Vikaro

Vikaro is a collection of stories that follow key moments in the lives of a series of humans and their spirit allies as they struggle to keep their people well and whole while facing climate change, war, and cultural imperialism across time from the Ice Age to the 21st Century. The ice that has maintained the climate for longer than anyone can remember is melting. Families are struggling to find enough to eat and places to live. It is a time when the tools for making decisions need to be reshaped in ways that are as dramatic as the changes the glaciers have left in the landscape. When the memory of the living holds no answers, other means are used, and the people survive.War arrives in the world of a peaceful culture for the first time. Several families are doing their best to respond to changes brought by the brutal armies of conquest. At first, the disasters effect only a small part of their homeland in Old Europe and in Anatolia. Soon they spread until the armies begin to lay their hands on Minoan Crete.These foreigners take the lives, lands and stories of the people they conquer to use them in service of their lust for power. Unusual things begin to happen. A slave girl and a little boy survive a flood that destroys an army through an unlikely series of events involving a cave, some goats and a god whose most powerful skill is dance. A young man who has been forced to join the crew of a pirate ship finds unexpected freedom when the crew's last captive turns out to be more than they had bargained for. Healing arts that haven't been practiced for centuries re-appear where they are needed most, which turns out to be in the dreams of several young men who are willing to do anything to help their dead family members return home to the place where they can find rest. What all of them share is a deep connection to an ancient past where they can reach for sources of strength and healing.These strange events and the deities behind them continue across the centuries. As the situation worsens along the border of our own time, a family of gods who remember when there were no lights bright enough to obscure the stars call a new series of people out of their pre-determined lives and into the work of helping to open the way for a better future. Before these new guides can begin their work, they must each face their own complicated past. One of them is a young man who is stuck in an abusive relationship with a woman and in love with his straight male best friend. Another is careening between living as an out-of-control drag queen and a dedicated family man. They are all struggling to live with the fact that they don't fit into any of the categories their culture offers them. The stories they have been telling themselves, the stories that form the basis of the cultures and traditions they were born into are making them sick. They are facing the collapse of their way of life, yet they don't know where to turn for help. Their calls are answered by the same gods who helped their distant ancestors survive the chaos of the melting ice sheets and the horror of war's invention. The catch is that none of the guides have ever heard of these deities. In order to accept the offer of help, they must look so closely at "the way things are" that they learn to see past it, into the spaces behind and between. Something needs to be done before it is too late. Are these unlikely leaders, rejected by the people they thought were their community, up to the task?