A.L. Knorr's Blog, page 9

Deleted Scene : Petra’s Testing in Hiroki’s Lab

(unedited)

We passed over miles and miles of forested wilderness, the shadow of our small insectile helicopter skating over the tops of the trees like those little bugs that can float on water. Just as it seemed as though the bush would never end, I spotted something small and dark with sharp edges nestled in the forest. The sunlight reflected off tall square windows and flashed in my eyes making me blink. A modern looking building came into focus as we neared, and the blacktop helicopter pad which it was clear we were headed for. The building looked as though it had been constructed out of dark gray modular blocks of sheet-metal. Whenever they’d needed more space, they’d simply tacked on another room, the way schools added portables to their parking lots.

Off in the distance I caught a glimpse of a large patch of deforested earth. I squinted to get a better view, thinking I could see earth-movers and the tiny forms of men moving about the bare ground. But as the helicopter landed, the patch disappeared behind the trees and out of view. The helicopter landed gently on the pad and powered off. The whirring blades began to slow. A figure appeared in my window as a man in a suit jacket and jeans approached the helicopter. The small door to my right swung open and he was there was there to help me down. We smiled at each other. I thanked the pilot, he saluted me with a deadpan expression. I got out and followed the man to a set of steps leading down to a terrace.

“I’m Andrew Banks,” said the man, holding a glass door open for me. “You can call me Banks. Everyone else does. How was your flight, Miss Kara?”

“Amazing,” I replied, passing into an air-conditioned hallway lined with plain gray doors. “I’d never been on a helicopter before. You guys travel in style.”

“Yes, we know how to do it right.” Banks nodded politely to a woman in a dress suit carrying a brown kraft box as she passed us. The box looked heavy. She looked at me with some curiosity but didn’t say anything. Banks held a keycard up to the electronic panel on one of the doors, a clicking sound could be heard. He opened a door and held it for her. I saw stacks and stacks of identical boxes, all the labels on the fronts extended for a long ways until they dissolved into shadow. The woman thanked Banks and slipped inside with her burden. The door clicked shut behind her and we continued our walk.

“So, you’ll take me to Jod- Miss Marks?”

“Not today,” replied Banks. “You’ll meet with Hiroki Emoto today. He’s one of our scientists.”

“Oh. He’ll do the testing?” That made some kind of sense, that a scientist do it rather than a businesswoman. “This is a satellite office, right? Where are your headquarters?”

“Like most big tech firms, we’re headquartered in Silicon Valley, but we’ve got satellite offices all over the world.” What appeared to be a boardroom opened up before us. A tall row of windows displayed the endless trees surrounding the building and I caught a squirrel leaping from one tree branch to another as we passed a glass table lined with plush looking black leather chairs. A big screen panel glared down from behind the head of the table and the logo of The Nakesh Corporation, with its bright red double triangle reflected above and below in the centre of the screen.

We turned down a second hallway, went through a set of double doors and suddenly there was activity. Professionally dressed people (why they bothered to dress up, when this whole set up was in the middle of the bush was beyond me) walked this way and that, each of them on a mission. A few of them were in fatigues and looked as though they did the majority of their work out of doors and with their hands. They stood, heads bent and talking with their nicely dressed colleagues. No one noticed me in my jeans and plaid button up shirt, trailing along behind Banks.

“Miss Kara, this is Hiroki Emoto,” said Banks.

I stopped abruptly, realizing with embarrassment that I’d been gawking everywhere and not watching where we were going. Before me stood a slim neat man with blue-black hair and those gorgeous cheekbones. “Hello, Miss Kara. Welcome to Field Station Eleven.”

“You were in Libya!” I blurted, happy to see a face I recognized.

He gave me a close-mouthed smile. “Yes, I was.” He held a hand out. “Wonderful to see you under better circumstances. Call me Hiroki.”

I shook his hand. “You too. And call me Petra.”

“You know each other. Good. I’ll leave the two of you then,” added Banks, and strode away.

“This way to the lab, Petra,” said Hiroki, leading me through another set of double doors and down a long glass hallway that linked two modular buildings. We were suspended over the tops of trees and I gaped down through the glass under my feet, watching the tips of the Pine trees pass by.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” said Hiroki as we made our way through the halls.

“Is there some reason I haven’t been able to contact one of my friends from the dig?”

Hiroki frowned. “Not that I know of, why?”

“No reason. Just haven’t been able to reach someone I really wanted to say goodbye to.” I didn’t say more to Hiroki, but I was actually quite upset. Over the last week, I had called Jesse once a day, with no answer. I only had the service of a simple landline, I had never splurged on extras like voicemail. If he had called while I was away, I wouldn’t have known it. I tried not to think that he was just going to vanish from my life, the way everyone else I had ever cared about had, but the thought was like a ghost in the corner of every room.

“You have an amazing office,” I said, clearing my throat and pushing thoughts of Jesse out of my mind.

“Thank you,” Hiroki replied. “We like it. No distractions. And our new chef is a master of filet mignon,” he added over his shoulder. “Not like the last guy.” He gave an exaggerated shudder.

The elevated glass hallway ended and we took stairs down to ground level where a set of metallic double doors barred the way.

Hiroki took off his glasses and peered into a glass square shining a dim blue light. A bell went off and a panel near his belly button lit up. He pressed a thumb to the lit pad and a loud click told us we could go inside. “Welcome to my lab,” Hiroki said with no small amount of pride. “This is my playground.”

The doors swung open and I gasped at the space that was unveiled before me.

***

It looked like something I had seen only in sci-fi movies. The central space was huge circular room half-surrounded by a screen taller than any human. A few people in lab coats moved about, talking with one another, working on computers, or bent over one of three circular tables, one of which was throwing up a blue holographic image slowly rotating on an invisible pedestal. The space was dark, presumably to allow the screen and holograms to stand out.

Yellow arrows were painted on the floor of the hallway ringing the circle in the centre, and several blacked out glass doors led off to goodness knew where.

“What do you do here?”

“We’re scientists. We do science,” said Hiroki with a smile.

“Uh,” I wanted to make a joke about that being obvious but the professional and extremely high-tech atmosphere had me a bit tongue-tied.

“TNC Has dozens of projects going on at any given time throughout the world, all of them rooted in a common goal.”

“What that?” I asked, following him as he walked the hallway which skirted the domed lab.

“Improving the quality of life for humanity.”

“Oh. That sounds good and very broad.”

He chuckled. “It is. This is one of four labs of its kind. We are sent all manner of assignments from any one of these multiple projects. We execute the directive and hand off the results to a team leader at either headquarters or whichever Field Station the objective came from. All of it passes through HQ where it is documented and if need be, the findings shared to benefit relevant projects.” He led me into a cool private space with two chairs facing one another, a small coffee table between them, and a few closed metal shelving units. A single glass window looked out into the lab. “Which brings us around to why you’re here.”

I looked around the small room with disappointment. The room was dull in comparison to what was on the other side of the wall. “Miss Marks tells me you have ways of testing my abilities?” Nerves twisted in my guts and my hands suddenly felt cool. What to expect?

“That’s right. Why don’t you take a seat? We’ll have a little chat first.”

“Okay.” I sat on one of the chairs and crossed my legs at the knee. A recollection of sitting in Noel Pierce’s office only a few short months ago sprang to mind. My nerves calmed a little when I thought of this as just another meeting with a therapist.

“Do you mind if I record this conversation? Just for me. It’s easier than taking notes and allows me to focus just on you.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Thanks.” Hiroki put a small black device on the coffee table and took a seat across from me. “I’d like you to talk me through when you first noticed that you had abilities other people didn’t have.”

As I talked, Hiroki listened calmly and quietly, he never judged or betrayed any surprise as I told him about how I figured out that I could pick up the thoughts of others, how I had been able to move small objects with my mind. He led me with similar questions that I had answered for Noel over the years, but Hiroki’s questions didn’t probe quite as deeply into my emotional state. He was more interested in the chronology of my life as it related to the development of my abilities, and how I had come to discover what I could do, and how it felt physically inside my body. We talked through my love of archaeology and my job at the museum and how it led up to the position on the dig-team. And finally, inevitably, we reached the events in Libya.

“Can you explain to me what happened in the cave, please?” Hiroki shifted in his chair. “Wait, would you like a drink? I’m parched.”

“Yes please.”

Hiroki got us both a glass of water as I talked him through how I had fallen into the cave and discovered the two stones embedded in the walls, and how the depressions I stood in disappeared. How I had gone into some kind of state when the moonlight filled the cave and lifted off the ground.

“But you didn’t do the levitating?” Hiroki interrupted.

I shook my head and laughed. “No, I don’t know how to levitate.” I blinked. Maybe I did. I had never tried.

“Interesting,” he handed me a glass of water and sat down across from me again with his own glass. “Go on.”

“I saw a vision,” I said and paused. Swallowing some water. I felt somewhat protective of the vision and hesitated to share it, even for the sake of science. But it was too late.

“Can you describe the vision for me please?”

“It was a man standing in an oasis,” I began. “He had light gray eyes, a lot like mine. He had dark kind of curly hair and dark skin.”

Hiroki lifted the cup to his lips slowly, staring at me from across the top of his cup of water. “Mmhmmm.”

“I thought maybe,” I took a deep breath, “maybe he was my father. The father I never met.”

Hiroki’s face did not change save for a small widening of the eyes.

“I think I asked him who he was.” I closed my eyes, trying to bring the specifics of the dream back. “But he only said one word. Really slow, like he was trapped in a slow-motion reality.”

“What word was that?”

“He told me to run.”

I jumped and opened my eyes as Hiroki began to cough quite violently.

“Are you okay?” I asked, alarmed. “Wrong tube?”

He nodded his head, his eyes watering. Still coughing, he banged on his chest with a fist. He took a frantic sip in between hacking coughs. “So,” he choked out. “Sorry.” His voice was a mere rasp. He coughed some more.

“That’s okay. I hate when that happens.” I grabbed his nearly empty cup and fetched him some more water. “Here you go.”

He took it, flashing me a grateful look, his face pale, and guzzled the whole thing. “That’s a bit better. Excuse me please.” He cleared his throat and his voice sounded better. “What else do you remember about the vision?”

I sat in my chair again, shrugging. “That’s it, I think.”

Hiroki’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think he was telling you to run from?”

I gave a short laugh. “At the time I had no idea, but after what happened, well it’s obvious. Don’t you think? You were there. You saw the aftermath of what happened.”

Hiroki nodded, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he seemed relieved. “You think it was the militants he was warning you about.”

“What else? They tried to blow us all up.”

“Does make sense,” murmured Hiroki. “Can you explain to me how the desert glass broke?”

“Oh.” My face heated at the memory. “I’ll always feel bad about that.”

“Why?”

“It was an artifact!” I replied. “Who knows how long it had been there and who put it there. The historical value will never fully be understood.” I shook my head. “It’s an archaeologists nightmare.”

“How did you do it?”

“It’s a bit hard to explain,” I said with a frown. “I can feel a kind of rhythm from things when I put my hand on them. It’s not obvious, you know. More subtle. But its there. I felt the rhythm of that glass and I,” I paused, searching for the right words, “matched it with my own rhythm.”

Hiroki stared at me, waiting.

“Crack,” I said, adding a hand movement to illustrate the explosion. “It blew to smithereens.”

“You were not injured in the blast?”

I shook my head.

“What happened after that?”

“Jesse found me and helped me out of the cave.”

“And the next supernatural thing that happened was the rock you lifted?”

I had a fleeting thought about making out in my tent with Jesse and my mouth quirked. I would have called that supernatural, at least it felt that way, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what Hiroki meant. “Yes,” I answered, simply.

“Tell me how you did that, please.”

“I don’t know if I have the words for this.”

“Just do your best. Afterwards, we’ll see if we can figure out the science component. I’m hoping to be able to assign some proper technical terms to what you can do. If we can categorize your abilities, we’ll be able to help you understand them better.” He folded his hands over his knee and waited.

