Heart Hunter
The Story
Fleet is a young Sceadu hunter: strong, fast, and fearless. She hunts deep into the frozen mountains in search of meat for her people, for the rains have failed, plunging the Sceadu into hunger.
Fleet’s hunts are long and hard but she has much to look forward to. Soon Siah, the Sceadu’s shamanic leader, will gift Fleet her air-name and make her a full adult. Then she will be free to marry the man she loves, the handsome healer Ashin. But while Fleet is on hunt, the old leader dies and the Sceadu’s new shaman, visions a very different future for her.
The shaman dreams a quest that will send Fleet over the perilous, ice-locked mountains to the far west, to retrieve a magical talisman to return water and fish to the Sceadu’s streams. And if Fleet fails, she can never be a full adult and never marry Ashin.
But even the Sceadu’s smallest child knows the mountains are impassable.
Fleet refuses the quest. The shaman loves Ashin too and Fleet believes she is being sent to her death. But in a moment of angry frustration, Fleet commits a terrible wrong, and sets out into the mountains, not expecting to return.
But in a journey that takes her deep into the earth’s darkest places, and even into Death itself, she discovers that only she can save her people. To survive, she must draw on every shred of her hunter strength, and doing the impossible, turns out to be just the beginning.
The Idea
The story started with a single word: sceadu.
This is the Anglo Saxon root word of the modern word shadow. Not only did I like the look of this word but, whether it is pronounced skee-ard-oo or shar-doo, I thought it made a great name for a tribe. But what I liked most about it was its multiple meanings, all of which are relevant to Deep Fantasy. Firstly, there is the rain shadow, which is the inland-facing side of a mountain range that gets less rainfall than the ocean-facing side and a lack of rainfall, I realised, would make an excellent story-driver. Then there is the shadow described by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. According to Jung, it is the area of our unconscious where we lock away/repress the things we do not like/will not admit about ourselves. A shadow is also an absence of sunlight and a shade another name for a ghost. And so, the word sceadu gave me many ideas around opposites to consider.
The Music
Hans Zimmer’s Millennium at the 2.17 minute mark of track 11, the Geerewol Celebrations, has a wild haunting tune that inspired Fleet’s frigid, snow-locked homeland of Berian-tur. It also fits Fleet who is the quintessential hunter: strong, independent, brave and free. When you listen to that part of Geerewol Celebrations you might imagine, as I did, Fleet standing in the snowy peaks, keen eyes searching the slopes, long black hair streaming in the breeze.
The Secondary World
As a Deep Fantasy writer, I am interested in how opposites are reconciled, and why they must be, and Heart Hunter is full of opposites.
Berian-tur and the Stead are only divided by ice-locked mountains but could not be more different. The Sceadu of Berian-tur are led by a female shaman (siah/seer) who takes guidance from dreams/visions; the Sunnen of the Stead are led by rational/logical men. The Sceadu are hunters and foragers; the Sunnen are cultivators. Fleet is a hunter; Tel is a gardener. Both peoples are affected by failing rainfall, but react very differently. Other ways of dealing with the lack of water/climate change are explored through the Meduin (who both hunt and cultivate); the Okeanos (who change their fishing habits); the Vulturi (who scavenge and steal); and the absent peoples of the Old Stead, who seem to have abandoned their magnificent settlement.
Different types of love are also important and how they impact relationships. The love of friends; the love of mothers for their children; the love of same sex and different sex couples; the effects of infatuation, promiscuity and infidelity. Most of the flora and fauna in Heart Hunter is unique to the secondary world but similar things exist in our own (primary) world. The scinton is a type of mountain cat; the berian are bears, and murrow are small, mole-like animals.
One of the interesting things about building secondary worlds is constructing cultures. Sceadu children are known only as Little Sisters and Brothers until six or seven when their characters emerge, and they are granted earth-names by the the shaman (Siah). As the young reach 17 to 18, Siah dreams/visions their air-name which replaces the earth-name. Her dreams/visions also decide the role of the new adult.
Fleet considers herself adult but needs this formalised through her air-naming before she can marry. But Siah’s dreams suggest Fleet is anything but mature, as does Fleet's behaviour. In contrast, Tel’s position as the head of his household, and the skills that aid the Sunnen, make him adult in their eyes, but like Fleet, he must undergo a lot of changes (and challenges) before he truly becomes adult.
Deep Fantasy
Heart Hunter contrasts world views seen as opposites: the Sceadu with their female shaman and dream-insights, and the Sunnen, with their male leadership and logic. The veracity/accuracy of Siah’s dreams and visions could be viewed as proof of their authenticity or seen as a coincidence, or as something Fleet brings about. Heart Hunter considers the merits of both intuitive and rational world views; how they might interact; and how they might complement each other.
I explored what makes a female hero different to a male hero in my Ph.D thesis and am keen not to write female heroes who think and act like male heroes (female heroes I call 'male heroes in drag'). Fighting and killing efficiently are seen as strengths and traditionally gendered male, while traditionally gendered female traits of love, nurturing and connection are seen as weak and implicitly devalued. However, such traits can be recast as strengths.
When Fleet finds herself in peril, she draws on skills such as submission and verbal trickery, as well as physical strength and it is her love for her people that ultimately drives her quest. To truly become adult, Tel must dispense with his male barriers of self-sufficiency and be open to the vulnerability of love.
There are a number of rescues in the story which, at first sight, conform to the ‘knight in shining armour rescuing the damsel in distress’ stereotype but Deep Fantasy explores emotional/psychological rescues as well as physical ones. Tel's rescue of Fleet from the Vulturi, looks like a traditional 'male rescue of a female', but he uses trickery and is successful only because Fleet has already rescued him emotionally.
The motif of water, in all its forms, is important for Fleet and Tel's journeys to adulthood. Lack of it drives Fleet from her homeland and her need to cross rivers drives her trust in Tel. The ability to control water makes Tel an adult in Sunnen terms but the Marshlands (where water and earth mix to become something in between) all but costs his life. Fleet is congealed, like the ice-bound water of her homeland, and must melt/change to become an adult. Tel is confined like the water in the stonestreams he constructs and must escape/flow free/take new form.
Happy reading.