For thousands of years, the Keepers of the Adjik Hata have preserved the White Path of the covenant with Ofvngv,but now the Spanish attempt to forcibly convert the Adjik Hata. Mvhvlv, the last Keeper, dispatches his tvbalv, Little Bird, with a secret message to Emperor Brim and entrusts to his niece, Morning Light, a strand of medicine beads containing the ancient lore of the Adjik Hata.
As her uncle perishes, Morning Light flees the ruin of a burning chapel with the beads to seek out Hiram at Ocmulgee. But war is brewing, so Hiram sends Morning Light to the unlikely haven of Charleston. As Morning Light struggles to adapt to the strange, new ways of the whites, Little Bird is drawn into the brutal Apalachee raids by his desire for vengeance and the machinations of Emperor Brim. During the war, Little Bird discovers a dark sorcerer and a Fallen Hiyaulgee instigated the destruction of the Adjik Hata to seize the beads, annihilate The People of One Fire, and usher in an age of darkness and corruption unseen since the Adjik Hata shut the way between the worlds. In the shattering aftermath of battle, Little Bird is directed to Ocmulgee. Meanwhile, Morning Light, troubled by dreams of tragedy for her adoptive family and destruction of the beads, is also urged back to Ocmulgee. Will they uncover the answers they desperately seek – or a destiny more wondrous and perilous than any they could envision?
Ty Bard is a graduate of the University of Georgia and a like-long resident of Georgia. 'Trekking to Ocmulgee' is the book one of the historical fantasy series, 'Spoken World.' Mr. Bard is currently at work on book two, 'Walkers between Worlds.'
In this snippet, Peaches is speaking to Morning Light about the similarities and differences between white people and Muskogees. The red ant would have had a special significance to a Muskogee because the red ant symbolized a tribal mindset and along with the wasps and other little creatures knitted Mother Turtle's broken shell back together. (Like a face in a cloud, an image of an ant can often be seen on the scoots of a turtle shell.) The red ant described is not the fire ant - the fire ant is a recent invasive species into the Southeast - I can remember when I was a child a time before the invasion of fire ants. Unfortunately, the ancient indigenous red ant described by Peaches has been nigh exterminated by the fire ants since my childhood.
Book Excerpt
Trekking to Ocmulgee
I tell you about white folks and maybe that will help you some. You see just like us they love their family. But they don’t have clans or towns like our towns. They see themselves as alone against the world, which makes them very driven and often quite selfish. They think only about themselves, or maybe their family, when they go about their doings. But we Muskogees always think about our clan and our town, about how what we are doing will affect them. White folk are cow ants, solitary, tough, going ‘bout their business all lonesome like; Muskogees are red ants working together, bumping in to each other, crawling over each other, clinging together and lost on our own. At least ways, that’s how I see it.
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