Twice have I brought you back from the grave—        at your birth and today. The debt has more than been repaid.        Your third life is mine.

Fujiwara Ryô has a decision to make: a husband or the sword.

As the daughter of the last emperor of Japan's defeated "Southern Court," she could have agreed to an arranged marriage and spent the rest of her life in a gilded cage. Except Ryô isn't the kind of girl to take the easy way out.

To make matters worse, a failed revolt against the Ashikaga shogunate leaves her with a price on her head and the shogun's henchman (her erstwhile fiancé) hot on her heels.

Ryô escapes with Sen, her loyal lady-in-waiting. Atop sacred Mt. Kôya, Sen's uncle (priest, philosopher and mad alchemist) summons the mighty Kala Sarpa. If all goes as planned, the "Serpent of Time" will transport Ryô far out of the shogun's reach, across six centuries to the present day.

Except that Kala Sarpa bears a grudge of its own against the Fujiwara clan and seizes the opportunity to even the scales. Their fates now fully entwined, Ryô must again put her life at risk and return to the past to save her future.

Japanese names

All names follow Japanese convention, with the surname given first.

It was common in medieval Japan for members of the aristocracy to refer to each other by their first names. When a shogunate retained power for any length of time, the proliferation of the same surname would otherwise become hopelessly confusing.

Romanization is according to modified Hepburn. Long vowels (such as /ou/) and double vowels (such as /oo/) are indicated by a macron or circumflex. Long and double vowels are held for two syllable counts.

Book details

Serpent of Time can be purchased at Amazon as a Kindle ebook ($1.99) and borrowed through Kindle Select.

Over the next six months, I will also be publishing the novel online with accompanying commentary.

The author

Eugene Woodbury graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Japanese and TESOL. He has twice been a Utah Original Writing Competition finalist and is a recipient of the Sunstone Foundation Moonstone Award for short fiction. He lives in Orem, Utah, where he works as a free-lance writer and translator.

Serpent of Time was edited by Katherine Woodbury. Katherine valiantly slashed and burned her way through a half-a-dozen drafts (the Word markup feature being mightier than a machete), clearing a path for the story to proceed on its intended course. Don't miss her novellas A Man of Few Words and Mr. B Speaks!