A Song for Naia
Alycia Christine
www.purplethornpress.com
Contents
A Song for Naia
Meet the Author
Also by Alycia Christine
Bonus Material
Copyright
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A Song for Naia
We called the world’s natives the Frozen since they were trapped in the secret places beyond our light. I know not how long they existed inside the glacier’s cold shadow, but I do know that my people were the first to give them fire songs.
My first fire song after our landing lit the night sky with a vision of our ship’s travel through the black void between our rotting world and this sea-blue jewel. The hardship of the journey was still evident in the char streaks along the ship’s dented orange hull. The fire song was full of golden high notes symbolizing hope and I believe it was these notes in particular that woke Naia.
I heard her discordant plea inside my mind. “Come! Come! Recover me,” it shrieked.
So I left the safety of our campfire with only my own kindled soul for warmth and sought the cold cave beyond our camp’s radiant circles of light. It was there in the womb of the ice that I made my first memory of Naia’s ethereal face.
She was the Frozen bound closest to the surface. Her blue-black countenance was caught in eternal terror, her six limbs were pushed up to protect her from the icy waves now solidly encasing her. She stared blankly until my fire-laced fingers touched the ice before her oval face. The heat of my song’s passion melted the cold separating us and her green gaze met my glowing red eyes. Awareness awakened after many millennia and she seemed to recognize me.
“Oft have I craved the warmth of your touch, Ryad,” her voice echoed in my mind while her look told me we would be lovers if I could free her.
Naia’s and my combined songs sparked a kinship stronger than her bonds and her spirit’s kindling soon awakened all of her people. The Frozens’ spirit songs cast visions across the blue stars of my people’s bright coming. In sleep they had waited for us, the Fire Singers, to leave our own scorched planet and melt theirs.
Now their spirits sing constantly in our minds. “Burn away our cold aloofness,” they keen. “Your blazes, dear Embers, fuel our passion and thaw our icy abode.”
“We two are equal parts, Ryad. Together we become balance,” Naia’s thoughts whisper inside me even as I continue to melt my way toward her freedom under the setting blue sun.
Each sundown renders our daily progress futile as the twilight temperatures refreeze our fire songs’ work. Others of my people have given up and will not leave the radiant security of the campfires. They say there is no hope of ever freeing our destined lovers without ourselves being frozen to death in the process, but I say I must try even though I might die in the attempt. Many frostbitten Ember corpses have been consumed in our campfires as their Frozen partners’ spirit songs die with them.
For Naia’s sake I must succeed. As I was her hope in the beginning, now she is my hope to the end. Naia’s love strengthens me and my fiery determination flares through the frost. Each cold dawn I give in to my passion and my flame melts more of Naia’s icy prison. Yesterday I managed to free four of her limbs before my fire finally died. I know night’s shadow will refreeze her inside the cliff, but the planet is warming and so is my strength. Unlike the others, I do not seek the refuge of the campfires at nightfall. Instead, I sleep in Naia’s arms with a wall of ice at my back. This sacrifice of security is the only way I can sing through more ice each day. Though I risk death with each renewed night frost, Naia’s calm song has kept me conscious and her body’s peculiar process of convection has kept me from freezing. Forty days ago, I could barely free a hand. Yesterday, I liberated four beautiful limbs!
Maybe tomorrow I will free her, maybe then I will have my bride and she will have her groom. For now, I rest my spent form in her languid arms as night comes to freeze us in song’s sleep once again.
“Soon will I free you, Beloved,” I say and then we both sing for dawn once more.
A sharp crack suddenly reverberates around us and I feel myself falling even as I hold tightly to Naia’s lithe body. In moments we are horizontal on the floor of the variegated blue cavern. The final burst of warmth leaves my body, melting the last icy shackles off her beautiful form.
“Freedom, precious freedom!” Her own song is pitched high in triumph even as mine fades to a bare hum. I feel faint, my mind grows...dim.
“Ryad?”
So beautiful my bride.
“Ryad!”
***
Warmth kindles my thoughts again and I stir against something soft and moist.
“I lost you, I almost lost you.” Naia’s thoughts sting with panic.
“I am here and I am well, beloved.”
