader everything they need to know about the character the first time the character is introduced.  This makes it easier to describe things that happen that are pertinent to the story without forcing, in some manner, the main character to be there.  The drawback to this style is that it tends to give too much away to the reader.  Some readers like this, of course, because some people like to know what's going to happen or they enjoy the feeling of what I like to refer to as 'Game Show Syndrome'.  What I mean by that is, when someone watches a game show and they know the answer but the person on the screen doesn't, they sit there yelling the answer at the person even though they can't hear them.  This same thing happens with books and movies.  The classic of course being, "Don't open that door!"

There are many other ways to write than the two I listed above but those are two common ones.

The perspective I use and personally love is the multiple perspectives.  This approach still is kind of a meshing to some of the others.  It allows the writer to still be able to draw the reader in and influence their opinion of the character while allowing the freedom to show things happening in other parts of the story that may still be important to the overall story.  If done well, the story will come together and mesh well while still providing some good intrigue.  If done poorly, like when I first started writing my story, all the characters just end up seeming like the same person or different character attributes of the same person.   To me it seems that using more than one main character allows the writer to toy with the reader's emotions and get them to second guess who the 'bad guy' is in the different character relationships.

About my first book.

   I realize in my last post I spoke of my book, He Came Around the Corner, and that was the first mention of it anywhere.
   So who cares?
   Well the hope for all writers is that people will care when they write a book and I, like most writers, write to influence those around me.  The purpose of writing is not always to make someone think about something profound and philosophical, although that is sometimes the case, particularly with some classic novels.  Sometimes writers will write just to make the reader feel enjoyment from what they read.  This is why I write.
   The funny thing about writing fiction is even though books are put into archetypes, they will often fit other archetypes as well.  For instance, a mystery novel could have a strong romance element in it.  My book is a Young Adult (YA) Fantasy but it still has other elements in it.  The next secondary element, after being Fantasy, in it is the romance.  The romance of the book actually causes one of the profound questions to appear in the story: What exactly are we capable of?

   My book is about two teenagers, Drake and Athena, at the end of their senior year of high school.  On the night of a school dance, what they know as the world they live in changes.  They find themselves alone in their town, everyone they knew and who lived in the town vanish.  The power is gone and only things on batteries and generators will work.  On top of all that, the two of them have to fight for their lives because where ever they go in town, there are orcs who want to kill them.  The only thing keeping them alive are Drake's new magical ability to summon a sword and their knowledge of the town they grew up in.