Faith Hunter has written an indescribably wonderful trilogy which will be coming out in mass market (already out in trade paperback) in November, December and January respectively. It's a fantastic example of urban fantasy and as a teaser for next week, she's given us a vignette of her heroine's early years.

Short Rogue Mage series blurb:

The appearance of winged seraphs heralded three plagues and a devastating war between the forces of good and evil throughout the earth. Humankind and their evolutionary progeny, the neomages, survived. When a unique battle-mage is bred and born, her gift nearly drives her insane, and into hiding. Thorn St.Croix lives disguised as a human--a fugitive, channeling her mage gifts for war into stone-magery, and the pacific tasks of jewelry making. But when the ultimate war comes to her, Thorn fights back in the Rogue Mage trilogy: BloodRing, Seraphs, and Host.

Early Years

Thorn in mineral city

Short Vignette by Faith Hunter

The blizzard had kept us locked in for two days, dark days when the sun was hidden behind black clouds and the wind howled through Upper Street like the voices of the damned. Snow piled up against the walls of the house to a height of four feet. The window glass on the ground floor and up in the loft where I slept was crusted over with blown snow, opaque and misty, further diffusing the little light that penetrated from the sun through the storm to the earth. And each time we had to leave the house to feed the mule, the icicles that depended from the eaves were longer, thicker, and more numerous.

The electricity was out. So was the phone. We were isolated from our nearest neighbors though they were only a few yards away.

Despite the blizzard, inside the small house built into the side of a hill, the air was toasty warm and scented with the smells of soup bubbling on the stove, bread baking in the little gas oven, candle and lamp smoke. And the smells of stone that made up the entire lower floor, where I had never been. Fear keeping me on the main floor and in the loft.

The house was carved out of a hillside, something I never would have believed safe in this time of devil spawn, but Uncle Lem had assured me it was secure, and so far we hadn't been attacked in our sleep and eaten. And I had managed to stay away from the lower level, though the rock drew me like a magnet, like a beating heart filled with the blood my own starved heart and veins and arteries craved.

To stay alive, I had to stay away from the tempting, alluring, demanding stone. I had to.

I had lived with my foster father, Lemuel Hastings, Uncle Lem, as he had instructed me to call him, for three weeks, and things were still uneasy between us. He was human. I wasn’t. And he didn’t know I wasn’t. Which sucked Habbiel’s pearly toes, but it had to be that way. If he discovered what I was, he’d turn me over to the nearest authorities to be flayed alive, my skin sliced off in thin strips, and my dead body chopped up in tiny bits and tossed into the winter gale.

Secrets stood between us. And species. And a gap of understanding that the Pre Ap humans referred to as a generation gap.

He had no idea I was a stone mage. He didn’t know how to treat a teenager. And I had no desire to learn how to treat a human man. Especially one so old his skin fell in drooping wrinkles and his teeth slept in a glass. It was just too weird.

I was homesick. And I could never go home. Never. Just the thought of it made my head swirl with sickness. And the old guy? Uncle Lem?

He had met me at the train with a doll. Tears of Taharial. A doll. I was fourteen. Practically grown up. And he had brought me a doll. Even if I had been human it would have been…well…stupid.

I turned the doll over in my hands. She was a baby with a padded body and cold, hard, hand-made porcelain head and limbs, wearing a lacy Christening gown. Her hair was painted on, swirls of red. Red as mine. I thought of her as Evangeline, not that I’d ever name a doll. But it was a pretty name. And though the doll wasn’t something I would have chosen for myself or something I would play with, ever, it had given me some comfort in the cold, frozen nights. She cuddled with me in the narrow bunk bed in the tiny loft, keeping me company. Sorta.

I lifted her to my nose and breathed her in. Evangeline smelled like Uncle Lem. The scents of pipe smoke, fresh bread, and that much more elusive scent of rock and stone were caught in her clothes and her padded body.

“Hey! Girl. Come’ere,” he called. “Lunch is on the table.”

He called me girl. Not Thorn, which he thought was a peculiar name. I guess it might be among humans, who tended to religious names, mostly from the Old Testament, but it wasn’t a strange name for a mage. For a mage it was perfect.

Setting the doll beneath the down comforter, as if Evangeline might feel a chill, I climbed down the ladder and took my place at the tiny table. Bowed my head. Listened to Uncle Lem offer a prayer of thanks for the food, the warm house, safety from the storm and the evil that roamed the night.

I wasn’t human. I had no soul. So no prayer of mine would ever reach the Most High God. But I had been brought up Christian by my parents until they died when I was four, and then for the next ten years by Lolo, the Enclave priestess, so I knew how to act at all the right moments. My parents had believed. Lolo surely believed. But for me it was pretty much an act. A way to fit in with the humans. Not get caught. Very Important on my list of things to do. Not get caught….

