Commitment Hour

Начало книги

Thanks to the usual gang of writers (Linda Carson, John McMullen, Dave Till) for providing initial feedback as chapters came hot off the printer, and to Robert J. Sawyer, Richard Curtis, and Jennifer Brehl who read the whole thing in one chunk. Thanks too to Shelley Goetze who told me the name of that little bump at the back of your neck (while she was giving me ultrasound for a broken leg… but that's another story).

Finally, thanks to Chris Blythe, Eric Bristow, Duncan Bristow, and Larry Hackman who first walked with me from Tober Cove to Cypress Marsh. Death to quill pigs forever!

The night before Commitment, I was down in the marsh with the frogs and the fish, sitting out the time on a mud-crusted log and waiting for the gods to send me a duck.

I'd spent hundreds of hours in that marsh when I was young, practicing my violin. Elderly mosquitoes may still tell their larvae about the human child who was so busy rehearsing arpeggios he didn't have time to swat. Our village doctor claims I forced her to work daily from dawn to dusk, gathering and grinding the herbs I needed for skin ointment when I came home each night. But back then, Cypress Marsh was the only place the Elders of Tober Cove let me practice; they said if they let me play in town, the noise would curdle milk.

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