Restless Shadows, Waiting Roads

by Yolande Kleinn

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Restless Shadows, Waiting Roads

  About the Author

  Yolande Kleinn

  As a child, Caleb was helplessly drawn to the woods behind his family's house—a deep forest that became a friend, a sharer of secrets, even a protector. On the night Caleb was stranded by a blizzard, a mysterious figure saved his life and kept him from harm.

  But all too soon his family moved away, and Caleb set the mysterious stranger aside as a figment of his imagination. Now, more than fifteen years later, Caleb returns to the woods he left behind and encounters a familiar face...

  Book Details

  Restless Shadows, Waiting Roads

  By Yolande Kleinn

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Michelle Kelley

  Cover designed by London Burden

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition September 2015

  Copyright © 2015 by Yolande Kleinn

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781620046067

  Through all the years Caleb's family lived in Chester, the forest beyond their backyard was forbidden.

  Were it not, Caleb might have had no urge to explore there. At a somber eight years old, Caleb knew enough to be fascinated by things he couldn't have. The pipe his father smoked on the back porch when the weather was pleasant. The movies his older sisters were only allowed to watch without him. The late hours of evening after his mother put him to bed, when he could still hear voices and laughter from downstairs.

  More maddening than all those things was the wilderness of green and shadows that stretched beyond the sturdy backyard fence.

  "Why can't I play there?" he asked, no matter the weather. It could be sunny, sleeting, storming, snowing: his question was always the same, and his parents never varied in their answer.

  "Because it's not safe for little boys. It's probably a nature preserve, and who knows what wild animals you might upset. You could get lost and never find your way home."

  "Joanna could take me," Caleb tried to argue once. His oldest sister never got lost. If the forest wasn't safe for a small boy, then surely a girl—practically a grown-up—could protect him.

  "No," his mother said.

  "No," his father agreed.

  "Then you could take me."

  No matter how often he asked, they never changed their minds.

  It wasn't only the mystery of the forbidden that called to him. There was something special about this forest. There were secrets; he could feel them. He sometimes thought he could see them if he looked closely enough. The idea would inevitably hit him around dusk, while he stared over the high fence and wished his mom and dad would yield.

  Caleb was an obedient boy, so it took him a long time to work up enough nerve to defy them. The Sunday before his ninth birthday was full of warm air and the smell of autumn. It was also the day he stopped asking his parents to take him into the forest. He started exploring the confines of his own backyard instead.

  His family lived a far ways past the outskirts of town, and there were no neighbor houses at all. The sturdy fence rose, unassailable, along every side of the wide-sprawling lawn. The front gate was as solid as the rest, and his parents kept it securely locked. A dozen trees stood scattered in the yard, pine and oak. The oak trees had begun to litter noisy leaves all across the lawn, but it was the pines that proved the answer to Caleb's dilemma.

  One particular pine stood in the farthest corner of the yard, well behind the gray shed that had stood empty since his parents bought the house. The tree had a broad trunk, and lower branches sturdy enough to support the weight of a small boy. The fence about the yard was tall and strong, and Caleb's parents trusted him to stay out of trouble, so he had only to wait for solitude. When he was alone, he climbed that tree with all the stubbornness of his almost-nine years. Clinging sap made his palms sticky, but he ignored the sensation. He ignored, too, the way uneven bark scratched at his skin and branches snagged his shirt.

  Caleb stopped only when he could see over the top of the fence. He crowed aloud at what he found, and then quickly clapped one hand over his mouth for fear of being heard. A second pine, as tall and sturdy as his own, stood just within reach on the opposite side. Thick branches stretched not only upwards along the trunk, but downwards towards the earth, all the way to the patchy ground below.

  Caleb didn't climb over the fence that day, though he longed to. He climbed back down his own tree instead, remaining in the yard until his father called him inside for dinner.

  *~*~*

  Caleb had been nine years old for three entire days when he finally climbed over the fence. His heart beat desperately. His curly hair clung, dark and sweat-damp, to his cheeks. He was exalted and terrified at his own bravery, and he nearly turned back twice before finally reaching the ground.

  Sunlight glinted down in an uncertain jumble, brighter where fallen leaves had left branches bare. The result was a discordant palette of contrasts. Gloomy shadows tripped over glaring light, painting mottled patterns along the forest floor. The ground crunched beneath Caleb's steps, grass and settling leaves. Trees were giving way to gold and brown and jarring red, and it wouldn't be long before only the pines held their color against encroaching autumn.

  Caleb didn't dare stray far from the fence. His heart was beating too fast, and his face flushed with his own rebellion. At any moment his parents could come calling after him and discover he was outside the yard.

  The air was warm and comfortable on Caleb's skin. The forest made him feel good, welcome and strange, and he was curious to press further. He had the strangest feeling that the forest itself was watching him. Though even at nine years old he understood what a silly notion that was, he still wanted to wave and introduce himself.

  He climbed back up the tree instead, hopping the fence and returning to his yard. He'd barely spent ten minutes at the edge of the forest. No one had noticed he was gone.