“Okay,” I breathed out a sigh. “When I saw that it was falling, I knew that I could do something about it, does that make sense?”

“It does,” agreed Hiroki, nodding his head. “We have other supernaturals who say the same thing, that they acquire a certain knowledge of their ability without fully understanding where that knowledge came from.”

I nodded, making a mental note to ask him more about these supernaturals later. “So I slid underneath it and pushed out a kind of power-”

Hiroki slid forward to the edge of his chair, eyes more alight now than they had been. “From where? Which part of your body?”

“Uh, all of me, I think.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“This power had a pulse, I could hear it in my head and feel it in my body.”

Hiroki was nodding and stroking a thoughtful hand across his mouth.

“It was enough to hold the stone until they were free of the danger. Then I rolled out from underneath it and let it fall.”

Hiroki sat and was quiet for so long that I began to squirm. His expression was so hard to read.

“Everything okay?” I finally asked.

“I’m trying to strategize how to proceed with you,” he said, gazing at me and speaking very slowly. “I’ve never seen anyone like you. Most supernaturals have one specific skill or ability, most often over an element or a sub-category of an element, the way Ibukun does.”

“You tested Ibukun?” I sat up in surprise.

“Of course. I’m not allowed to talk about her with you unless she’s given her consent, though. Aside from in the most general of terms.”

“She has control over a sub-category?”

“That’s right. In her case, she has the ability to manipulate metals. She’s been classified as an Inconquo, which is a sub-category of Earth.”

“How many sub-categories are there?”

“A lot. But I don’t want to get off track. I want to keep the focus on you. As I was saying, with most supernaturals, I can categorize them as an alpha or a beta. You defy both of these categories because your abilities transcend what I would otherwise label as an Air Elemental.”

“A Euroklydon?”

“That’s what the ancients called it, yes. Frankly, I have never worked with one before and my assumptions about their abilities as a group were way off base. You have multiple aptitudes which, up until now, I’ve seen in multiple supernaturals but never in one.” He rose from the seat. “I think that’s enough talking for now. I have a good idea of your history. I’m sure we’ll have to sit down again as things progress. Shall we begin the practical component of your testing?”

I got to my feet. “Sure. Okay,” I said uneasily. “What does that look like?”

“With your permission, we’ll have a doctor give you a routine exam. She’ll take blood and saliva samples to determine heritage and any anomalies. Is that okay with you?”

Curiosity rose up in me like a hulking thing with huge eyes. “Yes. I’m really curious about that myself actually.” Maybe I would finally learn more about my parents this way.

“I can imagine,” Hiroki said with a smile. He opened the door for me and I stepped out into the hallway. We walked halfway around the circular centre lab and entered what looked like a fairly average doctor’s examining room, complete with the boxes of latex gloves, a computer and desk, an examining table with the paper covering, the step stool. “I’ll leave you here for a few moments while I notify Dr.Desisa that you’re here.”

I waited less than a minute for the aforementioned Dr.Desisa to appear, a petite red-headed woman who was all brusque business and no bedside manner. She had me sign a consent form and conducted a very no-nonsense exam which took less than ten minutes. She extracted blood and had me spit into a vial. She labelled everything and asked me pointed questions about my health.

“How long before the results come in?” I asked, rolling down my shirtsleeve over the band-aid in the crook of my arm.

“You’ll have them this afternoon,” she said. “I’ll give them to Dr.Emoto and he’ll pass copies on to you.”

“That’s fast.”

She gave me a small smile for the first time since she’d walked in the door. “We take care of our supernaturals,” she said, peering at me from overtop of her bifocals. “You’re very lucky to have been discovered by TNC and some other less desirable organization. Mr.Nakesh does a lot of good for people all over the world.” Jody and Ibby had both mentioned Devin Nakesh, the billionaire investor who owned TNC.

“So I hear,” I said. “I’d like to meet him someday.”

“If you sign with TNC, you will,” she said, standing and picking up the tray with my samples in it. “He makes a point of sitting down with every supernatural he hires. He’s very personable.” She leaned in. “And handsome,” she whispered with a wink.

I blinked. “Oh?” Her cheeks actually flushed, which took me back. It was the first time she’d appeared human and not robotic.

She put a finger beside her nose. “But you didn’t hear that from me. I couldn’t handle the teasing.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” I whispered back.

She nodded and opened the door for me. “Dr.Emoto is waiting for you.”

***

Hiroki led me to a large quiet lab with long stainless steel tables and expensive looking equipment set up throughout the room. Shining clean empty workspace stood ready and waiting for a technician or a scientist to do their work. The space was large enough that at any given time at least a dozen people could work in the room, but either the room wasn’t in use today or Hiroki had kicked everyone out because it was as quiet as a morgue.

“I’ve had my team set up a space for us to work in,” Hiroki said as we wove through the tables to a space at the back of the lab where a couple of chairs and table had been placed and a long low shelf holding more equipment sat within reach. “Hopefully everything we’ll need will already be assembled. Have a seat.”

I sat in one of the chairs and Hiroki grabbed a blue hand-held device with a digital screen, and a wine glass from a cluster of them and sat across from me. “I’d like you to take this glass, and see if you can tell me the frequency it vibrates at.”

I took the glass. “Okay, but do you have something I should hit it with to make it vibrate?”

“No, I want to see if you can feel it first. If you’re wrong, we can try making the glass sing so you can hear it.”

I nodded. I closed my eyes and held the glass gently in my fingers. Within moments, I could feel a fast hum under my skin, in the same way I had felt the Libyan glass in the cave. I opened my eyes. I can feel it, but I don’t know how to ascribe a measurement to it.”

Hiroki frowned. “Okay, fair point.” He leaned back and grabbed a small meter. “Hold this.” He handed me a small metal node on the end of a cord attached to the meter. “Set down the glass so you don’t break it, and replicate the signal into the receiver, if you can.”

I set down the glass and took the receiver, closing my eyes. Tapping into my own frequency, that hot pulse of life that was always there in the background, I sped it up to match the same quick pace I had felt from the glass. There was a beeping sound from the meter and I opened my eyes. “What does it say?”

“Two kilohertz,” he said, a satisfied look on his face.

“Was I right?”

He nodded. “That was child’s play for you, wasn’t it?”

I smiled. “It wasn’t difficult.”

He set down the meter and picked up a small rock from the shelf behind him. He handed it to me. “Can you levitate this for me please?”

I opened my palm and held the rock on my hand, focusing on it. Giving the rock a mental lift, it rose from my hand and sat in the air a few inches above my skin.

“Are you able to take your hand away without dropping it?”

This was something I hadn’t tried before. Slowly, my eyes on the levitating rock, I removed my hand. The rock stayed, spinning slowly.

“Interesting. And not scientifically possible by any law I’m aware of,” said Hiroki. He reached behind himself again, grabbing another slightly smaller stone. “Leave the first one there, and repeat with this stone, please.”

I did so. Now we had two rocks floating above the low table, sitting in mid-air and rotating slowly like space junk.

“Can you make them orbit one another?” Hiroki put his elbows on his knee and peered at the stones, fascinated.

Giving both rocks a simultaneous push, like flicking a top with my fingers, the two stones spun around one another, the distance between them staying ever constant. They spun quickly, then began to slow.

“Remarkable.” Hiroki straightened. “Now,” he clasped his hands together, “are you able to set them spinning indefinitely?”

Keeping my eyes on the stones, I gave them a mental command to stay at the speed they were at, rather than to slow down and let the energy dissipate.

“Splendid!”

“Is it?” I smiled, bemused at Hiroki’s enthusiasm. “Seems like a bit of a useless party trick to me.”

“Oh no, Petra. This is truly magnificent, believe me. I have never seen another supernatural who could do this. There are those with aerokinesis, there are those with telekinesis, but I have never seen a supernatural who could give a command like you and then basically leave the proverbial room and the energy stays in motion. It’s,” he shook his head, “well, to be honest, it’s downright baffling. But I’ve become used to that feeling in this line of work.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to this. It still seemed a bit of a useless trick to me. What was the point of leaving something floating in the air while I went and had a nap or did my laundry?

“You can let the stones down now.” He took the blue hand-held device he’d grabbed earlier and flicked it on so that the small digital screen lit up. “I’d just like you to close your eyes and fluctuate your frequency if you can. It doesn’t matter how high or how low. This device will let me pick it up and watch. This is more for the record than anything else.

“Sure,” I obliged by closing my eyes and tapping into that rhythm deep inside, the pulse that seemed to fill every cell and my blood with life. Like a rolling of the tongue, I pushed my inner frequency up and down at random, but noticed that there was a point where it always seemed to want to go back to, a place where I felt the most at peace.

“Very good, that’s enough.”

“Okay, I doubt this is going to work but I’d like to try it just to rule it out,” said Hiroki, setting the small metal box with a white readout screen and needle position to zero.

“What is that?” I peered at the white face, reading the measurements. The needle was positioned all the way to the left side of an arch of dashes. Numbers on the dashes marked from zero to five-hundred. Words directly below the arched readout said ‘counts per second’. I squinted at the measurement units. “What does mR stand for?”

“This is a simple Geiger-Counter. It’s old by now, but it works. It measures radiation.”

My eyes widened and I blinked up at him. “You think I’m radioactive?” My hands felt suddenly cold and clammy and my stomach dropped into my pelvis where it squirmed. The idea of radioactivity was extremely uncomfortable. I had never been good in science, but I knew that exposure to too much could cause cancer.

“No, I don’t think you’re radioactive. But I’d like to rule it out.” Hiroki sat across from me. “And to answer your question, mR stands for Roentgen. It’s the measurement of energy produced by Gamma radiation within a cubic-centimeter of air.” Hiroki must have recognized the stunned look on my face. “It’s alright, Petra. If I thought you were dangerous I wouldn’t be sitting here in the room with you, I’d be behind safety glass.”

I nodded. “Okay.” Still didn’t really feel better.

“We know you can produce waves, we’ve proven that already. You can receive them somehow, without them affecting you the way they would other matter. And you can send them. Radiation is simply the result of waves. There are different kinds, some dangerous, some not so dangerous. We usually categorize radiation in ionizing and non-ionizing.”

“Let me guess, its the ionizing kind that is dangerous.”

Hiroki nodded. “That’s right, and those can be broken down into yet another three categories based on how they pass through solid matter such as paper, aluminum, or lead. But we’re getting into the weeds. We’ve already established that you can produce sound waves, what I want to know is can you produce radio waves. All I want from you in this moment is to try and move this needle, just a little bit.” He positioned the small cone on the end of the coil toward me and positioned the face of the Geiger counter where we could both see it. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I held my palm toward the Geiger counters detecter and focused on tuning in to the pulse inside me. I gave the pulse a mental shove toward the detector, the way I had done with the glass. Nothing happened. The needle lay dormant. I glanced at Hiroki. “Maybe if you explained to me the difference between sound waves and radio waves, it would help?”

Hiroki took off his glasses and folded them and tucked them into his pocket. He shifted forward. “Alright, yes. It is a bit complicated but I’ll try and break it down for you. You’re right, if you don’t understand the difference there is no way you could produce or manipulate a wave. And the two really are very different.” He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers. “Ok, very basically, sound waves need a medium to travel through because they are what are known as longitudinal waves. If you picture a single line of oscillation going up and down,” he moved his finger through the air to illustrate what he meant, “this is the most basic way of understanding how a wave moves.”

I nodded. “Easy enough.”

“Radio waves are electromagnetic in nature and can move through a vacuum. Radio waves are also much faster than sound waves, they can be broken up and polarised, where sound waves can’t. If you can imagine two waves, one electric, and the other magnetic, and imagine them oscillating together moving both this direction,” he moved his hand side to side like a snake, “and this direction,” he changed it to move up and down like a dolphin breaching in and out of water, “at the same time and in the same wave,” he held his hands out, “then you’ve understood it at a very basic level.”

