Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  As we moved through the night, a new set of howls and yips began to echo around us, different from those clear cries that had driven me to the wolf. What were they? I couldn’t be sure. The few times my frozen body would let me raise my head to look around, I saw nothing pursuing us. I remembered Cadoc with a shudder, and hoped that this place didn’t hide the same sorts of monsters that Stonemore did.

  I don’t know how long the wolf ran for. We left the expanse of rolling hills behind us and began a long climb to the top of a mountain range that blocked our path. In the back of my mind I fretted over the condition of the animal, running so hard and for so long, but I was constantly brought back to my own worries. My toes were slowly getting tingly, then numb, and my teeth started to chatter furiously. I tried to stay bent forward to keep what little heat I had left in my body from escaping into the frigid air.

  When we finally reached the top of the mountain the wolf stopped. He barely panted at all from his exertion, and I followed his gaze out over the land below. In the far distance a series of lakes stretched out, vast open plains and more mountains to one side. Nothing moved, and the howling had stopped.

  He turned and leaped off the peak, and we descended the mountain in a rush of wind and speed. I began to long for home, or Chapman’s warm closet, or Kiron’s cottage; anywhere that I could defrost my body and find warmth again. Little else mattered to me in that moment but to get out of the cold.

  Finally, after dropping what must have been thousands of feet to the floor beneath the mountain, the wolf came to a stop. He stood erect, his breathing coming faster now, the breath billowing out in big plumes from his snout. He had stopped right at the base of the mountain, and in front of us was a round, silver boulder.

  The stone was as tall as my waist, a perfect sphere. Five feet in front of it a rock tablet was set into the ground. The outline of two carved handprints was just visible in the shadow of the moon.

  The wolf did not move. We had reached whatever destination he had intended. I slumped off his back onto the ground in front of the tablet, curling up into tiny ball, and putting my frozen hands underneath the blanket to thaw. After a few minutes the subtle magic in the blanket began to warm me, more powerful now that I was out of the wind. My teeth slowly stopped chattering, and I was able to think more clearly.

  The wolf stood above me, looking between the stone and I expectantly. I got to my hands and knees and crawled over to the tablet, each movement sending a jolt of fiery pain from ankle to knee in my damaged leg.

  I slid my hands over the stone and found that the small platform was warm to the touch. I eagerly welcomed the heat that spread up through my hands into my upper body. I moved my two palms across the rough surface until they fit neatly into the spaces carved into the rock, greedily searching for more heat.

  Once, when I was about five, I visited the tiny city petting zoo with my mom. Keeping animals as pets was no longer a priority for people on Earth, but this one small place was built to teach the younger school kids about food production. The more people the government could interest in growing food, the better.

  Mom had been distracted by the dramatic wailing of a toddler who had been knocked down by an overeager goat, and I took the opportunity to sneak away. I had really wanted to come to the zoo to see the horses, but I quickly found out that they weren’t in the area where they let the kids roam around. Pigs and goats are all well and good, but I remembered the velvet touch of Grandma’s draft horse’s nose, and I was determined to at least find one to say hello to.

  I snuck through the swinging door of an empty stall in the pen and out the other side, tiptoeing towards the little shelter where three ponies stood. They looked at me with interest, and one of them even snorted a low rumbling nicker in my direction. I eagerly approached the wooden fence that surrounded them and climbed up, not noticing or caring about the thin silver wire that ran along the edge of the top board. My hands grasped the top rung as I climbed, and then, just to get a little bit higher, I grabbed the wire itself.

  Big mistake.

  The jolt that went through my arms was not enough to kill me, or even to hurt me really. But it was painful, and so surprising that I leapt away from the fence, tumbled through the air and hit the ground hard. Now I was the one wailing, and I ran for my mom, never having placed a single finger on any of those fuzzy noses.

  I had stayed away from anything that resembled an electrified wire ever since that day. But nothing about the rock betrayed it as dangerous as I slid my hands into the carved handprints. With a loud crack, electricity burned from my fingertips to my elbows. For a moment I was stuck there, glued to the thing, and then I was tossed backward, landing on my back in the snow.

  My hands felt like fire. I shouted with pain and rolled over onto my side, cradling them into my chest protectively. The rest of the world ceased to exist for a time. I could hear very little that occurred outside my own body. Inside, my heartbeat echoed in my ears, erratic, and the nerves in my fingers screamed as the blood pulsed angrily in and out of them. Coming out of this pain took a while, and everything seemed to right itself at a slow, agonizing pace. Then a howl broke through my haze, something large knocked into me, rolling me onto my back. I sat up, still clutching my hands, but immediately most of the pain vanished, replaced by the awe of the scene in front of me.

  Everything had changed. The sky, the deepest night just a moment ago, was now bright with the light of morning. On the horizon I could see planets, I counted five, seemingly very close to where I now stood. I had seen shows on TV about our solar system before, but this was more vivid than anything in my wildest fantasy. The planets were a rainbow of color, rotating slowly around a bright, but not blinding, star. My imagination made their impossibly huge movements audible in my mind. They looked as if I could reach out and touch them with my bare, throbbing hands.

