Harlequin's Riddle

Prologue - Tarya

TaryaShall I speak to you of dreams?

No, not of dreams. What I speak of lies before waking, but beyond sleep.

There is a moment, just before the dreamer stirs, when the mysteries of the world offer up their meanings. There is a moment, just beyond the ordinary, when perfection can be reached playing a melody or telling a tale. This moment is born in a world that lies between reality and dream. To reach it is as precious as life, but as dangerous as a nightmare.

In these in-between moments, when inspiration and meaning are a heartbeat away, I have seen the Shadow People draw eager breath and reach with empty fingers to snatch at stray dreams. But it is worse even than that. Their long grasp penetrates souls and hearts. In that moment hope is extinguished, destinies are changed, and the future falls into shadow.

Perhaps you will understand best if I show you. If I tell you my story, you can see, and know.

Where must the story begin? Some say each story has many beginnings, but I am a story weaver, trained to find the true heart from which a story can grow. If I am to tell truly, my story should begin with events that reached their end years before my brother and I were even born. Is that so strange? All stories are woven together in webs of great beauty, strength and, do not doubt it, tragedy. The simplest tale may have at its heart the distant past, or present secrets locked in deep caves, or a future we cannot even picture. But some secrets must not be told too soon.

We paid a great price, my friends and I, to uncover what had been hidden. I cannot give away truth lightly. So my tale will begin, as my journey did, with the day the players returned to Andon, a small, isolated town in the south of Litonya, drenched in endless sunlight. My father was one of few men who did not make a living from the sea that hissed and raged at the cliffs below the town. He loved Andon and never left it during his lifetime. He did not pass this love on to my brother Paolo. Paolo always said Andon was a village with pretensions, imagining itself a town. His dreams spoke of an exciting world beyond its confines, a world he could reach if only he stretched his arms out far enough. My uncle Tonio dreamed such dreams too, once. The problem is, if you hold the dream of something better before you, it shines so brightly that it casts long shadows. You can chase the brightness and not see the shadows that chase you. And if the dream dies, the shadows do not go away. I have seen them.

Chapter 1