Haven (War of the Princes)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

HAVEN

Copyright © 2011 by A. R.
Ivanovich
.

Cover art by A. R.
Ivanovich
.

Editing by Michelle
Ivanovich
.

All rights reserved.

Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher and author.

To the inspiration of this book,
Nani
, who has always been more of a sister than a cousin.

Chapter 1: A Crossroads

I’m not exactly sure what makes people decide to follow through with the wildest, most unthinkably reckless thing they could possibly do. I
am
sure that at some point in everyone’s life, they reach a bridge. On one side lie safety, familiarity and comfort, and on the opposite, you find curiosity and excitement, served with ridiculously large portions of mortal danger. A sane person might look across that bridge, consider the other side and perhaps even be tempted by it, but walk away with the knowledge that keeping their skin was better than sating an irrational craving that led to no reward but survival itself.

I wasn’t sane… I was seventeen.

I suppose you don’t always need a reason to do something stupid. Living in a border town as simple and quiet as
Rivermarch
certainly didn’t help.

I’d explored the entire village of stacked river-side houses by the age of six, built miniature fortresses in each of the outlying pine forests by age ten,
pranked
all of the five watermills with generous quantities of soaps and dyes by thirteen, and stole away to the quaint capital city of
Pinebrook
(which was impressive for two whole days) by fifteen. There were only so many lectures my forgiving parents were willing to dish out before they didn’t care about my recklessness anymore. That’s because, let’s face it, there was never anything to worry about in all of Haven Valley.

Aside from the occasional wrestling match between boys and the belligerent outbursts of bawdy drunkards at the local bar, there was not so much as a whisper of crime. Weaponless peace officers sat at vine covered park benches and played cards. Judges paid personal visits to the tall duplex cottages to clear up marital squabbles and disagreements between neighbors. Stores were stocked, economies were balanced, taxes were fair, weather was good, doctoring was free, and nothing ever changed.

 
Like any normal girl, I went to school, got good grades in the subjects I liked and trudged through the ones I didn’t.

It was easy to become distracted at
Rivermarch
School. There were big, bright windows in every classroom. They brimmed with daylight, either facing the pine trees and lazy rivers, or
Rivermarch
Town. There was a soothing ambiance to the whisper of the trees, the murmur of the rivers, the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels on the cobble streets, and the tapping of sparrows on
viny
windowsills. It was enough to set anyone pining to escape the confines of class, or at least fall into a deep sleep.

Of all my classes, Advanced Valley History was the last place I thought my attention would be piqued. At the time, I had no idea that my idle curiosity would set The Wheels of change turning swiftly toward a foolish choice that would change my life forever.

Chapter 2: The Wheels Turning

A Descriptive Perception of The Times

By Katelyn Kestrel

My world is pretty normal. Busy cities, rustic towns, steam trains; Haven Valley has it all. Technology is pretty standard... cameras, stereos and radio shows. We invented television two hundred years ago and did away with it... turned out all it had to offer was bad news and lame reality shows.

"A person can only take so much," my grandpa used to tell me.

We hung on to the film theaters.

 
          
Mechanical horse-drawn carriages are a big thing too. They've got easy-brakes, shock absorbers, and something else that helps propel The Wheels so that the horses don't have to do as much work... I forgot what it’s called. I fell asleep that day in Shop class.

I've had a couple dreams that I lived in a place where the buildings were big, boring, reflective cubes, and people drove around in rounded carriage cars that didn't have any horses. We made horseless cars like that in Haven for a while too. It was right around the time we had televisions. We got rid of the cars, but we still have the monuments honoring all the people who were killed by them in accidents. Honestly, they
kinda
had it coming to them. Horseless cars. It's just plain unsafe.

Flight technology and flight research is strictly forbidden in the nation of Haven. Officially, they say that the storms surrounding our enormous ring of mountains are too dangerous to trespass. I’m not sure if that’s the only reason. Despite all of our technology, intelligence and capability, no one leaves Haven Valley. Not ever. How boring.

I frowned at yesterday’s assignment, the paper resting crisply in my hand. We’d only had twenty minutes to write “A Descriptive Perception of the Times” and it turned out that my assessment was “scattered and informal.” What did my teacher expect me to come up with in twenty minutes, a groundbreaking literary masterpiece that would make language professors cry and wet themselves in awe?

