The Unconquered Country

World Fantasy Award: Best Novella winner (1985).
Nebula Award: Best Novella nominee (1988).

A novella.

When Third was a little girl, she lived in a peaceful village in the harmonious Unconquered Country. Then the Neighbors invaded, and the Sharks swooped from the skies leaving vast burned swaths of destruction. Soon, with Third's family dead and her beloved village destroyed, she left to try to make her way alone through a new, incomprehensibly society.

Here is a harrowing, uncompromising fantasy, not about fairywoods, but about a mythical yet all-too-familiar land close to the shores of our hearts and memories.