People physically hold their emotions in their bodies, manifesting disease and pain. The Drift of Hands is the story of a traveling health researcher who finds her own wounds are deeply connected to the scars of three others. As they work to heal their physical ailments she learns to release her past trauma and restore love.
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Chapter 1 [sample]
The human hand is precise. Even the clumsy swollen hand of the bacon cook as he stripes a black pan with gristle and meat. Watching her, distracted, with learned empathy. Boredom. Her hands were thin from change, worn. Molding bark into bookcases for leathered books, Tol often understood. But his world stagnated in physical habit and tortured her freedom. The heart is not so precise. He would, when in this deep water, dive.
Chapter 3 [sample]
I was a small child when the glass myth was first told to me. Pale eyes whose dry ducts teared grey, I was prone to illness and to quick recovery when my mother’s honey drops coated my parched throat and her wanderers’ tales filled my impatient ears. But father had wandered too far and the tales ended at eleven. The pot of lozenges long abandoned.
Chapter 5 [sample]
The carpenter smooths the back of the table, dusting off the edges with a thick-veined hand. He steps back to admire the carved, cream-colored board. With the scent of wood and the lingering sound of drums from his den he can barely hear her question.
Chapter 7 [sample]
Choking on the dust, the mare screams over the scorched earth. The writhing wind comes. The nostrils of the beast flare finding the fleeting air. The ground heaves with every beat of the mare’s hooves. Its mane wrestles with the storm. The smell of wild horses tangles with a rain cloud and begins to darken the stampede. The earth is soon shadowed by the sky and the air thickens. The animals align, descend on the camp, then scatter behind the shadows. Paralyzed, I was unprepared for the thunder.
I can still hear the hooves dancing with Enata’s drum. The thunder barely a hum until the mare passes and it can resume its bellowing rage. The mare passing …its legs turning her heavy bronze body in a circle. Flares the four directions. Bates the wind. In the last glare of lightning I see a young woman astride the golden body of wildness. She calls to her horse in the rain. Her voice a high pitch amid the rumblings. I see them rage towards me in pursuit of the hills behind me, looking for escape. The eyes of the beast reflect the intermittent shards of light. Still unable to move my feet I grab my coat to wave to her, signal the voice. The woman, now closer, signals to stand…to run.