The Strands Series

The Strands Series is a series of books and short stories written by Gael Baudino. The first two books, Strands of Starlight and Maze of Moonlight, take place in a fictional land named Adria, which is very heavily based on Medieval Europe. Book three, Shroud of Shadow, takes place in Adria and early 1990's Denver, Colorado. Book four, Strands of Sunlight, takes place entirely in mid 1990's Denver. Though most of the locations in Adria are fictional, the geography, culture, and language are very realistic depictions of France in the 1200-1400's. The latter two books reflect a very real Denver with only minor details changed and some fictional locations added. The story takes place against the backdrop of historical events such as: the Inquisition by the Catholic church; the Crusades ; and the introduction of cannon into European warfare. Only one character, the elf Natil, appears in all four books, though she is absent from the four short stories in Spires of Spirit.

Plot Summary

In the broadest view, the Strands series deals with the immortal Elves, who have been around since the forming of the world, and the relative newcomers, the humans. The purpose of the Elves is to provide "aid and comfort" to all living things, but especially their beloved human cousins. Against this urge to help, they find themselves feared, hated, and persecuted by humans because of their immortality and superhuman, nearly godlike, powers of prescience, manipulation of the future, powers of healing, and control over physical items. Over time, they have faded, as they reproduce very seldom, and their numbers have been thinned by the humans' persecution. Likewise, their powers are waning as time progresses.

Strands of Starlight

The introduction to the series follows the trials of an young woman, Miriam, who is treated as a pariah because she has the involuntary and automatic ability to heal any injury she sees, though she cannot heal herself. Cast out of her home, she winds up captive in the dungeon of the local Catholic authority, Bishop Aloysius Cranby, accused of being a witch. Escaping from the dungeon despite the horrific injuries inflicted on her by her Inquisitors, she makes her way through the city and comes upon a visiting businessman, George Darci, who has broken his ankle in the rain-slicked street. Against her better judgment and wishes, she heals him. He offers her his cloak and some money; she accepts grudgingly, departs him, and squeezes through the city gate and crawls several miles down the road away from the city.

She is found by a travelling midwife, Mika, who takes her in and tends her injuries, despite the very public search taking place and Miriam's unwilling healing of a minor injury on one of Mika's hands. Mika takes her into her home in the village of Saint Blaise and allows her to stay indefinitely. When Mika encounters difficulties with a patient of hers with eclampsia, Miriam accompanies her despite the very real possibility that she would have no choice but to perform a healing in front of some of the local women. She does indeed heal the ailing mother and decides to leave again. Mika advises her to seek out a nearby village named Saint Brigid; its inhabitants are known to be unusually tolerant. On her way there, she encounters a local nobleman, Baron Roger of Aurverelle, who has been mauled by a bear while hunting. When she heals him, he rapes her and leaves her for dead.

Coming to, she drags herself to her pony, and the pony takes her the rest of the way to Saint Brigid. She is found by the townspeople who bring her to the local church and call the elf Varden in to heal her wounds. He heals her physical wounds but discerns that she has even worse wounds on her psyche, caused by her life of abuse, fear, and rejection, that he can't heal. The last violation represents to Miriam an intolerable injury, a crossing of a line that had never been crossed before, and she descends into a deep depression. Despite that, the townspeople take her in wholeheartedly and without reservation. As she gets to know the town's history and is instructed on reading and writing by the local priest, Kay, she discerns that several undesirable members of the village have disappeared under questionable circumstances that suggest the use of magical powers. Amassing her evidence, she finally works up the courage to confront Kay and Varden and demand the truth. They confirm her suspicions: the Leather Woman and the Jacques Alban, the last priest before Kay, had been altered by magic. Soon after, she and another village girl, Charity, are assaulted by Baron Roger and Varden is mortally wounded by him. She heals Varden, and then she demands that he change her, too, to be made taller and stronger, so that she can take vengeance on Baron Roger.

Varden agrees to transforming her. In a midnight ceremony, he reshapes her into a taller and stronger woman, although she is initially dismayed to find out that she has been made lovely as well. Another elf, Terrill, agrees to teach her how to use a sword. He instructs her intensively, but she soon finds that he is expecting her to behave and fight like an elf, not a human woman. As time progresses, she comes to realize that when Varden healed her, and later when she healed Varden, some of his nature passed on to her. Her mystical transformation by Varden completed the process, so now she is physically like an elf and is quickly learning to think and feel like an elf. However, she finds she cannot let go of her rage against Baron Roger, which holds her back from taking the final step of giving herself to the starlight within and becoming wholly elven.

