Covenants

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Just like giving birth, a project of this size and magnitude (not to mention blood, sweat and tears) is more of a joint effort man solo performance, and my gratitude to all who put up with me as I started my way through it. I especially want to thank Tod Goldberg, teacher, mentor, and writer, who not only opened all the right doors, but shoved me through them; and John Schimmel, Jody Heaston, Sara Robinson, and David Elliott, who were with me for the entire birthing process.

We were lost. We’d been on a routine patrol, just like hundreds of others, but this time, while making sure the mountains above the small town of Freston were bandit free, we had somehow mislaid the way back. I was scouting ahead of my troop, volunteered by my troop mates on account of me being from the Border—a child of the Earth or some nonsense that was always showing up in children’s pantomimes and street dramas. Nonsense or not, after over a week wandering about without any sign of a familiar landmark, my captain was desperate enough to half believe that I could find a way home by smell and how leaves grew on trees. My tracking skills, though, were learned in low-lying forest, not above the timberline where the only thing that grew taller than grass was some feeble-looking scrub. I had no idea where we were and didn’t know how to get one.

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