writing

Water Road Wednesday: First Excerpt from The Endless Hills

/ JD Byrne / 2 Comments

For this initial dip into The Endless Hills, book two of The Water Road trilogy, I wanted to explore one of that book’s new characters a bit. Martoh is a crook, but he’s in the kind of prison he’s never been in before, the kind that’s landed him in the infirmary. Now, with a war on, there’s a chance for him to get out:

 A few seconds later a gentleman stepped behind the curtain as someone else held it for him. He carried small wooden stool in one hand and a black leather case in the other. His black suit was neat and fresh, implying he had some kind of official position. The fine grey dust from the stones out of which the prison had been built had yet to infest his clothing. “Martoh Isukar?” He put the stool down beside the bed.

“Who are you?” Martoh had long ago learned to be wary of men in clean suits.

“May I sit?”

“Help yourself.”

The man sat down and began pawing through his case. “It really was quite a journey to reach here, you know.”

“Why is that? And who are you?”

“I’m sorry.” The man sat up straight and pulled an official looking piece of paper from his case. “My name is Anea. I am from the Ministry of War.”

Martoh rolled his eyes. “Whatever it is they told you I did, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Anea looked at him with a frozen expression that said he knew Martoh was the right man. “You are serving a term of life in prison, is that not correct, Martoh? May I call you that?”

Martoh gave silent consent.

“Due to your sentence, you will die behind these walls. Why would I have to think anything else about you?”

“I’m not a killer.”

“It says something very different here.” Anea held up a clutch of papers and began shuffling through them, for Martoh’s benefit, most likely. “It says here that you stole some small trinket from a shop, were caught in the act, and pursued by the shop keeper. As he gave chase in the street he tripped, fell, and upon landing broke his neck. Died instantly, sad to say.”

“My bad luck.”

“His bad luck, I would say. But the court has already decided this. You are guilty of causing death while in the commission of another offense. Same as if you put a blade in the poor man’s back. However, the circumstances of your crime did, at least, save your life.”

“Put me in this cage, you mean,” Martoh said. He tried not to get agitated as any movement caused a bolt of pain to rush through his body.

“Martoh, you have never lived a life in harmony with His Majesty’s law, have you?” Anea let the question be answered by silence. “Although I suspect you never thought it would take you this far.”

“Obviously. It’s one thing to get locked in here for shooting a man or stabbing him. It’s entirely different when you’re here because of a mark’s poor foot skills.”

Anea didn’t take issue with him.

“If you are not here to pin something else on me, why are you here?”

Anea grinned, ever so slightly. “I am here to give you a way out.”

Martoh turned away from him. “I’m in no mood for games.”

“This is no game, I assure you. I am here on behalf of the Ministry of War, looking for recruits. You do know that there is a war on?”

“I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that the Neldathi might have a right to be angry.”

Anea cleared his throat in a way that suggested he would take issue with that position. “I am not here to discuss politics. I am here only in search of recruits.”

“Conscripts, you mean,” Martoh said, turning back to face him. “Typical. Use prisoners to put down an uprising caused by your own damned fool policies.”

Anea sat for a few moments. “Is everyone that cynical in your world, Martoh?”

“In the world I came from, one steals because that’s the only way he has to feed himself or his family. In the world I live in now, any other random person might try to kill me, just to prove he can. Pardon me if I seem a bit cynical when a stranger comes preaching salvation.”

Anea heaved a deep sigh. “Cynical or no, Martoh, you are not a stupid man. If His Majesty was going to conscript prisoners to go fight the Neldathi, why would I be here?”

Martoh had to concede that, but he wouldn’t admit it. “So what’s the deal?”

“Deal? There is no deal,” he said in a way that made it clear such horse trading was beneath him. “There is only an opportunity to serve your King and defend your homeland from barbarian invasion.”

“In return for what? Look, you’ve given the game away admitting that there will be no conscriptions. I get to say no thanks and stay right here. So why shouldn’t I?

“Freedom.” Anea let the word hang in the air while he got another paper from his case. “If you agree to fight, you will be free.”

Remember, The Water Road is now available at Amazon as well as in the real world at Empire Books & News.

Water Road Wednesday: All Around the World

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

I don’t really have anything substantive to say about The Water Road trilogy this week. Not because I’ve run out of things to talk about – far from it! But because I’m buried deep right now trying to get copies of The Water Road to all the folks who participated in my LibraryThing giveaway.

