Penumbra: Light on the Edges

A penumbra is the partial shadow at the edge of an eclipse, the ring where light and dark are still arguing. I named the cave kingdom for it because Penumbra is a place that exists in both. The caves are underground, but they glow faintly under moonlight. Its people live in the dark, but they are the most generous in Adamah, known for acting as if they are the ones in need whenever someone else requires help. Its priestess is blind, and she sees further than anyone.

The kingdom was founded by a man named Elijah who fled into the caves to escape a threat no one remembers and built a sanctuary for anyone who followed. His name survives in Elijah's Cave, a grotto in the Blue forty meters above the Endless Sea where Penumbrans send their dead over the edge into the water. The rest of the kingdom is organized around four gates, each with a color that tells you which way you are facing. The White leads north to Snowfall, up what the Snowfallen call the Legendary Stairs. The Green runs south by staircase to Ophir. The Red looks west over the River Sentience and the Valley of Elah. The Blue opens east to the sea and the docks. People take their identity from their gate. The Red, on the western edge, is where Offede keeps a plain dugout with a fire pit and unfolded laundry.

At the center of everything is the Umbra. It is a sacred place with no light at all, and it holds the Water of Life. Newborns are brought there. The sick come seeking miracles. Those who drink from the water are said to gain a kind of sight that works without eyes. Azul, the priestess, has lived in the Umbra for years and raised her daughter there until the girl was six. When she sends a warning to a visiting king that not all will be strong enough to resist, she is not guessing.

Penumbra's history turned on a single night. During the War of Light and Dark, Socho's soldiers reached the Umbra, and Penumbra's warrior king, Kage, was killed there in front of his wife and their four-year-old daughter. Kage fought with four daggers laced with poison. Zillah carries them now, one on each hip and one on each tricep, and she has never seen what they do to a person. She is sixteen, small for her age and furious about it, blind in one eye and green-eyed in the other. She heard her father die. She did not see it. She cannot unhear it.

Kage and Azul chose a warrior named Offede to raise her, and he has done his best. Offede leads Penumbra's four hundred fighters, who train alone and fight by ambush, and his soldiers call him the Guardian. He gave up a family to do the job. He is stoic, principled, a little lonely, and he has a rule he repeats to Zillah when her rage runs ahead of her: we protect, we do not attack. Zillah does not think much of the rule.

Penumbrans mine azurite and malachite, hunt boas and cave fish, and eat mushrooms, lichen and insects. They brew a ritual drink called the Penumbran Sour that outsiders are offered as a test of belonging. In the far east, Dark Lake sits near the Umbra's entrance, damp and stinking of bats, and it is where bodies are thrown when someone does not want them found. Two five-year-old twins named Hu and Si chase a boa they call Rex into the caves near it, which is exactly what children are told not to do.

Penumbra is a kingdom that has been grieving for twelve years and has learned to see in the dark because of it. The question the book asks is whether that sight is enough when the darkness starts looking back.