Given to the Earth Read online

  Also by Mindy McGinnis

  GIVEN TO THE SEA

  —

  THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

  —

  A MADNESS SO DISCREET

  —

  IN A HANDFUL OF DUST

  NOT A DROP TO DRINK

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Mindy McGinnis.

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  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: McGinnis, Mindy, author.

  Title: Given to the earth / Mindy McGinnis.

  Description: New York, NY : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2018] | Sequel to: Given to the sea.

  Summary: While Khosa, whose marriage to King Vincent precludes her being sacrificed to the sea, struggles with her longing for Donil and for the rising water, Donil’s twin, Dara, pursues vengeance against the leader of the Pietra, who destroyed the twins’ people, the Indiri.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017013759 (print) | LCCN 2017043759 (ebook) ISBN 9780399544668 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399544644 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Revenge—Fiction. Love—Fiction. | Ocean—Fiction. | Islands—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M4784747 (ebook) LCC PZ7.M4784747 Gi 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013759

  Ebook ISBN 9780399544668

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket art © 2018 by Cliff Nielsen

  Version_1

  For R. C. Lewis—Reader. Writer. Friend.

  CONTENTS

  Also by Mindy McGinnis

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1: Dara

  CHAPTER 2: Witt

  CHAPTER 3: Khosa

  CHAPTER 4: Vincent

  CHAPTER 5: Donil

  CHAPTER 6: Khosa

  CHAPTER 7: Dara

  CHAPTER 8: Ank

  CHAPTER 9: Witt

  CHAPTER 10: Dara

  CHAPTER 11: Donil

  CHAPTER 12: Khosa

  CHAPTER 13: Vincent

  CHAPTER 14: Khosa

  CHAPTER 15: Dara

  CHAPTER 16: Witt

  CHAPTER 17: Ank

  CHAPTER 18: Vincent

  CHAPTER 19: Khosa

  CHAPTER 20: Donil

  CHAPTER 21: Dara

  CHAPTER 22: Ank

  CHAPTER 23: Dara

  CHAPTER 24: Witt

  CHAPTER 25: Vincent

  CHAPTER 26: Khosa

  CHAPTER 27: Ank

  CHAPTER 28: Donil

  CHAPTER 29: Dara

  CHAPTER 30: Vincent

  CHAPTER 31: Vincent

  CHAPTER 32: Witt

  CHAPTER 33: Dara

  CHAPTER 34: Khosa

  CHAPTER 35: Donil

  CHAPTER 36: Ank

  CHAPTER 37: Khosa

  CHAPTER 38: Witt

  CHAPTER 39: Dara

  CHAPTER 40: Witt

  CHAPTER 41: Dara

  CHAPTER 42: Ank

  CHAPTER 43: Dara

  CHAPTER 44: Khosa

  CHAPTER 45: Dara

  CHAPTER 46: Witt

  CHAPTER 47: Dara

  CHAPTER 48: Ank

  CHAPTER 49: Ank

  CHAPTER 50: Vincent

  CHAPTER 51: Donil

  CHAPTER 52: Vincent

  CHAPTER 53: Khosa

  CHAPTER 54: Vincent

  CHAPTER 55: Donil

  CHAPTER 56: Ank

  CHAPTER 57: Witt

  CHAPTER 58: Dara

  CHAPTER 59: Khosa

  CHAPTER 60: Donil

  CHAPTER 61: Vincent

  CHAPTER 62: Khosa

  CHAPTER 63: Donil

  CHAPTER 64: Ank

  CHAPTER 65: Vincent

  CHAPTER 66: Ank

  CHAPTER 67: Dara

  CHAPTER 68: Khosa

  CHAPTER 69: Vincent

  CHAPTER 70: Vincent

  CHAPTER 71: Khosa

  CHAPTER 72: Donil

  CHAPTER 73: Witt

  CHAPTER 74: Dara

  CHAPTER 75: Witt

  CHAPTER 76: Vincent

  CHAPTER 77: Donil

  CHAPTER 78: Witt

  CHAPTER 79: Donil

  CHAPTER 80: Ank

  CHAPTER 81: Witt

  CHAPTER 82: Donil

  CHAPTER 83: Ank

  CHAPTER 84: Witt

  CHAPTER 85: Vincent

  CHAPTER 86: Witt

  CHAPTER 87: Dara

  CHAPTER 88: Donil

  CHAPTER 89: Dara & Donil

  CHAPTER 90: Vincent

  CHAPTER 91: Ank

  CHAPTER 92: Vincent

  CHAPTER 93: Vincent

  CHAPTER 94: Khosa

  CHAPTER 95: Vincent

  CHAPTER 96: Ank

  CHAPTER 97: Vincent

  CHAPTER 98: Ank

  CHAPTER 99: Khosa

  CHAPTER 100: Vincent

  CHAPTER 101: Khosa

  CHAPTER 102: Ank

  CHAPTER 103: Vincent

  CHAPTER 104: The Forest of Drennen

  CHAPTER 105: The Stone Shore

  CHAPTER 106: Stille

  CHAPTER 107: Khosa

  CHAPTER 108: Vincent

  CHAPTER 109: Khosa

  CHAPTER 110: Ank

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  Dara

  It is in my blood.