I nodded, but it wasn’t the description of the wave movement that clicked for me, it was the fact that he’d explained they were electric and magnetic in nature that changed the way I thought about them. “Okay, let me try again.” This time, I closed my eyes and instead of thinking about my own frequency, I tuned in to the world around me. At first, I imagined that I might have to see if I could pick up on any electromagnetic energy that might be nearby and could make itself available to me to siphon, or direct. But as I thought about this, a small circle of heat began to grow in my right shoulder blade, almost like someone was holding a perfectly round hot pad against my skin. The heat increased and with it, the pressure against my body.

“Stop! Stop!” The sound of chair legs scraping against the floor and Hiroki’s panicked voice snapped me out of my stupor.

“What? What’s wrong?” I glanced at the Geiger counter but it was just as dormant as it had been before.

Hiroki was on his feet, his face the color of ash. He had a hand clamped over his mouth and he was staring at me. Abruptly, as though he’d suddenly realized how unprofessional he’d just acted, he dropped his hand from his mouth and sat down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“What happened?” My pulse jumped at how freaked out he’d sounded. “You look sick.”

“Do I?” He fumbled at his back pocket, leaning to the side, and pulled out a kerchief to mop his face with. “You made the needle jump, and I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“It moved?” My brows shot up. “Really? I wasn’t really trying yet, I was just thinking…”

“What were you thinking about?”

“I was trying to see if I could pick up on anything electromagnetic from the space around us.”

“And how did that feel?” He twisted the kerchief into a knot in his lap, then dropped it with shaking hands, and reached for the glasses in his pocket again. He put them on his face off-centre, and then shoved them into place as though agitated to find himself not in control of himself.

“I didn’t feel anything at first, but then I felt a hot circle,” I put my hand over my shoulder to show him where.

“Really?” He cocked his head and frowned. “How odd. Um-“ He took his glasses off again and put them back in his pocket, clearly shaken. “Petra, I believe that is enough for the day. I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted.”

I nodded, but actually, I felt fine.

“We’ll need to do some additional tests at some point soon, but I’ll have to spend a bit of time strategizing them.” His eyes tracked to the Geiger counter and I realized he’d been avoiding my gaze.

I dropped my head to prompt him to look at me, searching for his eyes. “Mr.Emoto? Are you alright?”

With what seemed like a monumental effort, he raised his eyes very slowly to my face. What I saw there filled me with shame and turned my blood to ice in my veins. He was very, very afraid. I didn’t know if he was afraid of me, but he was most certainly afraid of what had just happened, which made my heart trip on its wheel and hammer in response.

As though he knew I could read him, he dropped his eyes and got to his feet. “I’ll take you to Banks, and he’ll deliver you safely back to Saltford. We’ll be in touch.”

And with that, I was perfunctorily walked to the lobby where Banks escorted me up to the helicopter pad. My mind was buzzing with questions about everything that had just happened, and I told myself that Hiroki would have some answers for me the next time we talked. I tried to imagine what life might have been like for me if I had been left to figure out my abilities all on my own, and the thought of it sent red-eyed rats of terror running up and down my spine. As strange as it was to be thrust into this new world of supernaturals and a corporation who employed and developed them, I was grateful that I didn’t have to face it alone.

Sirens & Scales, a New Boxed Set Containing 26 Mermaid & Dragon Stories!

Some of you will remember that in the spring I did a survey to announce that I would be producing a new siren story especially for a boxed set called Sirens & Scales. Well, the boxed set is now out up for preorder and its an amazing deal at only $.99US for 26 full  fantasy novels written for lovers of dragons and mermaids.

Here are the purchase links, but before you grab it, please read the rest of this post.

US AMAZON /  CAD AMAZON /  UK AMAZON / AUS AMAZON / GOOGLE PLAY /  KOBO

I was originally planning to write the next instalment in Mira’s story, but shortly after I did the survey to ask which siren you all wanted to read about most, I was invited to write for the Oriceran Universe with Martha Carr and Michael Anderle, and if you’ve been following my career, you’ll know I said yes as I’ve recently launched the first two books in that universe; Descendant and Ascendant.

Unfortunately, saying yes to this awesome opportunity meant that I haven’t had time to pen the new siren story for this boxed set – so the story which will be published in Sirens & Scales will be Returning, Episodes 1 & 2.

Don’t let this deter you from grabbing the boxed set though, even if you have ready Returning already. 26 stories for .99 is an awesome deal and promises hours of exciting and diverting storytelling as this boxed set is loaded with talented authors! I just wanted to explain so that none of my readers got taken by surprise if they purchased the boxed set and discovered they’d already read my story.

Thanks for understanding. I wish I could write faster, but looking back on nearly a year of publishing and having published 7 novels, 4 novellas, and a short story is a lot of writing in 12 months! Thank you so much for all the support you’ve given during this, my first year of working as a full-time professional author. I fully intend to write more siren stories (water is my element doncha know), and even have some fun new covers waiting for stories, too!

Snippet 4 of Ascendant, The Kacy Chronicles, Book 2

 

Chapter 4 (unedited)

The Kacy Estate

There had to be a logical explanation for this.

Allan paced back and forth in front of the ‘booze bureau’ (that’s what Jordan called it), pausing at either end to eye the strange glass bugs in his bourbon bottle. Since he was now out of bourbon, the glass in his hand carried single-malt scotch instead. The normally smooth oaky flavour had turned to diesel on his tongue. Still, he was on his second tumbler and his hundredth journey across the carpeted floor.

These same bugs might enable him to contact his daughter, but how? The bugs had gone dormant and rested in the bottom of the bottle along with traces of bourbon still left inside. As though to reassure himself that he’d not imagined the whole thing, Allan tapped a finger against the glass. Two of the bugs sprouted legs and crawled over their companions to the glass walls of the bottle where they began to climb, ever optimistic that the cork had been removed since the last time they’d checked. How glass could cling to glass was beyond Allan, but the bugs were somehow able to scale the slippery surface, their tiny feet click click clicking.

Allan set his drink on the bureau, rooted his cell out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts until he found Inspector Cranston’s number. His thumb hovered over the green call icon. He had to have answers, and if Cranston could talk all kinds of crap about avian-human chimeras, he’d have to be open to the idea of parallel universe bugs spelling out messages from his missing daughter.

“I am crazy,” he whispered, but he hit the dial button anyway. He lifted the cell to his ear, failing to block out the tink-tink of bug legs. He turned his back to the bourbon bottle and wandered to the archway between the parlor and the foyer. Bracing against the doorjamb, Allan sank to the floor and listened to the ringtone. The phone rang twice, then clicked as it was answered.

“Senator Kacy?” Cranston’s voice came through clear and crisp. “What can I do for you?”

“Cranston.” Allan’s heart doubled its speed and his palms suddenly felt cold and clammy. He felt his resolve weaken. “I – have there been any developments in the case? Have you found anything else out about the – uh, the chimera?”

“Nothing new, sir,” Cranston replied, then cleared his throat. “I hesitated to tell you about the blood for this very reason. I didn’t want you to worry. I assure you that everything is under control, sir. We’ll find Jordan and we’ll bring her back. I promise.”

Allan cringed. He hated when people said ‘I promise’. Cranston was just a man, and when men made promises they nearly always broke them. Allan thought that it was one of the many ways God kept men humble, as if to say, I can make promises. But you shouldn’t.

Allan’s eyes tracked to the bourbon bottle where two of the bugs were jammed into the neck. As he watched, they both put their legs away and fell with a clink into the pile of their companions below.

His mouth formed a grim line. Jordan’s bug message had told him the answer – she’d fallen through a portal. But how was it possible? How could any of this be real? Maybe, they’d slipped drugs into his bourbon and he’d hallucinated the whole event. That wouldn’t explain the bugs though. He’d felt them beneath his fingertips, they were the only thing he could see now.

Glass marbles, moving and –

But Cranston was talking. Allan had almost forgotten he was still holding the phone to his ear.

“– get some rest, Senator Kacy. You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

“Wait, Cranston.” He took a steadying breath. “I’ve found something.”

The tuk-tuk of a helicopter’s blades overhead sliced through his certainty like a hot blade through butter. He was a senator, he was under watch, under protection, and he sure as hell couldn’t afford to look crazy at a time like this. At any time, really. Even a whiff of crazy equated to weakness, loss of all credibility, loss of any pull he might have.

Loss of power and credibility could endanger his life and Jordan’s as a result.

“What did you find?” Cranston asked.

Allan gritted his teeth at the bugs.

“What did you find, Senator?”

“It’s, uh, it’s a picture of Jordan. I thought you might need an up to date one for your records.”

“Oh,” Cranston replied, and disappointment leaked through the phone. “That’s fine, sir. I’ll come over in the morning to collect the photographs.”

“Good night.” Allan hung up before he blurted out anything about glowing marble bugs and portals. He let out a long exhale. “What do I do?” He forced himself upright and readjusted his glasses.

The bugs were unconcerned by his plight, their fat glassy bodies lay dormant again in the bottom of the bottle like so many eggs.

“What am I supposed to do?” Allan asked again, frustration mounting. He lifted the bottle and poked at the glass with his fingertip. “You in there. Things. What am I supposed to do?” He’d neatly crossed over the line between tipsy and drunk quite some time ago already.

If Jordan had used these little suckers to send him a message, perhaps he could use them to send one back. He could ask her where she was, how to get there, and whether she needed anything.

What if she was hurt? Or cold? Or lost? Fear pasted his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Decades had passed since Jaclyn’s disappearance, but he’d harbored a secret fear ever since. He’d tended it in the silence of sleepless nights, and nurtured the fear like one would care for an orchid, this belief that someone would one day take his baby away from him too. That he’d also lose his daughter, the only person who mattered anymore. It was The Unthinkable, which of course meant that he thought about it far too frequently.

And now, it had come to pass.

These little glass balls were the only tie he had left to Jordan. “I’ll be damned if I let this happened,” Allan whispered. “I’ll be damned if I’ll just wait around and do nothing!”

He clutched the bottle in his fist and charged through the house, out of it, and down the deck stairs. He marched toward that five-hundred-year-old oak tree and it’s swinging chair, buoyed up on scotch and belief – he’d contact Jordan again.

Allan dropped to his knees in front of the old oak and said a quick silent prayer. Let me see her again. Let me bring her back. Let me talk to her. Please, she’s all I have left. She’s my little girl.

An image rose from the dust of his memories – Jordan as a five-year-old, her chubby hands squished against his cheeks. “You’re the best daddy borned. Smartess too.”

“Smartest, sweetheart.”

“That’s you.”

Tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes and he lifted the bottle. His breath caught in his chest. The bugs had started glowing. Those two yellow eyes on each glassy marble had reappeared. His heart skipped to a strange rhythm to see how they’d responded to being near the tree. More proof that there was some invisible portal here.

“I need your help,” Allan said to the bugs. “I need to speak to Jordan. I’m going to let you out, but you have to help me, okay?”

They seemed to stare at him, unmoving, now. Was it a sign they agreed?

He uncorked the bottle with a ceremonious hollow pop – then laid the bottle in the grass on its side.

The bugs crawled out one by one and scurried toward the tree.

“No, wait! No, you have to do the message.” Allan grabbed one, then another. He tried arranging them, but every one of them wandered toward the tree as soon as he released them. He tried to gather them up all at once between his palms, as many as he could, but each time he placed them in a pattern, they scuttled off again, always toward the oak tree.

“Stop it,” he commanded. “Pay attention!”

The bugs didn’t stop. They glowed brighter, their two yellow eyes blended into one, blindingly bright light. They became like small stars. They reached the tree, crawled up its roots and swarmed over the bark. They blazed now, so bright Allan had to blink against the glare.

Allan stifled panic and tears, raised his arm to block the light. “Please,” he said, swaying. “Jordy.”