  The light had transformed the land as well. The cold snowy wilderness that surrounded us now reflected soft pinks and oranges of sunrise. The mountains cast cool blue shadows on the ground between the shafts of warm yellow. The water of the lakes in the distance glittered in the glow of this small sun.

  I heard a low whine behind me, and I turned to see the wolf staring directly into a very different shaft of light that now rose from the round stone. Only it wasn’t round anymore. The sphere had split, blooming like a flower, and through its center came a slowly swirling beam. As I approached it, a female voice spoke, deep and soft.

  “One key for another

  There is only one

  You’ll give yours away

  Before you’re done

  Others have tried

  Giving what they feel wise

  They’ve only a moment

  To cherish the prize

  The items you bear

  You’d miss both most dearly

  And if you think hard

  You’ll see why quite clearly

  Choose wisely, friend

  The item you give

  It must be the right one

  For you to live”

  The voice stopped for a moment and then repeated the rhyme, the misty light twinkling at me invitingly. Three times the voice spoke the riddle. It, or she, or the ground itself, wanted a key. I looked up at the wolf and he stood, resolutely, unmoving. I pulled the pack from my back, revealed it, and sorted through the strange trinkets, searching for a key to trade for a key.

  If the voice was truthful and I didn’t make the correct choice, I would die, probably in some miserable and horrifying way. My body gave another miserable shiver, and the movement made pain radiate up my leg. This was no simple offering. I had to get it right the first time. I needed to get out of here.

  Other than a few pieces of food, I didn’t have much with me, but I did, in fact, carry two keys. I sifted through the pack, searching for the cold hard metal that I knew was buried within. My stomach twirled as I held up the two things that might break me out of this frozen land: the book of codes and the skelet
on key taken from the keeper.

  It might seem that the choice in front of me was easy; the voice was requesting a key, and I had two to give. I fingered the tiny green book in my hands, flipping through the pages. What would I be giving up if I offered this book? And what, I shuddered at the thought, would happen to me if I somehow chose wrong which item to give? I inspected the skeleton key. I could not imagine needing this item again along my quest, not unless I found myself imprisoned down in the dungeons of Stonemore. While possible, that seemed unlikely. I had left Stonemore far behind when I jumped here.

  I made a choice.

  I put my small pile of belongings back into the pack, slipped the book of codes into my pocket, and grasped the skeleton key in my left hand. Standing shakily, I slowly hobbled over to the light, my ankle throbbing angrily.

  The air all around the light shaft was warm and pulsing. The ground around the beam was unfrozen, the snow unable to stick to the patch of earth surrounding it. My body relaxed with pleasure at the touch of the hot air. I approached the beam slowly, trying to see around the edges of the rock into the depths underground, looking for the source of the light, but it was so bright I could see almost nothing below the surface. As I neared it I shielded my eyes, but soon I was protecting my face from the heat as well. I wondered if lava could be flowing beneath my feet, unknown to the snowy world above.

  I tentatively held out the skeleton key and released it into the beam, grateful that my fingers didn’t burn at the contact with the glow. It floated right where I let it go, hovering at eye height. Then suddenly it shot upward, twirling and flitting from side to side, and finally plunged into the depths of the earth below.

  The force of the impact of that thin piece of metal was enormous. From the deep came a deafening grinding, followed by a shudder in the ground so forceful that it knocked me off my feet. I lay still, flat on my stomach, and held onto the dirt stupidly with both arms. Then, as the noise and vibrations settled, a long thin object arose from the beam, shining brilliantly in the light.

  I scrambled to my feet and launched myself over to the beam. This was it! I had chosen correctly, and now I had the key! They key to what, I didn’t know, but I was so relieved to still be here, alive, that I didn’t care. I reached out for the object and it fell into my hand as soon as I touched it, released from the hold of the light.

  I held a long, thin, green stone dagger. On the thick handle Almara’s symbol was prominently carved and painted with gold. Relief flooded through my entire body. I hobbled away from the light towards the great white wolf, who stood waiting for me just on the edge of the snow.

  I didn’t hear the cries in the distance at first. I was so busy congratulating myself on my brilliance that the baying barely registered as noise at all. It was only when the ground started shuddering again that I came out of my reverie and looked around.

  The wolf stood at attention, intensely focused on the far hills. In the distance I could make out the smallest movement, almost nothing, a shadow across the snow. With each second the shadow shifted and danced, growing closer with great speed. Then it wasn’t one shadow, but two, four, fifty, all moving together, flocking like a group of birds in the sky, but racing together over the ground.

  I might have run, but the booming voice of the light echoed once again. No longer quiet or soft, now it roared.

  The choice was made

  Through light came your gift

  Tucked deep away now

  It won’t again lift

  Your journey is over

  I’m sorry, my friend

  What’s done is done

  Now you’ll meet your end

  I couldn’t believe it. The pack of shadows was quickly descending, almost close enough for me to see their legs now, and the shrieking that came from a hundred running beasts made my blood run cold.

