Began here.
Landing page here.

“Wait. Wait.”  Malina stared at the cat.  “Wait, some people think that Dominika – the one I’m named after, my ancestor- that she came from another world?”

“Well, many people did.  Right up until the Final Treaty was ratified.”

“Right up until – Wait.  People thought that, or – or people came from another world?” She was trying to remain calm.  She was mostly managing not to shout. “People were coming from another world?” Continue reading →

Began here.
Landing page here.

In a castle that shouldn’t be, in a place that wasn’t, a girl named after too many things ran her hands over the carvings in the sandstone and tried to read them. 

She could tell they meant something, but what they meant – that was beyond her.  Wait. 

“Wait.”

She ran her fingers over it again.  “It’s – Oh, I can almost read it,” she murmured.  “I can almost feel the weave in it.  The – oh.”  She pulled her fingers away.  “It’s like reading a language that is close to one you know, but is just different enough to be obnoxious.” Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.
Chapter 14 here.
Chapter 15 here.
Chapter 16 here.

In the middle of a land that did not exist, in the middle of a time that was, it seemed, all times and none, the woman named for her ancestors who had often found the names fit like someone else’s shoe put someone else’s crown on her head and found that both seemed to fit better than they ever had at home.

“I am Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre.  I am the daughter of Cecília Portela Dominika, the daughter of Tiago Jeleń Alexandre, great-granddaughter to Serafina who brought home the sun.  I am she who wears the crown here.” She lifted her chin, aware she was speaking to the wall of an abandoned – or nearly-abandoned – castle.  “I am she who crossed the border lands.” Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.
Chapter 14 here.
Chapter 15 here.

I was supposed to see the oases?
Of course.  You saw them, didn’t you?

There was just a little too much to take in.  Malina put her head in her hands.  She wanted – 

She wanted her tutor, Yethen, who would help her through these things.  She wanted her class-mates, especially Jaian, who knew what to do in situations where nothing made sense.  She wanted – 

She chuckled ruefully.  She wanted people.  She had spent so much of her life looking for a quiet place away from people, a little moment to herself.  And here – 

well, here, she had this cat, didn’t she?  Even here, she wasn’t actually alone.  Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.
Chapter 14 here.

A sensation washed over her, a feeling like the whole land was laid out in front of her. 

She’d thought of it like a big line, not all that wide, maybe the distance one could walk in a few minutes.

In front of her, the land spread out for days in all directions. 

Malina gasped.  “It’s huge.”  No, it was more than huge.  “It’s  – it’s impossible.  There’s not that much land on the whole continent.  There’s not that much land in one place in the whole world.”

“There never was.”  The cat’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a very long way away.  “There never was, and yet there always has been.  Forever and ever, and never, that’s the way of this place.”   Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.

Malina paced.  “This is – this is strange,” she complained. 

The silks of her new clothing brushed across her legs with every step.  The sandals made shhussshing noises on the tile floor. 

That in itself was strange. Everything was different from her normal clothing, from her normal floors, from her normal shoes.  The carved stone screens were like nothing she had at home. The bed, even, was made differently from any bed she’d ever slept in before last night.  Everything was like living in a storybook, which – 

You were named to this position.  We have been waiting for you. Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.

The Princess Malina  – Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre, who had always considered her long name to be more of a formality of being born a princess, rather like a carpenter’s child would have some sort of wood in their naming and a weaver’s child would have some sort of fiber, but now was learning that her name was some sort of way of anchoring her to some ancient magic, along with everything else she was learning during this particularly weird time – finished her breakfast and dressed herself in the silks and sandals provided by fish-sprites. 

She smoothed the clothes down over her body and found that she looked very old-fashioned, but so old-fashioned it was like she had stepped out of a history book, rather than like she had borrowed her grandmother’s clothing.  Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.

The fish-sprites chose that moment to arrive, which at least changed the mood if not improved it. One was pushing a large tray of food in front of it, the whole thing floating in mid-air. Another had a tray with piles of clothing; a third and fourth were managing a writing desk that was thick with carvings.

“Oh, oh wow.  Thank you, all of you. Thank you.”  Malina patted the air near all of the sprites.  “Thank you,” she repeated.  “This is quite a bit.  Thank you.”  She stretched and made her way to the little table, where the sprites had set everything.  “You are very good – very good sprites?” she offered.  “Very good spirits,” she added.  “Very good at serving me,” she tried.

How did you even talk to sprites?

They chittered at her, a trilling sound that went up and down and up and down again like it was running up the stairs. 

“You did a good job,” she added one more time. Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.

The bed was soft and fluffy; it smelled of an herb Malina could almost remember and it felt like sleeping in a pile of silk and feathers, which she thought might be a bit more accurate than intended. 

The sand-cat slept on the pillow Malina wasn’t using, and thankfully, he did not snore. 

She had fallen asleep far more easily than she’d expected – a strange place with nothing but the reassurances of a cat that she was safe; a place far from home where magic seemed to do all the housekeeping, when she had considered magic something that was barely in one’s life, or at least barely in her life; a place where she was still, when she came down to it, quite lost.  She had slept solidly, but as the sun filtered in through screens of silk, paper, wood, and stone, all of her dreams were loud in her memory. 

She opened her eyes to the bedroom, the Queen’s sleeping-chamber, which was draped in silk so that the limestone walls seemed very far away, although it was not a huge room.  She closed her eyes to pull back to mind the banners flying in the air, crisp and perfect.  

“Three spears azure, upright, oh, bother.”  Malina furrowed her brow.  “I was never good at all that terminology.  Three spears azure, upright, per chevron, with tips bloody, on a field vert, the border or.”  She saw the banner fluttering, and it seemed to her like the blood on the spears, the spears themselves, were suddenly real.  

“The three chiefs of the place that became the Ever-Flowing Fountain, the Karanala.”  The cat had not yet opened his eyes.  It didn’t seem to matter.  “They lay their spears down on the green grass where it still remained green and not red with blood, and they swore an ever-lasting peace, so long as the fountain flowed.” Continue reading →

Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.

There was a sand-cat in Malina’s lap, and he was purring. 

Weirder things had happened by far; if anything, the fact that there was a purring cat in her lap was made even stranger by how normal it was, compared to everything else that had happened to Malina in the last few hours. 

The fact that he was sitting there, purring, while she sat in the Queen’s chambers of an abandoned castle in the middle of the desert, just after telling her that she would learn to do magic, that made it even odder. Continue reading →