On this page you will find:
Back to Home Page
Where Reality Ends and Fantasy Begins:
A disclaimer with notes to the curious.
The "To Color the Wind Books" are a work of fantasy fiction. That it is fiction, means that the details of the plot are the product of my imagination. That it is a fantasy, means that I have not confined my story to common notions of what could actually be seen in the real world. None of the characters are modeled after any one person either living or deceased. There is no such place as Tirshaw, A’Tlaran, Kasablom, Kosteron, Noltare, or Te’Sheel, and there is not, and never have been a people like the Tlar or the Stillens (at least not that I know of!). These too, are creative works, not places or peoples in the physical world.
That being said, I have to admit that there is much in this story that has been lifted from the real world and plopped into my fantasy world.
Geography: The geographic setting is, for the most part, real. If you were to look at a detailed map of Central Asia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asia due north of the northern most tip of Pakistan, at the convergence of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, you can find a region known as the Fergana Valley. This fertile area has long been renowned for its abundant produce and big, beautiful horses. If your map is detailed enough, you can look at the eastern most point of the Fergana Valley, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferghana_Valley where two branches of the Tien Shen mountain range (or Tyan Shan mountain range – depending on how the cartographer decided to spell it) converge. There, you will find the head waters of the Narya River. Draw a circle with this spot at the center. Make this circle large enough to encompass an area a little larger than the state of Delaware, (2300 square miles or approx. 6000 square kilometers). Now squish that circle into the shape of Tirshaw (see map) and you’ll get a fair idea of where this fantasy world would reside if it had a place in the real world.
Now, this fantasy geography is not exactly like the real geography. Though my best research says that the climate of the real Fergana valley is fairly close to the climate described in these books, I really have no idea as to whether the area really you can find hot springs, or volcanic fissures there. I don’t know if the Tien Shen Mountains really have extensive networks of caves, and even if they do, I doubt that any of those caves contain glowing algae, like the “glow grass” in these books. I don’t know how far people living in this area would have to travel to find white limestone for their buildings. I don’t even know if the Narya River was ever navigable. These are all elements I added to serve the story.
A Note on “Glow Grass”: There actually are real life water plants that glow in the dark. Most are found in deep ocean waters, though a few species do grow in caves. Their glow comes from phosphorescent chemicals, similar to the chemicals that give fireflies and glow worms their light. In World War II the Japanese army issued a powder made of dried glowing algae to soldiers fighting in certain heavily contested zone. When the soldiers added water to the powder, it gave off enough light to read messages at night. The glow lasted only a few minutes, but the powder was much lighter and more compact than the battery powered flashlights of the day, and it didn’t give off any tell-tale smoke or smell to alert the enemy of their location.
History: This story is set at the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries (approximately 900 to 910 A.D.) At this time, the Fergana Valley fell within the boundaries of a region called “Transoxania”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transoxiana, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/603017/Transoxania Transoxania was claimed by Samanid (Persian Moslem) dynasty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanid, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/samanids/samanids.php. This claim had always been tenuous in mountainous areas. Distant, high elevation communities similar my fictitious A’Tlaran, often never knew that their lands were claimed by a foreign power. Local representatives of the Samanids, like my fictitious character, Tilvreet, had to walk a fine line with the area inhabitants if they were to maintain trade routes and collect the taxes their masters expected, without depleting their own thin resources (such as soldiers, food and weapons).
To complicate matters further, the Samanid Empire at this time suffered from internal quarrels. As a result, they began to lose territory to other dynasties. Around the turn of the tenth century, the Karakhanid Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qarakhanid_state was eyeing Transoxania and making forays toward claiming the area as its own. In addition to this political flux to the west and north, the Chinese Tang dynasty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty, http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Tang/tang.html, http://library.thinkquest.org/12255/library/dynasty/tang.html to the east, was crumbling. A cluster of warlords in China vied for power along China’s east coast (eventually paring down to five main powers.) With the larger, more organized warlords focusing their attention on the eastern third of China, China’s western frontier became the province of an ever-shifting mix of bandits and petty warlords. All these political upheavals disrupted trade, left communities in Central Asia more vulnerable to attack, and slowed their recovery from natural disaster.