Another note, below that of my mediocre grade, read, “Also, the only thing worse than writing that you’ve fallen asleep in class is having done it in the first place. Dim eyes make a dull mind!”

I drew a sad face on my paper.

There was no further discussion on yesterday’s assignment. Our material had leaped from modern time back to the beginning, before the nation of Haven was ever founded.

My professor Barry Block, had a knack for enthusiasm that was usually wasted on the students. I think he knew he was fighting an against-all-odds battle to keep our attention.

Pretending I hadn’t completely missed everything he’d said for the past ten minutes was a skill I’d honed over time.

“Can you just imagine?” he exclaimed as if the thought had inspired him for the very first time. His hands were up in a flourish as he paced the width of the classroom. “There was a catastrophe of such a magnitude that it would force all of our people into the safety of Haven Valley. Something so big, so terrible, that seven hundred years ago, our best and brightest leaders brought us here and destroyed the way out of The Valley. It was a complete evacuation. Absolute separation from the outside world, forever.”

 
Beside me, my friend, Ruby Rush stared dully out the window at the slow moving river beside the school. She was an inch or two taller than me, with glasses, and true to her name, her hair was a vibrant red.

“It’s calling me,” Ruby whispered dreamily.

“The preparations must have been immense and the causes great, for our forebears to first find this valley, uproot our entire civilization, bring it within the safety of these mountains and then destroy the only way in or out. Just let the implications soak in!” Professor Block said, leaning his thin frame against the chalkboard and scratching his salt-and-pepper goatee. It looked like he was letting “the implications soak in” more than the class was.

Ruby didn’t bother to smother a yawn.

I raised my hand.

“Yes, Miss Kestrel?”

“We know for sure that that’s how we came to Haven?” I asked with mild but growing interest.

“Yes, thank you for asking. We have specially preserved documentation in the capitol, under seal-and-guard. It is six hundred and seventy-five year old evidence of our origins outside Haven Valley, and while it doesn’t illustrate what the outer world was like, it does illustrate a very clear picture that we immigrated to this valley and then fortified it without any intention of returning to wherever we came from,” replied Block with another stroke of his short beard.

A slight chill overtook me. I had never thought about a world outside Haven Valley.
My
world was a broad, green lowland surrounded by unfathomably tall, white capped mountains. Geography classes never extended past the foothills.

When I raised my hand a second time, Professor Block jumped, obviously unaccustomed to the attention.

He pointed at me and nodded, still looking bewildered.

“So we don’t know
anything
about the outside lands?” I persisted.

Ruby had dropped her head into her arms, staring sideways out the window, and Travis, a boy in front of me, turned sharply and whispered, “Don’t encourage him!”

I shrugged.

“Well, we know that there were different temperatures and ecosystems, probably different plant and animal life, depending on the region. That’s logical,” he said, pacing again. “There were large bodies of salty water called oceans. Many descriptions in these texts are aged beyond legibility. But beside that, no, we really don’t know much. Even if we did have better records, it has been seven hundred years. Many things may have changed since our people walked those lands.”

My hand rose over me again and half of the classroom groaned.

“Yes Katelyn,” the Professor said smiling patiently.

“But what could have happened to frighten us away?” I asked knowing full well the beating I was going to get from my classmates as soon as the bell rang.

“Again, we don’t know,” Professor Block said, sighing into the chair behind his desk. “It could have been a natural disaster, a storm, a flood, perhaps even a war.” Now there were murmurings in the class. They were finally listening. “I know that is an old word, but it’s as possible as any other theory.”

“How can we not know? It seems like the most important part,” I demanded, wanting to know the end of the story… or the beginning. Whichever it was.

Professor Block held up his hands to quiet me down, and chuckled dryly. “I’m happy to see that at least one of my students has a functioning pulse, but I’m afraid that’s all the information we have on the matter. It seems to me there might be a place for you as an Archives Apprentice at the University someday.”

I groaned at the mere thought of such a boring job. “If we don’t know anything, why don’t we just go find out?”

The Professor stopped smiling. “Out of the question. It has never been done. And even if it wasn’t absolutely impossible, which it is, every single bit of writing we have warns us of immense danger. No, there is no leaving Haven Valley. And what sane person would want to?”

I crossed my arms, flustered. How annoying could his class be? Block had dangled the first bit of interesting history I had ever come across and then offered no real answers or conclusions. It was a complete waste of time. I may as well have been napping on my desk like Ruby.