While her instruction with Terrill progresses, Aloysius Cranby has been tracking her escape route meticulously and ruthlessly. He eventually arrives in Saint Brigid with two Dominican friars, Hoyle and Bartholomew, and takes up residence with Kay, the priest, in the very same house Miriam is living in. She discovers him, and although he does not recognize her in her new body, she recognizes him and alerts the whole village to their presence. All together, the villagers decide to mislead Aloysius and his two companions into thinking that Miriam had indeed arrived at Saint Brigid, and had committed suicide soon after arriving. As time passes, Aloysius becomes more irritated and certain something is amiss, but he cannot identify anything concrete. Meanwhile, Hoyle has developed lustful feelings for Miriam, and he attempts to corner her one morning on her way back from weapons training and coerce her into giving him favors. She kills him in a sword battle instead of using trying to defuse the situation with tact. Aloysius witnesses the fight and rides his horse out of town, deliberately trampling Charity in the process. While Miriam heals her, Varden becomes aware of the near-tragedy, and he uses secret paths in the forest to get ahead of Aloysius, waylay him, and kill him with his bare hands.

Miriam and Terrill become aware that Aloysius had captured Mika and charged her as a witch. Upon finding that she is being held in the same dungeon that held Miriam, she resolves to free her. Terrill, knowing that Miriam can fight well but not like an elf, sustained by the vision of starlight, initiates a full-contact, unrestrained sword fight with Miriam. As he hopes, the strain of fighting Terrill makes Miriam finally give herself over to the starlight and conclude her transformation into an elf. As a symbol of her completed change, she formally accepts the Elvish form of her name, Mirya; by this, she also tacitly admits that she is, in a way, the semi-reincarnation of Terrill's long-deceased lover, Mirya, who was slaughtered by men of Aurverelle centuries before. With that done, they infiltrate Hypprux and locate Mika, using their elven sight to find nearly-impossible ways of piercing the tight security. After they free Mika and slay all of the Inquisitors, Mirya gently restores Mika's sanity, using her newfound sensibilities and sight. Then, all possibilities of escaping undetected finally collapse, and they have to escape via a rope strung between two towers; seeing Mika's fear, Mirya once again delicately alters Mika's being, and takes away her fear of heights, much to the awe of Terrill.

Leaving the city, Mirya, Mika, and Terrill return to Saint Brigid. Feeling the weight of her quest for vengeance pressing upon her, a quest increasingly alien to her, Mirya leaves on her own and enters the starlight. Pouring out nearly all of her energy, she forces into being a new future, wherein Baron Roger and she can duel. Baron Roger, holding a young woman, Janet Darci, as hostage to ensure the cooperation of the Free Towns, gets the idea to arrange a hunt in a nearby tame forest, so that he can be alone with Janet and have his way with her. Mirya is waiting, and when he attempts to violate Janet, Mirya initiates a sword battle with Roger, knowing that he is a formidable swordsman with copious reserves of energy and strength. A side effect of her transformation, her new appearance, means that Roger doesn't even know who he is fighting, thus taking away the personal nature of her vengeance. Finally, Mirya prevails, and cuts open Roger's throat. At that cusp of time, with Roger's life ebbing away, she can finally see the unpleasant futures that await Roger's death, whereas a future with a changed Roger can prolong the things she holds precious for a while longer. Putting aside her desire for Roger's death, she heals him and then brutally rips apart and reshapes his entire being so that he is no longer a rapist or violently aggressive and ambitous; it is a taking, she realizes, that is far worse than what he did to her.

Mirya returns Janet to her family, and comes back to Saint Brigid, knowing that she and those she loves will have to deal with the effects of her actions for many years to come.

Powers of the Elves

The Elves' powers are described in terms of the Elves' awareness of and influence over the patterns of reality, much in the same vein as the Greek mythological Moirae. They can discern the patterns of cause and effect in a very real and palpable manner, and they can selectively re-weave the patterns to suit their desires, though it greatly drains them if the manipulation is in-depth and far-sweeping.

As mentioned above, the Elves can change reality by manipulating the patterns of reality. In practice, this means that some of them can: heal anything short of death; change humans into animals, other humans, or Elves; see into the many possible futures or the past; change large items like castles into solid rock; see in the dark; master an instrument or weapon beyond any human's abilities; speak with animals and plants; change aspects of a human's personality like fearlessness, happiness, intelligence, musical aptitude, aggression, etc.

Some Elvish names

Elthia Calasiuove

Medieval-era elves

• Mirya
• Natil
• Talla
• Terrill
• Varden

1990's-era elves

• Hadden
• Natil
• Wheat