Koyukon Yega

Autumn Chernikof lies in bed gasping for air—her sheets are soaked in sweat. Her mother and sister are a thousand miles away in the tiny Athabaskan village of Russian Cross. Autumn knows that they will die there if they stay. The Chernikof men have already succumbed to the unrelenting weight of arctic winters with their twilight days and endless nights. Only her young brother survives and fate demands that she must care for him always. She is their only hope—and that hope is suffocating her. Night after night, Autumn dreams of horrific childhood trauma. Ghoulish apparitions violate her in unspeakable ways. Her thoughts, once allies in her denial, have become invading hordes—hurling themselves against the gates that defend her sanity. Autumn fears those gates will someday fail, and she will disappear –forever. In desperation, Autumn dives into the murky depths of her past and of long-forgotten Athabaskan mysticism. She searches her dreams for guidance and protection. Her quest leads to a dimension beyond the veil of the physical world she knows. It is a world of pure consciousness defended by animal spirits and ruled by the Koyukon Yega. Every night, Autumn enters this world and prays for help. Every day, she copes as best she can with the reality of her life. When a charismatic but unpredictable young man appears in her life, Autumn dares to believe the spirits have finally answered her prayers. But, as events unfold, she questions the stranger's motives— and her own judgment. Is the man of her dreams a savior or a trickster—a Raven sent by the spirits to peck out what remains of her mind? The young Koyukon Athabaskan mystic is drawn into a world of dreams and animal spirits as she desperately searches for solutions to her earthly problems. In doing so, she unwittingly unlocks the power of the Yega, a powerful animal spirit, who may be her savior or a destroyer of everyone and everything she holds dear. Autumn fears she has stepped through a door she cannot close. Is she doomed to live forever in a world where all outcomes are possible, but none are real? Will the beautiful mystic return to her world, or must she remain in a netherworld? Imprisoned there forever by her protector—the Koyukon Yega.