While serving in the Peace Corps, I wrote a 950k+ word fantasy novel. It’s truly awful—but it was an accomplishment. I’ve decided to revisit it and publish it here, chapter by chapter.

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Prelude

 “I dreamt our world died again, and I was its killer,” the small boy said. The shakes had awakened the boy, and his screams had woken his minder.

She wrapped the boy in his furs. “Bad dreams is all.”

“He made me do it,” he said. 

“Who? Made you do what?”

The boy coughed. “The skeleton man. He made me kill.”

“Honey,” Regina said. She stroked his silver hair and felt how like eggshell his skull was. She could end the boy’s misery with a sharp movement, destroy her life’s work with a twist, but then she’d have to do it 24 times more, once for each other child, and she didn’t have enough iron in her blood for that. “The bads aren’t what they seem,” she said. “Stories from the past reaching us now.” 

“I was alone,” Walter said, shivering. 

“You’re not alone, dear,” Regina said. “Think of Marq and Piper and Squidge and Folley.”

He wailed and coughed and choked. Walter shook, and his thin breath whistled. Regina cursed the Bones for not making him stronger. He’s the link that anchors the rest of the chain, yet he’s the easiest broken. 

She held him til he calmed, til sleep took him. 

If the skeleton man Raed is about, it means our dreams are failing. She fell into her thoughts. Are others dreaming of Davin Ford, too?  

She shivered. The fire had gone out. Regina slid out from under Walter, padded towards the cell’s brazier, and reignited the coal and wood with a finger. Light hit the bed; the bare, stone floor; and Walter’s bookshelf. Her fingers danced across the broken spines and faded titles. She couldn’t part the boy from those stories of far away; they always brought him a smile, even here. Deacon Ackerman, head of Rainbow High, had been pleased about that. “They were mine as a child,” he said. “And look where I am now.” Titles such as Mikal and the Morass and The Travels of Aegeus of the Isles weighed down the wooden shelf. Adult themes, all of them, but festooned with enough vivid illustrations to keep a child’s interest. 

A story might settle him into a deeper sleep. 

She grabbed a book and turned around, but the bed was empty. 

“Walter!?” 

WALTER!

A crash rattled Regina’s bones, and her marrow sung with the vibration. She could feel that cursed animation—

(The bowl of God’s spoon is a broken down lemur skully!)

Him. The Skeleton Man Raed.

(Gimme a hallelujah!)

Regina ran out of Walter’s cell. She had to make sure the other children were safely away, hiding with Walter between the planes. Once Rainbow High was void of its dreamers, she’d face down Raed the child thief. 

Again. 

And, this time, she planned to win. 

But before that, she had to run. 

Regina pounced through the moss-and-ivy courtyard and didn’t stop until she hit the iron doors. Tiny Folley’s room was the closest. She yanked on the rusted lever and pulled the door open. Bare walls, bare floor, empty bed. Gone. Thank the Bones! She made the sign of Vlad, the Bone of Warding,

(He won’t be saving them, sweetie! Not a dead one such as he.)

and planted a kiss on the rusty door. She fled to other rooms. Each time: the sign of Vlad. When the final child’s vanishing was confirmed, she crossed herself, bringing her pinched fingers from mouth to breast to shoulder to shoulder.

(Calling on the Resurrection Man? Pretty sure he’s got dust on his cowboy boots.)

She steeled herself, pushing the demon’s voice away with clenched teeth, and kept on. Her cloak trailed her into the deep of the mountain fortress.

And something else followed as well.

.    .    .

She swept into a large hall, the walls covered with paintings depicting long-ago battles. Markus the Wise rode his white steed face-first into a rush of oily, upturned swords. Beyond him, Franco of Pitch, Rainbow High’s first Lord, stood on a high hill and shouted orders to his soldiers. Regina blinked and swallowed hard and looked up at the Resurrection Man, twisted on his cross. 

(HE’S A DEAD ONE HE IS!)

Regina clutched her head. The room swirled. “Blessed Vlad,” she whispered.

(Oh GINA!!!)

Come if you’re gonna.

(How I’ve missed you.)

Come! Now!