  It is in my bone.

  It is in my being.

  Before my mother became earth, she told us our names, her final thought becoming our first as my twin brother and I crawled from the pit that held our slaughtered people, our infant feet now the last on this land to carry the Indiri marks.

  “Dara.” I say my name now, our word for “vengeance.” To the side, a tree shrinks from me. It knows my tongue, as do all things of the land. And like all things of late, it wishes me gone.

  “Donil.” I say my brother’s name, the word for “family love.” Our mother knew us well, though she would never see our faces. No matter their meaning,
my words are heard only by wild things and my horse, an animal that none in the Stillean stables could lay a hand on without losing a finger.

  “Famoor.” One ear turns back to acknowledge that I have spoken, but otherwise the stallion ignores me, as is fitting for a proud animal named after the Indiri word for “unbroken.” That I sit upon his back is a temporary arrangement, and I would that he remember it.

  When I fall, I do not wish for him to return to Stille, to stables and harnesses, the civilized world shaving away his wildness until he thinks not of foraging but of the hand that will bring the next meal to his wooden box, where he is protected from the rain and the earth, sealed off from all that calls to him. It was my own mistake, years ago, and I will not have it played out by any other, be they two-legged or four.

  I left that behind me when I passed from the castle’s shadow, my former home. Stille will not welcome me again, not after I led the king’s beloved to her near death, a foolish choice, twice over. For both Vincent and my brother care for the Given, and she had called them to her as easily as the sea drew Khosa herself.

  I would see her crowned with seagrass, but now she sits enthroned beside Vincent, the boy whose heart I cannot have.

  The forest moves around me, the dying rays of the sun touching briefly on my speckled skin. I cannot look at my own flesh without marveling that I carry it, a dressing on my bones that only one other wears. As falling rain sinks through the earth to feed salium and igthorn alike, my spots have burrowed within, giving life to what is both beautiful and poisonous at my core.

  I am one of the last Indiri, the violent half of the whole, the prideful carrier of deep wrath, which wants only to bury itself in the Lithos of the Pietra, even if it be my last act. The love I carry for my departed people is a song made with war drums, the name my mother gave me inked deeply on my being. I close my eyes against the bright flash of fiverberries, the sun warm on my eyelids as Famoor goes on without my guidance.

  The Given would laugh to see me here, at this place I recalled for her from my third-great-grandmother’s memories. The ancient tree the Tangata cats use to sharpen their deadly claws stands as she saw it then, though larger now and marked with the use of many in their clowder, cats long dead.

  I swear as I dismount, though I had expected to find as much. Many things can be said of the Given, but not that she is dim. Together we worked in the place she felt most comfortable and I entombed, stone walls rising to our sides and smaller walls, bound in paper, stacked beside us. That I am here now, reminded of the Given even as I banish myself from Stille in order to forget her—and how others felt for her—is both a prick to my conscience and a chink in my armor.

  In her maps and books Khosa saw many things, as Donil does in the track of an animal, three days spent. These small moments she deciphered, trapped in time like a paw print in dried mud. There she saw the doom of our island, a rising sea that would never stop, the memories of the Indiri people helping to point the way.

  I rest my head against the tree, and it tells me stories of cats digging deep, fibers carried away in claws, a small death each day, a dismemberment spanning lifetimes. If I were stronger, I could ask for more, push for the tree to give me the tale of Onwena, my ancestor, and how she fell in love at this place. In her time the sea was far from here; in mine I can hear it striking the beach, and carrying away the earth as it leaves.

  But I am weak, and maybe the surf itself is to blame, earth taken and made infertile by salt. The tree could perhaps not part with the story, either, its lifesap leaving with the effort of telling. Underneath my hand, it shivers, and I see the tail of a Tangata above the waterleaf rue, a confident curl bending its stripes as it comes to tear bark from branch, skin from bone.

  I nock an arrow and send it through the violet rue, drawing a harsh cry followed by silence. I follow where the arrow hit true and retrieve it, leaving the cat for the oderbirds. Famoor shies from me as I approach, the blood on my hands scenting the wind. I cannot blame him. I smell of death and the wild, violence and the wind.

  “Famoor,” I say, recalling his name and its meaning to him, so that he may stand with pride at my approach. Unbroken.

  Again his ear turns to me, and I allow a smile for this one living thing that would have me near it. But my mouth is not accustomed to the shape, and the smile falls quickly as I mount, cat blood mixed with earth falling from my boot heels. I spare it a glance before spurring Famoor on, this mixture that I am bound to be a part of one day.

  Blood and earth.

  I’ll have one, before I become the other.

  CHAPTER 2

  Witt

  My Lithos.”

  I close my eyes against Hadduk’s voice saying Pravin’s words, but force my mouth around the proper response.

