I always begin a new set of journaling pages as though someone else might discover them after me. One never knows, there could be another Fall, even if I am not sure how it could come about.

  I am Draeza Lif-sai’Lune—the Lif is new to me—and, well I suppose all that I would normally write is different now, isn’t it? My uncle gifted me these pages after my coming of age. I am to be the new spirit-speaker for my clan, and so everything I thought and believed before about who I might be and what I might do has changed.

  Rather than following my friends on adventures through the forest—some adventures being scarier than others, and more and less necessary, depending on our food supplies—I will attend to Aveela, our spirit-speaker, and learn the ways of spirit-speaking from her.

  She said it will take a decade or more for me to learn so . . . I don’t know. Ten years is a long time. Part of me had hoped for a different possible future for myself. Different than I can even achieve as a Lifkin after the Great Displacement. I suppose I have my parents to thank for that, though maybe they didn’t know the cost of what they were doing.

  I have to think they did, though. They had to have known of the risks. And they thought it best to try anyway. It is still hard for me to understand why. But they are not here for me to ask, and Uncle did not agree with their plan. So I don’t know how I would ever find out.

  There is not a great deal I have missed out on, at least not yet, though it has only been a week since my naming day and induction into the clan. Uncle has organized guardians for the Seed and we have developed contingency plans for if we are discovered by the Hume. Should any threat of their presence arrive, aside from a visit from Alfonse, we will hide the Seed and remove it from the clan altogether. Its promise for our people, for our survival, is beyond my wildest hopes. We may soon be independent of the Hume for our sustenance, free from their dependence on the Order to bless their crops in exchange for their penance.

  Aveela calls to me—I will write more soon. Maybe being a spirit-speaker will be more exciting than I fear it might be.

  ***

  The newest part of my spirit-speaker training seems to revolve around staring into a fire and practicing “listening” by which I can only conclude Aveela means practicing staying awake. Her hut is warm, at least, and Mirdal made a special tea to help me stay alert. Aveela seems to appreciate its invigorating properties as well. She only napped for two hours rather than three between her spirit talks. They certainly keep her busy.

  I let my mind wander as I watch the fire—there is little enough else to do. And as has been the case for the last fortnight, my mind drifted to my latest fight with Bansaerin, this time about my cousin. This is much less pleasant than his dismay at my proclamation that should he indeed wish to woo me as he so claims, he will have to do so as the fourteenth king of the sunrise kingdom did for the beautiful princess visiting his court, a flower every day for a year, foreswearing all other lovers, with each flower bearing a token of love of profession of the beloved’s perfection. I told him a kale leaf would suffice in lieu of a blossom, but I think it is the swearing off of other lovers that gives him trouble.

  Mirdal says it is foolish of me to be so particular, but is it truly so much to ask?

  ***

  I encountered one of the stranger tales I’ve found in Aveela’s many tomes, a love story between a Lifkin maiden and a Hume. When Eletria asked me if such stories existed—wanting to justify her own flame no doubt—I told her no. Perhaps I should ammend my accidental falsehood.

  Of course many such stories exist, though in every other one I’ve ever encountered, the lovers meet a tragic end, usually with the Hume’s associates, sometimes their enemies, murdering the Lifkin lover with a few giant wars and battles thrown into the mix for variety.

  But this story is different, not least because it isn’t a carefully crafted record that perfectly complies with bardic conventions—this is a Lifkin journal, hidden away inside a giant historical tome cataloguing ancient kings and queens and their spirit-speakers and other members of their courts whose roles I can only speculate about.

  Yet the question remains—whose journal have I found? And why did the writer hide it here? I have taken the steps already to rule out the most obvious if potentially difficult-to-believe answer—the diary writer’s handwriting handwriting bears no resemblance to Aveela’s, and the grammar conventions and some of the word choices place it as a few hundred years before Aveela’s birth, just before the fall. The record also fails to identify the spirit-speaker recording from a spirit, which can only lead me to believe that it is as it appears, the journal of a Lifkin woman besotted with a Hume.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The beginning of the diary, which seems to have had the front set of its pages ripped out, has the writer falling out of love with her Lifkin beau. She says his professions of love fall short of his performing of love—I am as-yet unsure of precisely what that means, but I have a relatively good idea. Mirdal has indicated a similar disappointment of passion or—skill—before.