  The wolf approached me as he watched the pack. I could do nothing. Frozen with terror now instead of cold, my brain had completely jammed. A low snarl escaped his lips, and when I finally tore my eyes away from the jet black figures in the distance to glance at him I was surprised to see that he was snarling at me. His eyes bored into mine and I took a step backward away from him as his lips raised and he bared his teeth. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by three distinct dangers. My eyes flitted from the shaft of light, to the pack of whatever new beasts were heading this way, and back to the wolf. My useless brain tried wildly to make sense out of what was happening.

  Then he hit me. His great, furry body knocked me to the ground. The knife tumbled away from me and disappeared into the snow. His enormous head bowed, the wolf had run at me as a bull would a bullfighter. I lay, splayed out on my back, sure that this would be the end of me. Would he go for the jugular? Would he tear me apart? All was confusion as the world swirled around me. My impending death came at me from every side.

  But instead of ravaging me, he turned. Towards the pack of shadows, his paws flew silently over the snow until he was twenty feet away, squaring off to the approaching beasts. He then lifted his nose into the air and let out a long, night-shattering howl. I clasped my hands over my ears in pain. When his head came down from the cry, an enormous force emanated from his body. The air rippled out from him like an explosion, and the wave of the blast rushed over me and pinned me to the snow as it passed.

  Silence. Only the sound of my breathing made it to my ears, but nothing else. The barking from the flock of monsters had stopped. The voice from the shaft of light was silent. I got to my feet.

  The wolf was still. New air filled the space around us, casting a purple glow on the snow. The pack of beasts stayed a hundred feet away, trapped behind some sort of barrier, pacing back and forth. The beam of light from the flowering sphere shone just outside the edge as well. The wolf and I stood together in a circle of protected space, unreachable by fire or demon.

  I approached him, uncertain. No wind or ground moved within the circle of light, no fur rippled in the air around us. But as I rounded his head, I found that his eyes held mine. He stared at me with an incredible intensity as he watched me approach. We looked at each other for several long moments as the dangers on the outside tried to work their way in, and I suddenly understood what he had done, and at what cost. The blanket of stone started at his toes and slowly wrapped around his body, around each tiny hair of his silken white coat. Then, as my hand reached out to touch the fur under his chin, the light slowly faded from his eyes. Nothing but the vacant expression of stone remained.

  The protective shield around us was fading, dissipating quickly. The beasts outside began the breach the barrier and run for me. The ground rumbled as the rocks deep below the surface ground against one another. The air filled with the noise of impending attack. The protection of the white wolf, my friend, would not last.

  I stood back from him, a statue once more. Searching the ground I found the backpack and the small divot the knife had left in the snow when it landed. Then, as the pack of monsters was almost upon me, I held the dagger in the air and spoke the command that sent me spinning into space.

  Chapter 18

  A scream of fury followed me into the jump. I had escaped the clutches of whatever power ruled that world, and its wail echoed in my ears long after I had landed on dry, yellow grass. I lay on my back, exhausted, and looked up at the sky. Cotton ball clouds slowly drifted across the powder blue, and the grass floated back and forth on the easy breeze. Slowly the warmth of the earth crept up through my skin, until finally I was sweating in the afternoon sun.

  I sat up and looked around, hot tears of frustration and sadness running down my cheeks. He had sacrificed himself for me, used his power to save me from those shadowy monsters and certain death. And now he was stone again, trapped inside that hard shell of rock that encased him. Would he spend eternity there, staring out across the snowy plains? Would he ever be freed again? Or would the beasts who had trailed us destroy even the stone memory of him?

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks
and my hands came away black. I realized that my head and face were still covered with Kiron’s charcoal, and I angrily rubbed at my hair with my hands. I didn’t want to be disguised anymore. I just wanted this to be over.

  As the sun slowly sank over plains and both my tears and mouth began to dry, I finally rose to my feet and inspected my surroundings.

  The golden grass stretched for many miles around me in every direction. On one side a large ridge of mountains pushed up from the earth, towering in the distance. A small group of trees stood between me and the rock. On every other side the grass simply continued on until it met the golden horizon, blurring the line between earth and sky.

  I limped toward the trees. As I walked, sharp jabs of pain shot through my leg, but I didn’t care. Tears sprang to my eyes once more from the pain, but it was the pain of the loss more than that of my leg that brought them. Step by excruciating step I slowly neared the shady grove.

  When I finally made it underneath the canopy, the sun had just disappeared behind the mountains. I collapsed to the ground in a heap, and sobbed in earnest until exhaustion overcame me and I faded into sleep.

  The entirety of the next day I spent on my back under the trees. I was too listless to bother with anything, even food. The only thing I did ingest was water from two small jugs that Kiron had insisted I pack in the bag.

  I had a hole in my heart again, but of a different sort. I lay there hour after hour, watching the leaves slowly dance through the sunlight that seemed to race across the sky. I took the green stone dagger from my pocket and examined it in the hot, dry air. Almara’s golden symbol glinted at me as I rotated this hard-won prize in the light. I couldn’t argue with the fact that it had been worth it, worth the sacrifice in order to find escape from the snow world. But despite my victory over death, I could find no shred of happiness about it.