USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Marilyn Peake writes science fiction and fantasy. She's one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as editor for a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.
Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, Winner of "Best Horror" in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards, Semi-Finalist placement in the Young Adult category of the Kindle Book Awards, and Gold Award in the Fantasy / Science Fiction category of the eLit Book Awards.
At the end of the world, there will be magic.
Earth has been decimated by climate change. Humanity has fractured into isolated tribes. A child born in the southwestern desert of the United States appears to have magical powers, a strict taboo in his part of the world. In four other locations, people discover magical items. No one knows how they work or where they're from. Although these strange objects capture the imagination, using them is risky and dangerous.
Five tribes at the heart of this novel: 1.) Southwestern Desert Tribe, 2.) Northeastern Mountain Tribe, 3.) Tribe in Akihabara, Japan, 4.) McMurdo Station Tribe—Located in the Land of Magical Ice, Formerly Antarctica, and 5.) Vostok Station Tribe—Located in the Land of Magical Ice, Formerly Antarctica.
In this dystopian tale, climate change has destroyed the world, leaving behind a magic-infused wasteland. Across the ravaged Earth, survivors find what they think are relics of the past, but turn out to be incredible technology and magical artefacts. This world-hopping adventure is a fascinating look into a grim future, with spaceships, mystics, and a tribe that thinks pregnant women are witches. An incredible genre-bending tale. – Dean F. Wilson
"Solid worldbuilding, great character work, and interesting use of magic-technology. Great for fans of the time of N.K. Jemisin's Fifth Season, or even post apocalyptic sci-fi work."
– Alex Bree, Author of the Darkling Souls series"The depth and detail of Marilyn Peake's character development and world building makes the story come alive on the pages."
– Sherry Fundin, fundinmental blog"…They Left Magic in Their Wake…is jaw-droppingly astounding. Marilyn Peake has written the perfect novel to provide our generation facing the depression and hopelessness of Climate Change, overcrowding, and rapidly progressing pollution of our planet with the beginnings of encouragement for survival."
– Goodreads ReviewerChapter 6
McMurdo Station Tribe
Located in the Land of Magical Ice, Formerly Antarctica
Jaxon turned the glowing blue cube around in his hand, then shook it with both hands like a set of dice. It was forbidden for anyone other than the excavators to remove the cubes from the ice pockets or for anyone under the age of eighteen to own them. He'd known nothing but incredible luck since finding one, however, and didn't intend to give it up. He was thirteen years old, in eighth grade. He'd graduate high school at eighteen. That was so far in the future, Jaxon couldn't imagine giving up his incredible find until then.
The cube brought him a sense of clarity and calm, so he could excel at things. He'd never been a good student before the cube, scattered in his thinking and study habits. Now, he was at the top of his class at McMurdo Station Middle School. He'd never really understood math before. Algebra and geometry made sense to him now. It wasn't just a matter of numbers mechanically adding up to one correct solution. It was a way of representing reality. With the cube, he experienced math, felt it in his bones.
Out of curiosity, he opened the calculus book his friend Oliver had loaned him. Oliver was in high school, ninth grade, taking advanced courses, top of his class. Spacey as hell, though. He often focused so intently on whatever he was doing or thinking, the rest of the world fell away. Jaxon and he could be walking along, having a lively conversation, when, suddenly, Oliver would disappear into his own head, as though totally alone.
Jaxon wondered if Oliver had one of the cubes, or maybe several. They were closely guarded. Although you weren't allowed access to them until you turned eighteen, Oliver was precocious. Maybe he'd gotten permission.
Jaxon studied the first few pages of the calculus textbook. The author reviewed functions: what they were, how they worked. He could feel the numbers and letters. He understood what side of the equation each was on, how they were all stuck, how things needed to be moved around mathematically for them to fall into place to bring them home.
They just wanted to go home.
If x was the independent variable, y was the dependent variable. Of course. That's how life worked. Independent and dependent variables. At any given time, you were one or the other. Like this glowing cube. It was independent, origin unknowable. The cubes had been discovered four years after Jaxon's tribe had moved into the abandoned McMurdo Station, formerly a United States research station.
The place was strange. Temperatures along the perimeter of Antarctica had risen over the years, while the outer edge of the continent disappeared under the ocean. The new perimeter was so hot, fires were common. The Scorched Rim, as it was known, burned your lungs as it sucked your breath away. It served as a natural boundary, keeping foreigners out.
Jaxon's ancestors had fled religious persecution as well as the droughts and fires of Australia before fire had spread like a shimmering ribbon along the coasts of Antarctica. Once the Wall of Fire had risen, his tribe was enclosed in a frozen space, protected from invasion. After a time, the Wall of Fire gave way to the Scorched Rim. Every once in a while, fire danced there once again, a dreamlike memory of what had been, like a reflection of the aurora borealis that shimmered overhead.
Jaxon's people were mystics, which earned them torment from the fundamentalists ruling the Australian tribes with an iron fist. Jaxon's ancestors had heard rumors of a place that sounded near mythical: McMurdo Station, an abandoned research station in one of the coldest places on Earth. Facing death at home, they'd ventured out.
They now lived in a land that had weather and geography they couldn't explain. Heat shimmered along the coasts, but never spread inland. Although fires that ignited within the Scorched Rim matched the appearance of the aurora borealis shimmering in the skies overhead and appeared to be nothing more than an illusion, the conflagration incinerated anyone who stepped within. None of it made sense. The flames had run out of anything to burn, yet they continued blasting into existence, warning humans not to test the boundaries.
Inland, the weather was freezing. Like so many other places on Earth, the temperature tried to climb, things started to melt; but then everything snapped back to frozen. Sometimes the melting went on for extended periods of time, so that something was revealed: skeletons, old machinery, tombstones, anything that had been hidden by snow and ice. But then, snow and ice would once again cover that which had been revealed.
Jaxon rolled the cube around in his hand as he worked on his math homework. When he'd finished the assigned problems, he stood and walked around his room for a bit to stretch his legs. He stopped by the mirror on the back of his door to check out his appearance. He wasn't entirely satisfied. Tall and lanky, a face marked by acne, hazel eyes, wild dark hair. He was wearing wrinkled pants with a sweater that had a few holes along the collar. He wasn't bad looking, but Jaxon felt there was a lot of room for improvement. He just wasn't sure what to do about it.
Grabbing the book he had to read for literature class, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Jaxon plunked himself down on the bed, smushing his pillows against the wall for back support. Having abandoned the cube on his desk, Jaxon read through the class assignment: Read the printout of the preface George Orwell wrote for the first edition of Animal Farm. Then read Chapter 1 of Animal Farm. Make a list of ten excerpts or quotes you consider especially meaningful.
Jaxon mulled over an excerpt from the preface. "At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
That was incredibly relevant to the original people of Jaxon's tribe in Australia. They had to keep all mystical beliefs and practices to themselves. It was "not done" to say such things in public. But what about now? The quote felt personal. Jaxon wanted access to the glowing blue cube now, not when he turned eighteen. Yet it was "not done" to express such things publicly. Well, maybe that needed to change. Jaxon added the excerpt to his list for homework.