  Her entries are sparse for several months, only noting comings and goings from nearby towns. (She is, of course, allowed to travel, making her life both only worth writing about but reading about too.) When she first meets the Hume, she isn’t sure what to make of him, only that he’s different from the few she’s met before and how everyone told her they would be. (They did not go so far as to say that Hume sometimes eat Lifkin, which Bansaerin told me to tell my cousin—more that they resent the Lifkin and will harm them if given the chance which I know and believe to be true, more so after the fall than before.) This part at least matches up with our most beloved story traditions—lovers always recognize the significance of their future partner, even if they misunderstand the connection at first.

  I believe I shall keep these records among my own things, rescuing them from the obscurity of these other tomes until such time as I can find the other portions of their journals. It is difficult to discern how old many of the tales are, but I would wish for someone to refit the pieces of my story together were they to become separated.

  ***

  It’s been a few days since I’ve had the energy to write. The Nightblades are speaking to me once more though Eletria’s ill-advised flirtation continues. Aunt and uncle are well aware of the dangers, though I fear Aunt Rugan has gone too far in her fervor to protect her daughter and may have driven her toward the Hume and away from home instead. But one of the other Hume lasses has broken off her attachment to a Hume shepherd which raised their spirits and made them amenable toward me once more.

  What I have had more time for is reading deeper into the journal I’ve discovered and spirits be praised, I am relieved I did not entrust the journal to my cousin before reading further myself for turning the diary upon so impressionable a mind, I feel almost certain, could do little but deepen Eletria’s desire to pledge herself to the shepherd forever.

  To what extent the diary may be an exaggeration I do not know, but she writes with an air of exultation that what her Hume lacks in finesse he makes up for in blind passion and muses that this may be a feature of the short-lived races—they have not the time to dawdle.

  It seems the lovers did meet an unfortunate end after all, at least as far as the diary scrap is concerned. The journal ends abruptly, with a singe upon the final page.

  ***

  I happened upon a truly disturbing text in Aveela’s library today—I still don’t know entirely what to make of it. The record-keeper worked or the owner of an expansive estate or significant holding, someone of enough value to the king as to have their own floating island, islas, they were called. Perhaps it is the coldness of the record-keeper though I believe that most likely wishful thinking on my part—the records detail Hume after Hume imprisoned for little more than poverty. There is a tax of gold and goods they are unable to pay. For a while, I could not understand the shadow the farmers meekly referred to in the records, and something about a fountain, until one of the leaders was captured and brought before the isla-trustee.

  This is where the character of the record-keeper comes briefly to the fore—they write of the rebel leader’s bravery and commanding presence. There is even a small note of surprise that so attractive an arrangement of features could be found upon “so simple a race of creatures,” and so let us be sparse in our praise of true character on behalf of the transcriber.

  The Hume leader speaks boldly before the ruler of the Isla and says that his people would not be starving, forced to choose between feeding their children and paying the exorbitant tax had the ruler not stopped the island directly over the fields, casting them into shadow, nor if he had not diverted the springs of rainwater into an elaborate series of fountains in the palace gardens which stopped the flow of underground water dispersal—an ingenious-sounding irrigation practice—to the fields atop the isla, causing them to dry up.

  The isla-placement practice reminds me of one of the diagrams I studied a fortnight ago performing research for Aveela’s newest spirit. The drawings depict isla arrangements where the Hume homes were carved in a series of caves through the base of the isla, usually on the “shadow side” so they would not disturb the “pristine splendor” (to borrow from a different source) of the surface for the Lifkin.

  The isla ruler scoffs at the Hume and says it is no provenance of his to critique his betters. They throw the Hume into prison for dissidence and disloyalty.

  A fortnight later, they execute him before a forced crowd of prisoners and conscripted Hume. There is a sketch of both this and the audience chamber. Even without color of a great deal of detail, the stark opulence of the Lifkin compared to their starving subjects—maybe the Hume are right and it is the fault of the Lifkin’s misrule that has left our world in so damaged a state. I can scarcely look at the second drawing and yet I fear that I must.

  Shame—that is what it means to be a spirit-speaker at times. To look in the face of our people’s misdeeds and know the guilt that lingers in our past and taints the possibilities of our future. Given the chance, would we deal differently with the handsome Hume leader? I’d like to think so, and not only because he is so striking—such an intensity about the eyes, but the records state such an occurrence was rare indeed.

  I have found a phrase I very much like in my readings:

  How will you woo the heart of a Lifkin maid if you cannot speak with the tongue of her people?