Novel
Facing Out · Book Three (Book 3 of 7)
The Held Stretch
In the wet green country, light is a brand in the ground, and the wolves will not cross it.
In a wet green country where an old road glows at night and each stretch must be fed slowly, a young man who still prices a lock out loud learns a keeper's rule: a name said backward can end a stretch for good. An order on that road calls holding a pulse a theft of years.
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Reading order
- The Size of a DoorBook One
- The Second DateBook Two
- The Held StretchBook Three
- The Dry SeaBook Four
- The Ladder CoastBook Five
- The Shelf GardensBook Six
- The Short ClockBook Seven
Previous in the series: The Second Date
Next in the series: The Dry Sea
New to Facing Out? Start with Book One, The Size of a Door.
See all seven books in Facing Out on the Novels page.
The book
In the wet green country, an old road lies glowing after dark. Each stretch is one old brand of light. Wolves will not cross a stretch that is fed. Pell meets Sira, an elf keeper, at a maker-stone in an orchard whose crop has been dead three harvests. She teaches the work: fruit goes into the glass a little at a time, because overfed glass cracks, and the makers' names stay shut in the roll.
The party takes the road jobs. Brask stands at a warren mouth. Omber reads metal the way other people read faces. Yez keeps the jokes pointed at the weather. A notice from an order in the west says that holding a pulse for strength on the road beyond is a theft of years. Pell copies it, and he still says the price of a lock aloud.
This is a warm, clear-eyed coming-of-age fantasy told in three dated parts, from eighteen to twenty-six. It is about work that keeps a road awake, a bill you can read, and what a person spends when the paper calls the spending a theft.
Read the opening
The dawn came up behind them.
It came up over the edge of the plain the way a kiln comes up to heat, slowly at first and then all at once. The sky went gray, then pale gold, and then the sun was there, enormous and red, sitting on the rim of the world behind them with the far kilns of Kiln black against it like the teeth of a comb. Their four shadows went out ahead of them along the road, long and thin, much longer than they had any right to be. The mule's shadow had legs like a heron's. Yez looked at it and laughed, very tiredly, for the first time all night.
They stopped then, because the mule would not go any further without a proper rest and neither, Pell suspected, would anybody else. There was a low stone by the road, a boundary marker of some kind with its letters worn off, and they sat down round it in the long gold light. Brask did not sit. Brask stood a little way back down the road, toward the sun, with their hands loose at their sides, and looked.
Back-cover copy
In the wet green country, the old road glows at night. Each stretch is a single old brand of light, and the wolves will not cross one that is still fed.
Pell finds Sira kneeling at a maker-stone, an elf keeper who says her age first. The orchard's crop has been dead three harvests. She hires the four to feed the stretches the slow way: fruit into the glass a little at a time, because overfed glass cracks, and a maker's name stays shut in the roll. A name with a backward clause ends a stretch for good.
On a keeper's wall hangs a notice from an order in the west. Holding a pulse for strength on the road beyond is a theft of years. Pell copies the line. He still prices a lock out loud, ten heartbeats at a time, and writes the number where it can be read.
Brask will not leave a mouth. Omber talks to the metal. Yez laughs from a hut doorway in the rain. The road asks for a keeper's word before it will call the work its own.
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Package
- Back-cover copyIncluded
- Cover artIncluded
- Character portraitsIncluded
- Full manuscriptNot on this site
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Continue the series, or inquire with the desk.
The Held Stretch is Book Three (Book 3 of 7) in Facing Out by Ryujin. The manuscript stays off this site. Readers can continue through the series in order; producers, development executives, and representation can use the inquiry desk or browse the feature slate.