First Lines is a series of blog articles posted on around the first of the month. I started this series after a friend suggested I write a post on how to write the first line of your story. I hoped to inspire my own writing but also wanted to inspire other writers, plus point readers to books they might enjoy.
Celebrating November as Native American Heritage month, I’m taking a look at books written by Indigenous people. I hope at least one of these passages compels you to read the whole story.
Bad Cree
Jessica Johns
Before I look down, I know it’s there. The crow’s head I was clutching in my dream is now in bed with me. I woke up with the weight of it in my hands, held against my chest under the covers. I can still feel its beak and feathers on my palms. The smell o fine and the range of blood sting my nose. My pillow feels for a second like the cold, frozen ground under my cheek. I yank off my blanket, heavy like I’m pulling it back from th past, and look down to my hands, now empty. A feeling of static pulses inside them like when a dead limb fills with blood again. They ware clean and dry and trembling.
Shit. Not again.
I step gingerly out of bed, as though the world in front of me might break, and turn on the light, wait for my eyes to adjust. It illuminates my blanket on the floor, the gray sheet kicked int a clump. Every breath I take is labored, and when I blink, my dream flashes onto the back of my eyelids.”
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Jessica Johns is a Cree from Canada. She is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation.
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Nampeshiweisit, #1)
Moniquill Blackgoose
FIRST, THERE WAS THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING
I was gathering mussels on Slipstone Island when I saw the dragon.
I’d never seen a proper dragon before, but there was no mistaking it for anything else. It had come walking out of the scraggy stand of pine trees at the base of the temple mound and was standing on the rocky hillside, looking out to sea. It was red and gold and glorious with the evening sun behind it, like a hillside in autumn. From nose to tail it was twice as long as my canoe, and from wing tip to wing tip three times as long. It had a crown of antlers that must have come to thirty points or more. It stretched its wings, and the sun came through them, showing the scarlet net of its bloodworks. It had a long, sinuous body, like an otter or a fisher. It’s neck double curved like a heron’s. It’s mane was bloodred, each spiky, feather tipped with black, and it had black markings on its eyes and muzzle and along the rims of its deerlike ears.
For a very long time, it did nothing. It sat poised in the sun with its wings outstretched while I stared, hardly able to breath. We hadn’t had dragons on Masquapaug since the great dying. Anglish and Vaskosish dragons in Catchnet didn’t count; they’d come later. This was a …Nampeshiwe. That was the the word. The kind of dragon that belonged here.“
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Monique Poirier is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe (Rhode Island & Massachusetts, USA) and a lineal descendant of Ousamequin Massasoit.
Healer of the Water Monster
Brian Young
Prologue
Ages before humans lived in our current Fourth World, it had been said that the ancestors of the Navajo left the mists and clouds of the Second World for the shimmering waters of the Third World. First to crawl onto the land where the beings of thought, First Woman, and First Man. Second were the beings of land, Coyote, Turkey, Deer, Turtle, Cougar, Bear. Finally, the beings of air, the many birds and winged bugs, flew into the crispy, salty air. The beings of thought, of land, and of air gazed at their new environment. A sheet of rippling blue water brimmed to every horizon. Unlike the shadowy and dark First World, tiny islands, where land beings could walk dotted the best sheet of water.
Beings of water originated from this world. Among them where the mighty water monsters, giant lizards, whose toes were as thick as the trunks of fully grown pine trees. These water monsters governed the torrents of this water world and kept the waves tranquil. Most powerful of them was Mother Water Monster, who offered both her domain and nourishing waters to these unfamiliar beings.”
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Brian Young is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, he grew up on the Navajo Reservation but now currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
If the Dead Belong Here
Carson Faust
This time when Nadine wakes, it’s not just the house that feels emptier, colder. There is a new kind of absence. It’s as if her body feels empire. She springs up then nearly falls, dizzy from freshly broken sleep. The house does not feel like her own. Maybe it hasn’t for months now, since Mom started drinking again, but this is different. Worse, somehow. The blue wallpaper in the hallway looks darker because there is no moonlight. The glass of the picture frames that line the hall reflects only black. The floorboards seem to move beneath her. Her heart is humming. Her hand runs across the wallpaper, guiding her down the hall. She hits something. Hears it shatter behind her. But she doesn’t look back. She has to keep going.
She hears crickets singing in the fog outside. Smells wet earth and tree bark through the window screens. In a few weeks. Stems of Queen Anne’s lace will start to push out of the soil, the sun will ward off what is left of the long winter, and she, Mom, and Laurel will spend summer evenings pulling blackberries from the thickets that line the edge of the forest just outside their back door.”
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Carson Faust is two-spirit and an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina.
Riding the Trail of Tears
Blake M. Hausman
Tallulah Wilson never dies in her dreams.
For four months. At least I think it was four months. I watched her watching the calendars. I saw the reflections of her eyes in the plastic of her digital clocks. I heard the sounds of coffee machines and I smelled the beans grinding. I had her eyes, her ears, her nose, her whole skin – I sensed the world through Tallulah’s body for those precious four months. Yes four months. No. It must’ve been Moore. Five months. Yes it must’ve been five months because the sickness didn’t hit until the second month of my residence in her head. Maybe 5 and a half.
Used to be sharper, but the details got hazy when I fell off. Only the last day is still vivid, and even then the key details are vague. But the point is this – it happened. I did it. I left the machine. I tasted the world, and I have no regrets. I wish I could tell this story better, I wish I could remember everything crisp been clear. But I can’t. It’s a blur–a beautiful blur, but a blur nonetheless. So bear with me as I tell you. I must tell you you see because if I don’t tell you, then I’ll forget. At least I think I’ll forget. And if I forget, I think I’ll cease to be. There’s not much left of me except these memories, at least that’s how it seems, and I’ve got no reason to believe otherwise. Why should I?”
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Hausman is Cherokee (Indiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina USA), and his ancestors were forcibly removed on the Trail of Tears.
Clarification
There are no affiliate links in this post. I don’t make a cent off of the books listed on this page. Usually I pull these titles at random. They are from Amazon, my personal library, my area public library, or other online booksellers.
For convenience, the links here are to Amazon, but feel free to search for any of these titles on other book selling sites.
Reviews Keep Authors Writing Books You Love
No matter what book you’re reading, leave a few words on the site where you bought the book, a readers site, or the author’s website. Just say the kind of thing you would tell a friend about it. Reviews are always appreciated by writer and readers alike. But we need reviews for many reasons. Your review helps readers like you find our books. And the more sales we make, the more books we can afford to write.
Do You Want to Read More?
Do these first lines hook you? Do you want to read more? They are here for your enjoyment. And to entice you to buy more books. Let me know which ones sparked your interest.
Like this post? You can find more first lines by Native Americans or check out all previous First Lines posts.