The light evaporated, replaced by darkness and silence. Nothing moved, not even a whisper of wind in the long grass or the creak of the swinging chair. He lowered his arm. The bugs were gone. But it was too quiet.

“Hello?” he croaked, staring at the tree where something was happening.

The center of the tree moved and blurred, a hole widened in the fabric of Allan’s reality, the bark of the tree melted away and pulled back, stretching open like it was made of latex. The hole wobbled and expanded, exposing a strange deep blackness which changed color from dark to midnight-blue, then to the bright glaring blue of a clear summer sky. The radiant azure rim stretched outward, undulating and widening with a serpentine sway.

The hole broadened, the blue haze at its center dissipated and revealed… something else. Another place, another time, a view of –

“It is a portal,” he whispered and broke out in a cold sweat. The bugs hadn’t sent a message to her, but they had left a hole, a path, a doorway.

It didn’t matter if the bugs had heard him and done it on purpose, or if it was purely an accident, a result of their travel back home. They’d created an opportunity. Allan scrambled upright and swayed on the spot. The edges of the hole in the fabric of Earth’s universe tightened, and Allan gasped – the opportunity, it seemed, would be very short. Now or never took on new meaning. He glanced back only once at his plantation home, his jaw tightening with resolve. He could no more say no to this opportunity than he could prevent grass from growing up around the old house.

He clenched his fists, faced the new world, and entered it to find his daughter.

Snippet 2 of Born of Air

To read Snippet 1 click here. Sorry, I’m unable to record an audio clip for you, I have a cold, trust me, you don’t want to listen to me read right now. I hope you enjoy the snippet!

 

 

Chapter 2 (unedited)

“Sorry,” Noel laughed. “I thought you said you could read minds.” He coughed uncomfortably into a closed fist. “I must’ve misunderstood you. Could you repeat that please?”

“You didn’t misunderstand,” I said.

The air grew thick between us as we sat there looking at one another, me fighting the urge to dig at his thoughts. How was he reacting inside? Noel’s face had become impassive. It was the kind of expression I’d seen on him before. He trusted me and knew that I wasn’t a liar, and yet he wasn’t sure he could believe me.

“You’ve never encountered mind-reading before?” I asked.

“Petra,” he said, his face very still. “Telepathy is a pseudoscience. It has never been proven to exist.”

I frowned. “I know that. I have done my research. I was just hoping that maybe you had access to information that I don’t. So, you don’t know how I can get rid of it?” Great. I had spilled my secret for nothing. “Do you have any experience with telekinesis?”

He blinked rapidly like he’d gotten dust in his eyes. “Telekinesis is also a pseudoscience.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose where his specs sat, like they were pinching him. It was a tell. He didn’t believe me. My heart felt heavy. The one adult left in my life that I thought I could go to with anything was probably now questioning my sanity.

“Have you been under a lot of pressure lately?” He asked hooking his interlaced fingers over a knee.

“No more than usual,” I sighed. I went to get up from the chair. “I guess we’re done here.” As far as I was concerned, if Noel couldn’t offer me any additional information about my condition, then I wasn’t going to find what I needed here.

Noel got to his feet as well and rather quickly for a portly chap. “Petra, please sit down. You can’t drop a bomb on me like that and not explain. I promise I will try and help you.”

I sank back into my seat, hesitantly. “I knew it could be a mistake telling you,” I said. “But I thought that you of all people might have some idea how to stop it. After all, you see all kinds come through here. People with all sorts of mental health problems.”

He gave a chuckle. “Not like this,” he said. “Why do you want to stop it?” Now he was mining for gold. Keep the patient talking. Psychology 101. I was game. It was what I’d come here for.

“Because it’s annoying,” I cried. “The movies make telepathy out to be some sort of great power, something that’s supposed to give you a one-up in this world. The reality of it is much different, let me tell you.”

Noel scooched forward on the couch and propped an elbow on the arm of his chair. “What is the reality of it?”

I made a face and crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you have any idea how unintelligent most of humanity is? How selfish, simple, and vapid? I have no interest in sharing my mind–space with someone else’s idiotic thoughts.”

As a child, it had been agonizing, before I had a strategy in place to protect my mind from other people’s self-talk and mental images. The wall I had put up was stronger than it had ever been, but sometimes random thoughts not of my making would leak through, usurping my own thinking. “Other people’s thoughts are almost never enlightening. They always take me backwards. Do you have any idea how quickly I’ll devolve if I go around picking up other people’s mental garbage? It’s like…” I paused, searching for the words to explain how it felt. “Pollution. Noise cluttering up a library that’s supposed to be a serene place. When I was a kid, I thought I was crazy. I was 7 years old when I finally figured out what was wrong with me.”

Noel was leaning forward in his chair. “What happened to make you understand?”

“I was able to match up a random image that had popped into my head with the thoughts of the caseworker who was interviewing me,” I explained. “We were supposed to be going over my report cards and talking about how well I was integrating at school. She’d ask me questions and I’d answer them. But whenever I began to talk, the image of a man wearing a navy uniform, and black horn-rimmed glasses would materialize in my mind and completely derail me. I didn’t know who he was, I had never seen him before. It was frightening.“

I didn’t say it out loud to Noel, but it got even worse when the man began to kiss me passionately, and then swept me off my feet. Somewhere in the midst of my shock and distress, I could sense an underlying urgency and pleasure that didn’t belong to me. I was too young to understand it. “It wasn’t until after the session was over,” I continued, “and I watched the caseworker greet her husband in the parking lot, that I understood what I had been seeing,” I said. “He had just gotten back from overseas and she has missed him terribly. She couldn’t wait to see him, and her mind kept drifting to him during our conversation.”

“That’s very sweet,” said Noel.

“Not when you don’t know what the hell is going on,” I snapped.

He put his hands out. “Fair enough. Do the thoughts always come through in images?”

“Not always. Sometimes they come through like voices, speaking words. I guess it depends how the person thinks.”

“Could I ask you to show me?”

I knew that this would have to be part of it. I nodded. “Give me a moment.”

Lifting the wall I had placed around my thoughts was a strange feeling, unpleasant. It was like my eyes had been focused on something very close to my face for hours, and when I finally lifted them to the horizon, everything was horribly fuzzy. It might take a second or two for eyes to adjust, and there might be a little vertigo to go along with it. But it took my brain longer than that to home in on his thoughts. I closed my eyes as my vision blurred, and the old familiar pain throbbed low at the base of my neck. “Are you ready?” I asked, opening my eyes.

Noel looked relaxed, interested, unconcerned. He still didn’t believe me. “Okay,” he said leaning back against his chair. “What am I thinking about?”

I received his stream of consciousness and images began to form in my head. The images crept in at the edges at first, then blew up like balloons in the middle of my skull, fully formed and in technicolor. Apparently, Noel was a visual thinker.

“A rose garden,” I said and closed my eyes. I couldn’t help but smile at the beautiful image. “Looks like tea roses, mostly in pastels. They’re at their peak and they smell amazing. At the edge of the garden is an old stone railing with curved spindles and carved faces sitting on top. About a dozen of them, all with their backs to a very blue ocean.” I opened my eyes. “Some of the faces are cracked and worn, missing their noses.”

Noel’s complexion had gone pale, dewy with sweat. He had to believe me now, and he was clearly shaken.

“It’s a beautiful place,” I said. “Where is it?”

He tried to reply but it came out as a dry wisp of a word. He coughed to clear his throat and tried again. “Ravello,” he said. “The Terrace of Infinity. It was once owned by Becket, the poet.”

“Lovely,” I murmured. I was about to congratulate him on how steady his imagination held the place he was thinking of. Most people’s minds skittered from seemingly random image to random worry, out of control like a runaway elephant. But just as I opened my mouth, the image of the side of a black handgun came flying at my face and seemed to bounce off my forehead. The weapon was gripped by a meaty hand and as the gun made contact, there was a flash of red. While I didn’t feel any physical pain, I jerked backwards, startled, as I picked up the violent memory from Noel.

“What was that?” I said, alarmed. Fear riddled the image with wavy lines, like heat coming off asphalt on a summer day. I had never seen terror warp a thought so badly. So, even Noel had trouble controlling his thoughts, as that was definitely something he wouldn’t have wanted me to see. Thoughts were a strange thing. If you try not to think of a giraffe, the first thing that will pop into your head is a giraffe. Obviously, Noel now believed me and the fear of me seeing one of his worst memories came rushing to the forefront of his mind where I’d plucked it like a ripe apple.

“Stop, stop!” cried Noel, putting a hand out. His eyes were wide with dismay.

I slammed down the gate between my mind and his, the feeling of it was so violent it jarred my teeth. The images filtering into my mind ceased. The dull pain at the base of my skull eased and disappeared, but my heart was pounding. The last thought I had picked up was the most disconcerting one I had ever picked up from anyone. Why was my mild-mannered therapist being beaten by a man with a gun? Fury flared hot and hard inside me and I had to take a deep breath. Noel wouldn’t hurt a fly. This was another reason I didn’t like to know other people’s thoughts, especially if it was someone I cared about. If they were in some kind of trouble, I couldn’t help but get involved. For all I knew that thought was thirty years old and had long since been resolved. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

He shook his head as he pulled at his tie, loosening it from around his neck. “Don’t worry about me,” he wheezed. “It’s you we’re discussing.” He was a little out of breath and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” He said this while shucking his suit jacket. Sweat circles darkened the fabric of his purple shirt. “Would you like a drink? I need a drink.”

“Yes, please,” I said. Now that my mind was sealed, my heart was slowing down.

Noel went to the sideboard under the window and poured two glasses of water from the pitcher sitting there. I watched his hand shake and the water slosh. He returned to our little circle of furniture and handed me a glass.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it and drinking. I set the glass on a coaster on the coffee table between us.

“Can you still read my mind?” Noel asked.

I frowned. His voice had a tremor I didn’t like. He was afraid of me. “No, you asked me to stop and I did.” Reading minds was an invasion of privacy at the deepest level. Doing it made me feel sick, not physically, aside from the dull headache, but emotionally. I felt like a criminal, a voyeur, someone with a serious mental health problem.

He settled back in his chair, his shirt damp and his necktie gaping. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone. His eyes met mine for the first time, narrowing as he stared at me.

“I’m not,” I affirmed. “I can tell by your face that you don’t believe me. But I’m not. I swear on Beverly’s memory.” I put a hand over my heart.

“You don’t have to do that. I believe you.” His face relaxed and he took a kerchief from his chest pocket and mopped his brow. “How are you able to control it?”

“Years of practice,” I answered. “Mostly it involves not thinking about the fact that I can do it, and genuinely not wanting to know what people are thinking. If I do find myself wanting to know someone’s thoughts, that’s when it takes real effort. It’s like holding up a dam with your bare hands. It’s tiring, and if you have to do it for a long time eventually some water will leak through. If that makes any sense.”

Noel nodded, still pale. “It does. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why now?”

“I don’t like being looked at like I’m nuts. Not that you would,” I put up a hand. “But most people would. And I’m not interested in having to prove myself. I just find I still have leakage sometimes, and as I prepare to go into University, I’d like to get rid of it. You can imagine the battle of will that ensues during an exam,” I said. “It’s the reason I always studied so hard. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I’d be tempted to cheat.” I shrugged. “I was hoping you might have some experience with it from other patients. But I guess not.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Petra,” Noel said. “This is a first for me.” He took a breath. “And the telekinesis you mentioned?”

“Yes. What about it?”

Noel looked uncomfortable. He adjusted his glasses. “You have this ability too?”

I nodded. “It’s not as much of an issue, but I brought it up because I thought the two might be linked.”

“Can you…” he made a gesture with his hand, like an invitation to dance.

I nodded. Another demonstration. I picked up my glass, drained it of water, swallowed and set it back on the table. On the glass this time, not the coaster. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my stomach. Without taking my eyes from Noel, I gave the glass a gentle mental shove at its base so it didn’t tip over.

My glass slid across the table and clinked into his.

Noel’s hand flew to cover his mouth.

