I don’t think this has ever happened
before. But I found this review of my historical fantasy Teresa of the New World surprisingly insightful, bringing up
aspects of the book (and one problem) that were a little new to me. Reviews
don’t usually illumine work for the author. I’m still absorbing this. Maybe
it’s a fiction thing, since stories like this one come so much from the
unconscious depths. The review concludes: “There are several lyrical passages
about life on and under the earth’s surface…making this a good book to give to
a nature-loving, daydreaming child. Adults, too, are likely to find that it
unfolds unexpectedly into strange depths.” I so like the idea of strange
depths. And of nature-loving, day-dreaming children. I can see better now, too,
why the book may not have broad appeal.
I am concerned the first chapter
starts too slowly. Yes, it’s a little late for that! I find myself still
engaged in the writing of this book, which is odd.
I am concerned the first chapter
starts too slowly. Yes, it’s a little late for that! I find myself still
engaged in the writing of this book, which is odd.
Chapter One
Later, Teresa remembered.
When she was a
child, the earth whispered to her as she lay on her stomach, her stomach
pressed to the earth. Often this happened when she was hungry, and she was
hungry often, for her people lived in a difficult, swampy area along a
mosquito-filled bay where they ate fish and roots and not much else.
One day she woke
to find her cheek pushed hard into prickly grass. She didn’t know how she had
gotten here. The last memory she had was of her mother nursing the new baby.
Although Teresa had lived four winters she had just recently stopped nursing,
when the new baby came, and that had been sad—for her mother to feed someone
else and not her. She must have left her mother then and fallen to the ground
and gone to sleep. Now she felt dazed, her stomach empty, a distant ache. The
earth beneath her also felt distant, far away and cold. Her naked body was
cold. She wished someone would cover her with an animal skin.
In a hollow voice,
her empty stomach complained to the earth. Her stomach told the earth she was
about to die of hunger. Her stomach said it was glad because it was tired of
being so empty and unhappy.
The earth rippled
with a kind of amusement. Teresa listened, a skill she had learned because of
her father. No, the earth said, she is not going to die. She is only a little
hungry. She should eat some dirt now, mixed with water. She should look around
for some roots or grubs.
She can’t, her
stomach complained. She can’t move.
The amusement in
the earth swelled. Go find some leaves, the earth whispered. A grasshopper, an
animal skin to chew.
The ground under
Teresa seemed warmer, and Teresa tried to burrow into that warmth. I love you,
the earth whispered, not to her stomach but to her throat and mouth. I love
humans. I love watching you. I love watching and wondering what you will do
next.
Her stomach
grumbled. Teresa spoke out loud, “Tell me a story.”
The earth said, I
will tell you about a girl with long black hair who could swim through rivers
of stone. She moved through stone as wind moves through the branches of a tree.
Once she followed a vein of fire to a lake of fire, and she swam there smiling
at all the bright fish, yellow and orange and red and blue. She had never seen
anything so beautiful, and when she swam back up and rested on the ground, as
you are resting here now, she held one of those glowing fish in her hand. Of
course, it burned her. She dropped the fish with a scream, and the fish fell on
the grass and burned the grass and died. She was sorry then, with her hand on
fire. She is not from your tribe. She lives in the mountains.
Teresa didn’t much
like this story, which had ended badly for the girl. What are mountains? Teresa
asked drowsily.
Oh, I love
mountains, the earth said with a thrill that prickled across Teresa’s skin.
Sometimes I rise into the sky until I am high above myself looking down on
myself, and I can see so much and so far and the mystery of what I am is almost
clear to me . . .
“Teresa!” Someone
else was speaking, a human voice. “Teresa!” Not very gently, her father shook
her arm. “Wake up! Eat this.” Something in Teresa’s mouth felt too big against
her tongue, and slowly she began to chew. A baked prickly pear pad. He must
have gotten this from her aunt, who Teresa had seen gathering prickly pear that
morning.
“Come,” her father
said. “The men are fishing on the shore. Let’s build a fire and watch them.”
Her father was not
a good fisherman. He was not a good hunter of rabbits or peccary or a trapper
of mice. He did not seem to know what plants to gather or how to prepare them.
In truth, he rarely found his own food. Yet he ate as well as anyone and usually
had something to give to Teresa. All this was because her father was a good
trader, taking seashells and oyster knives from her tribe to the tribes inland
and bringing back deer tassels dyed red and a special paste for making arrows.
Her father could do this because he was a stranger and no one’s enemy and
because the tribes in this area considered him lucky. They thought themselves
lucky to have such an interesting creature live among them, a man so absurdly
incompetent, with a ridiculous long nose, blue eyes, and hair flowing down his
face and chest. They were not sure if this creature was human—not even Teresa’s
mother was entirely sure—but they treated him with kindness and gave him food.
“They are a
generous people,” Teresa’s father told her more than once, and she agreed. Her
people were generous. They fed new babies, and they fed her father.
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