  *~*~*

  Living so far outside of town meant Caleb spent much of his time playing alone. He didn't mind that he had no one to come visit him after school. The other kids liked him well enough, but they all had other friends and better places to be.

  After that first thrilling success, Caleb climbed the fence almost every day, staying longer and exploring deeper into the forest. The weather continued to be warm, as though encouraging him, and he came to know the trees by sight and feel, even as the ground grew thicker with fallen leaves.

  It was a miracle that his parents never caught him. Luckily his sisters never joined him in the yard. Laura preferred to stay indoors, and Joanna had a brand new used car of her own, which meant she was never around. But some days it still seemed chance alone that brought Caleb home just as his mother's voice called him from across the yard.

  He never became bored. Even once he grew easier in his ventures, more confident he would always return without alerting his parents, the forest was an endless companion. It was always watching him, friendly in its solitude, even when the sky started darkening earlier and wind began to blow with a promise of ice and snow.

  Caleb never spoke to friends and classmates about his forest. It was a secret. It was his. But the other children spoke of the woods often enough. They told unreasonable stories of demons and
monsters, of children gone missing in the haunted wilderness. Their stories made Caleb angry; the unfairness burned at him. What right did they have to talk about his forest that way? Not a single one of them had ever been there. They didn't know the place like he did.

  He said none of these things. Not even when the others included him in their conversation.

  "You live all the way out past the old plant." Tyler was a skinny boy, almost the tallest in the class, rough around the edges and scattered all over with dark freckles. "No one lives out there. It's right next to the woods, isn't it?"

  "I guess." Caleb sharpened a blue crayon and did his best not to look at Tyler, or at any of the other children whose desks were near his.

  "Are there ghosts there at night?" Tyler pressed stubbornly. "Do you ever see giant footprints in the dirt?"

  Caleb shrugged, still not looking up. When the bell rang everyone had to face forward and be quiet, and Caleb was glad.

  Autumn clung and struggled forward, cool and dry, but when winter came it landed hard. Frigid rain turned to sleet, and then ice and snow in the span of a week. For six days Caleb couldn't go over the backyard fence. Ice made it too difficult to climb the trees. Even once he dared to try again, he climbed slowly and carefully, fearful of losing his grip and landing too hard on the wrong side of the fence. But he made it over safely.

  His forest had missed him; he could feel it.

  Snow didn't stop him from visiting the woods. Climbing was more difficult bundled in his winter coat and snow pants, but the fence wasn't that high. And it was worth it, for the sight of the trees swallowed in heavy snow. The paths held new magic like this, fresh mystery and the feel of the unfamiliar.

  The forest was his—only his—a beautiful secret wrapped in shadows and snow.

  *~*~*

  Caleb never got lost in his forest, until the only time he did.

  There should have been hours yet until sunset. Saturdays were his favorite, for the simple fact that they belonged only to him. Morning and afternoon alike were his, and if he went outside immediately after lunch, he had hours before the lowering sun drove him from the heavy woods back to his own yard.

  Tonight was different. Tonight the darkness came too soon—or maybe Caleb had let himself grow distracted and forgotten to watch the hours—and by the time he realized his mistake, the shadows were too thick. They twined heavily around trees and foliage, painting everything in unfamiliar grays. They rendered the ground strange and wrong, and when he tried to retrace his steps, he couldn't find the tall wooden fence.

  Climbing the sharply sloping hill should have taken him home. Instead it brought him to a ravine as unfamiliar as the shadows around him.

  Caleb still wasn't afraid, but the cold was harsh in his lungs, and his hands were chilled in his damp gloves. He followed his own footprints back down the hill, as the light faded and sullen snow fell harder.

  By the time he reached the bottom, he couldn't make out even the shadow-smeared tree trunks around him. The darkness was complete. Caleb wrapped his skinny arms around himself, his coat creaking audibly in the silence. The wind kicked up terribly, and he imagined it yanking the warm hat off his head and carrying it away.

  Now he was scared. He didn't like the feeling. It was every bit as unpleasant as the cold seeping into his skin, or the wet weight of falling snow turning wild and heavy around him. He shouted. For his parents. His sisters. For anyone who might hear him. He shouted at the very top of his lungs for minutes on end.

  No one came. The voracious wind silenced everything. Even the usual noises of life were absent—birds, squirrels, larger animals—all were hiding from the fierce wind and muffling snow. Caleb stopped shouting.

  He stood shivering and terrified, for minutes that might have been hours. When he took a cautious step forward, his foot moved reluctantly through heavy snow. So short a time, yet drifts were already forming around him, hidden from sight by the stifling darkness.

  He needed shelter, but how could he search when he couldn't see?

  At the first pale glimmer in the distance, he thought his parents must have come for him. The light bobbed and crept towards him, not quite steadily but surely enough. No voices shouted his name over the icy wind, but the light grew closer and larger, moving directly for him. Caleb held his breath and shivered harder with the cold.