“Cheers.”

My attempt to lighten the atmosphere failed. Noel’s eyes flew up to my face. I watched him make an effort to get his gaping under control. But his complexion was still waxy, and he was still sweating. He tugged on his chin and closed his mouth. The sound of his palm scraping against his stubble was loud and filled the room.

I glanced at the clock on Noel’s desk. “We’re out of time,” I said, getting to my feet. “I hope I haven’t ruffled you too much. I know you have another patient right after me.”

“No, no,” Noel said. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t. It was plain on his face. No one needed telepathy to see how much I’d shaken him.

“I’m sorry, Noel,” I said quietly. “If I had known…” I bounced a fist off my thigh, feeling awkward. “I wouldn’t have…” I sighed. What else could I say? My hope that he’d seen someone else like me in all his years of helping patients dissolved into mist.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Noel intoned, getting to his feet as well. “I’ve just never seen anything like it. Would you like to make another appointment?” He followed me as I walked to the door. I plucked my jacket off the coatrack and picked up my purse. “There would be no charge. I’d really like to help you with this.”

But he couldn’t. He’d already shown me that. I gave him a smile, but it felt stiff and unnatural on my face. “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway.” I reached for the door handle.

“Wait, Petra-“ But my therapist seemed to be out of words for now. Couldn’t blame him.

I opened the door. “Nice to see you again, Noel. I wish you well.” I stepped out onto the landing and closed the door quietly behind me. At least I had some comfort knowing that he could never share my secret with anyone.

 

Order your copy of Born of Air here and continue the story! USA CAD UK AUS

Snippet 3 of Ascendant, The Kacy Chronicles, Book 2

To read Snippet 1 click here.

To read Snippet 2 click here.

Chapter 3 (unedited)

It didn’t take Sol long to spot Jordan from the sky over Maticaw. Her blonde hair and bright yellow feathers caught his eye like a beacon on a stormy night. She seemed to be in active conversation with a gypsy woman dressed almost entirely in purple. Sol’s Arpak vision sharpened on the pair. There was a basket on the woman’s hip, but whatever was in the basket was blocked by the golden arch of Jordan’s wing. He banked and drifted, finding an open space in the street to land in.

Dodging merchants and shoppers, Sol wound his way to Jordan. The gypsy had a cloud of curls puffing up from under a purple headscarf, and bangles twanged from her wrists. A single shock of gray hair at her temple stood out stark against the rich brown of the rest. A holey knitted shawl was tied around her waist and trailed in the dust of the street. Her face was lined with age but her brown eyes were keen with intelligence, the whites very white and brown very rich. Her expression was a blend of kindness and craftiness.

“Jordan, I’m finished. Ready to go?” Sol said at Jordan’s elbow. “I have a delivery for Upper Rodania.” His irritation that she’d not been on the terrace waiting for him was only mild as she’d been easy to find. “Wish you hadn’t left the- whoa“ his eyes dropped to the small blue dragon perched in Jordan’s palm. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a dragon on you.”

The reptile was no larger than a rat and had diamond-shaped scales of bright blue. A yellow patch (nearly identical to the brightest yellow of Jordan’s own wings) ran from its throat to its chest and along the insides of each leg. Its dark blue wings were folded against its back and its long tail was wrapped around Jordan’s arm like a spiral bracelet. Small blunted nails the colour of midnight sprang from short little claws which were clutched around Jordan’s wrist and in between her fingers. The dragon had shiny black orbs for eyes, too big for its face, which gave it a mousy quality. Two little holes on either side of its head served as ears, and two slender blue horns curved gracefully back from its skull. The scales that ran over its brow and neck were brighter and smoother than the rest – almost pearly. Whatever this dragon was, he was well fed and well taken care of.

The reptile cocked his head at the sounds of the women’s voices, his tongue darting out now and then, smelling the air or maybe the situation. Sol had studied dragons during his training, but more about how to recognize and avoid the dangerous ones than anything else. This little reptile, covered in his jewel-like scales and observing the world with a bright intelligent gaze didn’t look like any of the ones Sol had studied. It also looked very young.

Jordan blinked up at Sol, bewildered. “I’m sorry you had to come find me. I meant to be back at the terrace before you were finished. Yes, I’m ready to go but we seem to have a problem.” To illustrate, she held the dragon out to the gypsy woman.

The gypsy reached for the dragon who responded by squawking and skittering up Jordan’s arm to perch on her shoulder. Jordan winced as the sharp claws ran the terrain of her body.

The gypsy dropped the basket at her feet and put her hands on her hips with a huff. “He has imprinted on you, girl. You have to buy him. There is nothing else to be done.” The gypsy looked up at Sol, as though hoping to find an ally in him. “Tell her.”

“That’s just a sales tactic,” said Sol, reaching for the dragon. “Nothing more.” Moving quickly, he scooped the reptile up and handed it back to the gypsy, who glowered at him.

“It’s not a trick,” she grumped. “Berla is many things, but she is no trickster.” She took the dragon back and picked up the basket, setting him inside it and perching it on her hip. She looked down expectantly. “You watch. It’s not a trick.”

“Let’s go.” Sol put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder and they headed back toward the stairs leading up to the apothecary’s terrace where they could catch an updraft.

There was a throaty despairing scream behind them. A flapping blue blur fell into the dust at Jordan’s feet. The little dragon turned his liquid black eyes up to Jordan and gave a plaintive cry.

“Oh, look at him.” Jordan’s expression melted and she squatted. She picked up the dusty creature and brushed him off. The dragon leaned into her touch and emitted a clicking rumble from deep in his chest, a reptilian purr. Jordan stood, cupping the creature next to her stomach. “He likes me.”

Sol rubbed a hand down his face and sighed.

“He more than likes you,” said the gypsy woman, approaching with the basket dangling from one hand. “Dragon imprinting is a bond for life. It’s not a joke. If you don’t take him with you, he’ll die of a broken heart.”

Jordan gasped and looked up at Sol, eyes beginning to take on a pleading glaze.

“Jordan, dragons aren’t allowed on Rodania,” he said, firmly but with compassion. “I’m sorry. They grow to be enormous, and not least of all dangerous. Let’s go, we’re wasting time-”

“This one won’t,” interjected the gypsy. “He’s a Predoian Miniature. He won’t get any bigger than what he is now.”

Sol looked down as the reptile shoved his snout between Jordan’s elbow and ribs. “Really? He looks like a baby to me. He can’t even fly yet.”

“He is young but he is full-grown” The woman lifted her chin. “I know dragons. Don’t insult me by saying it is some kind of ruse. I care for my dragons, they are not just my business. I do not send them to where they will be unhappy.”

Jordan stroked under the dragon’s chin. His mouth opened and his tongue snaked out as he dropped his jaw into her hand. “Who knew reptiles could be so affectionate. Are miniature ones allowed on Rodania?”

Sol hesitated.

Jordan’s face brightened. “They are?”

“Yes, but he can’t fly, and neither of us is equipped to take on a pet right now.” Sol scooped the dragon up a second time and handed him to the woman in purple. “Hold him, please. Don’t let him follow her. We’re leaving now.”

The gypsy took the dragon reflexively but her eyes widened in fear. “I can’t do that! Do you want me to lose a finger or an eye?”

Sol snatched the rope laying in the bottom of the basket. “Then tie him up and wait until we’re out of sight.” His nimble fingers fashioned a noose and he slipped it over the dragon’s head, scooped him up and bent at the nearest tree. He tied the dragon to the tree trunk and stood up, satisfied. “There, now he can’t hurt you.”

The gypsy woman rolled her eyes. “You are not even an amateur.”

Sol steered Jordan toward the steps. “Lets. Go.” There was another screech as the two Arpaks stroke away. “Ignore him, Jordan.”

“But-“ Jordan looked back over her shoulder. “What if she’s right? What if he’ll die?”

They couldn’t ignore the second much louder screech, which was followed by a panicked flapping of wings and desperate snapping of jaws. The dragon strained at the cord. He turned his head almost completely backwards and sawed through the rope with his back teeth like it was nothing but floss. He came at Jordan in a flapping run and took a bounce at her feet. The reptile landed awkwardly on Jordan’s shoulder, his wings flexed for balance. He looped his head under her chin with a distressed whistle.

The gypsy followed, her hands on her hips. “Many would sell everything they own in order to have a dragon imprint with them. You are stupid if you do not see the benefit of this.”

Sol rolled his eyes. Jordan wrapped her fingers gently around the dragon and held him next to her heart, murmuring soft words.

“You do not need to take care of a dragon. They take care of you.” She jabbed a long-nailed finger into Sol’s face. “You do not need to feed them. They are our most deadly predator. You do not need to clean up after them. They do their business in the woods because its the only time they feel vulnerable,” she cocked her head with a faint smile, “and a little embarrassed.” She looked down at the dragon with affection. “And they will love you until one of you dies.” She looked back at Sol and Jordan and her face hardened. “You are a fool if you do not take him with you. And you would also be murderers.”

“Easy now,” muttered Sol, flushing faintly under Jordan’s gaze. He was rapidly losing this fight and soon, he would be the bad guy, if he wasn’t already. “We didn’t come here for a dragon. How much is he?”

The woman lost a little of her composure. “Sixty coin,” she said, shuffling from one foot to the other, purple skirt swaying.

Sol barked an outraged laugh. “We don’t even want him!”

“I do,” said Jordan shyly.

Sol stared at her.

Jordan’s bashfulness turned to certainty. “I want him. I’ll find a way to pay you back for him. Please.”

“How?” Sol put his hands on his hips. “With what gold?”

Jordan shrugged. “I’ll find a way. Money is easy to get, you just have to be creative.”

Sol groaned inwardly. “I’ll give you five coin for him.” He said to the gypsy woman. “If you care so much for him, you’ll agree to it. We did not come here for a dragon, he was thrust upon us. If you don’t accept my offer, the dragon stays, and you’ll be as much a party to murder as we would be, and your greed will be confirmed.” Sol shrugged and crossed his arms to show he was finished negotiating.

The gypsy woman’s mouth dropped open but quickly snapped shut, realizing how he’d trapped her. Her brown eyes flashed from one solemn face to the other, then to the little dragon now perched peacefully on Jordan’s shoulder. “Make it ten coin, and let us say no more about it.”

Mutely, Sol dug the coins from his satchel and dropped them into her upturned palm. “Good day.”

“Wait.” the gypsy woman opened the bag at her hip and rifled through it. She retrieved a small folded piece of paper. “Here is his registration.”

Sol took the paper and opened it, reading the hand-written certificate saying that the dragon was a Predoian Miniature born in Maticaw three months earlier. Sol glanced from the page to the gypsy and was about to ask if it was even legitimate, after all the dragon couldn’t even fly properly yet, but he thought better of it. They didn’t have time for this. He tucked the page into his satchel and nodded goodbye to the dragon peddler. The Arpaks left the gypsy woman standing in the street with a moue of unhappiness on her face.

“You’ll have to carry him,” Sol warned as they made their way up to Cles’s terrace. “Are you okay with that? I can do it if you like.” Even though she wouldn’t complain about it, Sol knew Jordan was still sore from the journey from Charra-Rae. It was a long way to go for an Arpak who’d just gotten her wings.

“I can do it,” said Jordan with a smile. She followed at his heels as they climbed the steps. “How was your delivery by the way?”

“Not good,” Sol grunted. “Cles didn’t have what he was asked for. I don’t think Juer will be happy.”

“Who is Juer?” Jordan had begun to pant and blew out a big exhale as they reached the terrace, flexing her wings in preparation. She and Sol crossed the landing to the balcony.

“The Royal Physician,” said Sol. He hopped up onto the platform built into the terrace railing and held a hand out to Jordan. “Are you ready?” His wings opened out halfway.

Jordan stepped up and looked down at the city below them, her tummy quivering. “This part still freaks me out a bit.” Her wings opened out, the feathers brushing the tops of the foliage reaching up from the garden patches.

