Leaves of Revolution (37 page)

Writing this series has been an amazingly fun and heartening undertaking. The best part of it has been meeting all of the amazing readers who have shared the journey, and have sent me notes, and made me smile when opening my inbox. It means more than you could possibly know.

I also have to give some very sincere thanks to some of the special beta readers and others without whom these books would not be what they are. Thank you SO much for your willingness to question things and push the direction of the characters and the storyline. (These are in NO particular order!)

Janene Silvers

Michelle Patrick

Kristy K. James

Mallory Rock

Jennifer Simmons

Lori Dees

Linda Jarrett

Kathie Juliano

Brett Jonas

Lisa Pottgen

Angie Taylor

Kathi McBride

Melissa Goodwin

Jennifer Severino

Alicia Cutler

Terri Nesvacil

Abigail Rose

And a special mention to my friend, Steve Brownlee, who added a fun touch to the voice of Zander by providing the scene with the dog and the peanut butter, and encouraged me the times I thought I was stuck (though most readers will be glad I didn’t take any of his story suggestions at
those
times to heart.

T
HEY SAY THERE ARE two sides to every story. My father, the man who raised me, says there are three sides – yours, mine, and the truth.

I think it’s both simpler and more complicated than that. I think there’s the story that gets told, and the one that doesn’t. And the story that gets told is the one that becomes the truth, no matter what the facts might be.

Take the story of how King Oriel’s army took over the kingdom of Sanctium seven years ago. There are facts – that hundreds of our men, young and old, died at the hands of the soldiers, that entire villages were burned to the ground, that for a long winter, nearly everyone was hungry, until finally, just as the first blades of green grass began to peek through the layers of white and brown, King Vincent surrendered, disappearing with his family into the night just before the army reached his castle and demolished it.

Those are the facts – or I suppose they are, anyway. They’re the stories
I’ve
been told, although my village, Graineycreek, was spared, and so were the small towns of Tildor and Mooreland, whose markets we attend to sell our wares. We only lost one man from our town, Edward Burroughs, the father of my two best friends, Caleb and Cara.

Although Caleb and I were both only ten when it happened, and Cara was nine, the three of us can remember every detail of that day. If I close my eyes, I can still the four soldiers walking beside a wooden wagon. They stopped in front of the Burroughs’ house as we played in the yard. I can still hear the screams – not from Eliza Burroughs, who took the news with a calm, stoic nod before gathering her children in her arms and holding them tight – but from the young woman laboring inside who delivered her child alone at the exact moment Eliza stepped onto the porch.

The young mother left sometime in the early dawn of the next morning, leaving her baby girl in the cradle. It was not the first time such a thing had happened in Eliza’s midwifery practice.

That baby was seven now, giggling as she rolled through the grass with my younger brother Leo, basking in the sunshine of a warm summer day.

None of us will ever forget that day or the days that followed -- the way we all suffered from missing a man we loved. Our entire village struggled without the skilled carpenter and stonemason whose hands had helped build nearly every house and barn in Graineycreek.

Things were better now. Keeping the abandoned baby had given Eliza something new to occupy her hands and heart, and without the task of rebuilding to worry about, our village enjoyed prosperity in the new kingdom.

The stories of the vast wealth and riches of King Oriel’s kingdom seemed to be true. People in Auria had gold to spend, and they were happy to lavish it upon craftsmen like my father who created beautiful rugs, tapestries, and clothing with his spinning wheel and loom.

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