It’s always cool to see where people who request the book are from and this batch is the most diverse I’ve ever had, with winners as close as Ohio and Kentucky and as far away as Tunisia and Malaysia! In fact, I think I’ve hit every one of the soccer confederations (much more important than continents) this time except for Oceania. Over the course of three books, I’ve had winners from 24 states and 9 other countries (10, if you separate out Scotland).

Speaking of next time – tune in next week for more Water Road Wednesday! Upcoming weeks will have some excerpts from the second book, The Endless Hills, as well as a cover reveal. See you then!

Until then, some appropriate Paul Simon:

Water Road Wednesday: Solamo Renzi

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

As we continue on here with Water Road Wednesdays, we’ve moved on to characters who don’t actually appear in the first book, starting with Solamo Renzi. That wasn’t always the plan – I initially conceived of The Water Road as having four main characters, but Antrey and Strefer kind of muscled in and took over the joint. The other got shuttled off, but do make an appearance later.

Renzi is one of those. In fact, his story that would have been in The Water Road forms a novella that will be released next year called The Badlands War. As you’ll know if you’ve read The Water Road, the subject of the Azkiri nomads who roam the red wastes up north was a topic of conversation before the Grand Council. The Badlands War takes up that tale. In the process, it gives some background on Renzi.

He comes from a wealthy Telebrian family, although it’s new money, which means they don’t have the pedigree of the rest of the upper crust. Renzi’s father got rich in business and, naturally, intended that his son would follow in his footsteps. Renzi had other ideas and chose what he thought would be a suitable alternative career – the military. Although he wanted to make his own way and work his way up through the ranks, Renzi’s father used his influence to get his son a prime posting as an aide to the general in command in the Badlands.

Renzi stepped right in as a captain, but found himself hamstrung by his superior’s traditional thinking. While he was part of the Telebrian high society, Renzi wasn’t beyond noticing that the Telebrian strategy against the Azkiri continued to fail, over and over again. When he got the chance to see how a Guilder unit faced the same foe, he jumped at the chance.

The end result, as The Endless Hills begins, is that Renzi is now a colonel and in command of his own unit. Funded by other wealth Telebrians, Renzi’s Rangers (he hates the name) is a unit unknown to the Telebrian army – a unit that moves quickly on horseback, but dismounts to fight on foot. He leaves his new wife behind to fight in a war where he may never get to show off all he’s learned.

Thinking on it, Renzi is unique in The Water Road trilogy, as he plays a large role in The Endless Hills (he’s one of several point of view characters), but he doesn’t appear at all in The Water Road and only very briefly in The Bay of Sins. Most other folks tend to hang around a little longer. Make of that what you will.

Remember, The Water Road is now available at Amazon!

Water Road Wednesday: Hirrek of Clan Dost

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

First contact is usually a story that plays out in science fiction stories, but it’s just as likely to pop up in fantasy or other genres, too. As you can see from the third excerpt from The Water Road, it’s got a kind of first contact story, when Antrey, after years of living among Altrerians in Tolenor, first encounters the Neldathi from Clan Dost.

The Dost roam an area squished in between the Kelly Range to the north and west , the Levin Mountains to the west, and the sea on the east. It’s not the largest of the Neldathi clans. The area its great circuit covers is one of the smallest, in fact. But it’s in a particular location, about as close to the Triumvirate as you can get, that makes it especially important.

Yet, when Antrey makes first contact with the Dost (by accident, it has to be said), it isn’t with a thek or a war leader, but with a hunter. After all, a clan has to eat to keep moving.

The one who put the elk out of its misery was Hirrek, Master of the Hunt of Clan Dost. Not only does he hold an exalted position in the clan, but he comes from an important family within the clan. His mother, Ushan, is thek of Clan Dost. His father, Kajtan, is war leader. Although most Neldathi clans, including the Dost, work on a democratic level when it comes to selecting a thek, being the son of such powerful parents should go a long way.

Needless to say, Hirrek is a little suspicious of Antrey. She’s a complete stranger, for starters. But more than that, once his mother begins to listen to Antrey’s story, Hirrek is able to see that his world is about to be up ended. Neldathi life was always changing – it’s the nature of being nomads. But at least Hirrek has some idea of the path his life was going to take. His world was his clan and that was it.

Then he gets roped into something bigger than himself, bigger than his clan, and bigger than his imagination ever could conceive.

Remember, The Water Road is now available at Amazon – just 99 cents for the rest of June!