I lifted the spoon and tasted the soup. Today it was green pea soup with slices of egg floating in it for me; chunks of ham floated in Uncle Lem’s portion. Green pea soup wasn’t something I’d ever choose to eat—I mean, it was green. Iiiiick—but Uncle Lem had been trying to learn how to cook food that I could actually keep down. I didn’t eat meat—it made me sick to my stomach, except for eggs and stuff—and the old man had been really working with meat replacements and new recipes to keep me from starving to death. And though the color of the soup was yucky, the taste wasn’t totally awful. “Good,” I murmured—only a partial lie.

Uncle Lem grunted. He didn’t talk much. He raised his hand and stretched it across the table to my tea cup. I heard a muted clatter. When he pulled his hand away, he left a pile of things on the table top. Rounded, shiny, green things. Rocks.

My breath caught. Fear slammed into me. He knew? Slowly I put down my spoon. It settled with a tinny clink in the bowl. I raised my eyes. Lem was looking into his soup, a hunk of fresh bread and his spoon working at the green liquid. He stuffed in a green-soaked hunk of bread and chewed.

When I found my breath I said, “Rocks?”

He grunted. Ate another bite. When he swallowed, he said, “I’m a rock hound. Them thar’s emeralds I found on the other side of the Toe,” he said, speaking of the Toe River that bisected the town. “Up in the hills thar. Girls, well, girls like gems, or so Elder Waldroup done said. Thought you might like to, I don’t know, play with em,” he finished gruffly.

I took the largest emerald between forefinger and thumb. Unable to help myself, unable to deny the part of me that was stone mage, I blinked on mage-sight. And the energies held in the rock blazed out at me, rich and intense and enticing. I managed to choke down the gasp that tried to force its way between my lips. Tears of Taharial. It was beautiful.

The part of the stone that was pure gem was small, maybe as big as my pinkie fingernail The rest was green, poor-quality emerald, and stone. But even the less-than-gem-quality stone was crystallized, as regulated as nature got, outside of pure, good quality gems. I knew all this at a glance. Stone mages could tell things like that.

The rocks held power, little zings of energy that touched my skin like the white sparks of fireworks, sparklers I had played with as a child. Memories flooded my mind, memories of when I was in Enclave, so long…angel bones…so long ago. I managed not to draw in a quick breath, though tingles spread though my body from contact with the stone. Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them away lest they betray me. “They’re pretty,” I said when I could trust my voice.

Wait a minute. He found them across the Toe? Fear filled me with the sudden understanding of what he had said. I looked up at him. “You found these? Like in a…mine?” The word was crusted with fear.

“Not a mine like you’re thinkin’. Strip mining. Removing the surface earth and exposing the underlying rock. Picked em out.” His lifted his gaze to mine, a glimmer of surprising humor in it. “With a pick, not my fingers.”

I huffed out a surprised breath and grinned, the muscles of my mouth stretching oddly. I realized I hadn't smiled lately. Maybe not since I got here. I let the smile fall away. “I like them.” I turned the gems over, watching and feeling the way the energy patterns responded to the light and to me. “How did you get them all smooth?”

“Tumbler. Downstairs. In the torture chamber.”

I stuttered a laugh. “I didn't say it was a torture chamber. Exactly.”

He grunted, a sound that might have held amusement. “Devil spawn hidey hole,” he quoted, laughter rumbling through him like the sound of boulders rolling down a hillside.

Angel bones! Does the this old guy have a sense of humor? I grinned again and shrugged. Took another bite of soup and tore off a hunk of fresh bread, dipping it in like Uncle Lem did. The bread and soup were actually pretty good when eaten together. My brows went up in surprise.

“Got me a drill downstairs,” he said. “I could put a hole in them emeralds,” he added, almost as an afterthought, though I got the feeling that he had been heading in that direction from the beginning. “Make you a necklace. Iffn you want.”

My gaze focused on him. “Really?”

He nodded, the hint of humor more a burning torch now. “I could teach you how. Iffn you wanted to learn. Not many girls want to work with—”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “Yes. Today? Can we start today?”

He chuckled and it sounded as foreign and unused as my smile felt. “You go feed the mule to save my arthritis. I’ll clean up the kitchen. Then we can go into the torture chamber and work us some rock. Deal?

Something burbled up in me, so long tamped down that it was hard to label. Maybe…joy? “Double deal,” I said, my voice little more than a thrilled whisper. I started to push my chair away, heading to our coats hung on hooks at the side door.

He held out a hand to stop me. “Eatchur lunch first. You ain’t no bigger’n a minute.”

“I’ve had plenty. I eat…a lot.”

“And I buy the groceries. I know the truth fer what it is. You live on peanut butter and oatmeal and that disgusting tofu stuff. Eatchur lunch. Then we’ll play with stones.” But he was smiling when he said it. And though his eyes were down, staring into his bowl, he looked sorta, well, almost…almost affectionate.

Crap….

A second flush of something warm and calming floated through me. Something I didn’t recognize. But it felt…. Habbiel’s pearly toes. It felt good.

I slid back into the chair. Settled my feet against the floor. Slowly I picked up my spoon. Tore off another piece of bread. And dipped it into the soup. A secretive smile pulled at my face.

With excitement zinging through me, the emeralds clamped in a tight fist, I finished my meal. Maybe I could live here..with the humans…. Perhaps.