The motes of dust floating in the air flared. Regina turned her eyes from the heat and light. A buzzing reverberated in her bones, sung, again, in her marrow. She felt years and lives returning to her. The last time the skeleton bastard came, he came for the youngest and killed ought else. Worse came to those who rose and fought. She opened her arms and called back the memories of her dead friends, the taken children, and Rainbow High’s failure to protect them.

Another bang, a

WHOMP! WHOMP! CHUG!

and her heart thumped against her bones.

Before her, an evanescent mantle appeared, hovering above two midnight boots. Buckles raced up their sides and disappeared into shadow. A wide-brimmed, red hat shimmered in the dull candlelight. She saw no face. 

She’d resisted before. For a long

long

long

time, she’d resisted his pull. Those gripping, skeletal hands. That eyeless gaze. A sick scent burrowed into her skull. Decay. Rotted things. The demon before her smelled of death. 

Yet Raed had never smelled of death. Too proud for that. He smelled of lilac and well-traveled musk. Never rot and decay. 

Too late, she thought: This isn’t Raed.

She squeezed her eyes closed. When she opened them, the corridor was empty. She put her hand against the wall and stumbled forward two steps. 

A third. 

The boots reappeared with their racing, quicksilver buckles. The red hat came too, this time with snaking horns below the brim. He was just over her right shoulder, humming in her periphery. She made out a silver ensign on his chest. Some kind of stupid, grinning animal that she didn’t recognize.

Regina ran. 

Maybe he won’t get me. 

(Maybe my baby!)

Maybe he won’t know how.

(And maybe the rain of SPAIN is full of FUCKING PAIN!)

Spain?

Her bare heels thudded against the cobble. Her toes caught between the stones, and she tripped, nearly fell, her momentum carrying her ever forward. A massive, oak door loomed before her, the gateway between the children and her private chambers. Regina tripped again, and, that time, her momentum dragged her to the floor. Blood leaked from a gash in her forearm. 

Get up, dammit! Get—

She reached the door. She slammed it shut and slid a bolt across the jamb. She made the sharp sign of Vlad. The Resurrection Man. R’ho and Opaleii for good measure. She expected to see him, standing before her like a nightmare but her room was empty. No furniture, no paintings, no uninvited guests. Just her and her ragged breath. She felt her mind slip. She bore down, but the drawbridge was falling. With each turn of the wheel, a bit of chain ripped out of the spool. She knew what happened when there was no more chain. She tried to calm her mind. She pictured herself at her last birth, ruby and regal and very much alive. Much later, she had died, of course, but she had been resurrected. For a purpose.

Her chamber door clicked.

Shuddered open.

There was no fear.

Just Regina, Minder to the Dreamers.

“Gina. Poor, stupid Gina.”

The form before her was a whisper. The light of the flames in her chamber played off the sapphire edges of his form. Tears spilled down her cheeks. 

“Who are you?”

“You won’t live long enough to care,” he replied.

Light danced around the man’s cowl. She caught a flash of his green eyes and saw nothing she knew. Regina moved to her bedside table and lifted a book bound in red leather. 

“Your book cannot help you. Your precious Bones cannot reach me where I am,” he said. “I am beyond flame and ice and all measures of men. I am even beyond your pathetic skeleton man Raed.” He thrust his arm out and bowed so low his cowl brushed the cobble floor. He raised himself up and said, “The boy. Walter. He’s a monster. He and his kin.”

“He has no kin.”

“Not yet. One day he will, and his kin will destroy the world. Surely you’ve heard his dreams?”

“I have.”

“Will you stop him?”

“That’s not what I am for.”

The man reached for Regina, grasped her blouse at the shoulder, and ripped. A long piece of fabric came off in his fist. He flattened it against his palm and traced images into it with his fingertip. He repeated the symbol and chanted. Then his fingers, awash in an amber glow, stopped.

(No, is it?)

“No,” Regina said.

“So be it.” He repeated the tracing, the chanting, once more. The amber light flashed. “Krov,” he said.

Blood leaked out her mouth and down her alabaster throat. She wanted

herself 

him 

this thing

to stop, but no stop came. She reached for him once. 

Twice. 

She fell to the floor at his feet, and his body swirled before her. The man spoke, but Regina had no ears for him. The cold of her chambers left her, and she felt a deep warmth. She never felt the long chill that came after.