Water Road Wednesday: Final Excerpt from The Water Road

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

For the third and final excerpt from The Water Road, we return to Antrey. In this scene, she’s escaped Tolenor and made her way into the mountains south of the Water Road itself. For the first time since she was a child, she encounters Neldathi in the flesh.

She jumped across the stream and made her way to the rocks, which clustered near the upstream corner. She sat down, slipped the bottle from her satchel, and took a long drink. What was once snow was now ice-cold water. She gulped it eagerly, knowing that the pool would provide a means to refill it.

Just as she took the last drink of water, Antrey heard a noise behind her, downstream, that sounded like a violent displacement of limbs and leaves. She turned and saw an elk dive out of the trees on the other side of the stream. Its great antlers were a tangled mess of underbrush ripped from the forest as it ran. Her eyes met those of the elk, which had stopped at the edge of the stream, gasping hard, its breath frosting in the chilled air. After a moment’s pause, it dropped its head and began to lap water from the stream.

Antrey closed her eyes for just a moment and heard the elk make a terrible screaming sound, like it was crying out in pain. It made her shudder and sent a bolt of pain shooting down her own spine. She opened her eyes and saw the elk, reared up on its hind legs, thrashing its head back and forth. There was an arrow in its neck, just above the shoulder. Antrey had not heard anything to indicate that anyone was around.

A salvo of three more arrows thwacked into the elk’s flank. It screamed again and tried to move away, upstream back to the trees, but it took only a few faltering steps before it collapsed in the snow. As it gasped for air, the white ground turned red with blood. The beast was trying desperately to live or calling out to die. Antrey wasn’t sure which.

Antrey was so transfixed by the elk’s plight that she forgot for a moment that the arrows meant that, after all this time, she was no longer alone. She did not hear the further rustling of the trees, but did see first one, then two, then half a dozen Neldathi emerge from the forest and approach the elk.

They were tall, with just the faintest tint of blue in their white skin. Were they naked, they would nearly blend in with the snowy ground. Each wore multiple layers of animal skins that obscured, but could not hide, that they were strong, powerful men. All had long black hair, which grew from a fringe of scalp at the back of their heads. It twisted in braids that ran halfway down their backs. About halfway down, the black color gave way to a pattern of red, black, and white strips. Three of them carried ornately carved bows, while two others had similar devices slung over their backs. They either had not noticed her or ignored her and approached the elk.

The other Neldathi, Antrey had thought initially, was unarmed. The tallest of the group, he strode towards the elk, reached inside the layers of his clothing, and pulled out a knife, bigger than anything Antrey had ever seen that was not called a sword. In a maneuver that showed years of practice and an abundance of skill, he knelt beside the elk, placed the great blade to its throat, and drew the knife across, ending the beast’s misery. All the while, he said something quickly under his breath.

Antrey had never seen anything like it in her life. When she was young she had never experienced a hunt or a kill, only the end result. The sight of such a brutally efficient killing shook her to the core. The bottle slipped from her hands and splashed into the pool underneath her. At the noise, the hunters turned and saw her.

The one that had killed the elk crouched motionless next to it, knife still in hand. The others moved away from the kill and sprang across the stream swiftly, switching their focus. They began to converge on her slowly, two from upstream in the direction of the elk, two others having circled around to come at her from the other direction. She lost sight of the fifth, but within moments she knew she was surrounded. Before it ever occurred to her to try and get away, five well-armed and curious Neldathi had blocked any means of escape.

She ignored the ones on her side of the stream and tried to make eye contact with the one by the elk. He appeared to be the leader of this hunting party or its senior member. Regardless, he was someone who commanded respect. Maybe by making contact directly with him she might open some line of communication, although she had no idea how to do that. At the very least, maybe he would put the knife away. The way he crouched there, casually displaying the bloody blade, made her think he meant to tell her that it might be her neck that was sliced open next.

As the others inched slowly closer to her, Antrey could feel their eyes on her, covering every inch of her with their eyes. One of them was close enough that Antrey thought he might have sniffed her, but she quickly dismissed that as a work of her imagination. That was something the barbarian Neldathi of the Altrerian culture would do, but made little sense upon rational examination. They would use every sense available to them, just as she would.

With each footstep that brought them closer, the snow crunched underfoot. Antrey’s heart raced the closer they came. It was calmed only somewhat when the one across the stream stood up, wiped the bloody blade of his knife on the elk’s carcass, and returned it to its sheath. When she heard a voice behind her, she nearly exploded.