Naia’s many limbs tightly embrace mine even as I burn away her tears with strength renewed from my people’s campfire. My smile matches hers as I settle my head in her lap and hum to regain my strength. I hear murmurs from Rue, Condion, and other leaders of my people.
“Look here, Ryad and Naia are evidence of the planet’s warming.”
“Again we must endeavor to free the Frozen!”
“By all means, we must.”
Naia looks around, her thoughts calmer and her lips parted in a wide smile. “Now, our hope guides others,” she sings.
My smile matches hers. Maybe tomorrow I will have my bride and she will have her groom, but, for now, her spirit song paints a lullaby across the indigo sky as our peoples add their chorus of hope to her melody.
Meet the Author
Alycia Christine grew up near the dusty cotton fields of Lubbock, Texas. She fell in love with fantasy and science fiction stories when her father first read Gordon R. Dickson’s The Dragon and The George and Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit—Will Travel to her at age ten. Her love-affair with fiction deepened when Alycia took a creative writing course while attending Texas A&M University. After that class, she was hooked as a writer for life. Her subsequent B.S. degree in agricultural journalism not only helped to hone Alycia’s skills with a pen, but also with a camera. Today she uses her skills as a photographer to capture the beauty of the world around her and add additional perspective to her fiction and nonfiction writing. Find her at AlyciaChristine.com.
Also by Alycia Christine
Fiction Anthologies
Musings
Short Fiction
“A Song for Naia”
“Chosen Sacrifice”
“Of Kelpie Lullabies”
“Raven’s Fall”
Find out more at AlyciaChristine.com.
If you enjoyed
A Song for Naia
look for
Musings
by Alycia Christine
“My train of thought derailed somewhere in the wilderness of my daydreams and Musings is the result. With short stories gathered from every corner of my imagination, I hope this fantasy and science fiction collection proves uniquely entertaining and thought-provoking.” –Alycia Christine
An excerpt from
“The Banner Prophesies”,
a short story exclusive to the Musings collecti
on
Smoke coiled about the battlefield as the unicorn and griffin circled each other. Round and round they paced, testing each other’s weaknesses. The unicorn mare’s silver hooves flailed against his golden talons and drew scarlet blood. It stained the moorland’s dying grasses. Not that the successful attack mattered. The male moved all the faster with the sudden spilling of his blood, his jagged scars stretching over his bulging muscles as he pounced toward her. His body bore more scars than hers, but most of these were shallow and that worried her. The unicorn mare was sleek and smart, but this Sindon beast was proving a more cunning fighter than his predecessors. When she attacked again, he feinted and then snapped back at her with all the ferocity of a true steppe predator.
They kicked and bucked at each other again and again. Her right hoof opened a scarlet gash in his golden chest and his left talon scratched her right cheek. His persistence soon scored a painful gouge even as she bit his feathered neck in return. Her back kick crippled his left wing and his beak snipped off the end of her right ear. Her pained scream echoed off the dark bark of the distant pines even as she tried to spear his left forearm with her spiraled horn. The attack failed and the griffin’s reprisal opened a gash in the unicorn’s left flank.
She fought on, heedless of the pain, trying to protect her home and her foal from this monster. Like many before him, the griffin of Sindon had tried to expand his territory by conquering hers. The lush forests and verdant fields beholden to the Auleig unicorn would perfectly ornament his vast domain and so the griffin had trekked across his deserts and steppe regions to battle her for dominance. His coming was like the torrent of a firestorm, scorching all life as it swept through the land. The unicorn longed for peace, yet saw none while the griffin rampaged. So now she fought him hoof against claw and horn against beak to end his fiery reign…
Musings coming June 20, 2014! Find out more at AlyciaChristine.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
“A Song for Naia” Copyright © 2014 by Alycia Christine
Excerpt from Musings copyright © 2014 by Alycia Christine
Cover illustration and design by Alycia Christine
Cover copyright © 2014 by Purple Thorn Press
Purple Thorn Press books may be purchased for educational, business, or for sales and promotional use. Please contact Purple Thorn Press for more information.
Purple Thorn Press logo designed by Alycia Christine.
Alycia Christine
https://www.AlyciaChristine.com
Purple Thorn Press
https://www.PurpleThornPress.com
ISBN 978-1-941588-07-9