Chapter 23:

  Eli needed a way to slowly introduce his friend to the wider world.

  “Do you like stories?” He asked. He knew she did, but it was a good way to change the conversation, as well as an opportunity to introduce some new ideas.

  “I like stories,” Aria said.

  “What would you like to read about?” He asked. Aria hesitated only briefly before she glanced up.

  “Madame Okoro… They way she looks, she reminds me of my mother. You said she might have come from the Contested Lands like Mme Okoro? Maybe, if there is a story about them, you could tell me?”

  Eli studied her face, the soft, fullness of her young features were balanced out by the flop of new curls growing in. Her light brown skin contrasted beautifully with the pale blue fabric of her new night gown. Eli nodded as he thought.

  “Yes. We could do that. Not all darker skinned people are from there, but it is where most of them are born.”

  “I want to know more about her,” Aria admitted.

  “Do you have many memories?” He asked. His voice was soft, sincere, and open.

  Aria’s eyes dropped. “I don’t remember her too much, but there are some things I couldn’t forget. Like her face. I remember her eyes. They were beautiful, and kind. They looked like the pretty gemstone we saw on market day. The one the traders bring in and only the uptown families ever buy. “Remember when we went, you told me it was called quartz – smoky quarts.” She was talking mostly to herself now. It was rare for Aria to speak so much, and when she did Eli was happy to listen.

  “Her skin was rich and deep, like cinnamon, or the mountain trees in the rain when they smells so sweet. My mama smelled like wildflowers and garden mint, and snow when it is sunny but it's still too cold to melt. She had a warm voice. She liked to sing, or maybe hum? I think she used to hold me when she sang.” She turned to Eli. “She held me when she told me about my name. She said she called me Aria because when I was born, I cried like a song.”

  Her voice broke. Eli set her mostly full mug on the table and pulled her closer, wrapping her in his arms. She didn’t cry, but he didn’t need any sensory enhancement to feel her trembling where she was pressed up against him.

  “Let us read about where she came from. Yes?” He offered. When she nodded, he made a gesture to the attendant at the door. She was quick to head to one of the many bookshelves, searching for a moment before she located a tome and brought it over to him.

  Gently rearranging himself and his friend, he opened the leather-bound book. On the front it read ‘A History of the Contested Lands Vol. I”. When he opened the first page the script inside was neat and precise. It was one of the handwritten volumes from before the mana-printers.

  His voice carried softly through the room as he began to read.

  ~

  “The Contested Lands were formed when the Ranked Families could not agree who should hold the frontier. Some wanted resource routes secured, others wanted land, few were willing to pacify an area so devoid of easily collected resources. Those areas that were valuable were often surrounded by undesirable plots that few were willing to sacrifice for.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Wars arose over mines and trade paths. Merchant houses took root where armies failed, claiming profit where the powers could not stand their ground. In most areas of the Contested Lands, the land itself is harsh. The climates are hot, dry, unforgiving. Patches of lush exist between swathes of unworkable land. The people native to the area are all shapes and sizes, but most are darker-skinned, their bodies adapted to longer, hotter days. Many groups, even now, travel in communal caravans, gathering at freeholds and meeting grounds. They did this before any of the Empires arrived, and they continue to do it to this day.

  “The people of the lands rarely take part in the many conflicts over what should rightfully be their land, however when they were engaged, most forces quickly discovered that it was much safer, and less costly to simply coexist with the people than to antagonize or attempt to drive them out.

  “Out of conflict grew independence. Where the powers failed, the people of the contested lands prevailed. These people eventually came to be known as the Nonta people, though this is not a name they call themselves. They were offered deals to maintain trade routes, and to work with the Empire and other continental powers that border the Contested Lands as well.”

  Eli paused there, watching Aria’s eyes follow the flicker of the lantern. He softened his voice, thumbing at the pages of the heavy history book in front of them.

  “Now,” he said, “that is how the historians write it in their big books, with their big words. It is all very proper, very serious, yes. It is also, very boring.” Eli grinned and Aria’s mouth twitched upwards as well.

  “It sounds interesting though.”

  “Oh, the story is very interesting. It is the people who write these books.” Eli shook his head. It was like some of them make it a mission to turn the most amazing stories into something so dry and dull you never learn they were more parody than history. Anything he didn’t learn under the tutelage of Mme Okoro and his family had seemed more like propaganda than history or current events. Then they had the audacity to dress up their lies in the driest, blandest, most offensively dull language and make hordes of children memorize it.

  “You know the stories though?” Aria had asked.

  “I do, yes.” It was a spiteful yes. As he answered, he realized he had an opportunity here. He could both help broaden Aria’s worldview, and quietly flout the skewed history told by the empire. Leaning forward, Eli gently closed the tome. He had decided he would tell her about the history from memory.

  “Let me tell you what happened. The truth of the Lands is less about maps and more about people. Most history is about people, Aria. How they react to the world, and how the world change in response.”

  He settled back against the couch and let his voice drop into a special cadence he had recently developed just for her, half lecture, lullaby, all story.

  ~

  “Imagine,” he began, “a place where the world cannot seem to settle on what kind if land it wants to be. A place where one step will find you in green shade and the next step in cracked earth so hot poorly treated boots are worn through by the heat.

  “That is the Contested Lands. It is one place, so large and vast it can hardly be a counted as a single territory, but so interconnected it cannot be separated from itself. The whole place is like a patchwork quilt of people, places, and climates, all stitched together by the sun the land, and the people. When and how the people of the Lands got there.” Eli just looked at Aria and shrugged. She shrugged back, then they smiled at each other as Eli continued to speak.

  “There are stretches where the air tastes like dust and copper, and nothing grows unless it has magic, or a very stubborn spirit. Then, just around a hill or dune you will find an oasis so blue and so bright it looks like sky fell to earth and decided never to rise again.

  “The beautiful places are incredible. They are full of life, and power, and when people from the Empire and other powers saw places like that they decided they wanted it, but how could they keep it when land like that is surrounded by dead desserts, and the domains of beasts it would be smart never to cross. It is very inconvenient to try and conquer land you can barely get to without death or delay.

  “But the people who lived there before anyone drew a map, the people that the explorers from the empire and other powers call the Nonta, they have lived on looked at that same land for longer than books like this even know. To them, the Lands are their home.”

  He watched Aria absorb this. She knew something of harsh homes, and the stubborn souls who survived them.