As I said, that’s it for the excerpts from The Water Road. That’s because it finally comes out next Wednesday! After all these weeks of reading about it, isn’t it time you just read it for yourself? Head over to Amazon and pre-order your copy today (only 99 cents until the end of the month!).

TWR Cover (540x810)

Water Road Wednesday: Naath of the Isle of Amreh

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

The Islanders – the inhabitants of the Slaisal Islands in The Water Road trilogy, not the hockey team – are an odd bunch.* In a world that’s defined by where you were born and lines between such places are brightly drawn, the Islanders go a different way.

Physically, as well as culturally, they have a lot in common with other Altrerians, particularly those in the Triumvirate. They aren’t, for example all stand offish the way the Azkiri are. But they don’t really want any part in the political stuff, much less the military expeditions. Folks in the Triumvirate view the Islanders as essentially hiding behind the protection they provide – it’s not like the Neldathi are going to sail up to the Slaisals anytime soon. The Islanders just see it as somebody else’s problem.

The irony is that the Islanders deal with the Neldathi more than the Triumvirate does. They trade with them and built four cities along the Neldathi coast (along with one on the northern coast, on the edge of Azkiri territory). Yet, they don’t have any particular affinity for the blues – they just do business with them. In a world with a lot of walls between cultures, the Islanders don’t pay attention to any of them.

Which is where Naath comes in. Born on Amreh, one of the many Slaisal Islands, he decided at an early age to go to sea. It was either that or be a fisherman and he never had any particular love for sharp hooks and the smell of fish guts. It would be wrong to say he wanted to see the world, but that’s precisely what he ended up doing. The pull of home at the end of a long voyage was strong, but at the end of the day, Naath belonged on the deck of a ship plowing through the ocean.

At the time The Water Road begins he had risen to be second in command of a trade ship called Gentle Giant – yes, it’s a prog referrence!

It’s the final part of paying his dues that’s going to lead to him having a ship of his own, maybe more than one. That’s the plan, anyway. At least until he rows onto the shore of bay in Dost territory and meets Antrey Ranbren.

Then his future, especially at sea, becomes much less certain.

* Maybe the hockey team is, too, for all I know. I’m not much of a hockey fan.

Water Road Wednesday: “The Missing Legion”

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

The Water Road is the first part of the trilogy, of course, and the first thing I wrote in this universe. It’s not the first to see the light of day, however.

At some point in the past, I decided I wanted to write a ghost story. October was coming up, it was something I hadn’t done before, and I thought it would be fun. I was in the middle of revising The Water Road at the time, so I decided to set it in that world. I quickly settled on a story about a hunter (in pursuit of one of the cryptid beasts that stalk Alteria) who gets lost in the woods and gets more than he bargained for.

I knew I didn’t want to set it during the time of The Water Road, so I set it much earlier, even before the First Neldathi Uprising and the forming of the Triumvirate. Indeed, it’s a time when two great cities in the Arbor are at war.

As for the ghost story itself, it’s influenced heavily by a section of Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film Dreams that you can read about here. Or, you can just read “The Missing Legion,” which is part of my short story collection The Last Ereph and Other Stories. Here’s a snippet:

The corporal turned away and motioned for Taiman to get back on his horse. “You’re heading into the woods, you say?”

“Yes,” Taiman said.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Absolutely,” Taiman said. “I’ve been chasing that beast for five days. If I can corner it in the woods, perhaps I can catch it alive.”

“Will that be worth it, you think?” the corporal asked.

“Of course,” Taiman said. “Why?  You’re not going to try and keep me from going, are you? Thought men in the Arbor valued free movement more than anything.”

“We will not stop you,” the corporal said. “But I would advise against going in, particularly if you don’t know the area. It’s very easy to get lost. Plus, they say things happen in those woods at night. Strange things, when the moons are full.”

Taiman chuckled and sighed. “Thank you for the warning.  Someday, the enlightenment that has come to the Guildlands will filter down to the Arbor as well. We no longer believe in superstitious nonsense. There are no strange things, only things that we do not understand. Besides, I am capable of handling any creature or person I might encounter. Now, if I may be on my way?”

The corporal told him how to best make his way around the camp and Taiman set off. He cursed the delay, but knew it had not spoiled his hunt. The beast had outrun him the day before, vanished from sight, but Taiman had held onto the trail. Barely.

His hopes rekindled when he spotted the beast through a telescope as it loped out of the trees in search of water. Once again he had a target to pursue. Taiman spurred his horse and charged off down river.

