The form is still rather nebulous, but I believe this will be the opening segment. You're seeing a novel being generated, lumpy spots and all. ;) The Tree Singer Chronicles are fantasy based in modern civilization (and possibly YA but someone else would have to tell me where the line is drawn nowdays between "YA fantasy" and "clean fantasy.")
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Jeremiah stood before the Traitors’ Gate, his head bowed but his hands fisted. It had been named such long before he was born, but still, it felt right that this Gate should bare such a name. He didn’t know the event that had caused the naming, it was too far removed for living memory to serve. But it had been this Gate, of all the Gates between the two worlds that she had chosen to cross through just twenty years ago.
Jeremiah closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the twisted wood, his mind calling out why? It had become a useless question. She couldn’t answer it in life and certainly couldn’t answer it in death, but still he could not put the question to rest. It was at this Gate that he had failed her, and, in the twisted will of the world, this Gate that he was forced to guard until the next Tree Singer could walk through it and claim her own.
He opened his eyes and forced himself to study the Gate. His eyes skated up the gnarled roots, the bark of the tree. Checked its arching curve as it made its way higher than a man’s head just low enough to make a man on horse back dismount. It’s branches swooping downwards to complete the perfect circle before touching the dirt and growing back upward. The locals liked to say that the tree had been bent in the harsh snow. They named years they could remember heavy snow that sat for weeks or ice storms that shut everyone in. It was true that such storms had bent and reshaped many trees, but this one had been bent and curved all the years it had been a Gate. It was a painful sacrifice for any tree to make but it was necessary to separate the worlds. It wasn’t snow damage that Jeremiah was looking for; it was signs of trespass and ware. But today, blissfully, there were no tracks in the earth, no chipping or scrapping of bark, no broken branches. The apparent disuse was a blessing.Sighing with as much relief as he ever had at such moments, he gathered himself together and stepped through the Gate to search for the one that was coming.
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Highly Recommended