“Want me to take him?” Sol nodded at the little blue reptile cupped now in Jordan’s hands.

“No, I’ve got him.” Her eyes were bright and her face pink. “How far to Rodania did you say?”

“Five to six hours depending on the wind. We have to bank north and follow the coast for a while. Storms tend to gather between Maticaw and Rodania, but they’re easily avoided by going north.”

Jordan faced the sea and stepped to the edge of the stone ledge built just so that Strix could drop off and catch an updraft. Maticaw stretched out before her, its rooftop terraces and towers cascading down the steep mountains sides to the sea. She looked down at the little dragon, contemplating that she now had a companion, if the gypsy was to be believed, for life. Jordan felt the ties between her and Oriceran tighten. Miserably, Jordan thought of her father and wished he could be with her to experience all of this. Had he received her message? Had it frightened him? Of course it had.

“Jordan? You okay?”

Jordan turned to Sol, eyes glistening. She brushed at her face. “What should we call him?” She looked down at the reptile, hiding the emotions rising up in her. She was still so relieved that Sol hadn’t left her to fend for herself in this strange land, the idea of burdening him with her problems further was abhorrent to her.

“Uh,” Sol gazed at the tiny creatures sapphire blue scales. He was actually a spectacular specimen, a real beauty, for a reptile. Not that Sol had seen many dragons in his lifetime, but the ones he had seen were dull gray in colour, and somewhat misshapen looking. “Blue?”

“Blue!” Jordan laughed. The dragon looked up at the sound of her laughter and rattled off a purr in his throat. “No points for creativity. Don’t worry,” she looked down into the dragon’s face, “we won’t call you Blue,” she crooned.

“Jordan-“

“Yes, I’m ready.” She clutched the dragon against her chest with both hands so he’d feel secure. “Don’t worry. I won’t drop you,” she murmured. With a squeal and a gasp she spread her wings and hopped from the platform. She dipped face-first toward Maticaw and banked upward at the last moment, just missing a weathervane spire which spun as she passed.

 

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Snippet 2 of Ascendant: The Kacy Chronicles, Book 2

To read snippet 1, click here.

Chapter Two (unedited)

Jordan followed Sol through the air as they descended to a large flagstone terrace. Throughout the patchwork of stones were pockets of plants, trees, and flowers, some of which looked a lot like plants from Earth. There was always something just a little bit different about them. There were flowers that had the droopy conical blossoms of foxglove, only with several long red pistons flowing out from each blossom and drifting in the breeze like hair. There were the long-stemmed tiny purple flowers like lavender, except their stems were covered with white fuzz.

“Where are we?” Jordan asked, closing up her wings and wandering closer to the nearest garden patch, drawn by a sweet fragrance. “I mean, I know we’re in Maticaw. But whose place is this?” She bent down to inhale but had to go slowly. She still wasn’t used to the weight of her wings, and the muscular soreness that had come with the last few days of travel was only now just starting to heal. Sol had coached her to keep her wings slightly flexed while walking (or just behaving like a bi-ped in general) rather than letting them relax and go limp, but not before she’d toppled over more than once when bending over, as the weight of her wings pulled her forward unexpectedly. Jordan had a sneaking suspicion Sol had enjoyed her ungraceful tumbles and had delayed giving her this handy little tip.

“This is where Cles lives and works from, and where I’ve come to deliver this,” Sol held up a small folded yellow letter. “I’m not sure how long this will take, it depends on what it says and if he needs to write a reply. Do you mind waiting here?”

“I don’t mind.” Jordan breathed in the fragrant perfume of a pastel green rose-like blossom the size of her head. This garden was a beautiful and delightful-smelling place to hang out.

“Thanks.” Sol disappeared through an archway and a few seconds later Jordan heard the sound of squeaky hinges as some door opened to receive him. The door closed and she was left alone with the blossoms and the insects that danced among them.

She strolled the terrace at her leisure, sniffing plants and herbs and trying to place the language root of the identifying glyphs that had been painted onto the tiny signposts thrust into the dirt, and failing. They had accents, not unlike that of Hebrew, the sharp angles of Runes, and the occasional swirling spirals of Sanskrit. But altogether the language was indiscernible to her.

The terrace was enclosed on all sides by a stone wall nearly twice Jordan’s height. The exception was a handful of lower narrow ledges scattered about where a view of Maticaw could be gained. The sounds of distant laughter floating on the humid sea-air drew Jordan to one of these ledges where she was rewarded with a sprawling view of Maticaw. She hopped up on the thick mantle, flexing her wings for balance, and sat cross-legged.

Bright blue water threw off sparkles of the setting sun as the sky turned a delicate shade of peach. Jordan perched her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her palm as the wind tugged at her hair. Sailing vessels of all sizes and shapes drifted in and out of the large port. This one tall and slender like a schooner, that one winged and spiked like an Asian spice trader. Faint engine noises reached her ears as flying vessels droned over land and sea and descended into port.

Distant conversations drifted up from the city like puffs of smoke, loud brays of laughter and some harsher sounding exchanges filled the air and made Maticaw feel alive. Peering a little further over the edge revealed a long drop plummeting for several stories before hitting the winding cobbled streets below. A narrow set of stairs zigzagged up the rocky hillside and wrapped itself around the curved walls of the tower on which Jordan now stood.

Hopping off the ledge Jordan crossed the terrace and wandered through the archway that Sol had passed through. A smaller courtyard opened up with a stone building on one side with two huge wooden doors, both closed. An iron gate at the far end beckoned and she found the top of the staircase on the other side of it. Jordan looked back at the wooden doors. There was no sign of Sol yet, surely she’d have time for a short exploratory walk. She’d be back before he even noticed she was missing. Besides, she had wings now and could back on the terrace in a flash. The gate squealed as Jordan pushed through it and descended the curving stone steps. There was no railing along the stairs and having the world drop away on one side made her heart skip a beat. The wind picked her hair up and whipped it around, ruffling her feathers.

Jordan followed the stairway down to street level and found herself in the midst of a busy city market. Fascinated, she followed the street downward, taking in the small quaint shops and the wares on display. It was like Nishpat, only much bigger and more cosmopolitan, but as fascinating as the shops were, they couldn’t compare to Maticaw’s citizens.

In amongst the humans were countless non-humans, all looking a great deal like someone had taken a drawing from a fantasy artists doodle book and breathed them into life. There had been more than a few moments which had hammered home that Jordan was surely not on Earth anymore, walking Maticaw’s cobbled streets was one of them. A large silver rat wearing a vest scampered by on its hind legs. He or she had a burlap sack held in its paws just like a prim housewife would hold a clutch. A larger creature, yet still only reaching mid-thigh went by going the other way rolling a small barrel. His skin was a rich forest-green and the hands he pushed the barrel with were three-fingered, each digit equipped with a long terrifying claw. A single rheumy eye moving independently of the other darted up at her and she looked away, sure the creature wouldn’t appreciate her staring.

Jordan’s eyes fell on a small sapphire blue dragon sitting in a basket balanced on a woman’s hip when a silver blob appeared in her vision somewhere in the vicinity of her chin. Jordan stopped walking and stared in surprise at the locket, watching it dance and float in front of her face. It drifted the way a piece of fluff might catch a current of air, lazily bobbing. She tapped the top of it and it descended only to float upward again. Baffled, Jordan snatched the locket and stuffed it down her vest, lodging it between her breasts. She levied her attention back on the dragon.

“Excuse me,” Jordan said to the woman with the basket on her hip. A big round disc-shaped earring of yellow metal swung beside her jaw. A purple kerchief covered part of her puffy brown hair. “May I see your dragon?”

“He is for sale,” the woman replied, turning so Jordan could see the scaly baby. “For sale, for sale.” She smiled into Jordan’s face. “He is very young. Very sweet.”

Jordan peered in at the dragon. He looked up at her and squawked like a rusty hinge. A little red tongue darted out at her hand as she held her fingers out for him to lick. Jordan felt her heart begin to melt.

***

Sol had been to Cles’s laboratory several times already this year and felt that the medicine man might be okay with Sol letting himself into Cles’s lab. Sol was on King Konig’s business after all.

“Hello? Cles?” Sol called into the gloom. “Are you here?” The door closed behind him.The sounds of bubbling and hissing was Sol’s only answer. The dim space smelled of dried herbs and bitters, vinegar, oil, and smoke. Numerous sprawling tabletops were covered in strange looking equipment: distilling devices, small hot-plates with multiple wicks underneath, bottles and jars of all materials from glass to ceramic to basalt. Copper pipes curled and spiralled gracefully between copper pots and vats. Everything looked very expensive and presently in use. In contrast to the mess of the lab and further toward the back wall was a neatly kept library.

“Cles?” Sol crossed in front of two yawning furnaces. Both were cold and dead, tongues of soot licked over the top edge and toward the ceiling. He peered up the spiral staircase lined with ornate spindles. Sol had never been upstairs, but he figured it was safe to guess that upstairs was Cles’s private quarters.

“Lo?” Came a raspy cry, followed by a dusky deep cough. “Whozat?”

“It’s Solomon Donda. Is that you, Cles?”

A phlegm-filled laugh answered him. “Course it be me, no one else be living here.” His voice tightened as though he was working at getting up from laying flat on his back. Perhaps the old Nycht had been napping, he was getting on in years. “You have a deliver?”

“Yes, I have a deliver.” Sol smiled. He’d always liked the way Cles phrased things. “You sound unwell.” Sol craned his neck, peering up the steps for some sight of the apothecary. “Anything the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing,” came the grumbling voice along with the thudding of heavy footsteps. Cles appeared at the top of the steps, propping wire-rimmed spectacles on his face which enlarged his eyes to an amusing size. He descended the stairs in a laborious, waddling way, his bulk swaying back and forth with every step. “‘Lergic to miniphos plant. Very ‘lergic.” As if to highlight the proclamation, he followed these words with a violent sneeze.

Sol stepped back from the steps and watched the old Nycht descend. “Sounds like a cold to me,” he said, crossing his arms. “And you must be the only Nycht in all of Strixdom who has stairs in his house and takes them daily.”

Dusky light from the frosted glass windows illuminated Cles as he descended. The light traveled over the bottoms of his bare feet, over his simple homespun leggings, past his fat leather belt and paunchy belly to his barrel chest and pale lined face. He was chuckling in his usual throaty way, made even more hoarse by the phlegm in his chest. “Don’t fly much no more.” The Nycht ran a hand over his bald head. His grey leathery wings poked up over his head, skinny and flabby, atrophied from lack of use. The hooked claws at the tops of his wings drooped uselessly, the nails cracked and brittle, their climbing days long over.

Sol knew that Cles hadn’t flown in several years in fact. A body that big would be hell to carry, even for a strong Nycht. Regular use was critical for any Strix who wanted to keep the ability to fly. That part of the population who didn’t care enough for flying to do it every day had baffled Sol since he’d been a young Arpak. Flying was Sol’s life and independence, his freedom and happiness.

“Between we,” Cles said, winking conspiratorially, “I’m considering to cut.”

Sol blinked at the casual way Cles delivered that he was considering this irreversible operation. Losing one’s wings by passing out of Oriceran meant they could grow back when fed enough magic. Losing one’s wings by amputation meant the wings would be gone forever. Sol was sure the Elves could probably reverse amputation if they were paid enough, but anyone who amputated did it because they were certain they no longer wanted wings. In some cases, the Rodanian Council might hand down a sentence of amputation to a criminal, but it was extremely rare, reserved as punishment for murder or acts of treason. Sol swallowed hard at the idea of any Strix having their wings amputated, on purpose or by the Rodanian justice system.

“At this point for my little life,” Cles rasped. “They are more nuisance than blessing. But enough of this old Nycht. You have a deliver?”

Sol handed the yellow envelope to Cles with the words: “It’s from Juer.”

