The Weight of a Thousand Oceans
The Forgotten Ones Book One
Jillian Webster
Contents
Also By Jillian Webster
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Book Two Excerpt
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The Weight of a Thousand Oceans Book Club Questions
Acknowledgments
BIBLIOGRAPHY
About the Author
Also By Jillian Webster
Scared to Life: A Memoir
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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THE WEIGHT OF A THOUSAND OCEANS
Copyright © 2020 by Jillian Webster
Second edition released 2021
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www.jillianwebster.com
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The moral right of Jillian Webster to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
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All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
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Cover design by Murphy Rae www.murphyrae.net
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978-1-7350256-3-6
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Second Edition
For my husband, with all my heart.
Prologue
It’s happening again.
Her nightmares have been occurring more and more. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to escape them. They chase her into the deepest recesses of her mind, smashing through locked doors and hidden rooms, mercilessly dragging out everything she’s fought her entire life to forget.
She recognizes this wild and foreboding trail where she now stands—knows every detail of it with every cell of her being. She’s familiar with every green vein of each fluttering leaf and every knotted and twisted branch snaking deep across the path. She’s walked this passageway thousands of times throughout her twenty years of life. Each night, when it greets her in her dreams, she knows her mother will be waiting for her on the other side.
And she knows what she’ll be expecting.
Closing her eyes, Maia holds out a single trembling hand. With one sweeping motion, she commands the branches of the overgrown trees to swoop to the ground, clearing the once obstructed trail leading to the beach. She wanders along the path, careful to avoid the huddled branches on the ground, now quivering from the fear of being crushed.
Stepping from the forest onto the warm sand, Maia is immediately enveloped into her mother’s welcoming embrace. “Good, darling. Very good,” her mother whispers with a smile. She grasps Maia’s hands and leads her farther onto the beach. “Now,” her mother says with an even bigger smile. “Do the same with all the bush.”
Maia turns to the woods behind them. Swiping her hand across the landscape, she gasps as every tree and bush bows to the ground.
“Shhh, be careful—don’t hurt them. They are all your children,” her mother says. She grabs Maia’s shoulders and steps behind her. “Look how they bow to you. Look how much they love you.”
Alarmed, Maia retracts her hand. The trees uncoil upwards, sending leaves seesawing to the ground.
“I don’t know … I don’t understand,” Maia breathes with alarm.
Her mother stands proudly behind her but says nothing.
Maia turns to face her. “Mum, I miss you so much.”
“I’m right here, darling. I’ve always been with you, right here in your dreams.”
“What is happening to me?”
Maia’s mother gazes down at her with a discouraged look across her face. “Come,” she says with a sigh. Wading into the ocean, her fingertips skim the glassy surface and her white gown flows behind her.
Maia stands reluctantly on the shore with the rolling hills of the tranquil New Zealand coastline sitting behind her. The sky a placid dome of blue, a light breeze sends newly fallen leaves tumbling across the beach.
Scanning the shoreline, Maia watches as the coast on either side of her slowly wraps around until it connects across the ocean, transforming the body of water into an immense lake.
Maia’s mother stands in the middle, reaching out to her. “Come, my darling,” she says with a smile.
Behind her mother, a foreign city now looms, murky and vague. Countless dark towers shoot into the sky, disappearing into a rolling layer of black clouds.
Maia stands frozen on the beach, consumed with fear. The water is just a step away. She peers over the edge to find the shore has morphed into a sudden drop into a bottomless watery abyss. “Mum, I can’t jump!” She shakes her head, frantic as her mother’s body begins to dissolve into the sea. “Please, don’t do this.”
Her mother’s hands clench in fists at her sides. “Stop being so afraid, Maia. I’m trying to help you!” Her voice fades into a whisper. The details of the mysterious city behind her are now illuminated through her gown. “Hurry!” Her mother reaches out to her.
The once placid ocean is now furious, sending countless massive crests of water hurling towards Maia. Her mother continues to call to her, and then she stops, mesmerized by something along the shore. Her eyes narrow and her hands drape to her sides, placated like a rag doll. A smile curves up from her lips, and then she disappears completely.