The Last Ereph and Other Stories is available at Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited, which means you can read it for free, essentially. Why wait?

Final Cover Idea (KDP)

Water Road Wednesday: Goshen the Holy

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I talked about religion in the world of The Water Road. While it’s largely background for the story of The Water Road trilogy, there’s one character who brings the matter to the forefront and plays a key role.

Goshen, known at the time the story starts as Goshen the Holy, is, somewhat like Antrey, a person without a country. He has a clan heritage, but he was born and raised in one of the Islander cities, which gives him a completely different perspective on the world.

Primarily, Goshen has no clan. The Islander cities all have a small, permanent Neldathi population, some of whom stay with others of their own clan. But most of the urban Neldathi mix with those from other clans, at least occasionally. As a result, there are those, like Goshen, who are born and raised without any kind of loyalty to a clan and without the animosity that engenders to other clans.

In addition, because he wasn’t constantly on the move, he was able to learn to read and had access to books brought in by Islander traders. At an early age, he was drawn to the stories of the gods (and other mythological figures) that had been compiled by Altrerian anthropologists before the First Neldathi Uprising. What started as simple fascination turned into serious study and, eventually, a calling.

Goshen first realized that the gods worshipped by the Neldathi and those worshipped by the Altrerians before the Great Awakening were one and the same. The Neldathi interacted with them in a very different way, but their names and essences were the same. Going further, he discovered more and more similarities between how the various gods interacted with the world. This led him to a conclusion as bold and world shattering for a Neldathi as the Great Awakening had been for an Altrerian – the gods were all actually separate aspects of one, real, god.

Goshen’s digging brought him to the creation story of the Maker of Worlds, which solidified his beliefs. If one god made the world, why would She then leave it to be overseen by others? No, Goshen concluded, the Maker of Worlds is the only god and She interacts with her creation via the different gods of Neldathi mythology.

He realized that wasn’t going to be a popular opinion amongst the Neldathi, who valued their clan identities, of which their individual protector gods were a large part. Nonetheless, he went out among them without the colored stripes in his hair to signify his clan membership. Part of all the clans, but part of none, he wanted to bring them together.

Sooner than he’d thought possible, he’d have his chance.

Water Road Wednesday: Gods and Beings In Altreria

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

One of the fun things about writing fantasy is that you get to build worlds from the ground up. Since you’re not playing with reality necessarily you can do just about anything you want. It also means you have to do a lot of background sketching to fill in your world. John Scalzi once wrote that he tried to go two questions deep on world building, which makes a lot of sense. It’s important that your world be well rounded (pardon the pun), even when it comes to things that don’t necessarily drive the narrative.

Which is to say that when I was building the world of The Water Road I had to decide what role religion played in it. Even though I’m an atheist, religion fascinates me and I think part of any well developed fictional world would be religion (unless the complete absence thereof was what you wanted to explore). In fact, one of the first things I wrote for The Water Road is the Altrerian creation myth. It’s not actually in any of the books, so this seems as good a place as any to let it see the light of day:

In the time before time, the Maker of Worlds saw a void in the firmament of the heavens.  She decided that it must be filled, lest the other stars and planets be drawn into the void and lost forever.

So the Maker of Worlds cupped her hands and dipped them into the Lake of Eternity.  She brought the water up in her hands and breathed on the waters while molding it into a ball.  When the swirling churning waters had been shaped into a perfect ball, the Maker hung the ball in the firmament and filled the void.

But when the Maker of Worlds looked at the ball of swirling water in the firmament, she was not pleased.  She plucked the young planet out of the heavens and set it in front of her.  The Maker thought for a moment and pondered what was missing from her new creation.

After a time, the Maker took the sharpest knife she could find.  She took the blade in her left hand and held her right palm out over the swirling waters.  In one quick motion, the Maker of Worlds sliced across her outstretched palm and the blood of the Maker fell into the churning, swirling, and empty oceans.

As the blood of the Maker of Worlds fell into the oceans, it began to become solid.  The more the Maker bled, the larger the stain on the oceans would become.  Before long, the spots of blood began to come together and form The Land.  As the land formed, the churning seas beat upon it, breaking off small parts which became The Islands.

The Maker of Worlds healed her wound and surveyed The Land.  With her breath, the Maker calmed the rough seas.  With her lips, the Maker gave the new world a kiss of life – to The Land, to The Islands, and to the seas.  Weakened by her work, the Maker hung the now living planet back in the firmament, where she forgot about it.

