Windrunner's Daughter

by Bryony Pearce

  Raw’s eyes flashed and he stepped back from her. He twitched his hair back over his face as he retreated. “Is that what you think? That I’m here tonight because I owe you one?”

  Wren couldn’t look at his flushed face. “I don’t know.”

  “Was none of this real for you?” Raw snapped. "Nothing that we went through?"

  Wren gasped. “Of course.”

  “How could it be, if you think that about me?” He turned his back and Wren’s gut lurched as he prepared to leave. “You don’t want me, that’s the truth isn’t it? I saw how you looked at Orel. I’ve seen how you look at my face.”

  As his feet found the path, Wren leaped for his broad shoulders. “Don’t leave like this.” She grabbed frantically at him. “I didn’t want you to feel as if you had to choose me over one of the others. Any of them would have you.” She swallowed. “You’re beautiful.”

  Raw stopped his headlong rush away. “That’s not true. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life looking at me if you can’t. Just say so.”

  Wren forced his face round. “You’re beautiful, Raw.”

  He caught her chin in one hand. His eyes had filled with tears. “You did save my life, Wren, but I saved yours’ right back, remember? You got me home, but I caught you when you fell. We’re even. We’re not doing this because we owe one another anything, all right?”

  She inhaled air that seemed too thin. “You really don’t feel like you owe me?”

  Raw rubbed his scar as if it hurt him. “Of course I owe you. Before I knew you I was bitter and vengeful. You changed that. You’re strong and brave; you’re the beautiful one. I’m going to choose you, not because I owe you, not because I want to, but because …” His eyes glittered and Wren gulped. “Because I have to. Without you I’m nothing. And if you went with someone else, I’d kill them with my bare hands.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, nervously revealing his whole face to her. “If you still hate me, you don’t have to agree to the choosing. I betrayed your wishes and I know it.” His eyes flashed. “But I wouldn’t change anything, Wren. You’re alive.”

  Carefully Wren put her arms around him. “We saved each other over and over again. I can’t blame you for doing so one last time.”

  Raw tilted her chin upwards. “You’re mine, always. I’ll say so in front of the whole settlement in a few days.”

  “All right.” Wren nodded, relief leaving her weightless. “Except that I’m not yours.”

  “But you just said.”

  “I’m not yours, you idiot.” Wren punched his arm. “You’re mine.”

  Raw smiled. “That works too. I just wanted to make sure you were okay in there.” He nodded at the watching girls and Wren glanced back. She’d have to go round the front to get back in. There would be some awful punishment. She grinned.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  End

  Acknowledgements

  This book has been a long time in the making. The first time Wren appeared was as a character named Web, in a short story I wrote back in 2003. She was the one who encouraged me to give up my life and job in London and move, in 2004, to a village the Peak District, where I went freelance, so that I could spend as much time as possible writing. Writing what? Her full story, of course.

  Windrunner's Daughter was the novel that taught me to write. I made mistakes - huge mistakes. But for the first time in my life, in 2007, I actually wrote a whole novel, thanks to Wren.

  When I thought I had finished the book I sent it to agents and received my first raft of rejections. Being a writer means dealing with a lot of rejection!

  So I went to a company called Cornerstones, to help me find out what I had done wrong.

  That wonderful team led by Helen and Kathryn helped me hone my novel to the point at which they thought it was good enough to enter into a competition run by the British chapter of the international organization SCBWI. The competition was for unagented, unpublished novelists - Undiscovered Voices. They also sought to find an agent for me.

  I was a winner of Undiscovered Voices 2008 and, as a result, got offers from agents.

  Sam Copeland believed in Windrunner's Daughter enough to take me on. After Cornerstones, he was my first real cheerleader and did his best to sell the novel, but while publishers loved the first half, the second had problems.

  So we gave up Windrunner's Daughter, put the manuscript in the back of the proverbial drawer and, using everything I had learned in writing it, I came up with another novel, Angel's Fury, which sold to Egmont, was long listed for the Branford Boase and won two other awards.

  The Windrunner's Daughter taught me to write and then retired.

  Or so I thought.

  The reasons I had for writing Windrunner remained. I had thought it was important to write a story which showed that girls could do anything, especially those things they are told they cannot do as well as boys. In October 2005 I had given birth to a little girl and it became even more important to me that she learned this lesson. Maisie is surrounded by messages that try to pigeonhole her and I wanted to write something that would counterbalance this.

  So after writing The Weight of Souls and Phoenix Rising, I went back to Windrunner's Daughter. I deleted the whole manuscript, keeping nothing but my original concept, and rewrote it all.

  This time I plotted the second half as carefully as the first and used everything I had learned from working with editors from Egmont, Strange Chemistry and Stripes.

  When Strange Chemistry closed down, the lovely people at Xist asked to see Windrunner's Daughter and finally, I had a new set of cheerleaders, Calee and Michael-Ann, who also believed in Wren and her messages of courage, self-belief and equality.

  I write these acknowledgements with my own message - never give up on your dreams, dear reader. Because somebody, somewhere is waiting for you to get it right.

  Thanks as always to my family, who have been waiting patiently, for over a decade, to read Wren's story, to the wonderful people at Cornerstones and SCBWI who first told me Wren's story was worth telling and to Sam Copeland who first believed in it. To my new friends at Xist, Calee and Michael-Ann, who laboured to bring it to life and who suggested that I set the story on Mars, which was the final piece of magic it needed. And particularly to the daughters of my family. To my niece, Blythe, who gets up before dawn to train for triathlons and then goes to school and to Maisie, my musician, who is my greatest inspiration - she has never let anyone tell her she can't do something.

  My next book will be for my son ...

  With love to you all.

  Bryony