  When the glow finally emerged between two broad pines, it wasn't a flashlight as Caleb had assumed. It was a small sphere of light, pulsing like a heartbeat, floating above the upturned palm of a narrow hand. Pale skin disappeared beneath a heavy sleeve, and Caleb's eyes followed the arm upwards, taking in the dark cape and the unfamiliar visage of the man standing suddenly before him.

  The face peering down at Caleb seemed even paler than the hand bearing the impossible light. A man's face, Caleb thought, though prettier than any man he'd ever seen. Fierce cheekbones cast shadows that made the man look gaunt, but his mouth curved upward in a curious smile, and his dark eyes were full of mischief.

  "You are not supposed to be here." The words were spoken in a low, smooth voice. The man wasn't shouting, but Caleb could hear him clearly above the roiling wind. "I suppose we'd best get you out of the cold. Come along."

  He turned to go, and Caleb darted after him. Every instinct told him to trust this man, stranger though he was.

  "Where are we going?" Unlike the slender stranger, Caleb had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. He struggled to keep pace, trudging knee-deep through the drifting snow.

  The man made no attempt to answer Caleb's question, but he didn't have to. A larger, more powerful glow rose from the darkness before them, growing brighter and stronger as they approached. The snow was falling and gusting too angrily for a clear picture, but the size and scope were startling just the same. Tall windows stretched floor after floor towards the sky, obviously the source of that spreading glow. Yellow light poured slyly into the darkness, across wide wooden steps and glittering snow banks. It flickered like firelight, and Caleb gawked in disbelief.

  Surely this house—this mansion—hadn't been here before. Caleb knew these woods too well. Surely he'd have come across it in his wandering. Lost or not, he couldn't have traveled far enough tonight to reach unexplored ground.

  Yet a mansion the size of a castle didn't simply grow out of the air.

  He wished he could get a clearer look, but the stinging blizzard prevented him. Blinding flurries spun, making it impossible to see anything clearly. It was mostly by feel that he climbed the wooden stoop, keeping more or less beside the man who had guided him here. Caleb missed a step and almost fell, but he caught a hand in the dark cape to steady himself. It earned him a pause, a pointed look and a raised eyebrow. But the man made no move to stop or to help him, and Caleb regained his own balance in time to see the massive front door swing inward.

  The door was dark wood—intricate, strong, sturdy as iron—and once they were through, it closed behind them with an audible thud.

  The icy wind vanished with that sound, and Caleb gaped at the narrow foyer. The floors were of the same dark wood as the front door. Light came from two sconces where candles burned on opposite walls, and more light stretched from an open door frame farther down the hall.

  The man, standing beside Caleb, closed his hand into a tight fist, extinguishing the soft sphere of light that still hovered above his bare palm. He then shrugged out of his dark cloak and hung it behind the door. The clothing he wore beneath seemed strange and old—wide cuffs and buttoned collar, leather boots that rose nearly to his knees. He looked like a character off the front of the books Joanna read, or maybe out of a movie Caleb's parents might watch—one with far too much sitting and talking on benches, and far too little action.

  The man's hair had been impossible to make out in the stormy darkness, but Caleb could see now that it was straight and black and hung just past his shoulders. It made the man's narrow face look even more severe, though the bland expression he wore was untroubled.
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  For all that the door had shut out the worst of the winter storm, Caleb still shivered with cold. He had no desire to shed his own coat, even in the relative warmth of this unexpected haven. The man didn't seem to expect him to, either, although he was watching Caleb closely. His arms were crossed over his chest, but he didn't look angry the way Caleb's mother always did whenever she struck a similar pose.

  "My name is Eli." The man's voice was soft and smooth, and his tone made Caleb feel safe.

  "I'm—"

  "I know who you are, Caleb," Eli interrupted. Half a smile animated his face. "What I don't know is why an intelligent boy like you would put himself in perfectly avoidable danger. You should have been gone well before the snow began."

  The fact that the man—Eli—knew his name didn't surprise Caleb, though he thought maybe it should. That gnawing sense of the familiar made it seem completely natural, and he didn't consider questioning how. He followed Eli from the foyer, silent after the gentle rebuke. It was foolish of him to be caught by the storm. He could only imagine how frantic his parents were. Surely they were looking for him. When they discovered he wasn't in the yard, of course they would realize the only place he could have gone.

  Caleb was distracted from his guilt as he stepped over the threshold and into a room alive with firelight. The room was small, but the fireplace was three times larger than the one in Caleb's house. It crackled with flame, giving the entire room a welcoming feel. There were candles along the walls here, too, offering warm counterpoint to the hearth's reassuring glow. Two tall-backed chairs stood near the fire, green-cushioned and elegant. Beneath Caleb's feet there was smooth wood, and nearer the hearth, a fine carpet woven in golds and greens. Caleb stopped before stepping onto that beautiful rug with his sodden boots, but he could imagine how soft it might feel beneath bare feet.

  When he raised his eyes he found Eli watching him once more.

  "It's your forest, isn't it," Caleb realized, more statement than question.