Eons passed before the Maker of Worlds remembered her watery creation with the one continent upon it.  In the time that had passed, The Land had become full of life.  Not only animals and plants, but intelligent beings, who lived together in communities and created a society.  The Land was rich and plentiful, but its inhabitants still found things to fight about.  They constantly warred, on upon the other, seemingly without end.  When the Maker saw what had become of her world, she was depressed.  And she was angry.

In her anger, the Maker of Worlds lashed out at her creation.  She drove a single finger into the soil on the east side of The Land.  Then, she drug it across the entire breadth of The Land, changing it forever.  In the wake of the Maker’s finger came Great Basin Lake and The Water Road.  To the south of the river, great mountains heaved up from the soil, all the way south to the cold southern seas.  To the north, The Land cracked and two great rivers were formed as water rushed into the fissures.  The far north, beyond the reach of the waters, became barren, dry, and inhospitable.  The people of The Land were likewise shattered, north and south, divided by the Water Road into Neldathi and Altrerian.  Many multitudes died.

When the Maker of Worlds realized what she had done, she howled in pain.  After all, she was a creator, not a destroyer.  He had lashed out in anger because her children had disappointed her.  Her anger saddened and disgusted her.  As she held back tears, the Maker of Worlds took the wounded world and gently placed it back in the firmament.  She vowed never to touch it again and let her children be.

And then, history began . . .

The Neldathi and the Altrerians were both polytheistic and shared the same pantheon of deities, but interacted with them in different ways. The Altrerians treated the gods as a group, beings that were all involved in the order of the universe. By contrast, each of the Neldathi clans had one god as a protector and venerated him or her over the others. The Maker of Worlds, in spite of the creation myth, wasn’t really part of the pantheon.

At the time The Water Road begins there’s been a seismic shift in the way the Altrerians think of the gods. Sometime in the semi-recent past, a Great Awakening swept across the nations of the Triumvirate. Only this wasn’t an awakening of religious fervor, but the emergence of a consensus that the gods actually didn’t exist. How people dealt with this varied – in the Guilds religious belief and observances disappeared in a generation, while the Telebrians hung on to the traditional cultural aspects of belief while largely proclaiming not to believe anymore.

On top of that, among the Neldathi there’s also a new strain of religious thinking. A movement led by a man named Goshen preaches that the gods are all actually different aspects of the one actual god – the Maker of Worlds. He and his beliefs will play an important role in The Water Road.

Water Road Wednesday: The Neldathi of Kentucky?

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

I have a list of topics for these Water Road Wednesday posts. I sat down last December and wracked my brain to come up with everything I could talk about without going too far into what actually happens in the books. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d wind up with a post about the blue people of Kentucky.

Although the story began much earlier, it came to the attention of doctors in 1975 when a child in the hospital was being treated based on the blue color of his skin (“as Blue as Lake Louise”). Then, as:

a transfusion was being readied, the baby’s grandmother suggested to doctors that he looked like the ‘blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek.’ Relatives described the boy’s great-grandmother Luna Fugate as ‘blue all over,’ and ‘the bluest woman I ever saw.’

Turns out, genes were to blame:

The Fugate progeny had a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia, which was passed down through a recessive gene and blossomed through intermarriage.

* * *

Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder in which an abnormal amount of methemoglobin — a form of hemoglobin — is produced, according to the National Institutes for Health. Hemoglobin is responsible for distributing oxygen to the body and without oxygen, the heart, brain and muscles can die.

In methemoglobinemia, the hemoglobin is unable to carry oxygen and it also makes it difficult for unaffected hemoglobin to release oxygen effectively to body tissues. Patients’ lips are purple, the skin looks blue and the blood is “chocolate colored” because it is not oxygenated . . ..

According to family tradition, Martin Fugate came to the area, in all his bluishness, in 1820. There he married a woman who carried a recessive gene for the condition. Four of their seven children were blue. Other families in the area showed signs of the condition, too, with one group being described as “bluer’n hell.” The Fugate family began to move away in the early 20th Century, as coal mining picked up in the area.

Although it’s a genetic condition (exacerbated by inbreeding), it can also be caused by exposure to certain chemicals. It’s one of those conditions that’s so rare no doctor ever sees it, but they all learn about it medical school.

Did the Fugates and their like really look like the Neldathi of The Water Road universe? Doubtful. But it’s kind of interesting that a clan-based group of mountain dwellers I pulled out of my imagination have a kind of real world equivalent. Truth, as they say, is never a match for fiction.