Prologue: The River of a Thousand Teeth

They came in the night of the new moon, carried on the wind, deadly leaves that were among us before anyone could react. All colors of skin and all manner of sex, no one knew who they were or why they had come. Claws and teeth, spear and ax they hacked their way through our skulls and breasts. Men were gutted and castrated, women split open from ass to skull and their bodies dragged off into the woods. All was chaos; around me were more of these demons than any of the faces I had grown familiar with. My father was castrated by a naked woman's teeth and then she took him into the woods. Through the cacophony I could not make out his screams from the others. A large man knocked me down and squeezed my throat, surely seeking my life.

But then there were new men, one black as the night and one white as a moon and they killed the man, showering his blood on my face. His death throws tore away my skirts but my tunic still covered me. Strange, I was near death, my father surely dead, and all I could think of was keeping my body covered. The new men, men from the camp, men I had seen that day and the day before, they carried me through a ring of other men and women, soldiers and traders, all armed. I was set down with two children, one pale and one dark. A boy and girl more frightened than I. The pale man was yelling at me, holding out a knife. I took it and pulled the children close. We watched the desperate battle; two sides killing, screaming, dying. We shivered and we waited. I knew I would defend the children to my death, but I knew death was coming.

And then it wasn't. The noise died away. Silence again ruled the night. We three fell asleep huddled together and when we woke in the morning, the bodies of friend and foe alike were gone. As if they had never been.