Maia cries out but her screams are immediately silenced. The ocean is still heaving swells at her feet, sending white explosions of water scattering into the wind, but the surges make no sound. There is no rustling in the trees, no birds chirping along the shore. Maia’s gasps remain mute despite her adrenaline stealing the breath from her lungs. It’s as if the air itself is being sucked into a void.
Soft laughter travels in waves across the barren expanse. Chills race up Maia’s spine as she recognizes the laughter as her own. She turns to face a fierce young woman standing alone along the shore, her delicate white gown rippling softly behind her.
Maia remains frozen, captivated … terrified, as the reflection of herself glares at her
with two different-colored eyes faintly glimmering like crystal. Her skin is like porcelain, and her long red ringlets of hair spill down her back.
Maia pulls frantically at her hair; her long auburn waves have been replaced by a full head of red spirals. Wrapping her arms around herself, she trembles in her white gown.
The two stand across from each other—mirror images, motionless and silent. Then the ghost reaches for Maia as a peculiar grin spreads wide across her face and Maia unleashes an earth-shattering wail.
Sitting up in bed, Maia’s screams still pour from her lungs. Her clothing is soaked with sweat, her face streaked with tears. She clutches at the sheets, gasping for air as her grandfather rushes to her side.
One
A match strikes a fire. His old hands tremble as they cup the delicate flame. Its flickering light dances across the dark cabin high up in the mountains as he carries it to a half-melted candle sitting on the table between them. The glow casts wavering shadows across his weathered face, the deep lines and crevices of his skin tracing like road maps on scorched land.
She looks at him in earnest, the fluttering candle bouncing waves of light off her porcelain skin. They sit for a moment—too afraid to speak yet terrified of their silence.
“Grandpa?”
His body trembles and she fights the urge to hold him. His tired eyes cast down upon the flame as an entire world flashes before him.
“Grandpa, tell me.”
He looks up with glassy, bloodshot eyes, holding her motionless in his gaze. “How could I possibly—” He takes a deep breath and his head collapses into his hands.
She drops to her knees, wrapping her arms around his frail body. “I’m sorry. It’s okay.” She holds the side of his face. “We don’t have to talk about it.” She kneels before him and he grabs her hands.
“The earth used to be such a beautiful place.” His eyes are wide—afraid—searching the darkness from beneath a deeply furrowed brow. “Like the wheels of a clock, everything clicked together. Life had evolved that way for billions of years.” Hesitating, he looks up at her. “We were so arrogant. We had been playing the hand of God for too long.” His voice cracks. “We controlled everything back then, or at least we lived in the illusion that we did, and life was really good for a while. We had control over sicknesses, aging, and death. We controlled the production of our crops, our livestock, even our genes and the genes of our children. Life was engineered and modified to fit our needs and our population grew at warp speed. The earth groaned under the weight of our actions but we couldn’t hear it. Like supercomputers, we defied the laws of nature. Our technology, my God, the things we could do. We were unstoppable.”
A gust of wind rattles the windows of their cabin. Maia quickly pulls a few pieces of wood from a large wicker basket and stacks them in the living room fireplace. Pulling out a small reed, she lights it from the candle and places it under the stack. She leans close to blow the embers, and the delicate flames stretch like arms around the timber.
“From the beginning of time, life on Earth has experienced numerous massive extinctions,” her grandfather continues. “And from those extinctions, beautiful things have evolved, things that would have never existed before. Life as a whole tends to work like this. Some of the most beautiful things in this world have been born from disaster.”
He looks at her with a fondness in his eyes and he softly cups her chin. “Darling, you are a beautiful thing born from this disaster. Life is still here. If there is one thing we all have in common, from the smallest, most insignificant creature to the largest, it would be that nothing wants to die.” He quickly moves away. Holding his breath, he searches his pockets and pulls out a small cloth.
The fire hisses and pops, spitting sparks into the darkness. Maia sits on a tattered old rug, anxiously watching her grandfather as he hunches over and coughs violently into his cloth. He shoves it into his pocket and leans back in his chair, his rattled lungs wheezing as he catches his breath.