I don’t know if there really was a major drought in Western China at the turn of the tenth century; but I do know that European explorers in the late 1800s reported finding ruins of large, prosperous towns out in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Architectural styles and artifacts in these ruins led the explorers to believe that the towns were abandoned not long after the height of the Silk Road in the first century A.D. Chinese records from the height of the Tang Dynasty tell of chains of trade outposts connecting and protecting farming communities in areas where you can only find sand today. Together, these reports indicate a long term drying trend in this region. This makes it likely that there could have been a drought during that time. However, I put the drought in the story because it served the purpose of the story (I also have never heard that eastern nomads invaded Fergana in this time period. Again, this simply served the story.)
Similarly, I don’t know if there was a crop failure in Fergana due to unusually cold weather around the beginning of the tenth century; but such things do happen in Fergana and elsewhere in the world.
Archeology/Anthropology used in creating “back-story” (What happened before the story opened.)
Current scientific theory states that most of Central Asia, including the Fergana Valley, was first settled by Caucasians coming up from the Caucus Mountain region. (No, that is not a pun. According to the best-accepted theories of our day, the Caucasian race originated in the Caucasian Mountain area, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Scientists say that the similarity between the name of the race and the name of the mountains is simply coincidence. Personally, I suspect a more direct relationship between the terms, but that is just a gut feeling.)
Early Chinese descriptions of people encountered in what is now Western China tell of people with freckles and reddish hair all over their bodies – “like monkeys”. The description further describes these people as “ugly” and “barbaric”. I don’t know if we would have called those people ugly and barbaric - many Chinese consider modern westerners to be ugly and barbaric! However, I used this description as a starting point for creating the Someh people, and, to a lesser extent, the Gebes people.
Ancient burial mounds containing the remains of bodies with blond hair have been unearthed in Western China and other parts of Central Asia. This gives credence to the possible presence of the tall, fair, blond, people like the Kasablomians in Fergana. (The Stillens are another story. See below.)
It is believed that the next people to come into the Fergana region were Chinese nomads – probably people with a horse-centered culture, like the Mongolians. It is believed that they probably came into Fergana in small groups, a little at a time and married into the local populations. This, of course, varies with the scenario I put forth in my story, in which a large group of nomads (the Tlar) descend into the eastern end of Fergana and push the local peoples to the side. However, I would point out that my story takes place in only a small portion of the Fergana Valley. It is possible for one small area of a region to be conquered by force, while other areas of that region experience a gradual, peaceful melding of cultures and genes. Again, it served the purposes of my story to have the Tlar make a forceful conquest.
The next wave of settlement in the area is believed to have been the Turks. I have not read anything that indicates that the Turks forcibly conquered the area, so my guess is that they quietly settled in areas not already held by other people, then as time went on, married into the local population. I created the physical appearance of my Noldarans (and hill people) with the idea that they would have been descended from a blending of the Turks with the previous settlers. I gave them the less desirable land, thinking that as late comers, most of the good land would have been claimed before they arrived.
Belief Systems:
I have depicted the people of A’Tlaran as practicing a type of Shamanic religion .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism This is because, from the research I have done, this seems the most likely type of religion to be practiced in such small mountain communities during this time period. In fact, though the Fergana region is nominally Moslem today, visitors to the region have noted that the majority of people there mix Shamanic and Buddhist beliefs with Islam. I would expect that this tendency to hold onto Shamanic beliefs would be much stronger in the tenth century, since Buddhist and Moslem missionaries had only entered Central Asia a couple of centuries before. It would take a long time for a foreign belief system to spread across the rugged terrain of Central Asia. (I know that Tibet accepted Buddhism even earlier than this, but Tibet already had a strong central government, and the Buddhist missionaries received royal sponsorship.) I also expect that the state of political unrest during this time period would discourage most missionaries. The most likely visitors would be rough and ready types looking for freedom and/or profit.
The A’Tlaran fascination with color also is inspired by real life beliefs. Through out East Asia, people practice the art Feng Shui. http://fengshui.about.com/od/thebasics/qt/fengshui.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui Feng Shui is a belief system that encompasses a variety of practices believed to bring about a safer, healthier, happier life. The employment of color to attract what you want and repel what you don’t want is one of the most widely used aspects of Feng Shui practice. This belief in the power of color to bring about change reaches a high point in Tibet, where people possess arsenals of different colored flags. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_flags Specially trained practitioners are hired to cast horoscopes and forecast the best color of flag for an individual (or community) to display on any given day, depending on the cosmic influences in force for that time period. Visitors to Tibet have seen doctors recommend displaying certain colored flags outside a sick person’s house to improve the invalid’s recovery.