“Course it be from him.” Cles took the envelope in one meaty fist and bumped his other one against his chest as he gave another rasping cough. “It always from doctor.” Cles turned away and lumbered over under a window where the light was better. “Always a doctor. Always a Juer,” he muttered. The lab fell silent while he read. In short time he gave a harrumph. “He want what I only have so small of.”

Cles swayed heavily over to the cabinetry along the side wall, opened the doors to reveal shelves full of various containers, each marked by a neat hand-printed label. He rooted through the supply, gently tapping the tops of various jars with the pads of his blunt fingers. He selected a small jar of black liquid and leaned over a small desk under the window.

“Wait,” Cles said to Sol, hand patting at the air, gesturing that Sol should sit. “I write slow. Rest please, or you make me anxiety. Needs quiet for thoughts. When you be tranquil, Cles be tranquil.”

His better nature thus appealed to, Sol perched on a nearby stool. The tips of Sol’s wings shifted to cross at his ankles, hovering just out of the dust.

Cles sat as well, but the old Nycht’s approach was to kick his wingtips with a heel to move them out from under the stool’s three legs. He reached for a piece of paper and a pencil and scratched out a short note. “I not have what he ask.” Cles grumbled. “Lapita must be sick or crops gone bad. I know not.”

Sol felt a niggling rodent of anxiety burrow into his gut. This probably wasn’t good. Until now, Cles always had whatever Juer asked for and plenty of it besides. Cles had always made a point of saying so and encouraged Sol to purchase extra of whatever concoction the doctor had ordered. Sol was a courier, his job was to deliver important messages on behalf of the king and the king’s staff. But it was sometimes impossible not to get sucked into palace drama as he came into direct contact with the parties on either end of a delivery. He wondered which important Arpak the medicine was for.

“How much is he asking for?” Sol asked.

“Too much. Don’t have raw material.” Cles folded up the note and stood.

Sol frowned and got to his feet as well. Obviously.

“He ask for lapita many times and many times I give.” The big shoulders rose and fell. “Lapita in short supply now.” He held out the letter and the small jar to Sol. “This all I have. Last of stock. Take it. If it for Juer it much important.”

“What if it’s not enough?” Sol took the small jar sloshing with black liquid and the letter and tucked both into his satchel.

Cles waved a plate-sized hand. “Find new source, or wait til source replenish. I see many things go in, go out.” He rubbed his stubbly chin with his fingers. “Lapita no different. Is eighteen coin.” He held open his palm.

“Eighteen!” Sol didn’t know how much lapita normally was, but this price was outrageous for any concoction.

“Is commodity, so-“ Cles shrugged. “Supply go down, price go up. Is simple economy.”

Sol frowned and dug into his satchel. He’d picked up lapita many times before and it had never been so pricey. It wasn’t his money, it was the king’s money. Still, he had to report the outrageous price to the royal accountants, and they wouldn’t be happy that it had tripled. Sol counted out the price and spilled the gold into Cles’s hands.

“Pleasure being business,” Cles said as he pocketed the coin.

“Doing business,” corrected Sol, still perturbed at being charged so much. “The auxiliary verbs in English-“

Cles’s eyes glazed over and his jaw sagged.

“Never mind. I’ll show myself out.” Sol left the dim odd-smelling lab and stepped out into the gardens and sunlight. “Ready to…”

But Jordan was not on the terrace.

 

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The Haunted Swordsman – A Kickstarter Project brought to you by the Effects Artist from ‘Stranger Things’

In this handcrafted epic puppet film, a lone samurai and his odd companion, a cursed severed head, seek vengeance in a haunted world.

 ‘Lost in a bamboo forest, his Shogun murdered by an evil supernatural force, a lone samurai collapses to his knees with an anguished cry. Disgraced and humiliated at having failed to save his Master, the Samurai prepares to commit seppuku. But a voice stops him. A voice emanating from a cursed severed head who offers to guide the Samurai on a quest for vengeance. Thus begins the tale of…’The Haunted Swordsman’.

Every artist has those people in their lives who never stop believing in them, even when things get tough or seem impossible. It’s the voices of those Believers who add fuel to the artistic fire. Tab Murphy is one of those people for me. He is not only an encouragement, he’s a massive inspiration, not just to me but to a whole generation of writers and storytellers. Not kidding…

Tab Murphy, Screenwriter

Tab has serious storytelling chops… in fact, his chops are so serious that he was nominated for an Oscar for writing a film you’ve likely heard of starring Sigourney Weaver called Gorillas in the Mist. Tab was in my life before we ever met. When I was a kid I was crazy about Disney animated films. I watched them so often that I had whole chunks of the script memorized… never knowing that down the road I would become friends with the man who wrote those scripts. These films include Tarzan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Brother Bear and Tab also directed The Last of the Dogmen, just to give you an idea of the scope of his talent.

I’m super excited because Tab is working on an epic gothic samurai story called The Haunted Swordsman. This short film is only a single chapter in an epic tale of a lone samurai and his odd guide, the cursed severed head of another samurai, as they traverse a world of mythical creatures and nightmares of folklore.

The Haunted Swordsman will be told with the traditional Japanese theater puppetry technique known as bunraku. Each puppet figure is controlled by three (or more) puppeteers dressed in black and hidden behind each character. It’s being brought to life by Director Kevin McTurk and an impressive team of puppeteers, artists, model-makers, and creature effects artists. Of the project, Kevin says:

“The Haunted Swordsman is a passion project that is heavily influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa, the Lone Wolf and Cub manga and film series, the classic Japanese ghost story films Kwaidan, Ugetsu, and Kuroneko, among others, as well as visceral, immersive films like The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Check out The Haunted Swordsman Kickstarter Page to watch the video and learn more, or scroll down to view some amazing concept art, sculpture and creature photos and read an excerpt…

The Navigator. By sculptor Arjen Tuiten.

Sneak Peek at Episode I of The Haunted Swordsman:

 

Hooked? I know I am! Check out The Haunted Swordsman Kickstarter Page to learn more and to throw your support behind this amazing project…

 

Creating a Whole New Fantasy Universe with Martha Carr

When Martha Carr approached me about writing in the new urban fantasy universe called Oriceran, I didn’t hesitate to say yes! Working with her and Michael Anderle is a wonderful learning experience and an absolute blast. I was naturally curious about how the whole thing came about, and Martha was kind enough to share her story with me. I hope you enjoy reading about her journey as much as I did.  – A.L. Knorr

Dreams come true for me slowly, bit by bit, over time. I have an idea that something cool is rolling out but there are usually so many challenges up front that I can’t be absolutely sure. Some inner voice, though says, hang in there. Let go. Just keep going.

Starting the Revelations of Oriceran Universe, a cooperative for authors to write together inside of one large plot, with Michael Anderle, the visionary behind LMBPN Publishing, had every earmark of being one of these moments. Michael and I met just one year ago when I went to hear him talk about how he had managed to become successful at building an enormous, sustainable readership in fiction in less than a year. That’s supposed to be impossible.

Fifteen minutes into his talk I knew he was on to something. At the end of the talk, he said, “I’ll stay

Martha Carr & Michael Anderle

as long as anyone has questions.” Out of 90 authors in the room, only three of us went up to him. First thing I learned about Michael is his generosity and kindness are far-reaching and consistent and rare. He has given chances to people who didn’t know how to write but wanted to learn, as well as people like me who are longer in the tooth (I’ll be 58 on September 6th), and aren’t the voice of a new generation.

You hear that a lot in this business like it’s a precious commodity. But with Michael, none of the precious things that are often used as a barricade to keep authors out like it’s an exclusive club were mentioned. The result is he has scooped up hidden gems left and right, people that were ignored by others, and built a publishing house that is new, innovative and building a massive, loyal audience.

To join in the fun and actually co-create a universe with him would take only a few very basic requirements. I had to want it, be willing to work for it and be willing to just do it his way. That last one is not his requirement – it was mine. I put aside those 30 years of publishing and started from scratch.

Eight months later, we have four titles out in The Leira Chronicles in the past 30 days. They’re funny, irreverent, full of magic and have characters that are strong, loyal and know how to go get the job done. And the readers are responding. In another week, two more authors will be starting their own series that will be in the same world of Oriceran and Earth, following the same rules but with their own characters. In October there will be two more. This type of world building is for the voracious reader who wants to immerse themselves into a different place and know there will be plenty of material for some time to come.

There are quite a few people doing this same type of structure but Michael has a few twists that make it a very different experience. He operates first on the premise that everything will be alright and everyone will succeed, including himself. Therefore, authors get a much bigger share and their name is on top. That’s unusual in most of these situations where it can look like one author suddenly wrote 30 books. And, he’s constantly looking for new ideas and then implementing them, which makes the artists and writers around him excited. They are encouraged to offer their other talents to the entire project. The result is a beehive of exciting activity.

Everyone thrives without the pressure to be the same. It’s a new kind of full-service publishing house that has been modified for the 21st century and has a lot of the best traits of the indie world.

So, back to what I was saying about dream building. Here I am, co-creating this universe with Michael Anderle, working with some really good writers to help them create their vision, interacting with wonderful fans all over the world who share so much about their lives while I write about elves and trolls, a female detective who can do magic and a magical place called Oriceran. That’s a pretty big dream and far bigger and better than what I would have dreamed up on my own. That’s the way these things always are for me and they always show up the moment I let go of how it ought to look or what it ought to be. Like magic.

Click on The Leira Chronicles book covers to learn more…

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Review of Promotions Company “Write Promotions”

 

I originally booked Write Promotions for an early July promotion on one of my books. Before I booked them, I contacted Jeremy Laszlo, who they tout on their website as using their services. Jeremy was kind enough to respond and say that he has used them and they’re great. Okay, then.

Let me set the stage, here:

Every time I have done a promotion since I started publishing (I have done ten now) there has been a spike in key performance indicators. My newsletter subscribers go up, my facebook likes and follows go up, the number of emails from readers goes up, my number of reviews go up, the number of people who say they’re ‘currently reading’ my books on Goodreads goes up, and of course my sales spike as people enjoy the book and purchase the rest of the series. I also have a bonus chapter at the end of one of my books and the downloads for that bonus chapter always skyrocket – a happy little testament to a reader having enjoyed the book.

What happened to those metrics after the WR promotion?

Nothing.

Worse than nothing. My sales actually fell.

Here is a screen shot of what happened after a 5-day promotion I did that ran from March 9-14. Notice the uptick which began around March 12 and continued for two weeks and remained above the benchmark set before the promotion. This is the kind of chart I have seen repeatedly with every promotion I have ever run.

Here is a screenshot of what happened with the Write Promotions event, which went from July 25-29th. You’ll see I’ve captured from July 18 – Aug 19 to give a full month’s view of the results. Note the gigantic spike followed by a sharp and then steady descent below the benchmark set before the promotion.

On Aug 13 I wrote to them:

Hello Rachel,

It has been two full weeks since my $399 Write Promotions promotion. There has still been absolutely no lift in sales (actually my sales have plummeted by more than 50%), no resulting reviews, no emails, no new sign ups to my newsletter, no downloads from the bonus chapter at the end of my book, no added Goodreads readers, no resulting influx of Facebook likes. It is reasonable to conclude that this promotion was a complete bomb and by far the poorest return I have ever seen from any promotion I have ever done.

It is simply not possible to have 13,000 downloads (more than any other promotion I have executed) result in absolutely zero improvements in the key performance indicators which consistently rise every time I have done a promotion.

At this point, the only thing that could ease the sting from this failed promotion would be the offer of some kind of a refund from your team. Do you not agree that a negative return for my $399 investment is something you should endeavor to rectify?

I await your reply,

Warmly,

Abby

No reply.

On Aug 29 I wrote again:

Hello Rachel,

I have waited over two weeks for a response to my last email. The lack of response is extremely disheartening. 

Please, please don’t be the kind of people who do not stand behind your claims of ‘indie author success’. Writers are not a group of people who can afford zero ROI on the promotions they run. Spending $400US and getting absolutely zero results really really hurts (and I think you’ll agree is extremely suspicious). Is your response to my request for some kind of refund to simply ignore it?