  “My Mason.” I nod at him to continue, ignoring the salt that streaks down my throat as he updates me on the state of the Pietran army. My army. I taught myself to cry only inwardly at a young age, knowing my mother’s deepest wish was to send me to the Cliffs of Alta, where I would train to become what I am now. The Lithos, leader of the Pietra, a man as hard as the Stone Shore he protects. Mother’s wish was granted, and she knew no regrets when I put her in the boat and pushed her out to sea with no oars.

  We have no need for more saltwater, and so I swallow mine, rather than let it leak from my eyes. Much and more laps at our heels, pulling away the very soil we stand on. Our rocks are crusted with its leavings, a briny reminder that time passes, and so shall we—sooner rather than later if we do not hold the entirety of this island for ourselves. Even from the cliffside where I view what remains of the once sprawling Pietran army, I imagine I can hear the tide, though we are safely inland.

  “As for my own men,” Hadduk concludes, “most were lost to the wave. Only a handful found the fires and returned.”

  I make a sound in my throat, one that he’s prickly enough to interpret correctly.

  “None would abandon, my Lithos,” he says, dark eyebrows coming together at the inference, though his tone remains respectful. “They were trained by me and earned their armor.”

  “And drowned in it,” I say, recalling the pull of the water at my own feet as I climbed a tree, the weight of Pravin’s hand on my ankle swept away as it receded.

  “That they did,” Hadduk agrees. “And I’d rather have it be so than see them walking dry on the land and not in step with their commander.”

  “It is not in them,” I concede, and know it to be true. Hadduk is a hard man, one of the soldiers who rode down the Indiri on the Dunkai plains, blood of children flinging from the tip of his sword. His men would either fear him or be like him. Either way, they would have found our campfires if they could, returning for the promise of more fighting, or to avoid his wrath. Either way, I do not care what urges their feet to return to their army, only that they come.

  The army below us stands in rank and file, a mouth with more gaps than teeth. Some men are without armor or weapons, shields and swords torn from their grasp by watery fingers, their mail blown from their bodies to be dragged to the depths and then rust. Even this sight does not slow Hadduk, his eyes making quick work of the picture below.

  “Fold Gahlah’s men in with Fadden’s. Spears are easily made, and both commanders taught them well.”

  “Though there is only one to lead them,” I say, eyeing what’s left of Gahlah’s lancia, their commander no doubt swollen with the sea by now.

  Hadduk only shrugs. “Fadden is the better man.”

  The better fighter perhaps, but I’ve seen Fadden’s wife and children dappled with bruises, as if they stood beneath a Hadundun tree on a clear day, the shadows of the leaves marking where they would slice, should they fall. Yet to Hadduk he is still the better man.

  And as Lithos I should be nodding in agreement, glad to have such a fine commander under my watch, not thinking of his wife and children at home, who w
ould have found their lives much easier if the wave had taken him.

  “Ula’s spada barely stands,” I say, continuing our assessment of the units.

  “And swords take time to make,” a voice behind me says. Hadduk and I turn to see that Ank has found his way up the cliff.

  “Lithos.” He nods to me, and I note that he has left off the traditional “my.” The Feneen may fight beside us as part of our agreement to make them fully Pietran after Stille is defeated, but I am not their leader yet.

  “Where’s your pretty snake?” Hadduk asks, when he sees that Nilana is not riding in her harness on Ank’s back. Though she is armless and legless, Nilana is as deadly as any of the Feneen, and many times more beautiful.

  “Nilana minds our camp,” Ank says, one sweep of his gaze assessing what remains of our army. “A somewhat bigger task than minding yours, I think.”

  Hadduk bristles, exactly as Ank intended. “I’ll show her something big—”

  “Enough,” I say, raising my hand. Hadduk falls silent, but there is nothing I can do to wipe the smile from Ank’s deceptively youthful face. Though his hands bristle with age, the caul he was born with kept him looking far younger than his actual years. Even without wrinkles, his eyes show a lifetime of wandering with the Feneen, morbid castoffs and unwanted members from other peoples.

  “How many of your soldiers were born Pietran?” I ask Ank, surprising him. His eyes go upward as he pretends to ponder, though I have no doubt the answer is easily summoned. The Stillean mother who abandoned him was foolish indeed to quail at the sight of his caul. Underneath it is the quickest mind I’ve seen.

  “A full third,” he answers. “Though they are all Pietran in the end.”

  Hadduk clears his throat and spits, and I know where his thoughts go. The terms of our agreement to bring the Feneen into our people as one were deftly made, Ank’s offer of an entire army of blooded soldiers difficult to refuse. Pravin assured me that the most hideous of their kind—those with three heads or misplaced arms—would be bred out within a generation, Pietran blood only diluted, not overwhelmed, the Feneen rewarded with the acceptance denied them at birth. Yet now I have no doubt the Feneen stand three deep to a single Pietran, and any offspring that should come from our mingling would have more wildness in them than stone.