In East Asia colored gems are believed to have especially strong powers to attract and repel energies and events. The belief in the power of gemstones is also found in India, and was very prevalent in Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods. A remnant of this European belief survives in the tradition of birthstones.
Kee Anyone who has studied eastern religions, eastern medicine, or Feng Shui will probably recognize my A’Tlaran word “Kee” as “Chi” or “Kei” of eastern belief. http://skepdic.com/chi.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi Though I won’t guarantee that everything I say about “kee” in these books would be embraced as accurate by a Buddhist monk or Feng Shue master, I have tried to conform my descriptions of this energy to the classical descriptions I have found translations in eastern lore on the topic. However, my inspiration for the descriptions of human auras comes from literature written by westerners who claim to be able to see this phenomena. Again, I don’t claim that every clairvoyant (as people who can see auras are usually called) would agree with the way I describe auras. Furthermore,I leave it to the reader to decide if he or she wishes to believe these sources. I’m just writing fantasy fiction.
The Status of Women
The research I have done on Central Asia in this period seems to indicate that women there generally held a higher status than their counterparts in East Asia and the Middle East. Though traditions varied widely in the cultural patchwork quilt of Asia’s central mountains, in general women were allowed to travel freely, to operate their own businesses, and in some circumstances, to own land in their own right and broker their own marriages. However, I have to admit that my depiction of aristocratic women holding official positions in the government bureaucracy is pure fantasy. In truth, I have not found examples of any country anywhere that regularly allowed women to hold official government positions until the twentieth century – except for queens, of course! As a woman, I simply found it more interesting to give my female characters more options than they would actually have had in that time and place. I consider this my prerogative as a writer of Fantasy Fiction.
Stillen Magic
The folklore of the world is full of tales of magical peoples, enchanted castles, and doorways into other places and times. In the twentieth and twenty first centuries, some theoretical scientists have dabbled in creating equations that suggest that a version of some of these elements of fairytale magic might actually exist. Mathematical models suggest that there may be more than the three or four dimensions we normally perceive: that there may be an almost infinite number of dimensions, or even an infinite number of universes, intersecting our world; and it might be possible to view, if not actually travel, to these other dimensions and other universes. However, at the time of this writing, no one can even come to a consensus about how we might detect them - if they exist.
It has been posited that where these theoretical extra dimensions and universes intersect with ours, we might see strange, magical-looking phenomena: objects disappearing and reappearing –perhaps somewhat altered in the encounter; objects seeming to float in mid-air; strange visions, sounds and energy phenomena. A person who is able to perceive and harness these extra dimensions might be able to seemingly levitate, instantly change their appearance, or disappear and instantly reappear at a distant location - or even a distant time! Much of the “Stillen Magic” I have portrayed in these books is based on the idea that the Stillen people have found ways to access – and even travel to and from - other dimensions and universes. (Other magic in this book is based on folklore.) I won’t guarantee that my descriptions adhere to current mathematical models of interdimensional transactions. I will admit that I have difficultly following the long complex lines of mathematical reasoning used in creating these models. I have simply used a few basic ideas from these models as a jumping off point to create another fantasy element for these stories.
For centuries, mystics around the world (especially in Asia) have been claiming that the flow of time as we experience it, is an illusion. In this view, it is theoretically possible to step outside of time (as we know it) and move about between different times, as easily as we can program our computers to jump around and access information stored in different places on a data disk, without having to ‘play through’ everything in between. A few maverick physicists have come up with mathematical models for this view of time. These models have yet to be accepted by the scientific community as a whole, but they are interesting. Luckily, I am writing fantasy fiction, so I don’t have to prove that anything in my stories could actually exist in the real world. I can simply incorporate some of these ideas into my depictions of Stillen magic and call it literary license.
I’m not trying to imply that a reader can learn much that is useful about history, geography, theoretical physics, eastern mysticism, or Asian folklore by reading these stories. My primary goal in writing these books is to entertain. If I have managed that, I have accomplished my main goal.
However, if the reader finds these story elements interesting, there are many good, informative books and articles on these topics. Just research these topics on your web browser, or take a trip to your local bookstore or library. The world is a fascinating place. If I can inspire a few people to look a little farther over the horizon than they have gone before, I will consider that a wonderful bonus!
Sincerely,
Barbara Glynn
October 2008
Back to Home Page Site Map