Regards,
Abby

To date, there has been no response to that either.

What is left to say to my fellow authors?

Caveat emptor.

Descendant Snippets – Chapters 2 & 3

Abby has recorded audio files if you like to be read to, begs forgiveness for her amateur reading skills and hopes you enjoy anyway!

https://www.alknorrbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Descendant-Chapters-Two-Three.m4a

CHAPTER TWO

Sol heard the harpy before he saw it. The whistling, half-scream half-roar couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Miles of wilderness coastline flew by underneath him, unguarded, unprotected. This was the most dangerous stretch between Rodania and Maticaw, still, it was rare to see harpies this far south. Sol cursed under his breath as another scream rent the air. Even the sound of the crashing waves breaking against the rocks below couldn’t drown out that wretched cry.

Sol’s enormous tawny wings pumped with slow, powerful strokes, catching an updraft and taking him higher. Being an Arpak, a winged human, meant the sky should be his territory. Harpies used to be a non-issue but they were a becoming a menace and growing bolder by the day.

He craned his neck, but couldn’t see the harpy through the cloud cover. He climbed higher in search of the top of the stratocumulus. Fog swirled around him in little cyclones as he powered his way up, tawny wings pumping.

Breaking through the cloud cover, he leveled out and shut the reticulating membranes over his eyes. Nothing but thick gray fluff could be seen behind him, but ahead of him it thinned and he could make out a line of green below. The cliffs were coming to an end and the forest was growing thick. Sol smiled grimly. Harpies and forests didn’t mix well. The woods represented his only opportunity to shake them off. He didn’t relish the thought of one-on-one aerial combat with a harpy, no matter how many tricks he’d learned at the academy.

As the clouds thinned, he tucked his wings in behind him and angled downward, his body becoming a bullet streaking toward earth. As he dropped below the cloud, another hair-raising screech sounded off behind him. Too close. Looking back, he saw a dark shape, broad and powerful, those leathery, dragon-like wings driving the beast forward like the pistons of some great machine. Sol faced front and streaked downward before leveling out over the treetops.

Another glance back had his heart in his mouth.

There’s two of them, now? And they were gaining, fast. He could make out the wrinkled skin of their foreheads and the flat yellow eyes. Sol didn’t have time to process how strange it was to see two harpies hunting together. Everything he’d learned, and everything he knew up until this point, was that they were solitary beasts.

Sol swallowed as their external teeth came into focus. It was far too detailed a visual for his comfort. He skimmed over the treetops with fast powerful strokes, watching for a break in the canopy. Harpies were larger and stronger than Arpaks, but they weren’t nearly as nimble. The odds they’d follow him into the trees were low, he hoped.

The throaty screech behind him, closer yet, made his decision for him. At the next break in the canopy, he dove. Holding his breath, Sol broke through the treetops and dropped face-first with his forearms up in front of him. This kind of maneuver was dangerous for an Arpak, even in a forest of giant Dreesha – trees so big and tall, there was a whole new layer of atmosphere underneath them.

Branches scratched and clawed at Sol’s arms and leather clothing as he broke through at a speed he would never attempt if it weren’t a life-or-death situation. Taking a glancing blow off a thick dreesha limb, Sol lost a bit of speed and wobbled before righting himself below the canopy. He picked up speed again and worked to maintain his height in the strip of atmosphere between the dreesha canopy and the second canopy below him. Light filtered through the trees in soft pillars and flashed in Sol’s eyes as he flew.

The sound of snapping and breaking branches made Sol take a sharp breath.

They’re following me?

Sol gritted his teeth as both harpies let off simultaneous screams. More sounds of breaking limbs and something heavy landing in the canopy below, behind Sol. He glanced down to see a thick dreesha limb fall and crash through the more fragile bottom canopy, leaving a gaping hole. Screaming birds flew up from the trees, scolding the harpies for disrupting them.

Sol’s right hand went down to his blade, and his left hand reached back over his shoulder to grasp a short spear from his quiver.

If I am going to have to fight…

Sol didn’t finish the thought as he saw a break in the canopy below. Surely they wouldn’t follow him down even further; they couldn’t maneuver at all through a forest of the much smaller oaks. Without thinking, Sol dove towards the break.

Realizing their prey was going to evade them, the harpies screamed that grating, ear-drum-destroying cry. The sound of their leathery wings bellowing against the air spurred Sol on. He didn’t dare look back, but every hair on his body stood at attention, anticipating a rake of claws across his legs at any moment. One swipe of those nasty talons and he was very likely finished – if the wounds didn’t kill him, the infection would.

Pinning his wings back and praying for a safe break through the canopy, he braced himself. Yellow sparks and flashes of light went off in his vision. Before Sol had time to realize what he was seeing, he was through the break. His sight went black, and the sounds of a thousand voices and crackling lightning filled his ears. There was a bone-breaking, tooth-jarring impact, and Sol knew no more.

 

CHAPTER THREE

“I was beginning to get worried,” said Jordan from the front step as Allan got out of his Land Rover. His ginger hair was ruffled from driving with the windows down, and his glasses were dusty. Allan was a tall, slight man with a narrow face and generous lips. He was pale, freckled, and handsome in his way. Fine lines bracketed his mouth, and Jordan frowned at the dark smudges under his eyes. “Tough week?” She crossed the gravel and helped her dad take his small suitcase, laptop bag and briefcase inside the manor.

“Very,” Allan sighed. He set down his bag and pulled his daughter in for a hug. “I’m destroyed. Is there any bourbon left?” He released Jordan, reached into his suit coat pockets, and dumped a handful of paper money, change and receipts onto the foyer table.

“Well I sure don’t drink the stuff,” Jordan shuddered. “That bad, huh? You going to numb yourself with alcohol until the pain of politics goes away?”

Allan laughed. “Don’t tempt me. Besides, I don’t think there’s enough alcohol in the world to accomplish that monumental task.” They passed into the parlor. “You did light the fire, after all.” Allan collapsed onto the sofa in front of the flames, toeing off his dress shoes and stretching his legs out in front of him. “You’re such an amphibian. Always with the cold toes, just like your mother.”

“Cal lit it,” Jordan said as she crossed to the side board. “He was here when I arrived.” Jordan was familiar with the stories of Jaclyn freezing Allan in bed with her cold feet.

Any kind of hard liquor you could want was displayed on shelving and backed by a mirror, making the selection look twice as bountiful. She removed the lid from the bourbon decanter and poured a drink. He took it neat; no water, no ice, no nothing but nose-singeing, throat-closing alcohol. Her dad swore it went down smooth. Jordan held the bourbon away from her nose so she didn’t have to smell it, and delivered it to her dad.

“Good ol’ Cal. How did your exams go?” Allan asked her as she plopped down beside him and kicked off her sneakers.

“Aced them,” she sang. Jordan came from a line of overachievers, which she fit right into like a set of those multicolored Russian dolls. When she’d chosen forensic linguistics for her major, Allan began to request case studies from court for her. She was fascinated by the examples of a forensic linguistic expert studying the phrasing of a suicide note left by a young woman. The expert had been able to determine the note was not written by the girl, but by her mother. Only a few lines were needed to damn the woman as the murderer of her own daughter, and the proof was irrefutable.

“Atta girl. Any thoughts on where you want to do your Ph.D.? Maybe VCU, stay close to home?”

Jordan shrugged. Allan always brought the conversation to the future, and Jordan was usually prepared, but this time, she didn’t have any firm suggestions. “I was thinking Europe, maybe Italy?”

Allan took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why? It’s a cutting-edge industry and America is the tip of the sword.”

“I don’t know, Dad. How about we just chill out and enjoy the weekend? Do you want to go the stables tomorrow? Go for a ride?”

“Maybe Sunday,” Allan replied. He waggled his eyebrows at Jordan. “I’m gonna pick up my new toy. You want to help me set it up?”

“What is it?”

Allan leaned back and slid down into the soft cushions. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said with a grin that Jordan was sure hadn’t changed since he was a little boy.

“I won’t be tricked into lining up four thousand teensy toy soldiers like last time,” Jordan tilted her head down and gave him a look.

Allan bellowed and slapped his knee. “That was a good one.”

“If mom was here, she would have skinned you for making me do that,” Jordan laughed.

Allan’s smile faltered for a moment and Jordan thought he forced it back onto his face. His hazel eyes flicked to the photographs on the mantel and back down to the fire.

“It’ll be her birthday next week,” Jordan said. “You want to go visit the grave?”

The frown that crossed Allan’s brow was there and gone so fast Jordan wondered if she’d imagined it. Allan took a breath and looked over at his daughter, her beautiful teal eyes — the shape of Jaclyn’s — and her thick lashes.

“What d’you say we make that an every five years event, instead of every year, Jordan?”

Jordan blinked and the corners of her mouth turned down. “Because that’s how she would be slowly forgotten,” she said quietly. “Is that what you would want if it were you?”

“Yes,” Allan said immediately. “I would want my loved ones to move on, not hang onto the dead.”

“We don’t know for sure that she’s dead.” Jordan began the debate that was as old as her ability to have an adult conversation with her father.

“She’s dead, darling.” Allan pinned Jordan with a look. It was compassionate but resolute. “And she wouldn’t want you to go on holding out hope for the impossible.”

“No body, no proof,” Jordan replied. “You had the headstone erected in Hollywood Cemetery for Grandma and Grandpa so they could have some closure before they died, but it’s still just a stone over an empty plot of earth.”

Allan sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand underneath the frames of his glasses. He dropped his head back on the top of the sofa and rested his bourbon glass on the arm of the couch. “I don’t think it’s healthy, Jordan.”

“You didn’t raise me to give up,” said Jordan, stoutly.

“I didn’t raise you to waste your youth pining for a dead woman, either,” Allan said so sharply it was almost a bark.

Jordan tensed, stung. She had never heard her father refer to her mother as a ‘dead woman’ before. It was so impersonal, so cold. “Dad…”

Allan sat up and turned to her, regret etched into his features. He put a warm palm on the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. You know I loved your mother more than anyone. There just comes a time when you have to move on. You’ve been so loyal, so devoted to her.” Allan sliced a hand through the air. “To a fault, Jordan. It’s time to pack up all that memorabilia you have in your room,” he gestured to the photos on the mantel, “and everywhere.”

Jordan’s eyes widened.

Allan’s voice softened at the look of horror on his daughter’s face. “I’m not saying to forget entirely; I would never tell you that. Just…” he gestured towards the line of frames holding some kind of image of Jaclyn, “pick one and let that be it. This place feels like a shrine.”

Allan got up and went to stand in front of the fireplace. His hand was up on the mantel, but his face looked down into the dwindling fire.

“I’m going to turn in for the night.”

“Jordy-” Allan said, turning. “Don’t go to bed mad.”

“I’m not mad, Dad. Just tired.” She got up and went to kiss Allan’s cheek. “Have a good sleep.”

Allan kissed her back and wondered if he’d spoken too soon. He watched his daughter leave the parlor, and he set his jaw. No, it wasn’t too soon. His daughter was an adult now. Pining was unhealthy. It would be better for her not to be reminded of her mother every time she was in this house, every time she looked up.

Allan’s hazel eyes went to the image of Jaclyn in her debutante dress. Her painfully beautiful face smiled down at him. The smile used to warm him to his toes, but now it taunted him. He set his bourbon down on the mantel and began to take the pictures off the wooden shelf. Her holding flowers and standing next to her father in his black tails, their wedding photograph. The casual shot of her, taken on the tree-swing hanging from the old oak in the back yard. One by one, he took them down and tucked them into the cupboard under the bookshelf.

By the time Allan doused the flames and went to bed, there was only one shot of Jaclyn left in the room. It was a small oval portrait hidden among a collection of them hanging on the wall behind the grand piano. Now hers was just one picture among many.