A street boy with a special connection to his dog befriends the Emperor's daughter and rescues her from a wild animal's attack. Their friendship gets put on hold when the Emperor's advisor, recognizing his special talents, attempts to capture him to put him to work for the Emperor. Years later, when the boy and his dog meet the daughter once again, will he be as lucky to escape? How will that fateful meeting change their lives and the destiny of the entire kingdom?Written as part of the National Novel Writing Month competition of 2019, this is the first volume of The Heartfire Saga.EXCERPT:My first memories are smells, sounds, and tastes. I remember these as flashes, like dog dreams. They blend together in a constant stream of what made up my early life: nibbles of castoff meat, a crust of bread, a short nap in the warm sun, the sharp tartness of pomegranate not quite yet ripe, the taste of blood running from my split lip to my tongue, the sting of rocks, a howl, warm fur, and dark eyes.Odors that I found normal, others may find repulsive, but they were an ever-present element of my early life. They were the scents of too many people crammed into too small an area, a competing maelstrom of odors coming from food, industry, and waste. The spicy smells of roasting meats drifted down from the markets and cafes. I lived in a warren of streets, a virtual maze between brick and mud buildings that towered far above my small head. Dark stains streaked the walls and the alley between them. Brick, clay, and mud buildings had been thrown together haphazardly, with little planning for expansion. They melded together, the next one using the previous one’s walls to start. Most were two or three stories tall, and a network of walkways, awnings, overhangs, and clotheslines obscured sight of the sky from the ground level.These narrow alleyways were teeming with life, mostly of the unwanted and disposable sort. Rats navigated these narrows with ease, along with other scavengers and children as well. Children, unwanted or unaffordable, were left to the streets to fend for themselves. Clothed in rags if they were lucky, the children were overlooked and forgotten unless they offended you with their begging or got in the way of your caravanning wagons and animals. Then, anger, fists, and sticks might be brought against them.The street children were a rabid, sorry lot. They fought like animals over moldy crusts of bread. The weak ones died quickly of illness, but this may have been a mercy. The slow ones were caught or trapped to be taken away like vermin. The prettiest of them were taken to be servants in rich houses, used as free slaves, or worse. The fastest of their kind made their way into the circles of cutpurses and thieves. They made good lookouts for the criminal sort that stalked the city, or they worked as flash looters, overwhelming market stalls with their sheer numbers. It was a dangerous way to live. You never knew when a truncheon would fall upon your head or maim you. No one cared. You were one of the unclaimed. You were better off struck dead than maimed. Maimed, you were a target. I could always gauge the remaining life of a wounded one by the severity of the infirmity. You could measure life in hours or days, like sand running through clenched fingers.I was not one of them, though. No, I was part of my own pack. Dog and I were a pack. A cast-out like me, he’d once lived in the scrublands that surrounded the city. As a pup, he’d been captured, likely to serve as an oddity for the fighting pits, cheered along as some savage beast mauled him to death. He’d escaped his cage and that horrible fate, and somehow we’d found each other. I don’t remember how. I don’t remember the time before him. I don’t remember the feeling of not having him beside me, but I do remember knowing him when we met.I was barely old enough to walk, a sorrowful creature destined to die in days.
