Dreams of the Compass Rose (Alan Rodgers Books) [Hardcover]

The Compass Rose universe--an ancient milieu where places have no names, cities spring forth like bouquets in the desert, gods and dreams walk the scorching sands in the South, ice floats like mirror shards upon the Northern sea, islands that do not exist are found in the East, death chases a thief on the rooftops of a Western city, immortal love spans time, and directions are intertwined into one road we all travel....

You come to this place when you wonder, and sometimes, only when you dream.

It is singularly appropriate that the word "Amarantea" and the image of a heart-wrenching island between worlds first came to me at the edge of dream. It haunted me immediately, and initiated a chemical reaction from the elements of my being. Fragments of intensity filled me--bits and pieces of unresolved curiosity, wonder, nostalgia for all things of the past, a garish swirl of mythos combining those parts of me that were steeped in ancient history of my native Armenia, Russia, and beloved Greece, the Far East. So many people, so many fates. Indeed, history spun in all directions--past, present, and future, and that uncharted realm of alternate possibilities, the fourth dimension, if you will--and I had no single term to sum it all up, no symbol that would convey everything except that of the old nautical wind rose, also known as the compass rose.

I began to write feverishly the very next day, still unsure of the directions. I was flailing with the need to convey what it was that I had seen in that one dream image. The result, so much later, fell together into a peculiar "collage" of fables that all work in tandem to illustrate the world as I see it, despite the trappings of myth. And now, I give you this story of interconnected lives, of many flavors of passion and illusion, and present it not so much as a novel as a philosophical puzzle. Find in it, if you can, a piece of yourself.

Vera Nazarian left the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War as a refugee at the age of eight and arrived in the United States a month before her 10th birthday by way of Lebanon, Greece, and Italy. As soon as she figured out the English language, she started to write in it and sold her first short story at the age of 17. Since then she has published numerous works of short fiction in anthologies and magazines such as the Sword and Sorceress and Darkover series edited by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, and has seen her work translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Czech. She is an active member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Ancient myth, moral fables, and her Armenian and Russian ethnic heritage play a strong part in all her work, combining the essences of things and places long gone into a rich evocation of wonder.

In the metallic blur of the horizon, below the cumulus cloud skies, lies Amarantea....

It is violet, lavender, or indigo, at dawn, noon, and dusk. It is where the soul flies in search of wonder, when sleep takes you by the eyelashes....

So it was told, in all the lands of the Compass Rose. It was also related, in the late cozy evenings by the marigold hearth, when children settled to absorb the ancestral wisdom of their elders, that Amarantea was a place between worlds, inaccessible.

One such child, sitting at her Grandmother's knee, asked insistently every night to hear the story, until Grandmother nearly went daft with repetition.

"Tell me of the beast that inhabits the island kingdom!" cried little Learra. "The one that has no name, and that can only be seen when it sleeps! Tell me of the king of Amarantea, who has wed a woman with no eyes! I want to hear the words of the greatest Truth that are inscribed upon the coffin of brass--the one that is within the anonymous sepulcher of the unknown one!"

"The beast that has no name does not want nosy little girls to know anything more about it," Grandmother said. "And neither does the king and his poor wife. As to the words of Truth on the brass coffin--why, I've recited them to you over a dozen times."

"One more time, please!"

"It says," Grandmother began to speak with the patience of an antique maple, "that whatever lies within this grave is the only source of evil. And it should not be disturbed by you or me, or anyone with the least bit of brains, for that matter. Nor should silly questions be pursued beyond a certain point."

"No, no!" insisted Learra. "I want to hear the real words, please, not your own, Grandmother!"

"Ah... What's an old woman to do, when her words are no longer considered real? Very well. It says: 'The soul is a flower, severed from its stem, bearing seed, planted at birth, reaped in death, but never discarded in the bottomless well.'"

"But that says nothing about evil. And what strange words! What does it all mean?"

"How should I know?" said the Grandmother, moving her embroidery needle through cotton fabric.

"Then how do you know the words at all?"

"Why--I was told them when I was your size, little one."

Learra touched a small hand to her Grandmother's sunken cheek, saying, "Then I must find out, before I am your size."