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.
Chapter 1 [sample]
The mud swells in circles around the black skin of the Ebu herdsman. His goats drank the brown milk and ate the water grasses as he washes the desert clay off his chest and the high sun scatters pigments in the circles. His thin wrist bore the weight of a massive hand washing an embossed four- sided star above his ribs. An old, deliberate wound it has healed in perfect symmetry with the star . The black sheen below his collarbone. Sculpted these designs which point to his heart and are a brief distraction from his pronounced features. The healer, Ossu, came to me above ground when I ran a fever that made my pulse quicken and slow without rhythm. Without constancy. The fear of a break in rhythm.
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 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.