“I still can’t figure it out,” he gasps. “I can’t seem to wrap my head around it—how we could have done better, where exactly we went wrong. We could have never imagined, Maia. But that all seems like so long ago now.”
“Grandpa? What happened?”
Exhausted, he rests his head back in his chair and moans as he winces in pain.
Maia grabs his pipe. “Take it.”
His knotted fingers clutch the briar pipe and he repositions himself forward as she lights the bowl. He leans back, gazing into the fire, and a heavy flow of smoke streams from his nose.
A low rumble barrels from a distance.
“Quake,” Maia says. Jumping to her feet, she crouches beside him and wraps her arms around his hunched body.
They close their eyes and brace themselves as the ground beneath them begins to shake. The cabin moans and creaks at the seams as it wavers from the unstable ground. The earth jolts forward again and a picture drops from the wall. Maia whimpers and her grandfather holds her tight. Another jolt.
“Grandpa?!” Maia looks at him in panic.
Dust and dirt hiding between the tightly packed rafters fall in streams from the ceiling. She grabs his arms and lifts him to his feet. The earth jolts back again and they tumble to the ground.
“Grandpa!”
He holds her face next to his. “Maia? You are my sunshine…”
She smiles. “My only sunshine.”
“You make me happy, when skies are gray.”
“Is it still going?”
“A little bit. You’ll never know, dear…” He sits back and lifts her chin. “How much I love you.”
The earth calms beneath them and Maia sighs.
“That was a good one,” he says as he surveys the cabin. “I thought we bolted down everything, but looks like there was a straggler.”
Maia stands and grabs the picture frame, a photo of a young child on a swing. Her auburn hair is up around her face as gravity pulls her away from the photographer. Her one foot higher than the other, she is kicking to the sky and smiling … or is she laughing? Her two front teeth are missing. Grandpa says she was about six when this photo was taken. That was before. Before what, though, he still has not been able to talk about.
“Your mother was such a happy child.” He reaches out and Maia hands him the photo. “You look just like her. Have I ever told you that?” he asks, gazing at the glass. “You even have the same eyes.”
“Many times, Grandpa.”
“It’s very unusual to have two different-colored eyes, Maia. Beautiful really. One blue and one green, like the colors of the earth. Here, help an old man up.”
She takes the photo and sets it aside, then helps him maneuver to his feet. He rests back in his chair. A high-pitched whine sounds from the porch.
Her grandfather looks up at her. “No.”
“Grandpa, please. You know how much he hates earthquakes, the poor thing.”
“That dog is not stupid. He’s putting on a show just to make you feel bad.”
“Well, it’s working.” She walks to the front door and cracks it open.
A large black dog barrels his way through and heads straight for the rug. He circles twice and then he’s down, resting his head on the ground as he looks up at them.
Maia smiles. “You are such a baby.”
She hangs the photo back on the wall, making a mental note to secure it later, then stands back and surveys the collection of pictures hanging before her. “Would you like some hot water?” she asks without turning around.
“That would be great.”
After bringing her grandfather a mug filled from the kettle on the wood burner, she sits down on the ottoman next to him. She sighs, feeling defeated. “So, another time, then?”
“Yes, darling.”
“You promise?”
He hesitates.
“Grandpa?”
“Your life is better not knowing.”
“Grandpa!”
He winks a
t her. “I promise.”
They stare into the fire. Another gust of wind berates the side of the cabin. Maia runs her hands through the dog’s thick fur, listening to the burning wood crackle and pop next to her.
“Darling.”
She looks back to her old grandfather, startled to see tears in his eyes.
“You haven’t experienced much adversity in your twenty years on this earth, but you will. This is a fact of which no one human is exempt. Throughout your life, you may hear or meet people who are capable of doing terrible things.” He leans forward and she meets him, grabbing his fragile hands once more. “You, my darling, may do terrible things. Every human has the potential to do great things—earth-shattering things—both good and evil. Don’t let this harden you. Don’t ever commit the crime of believing one person cannot make a difference. Every change has stemmed from a single thought, a single action, a single person. One person can change the world.”
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