copyright 2018
by
Julie Lavender
Illustrated by
Katrina Santucci
ISBN: 978-1-54395-058-8
Dedicated to Mrs. A’s Cheering Section
Mark, Jean-Marc, Christian, Amiee,
Tina, Matt, Sierra, Josiah,
Levi, Kendra, Ryan, Jillene, Pam, Emily,
Belle, Kayla, Tamara,
Levi, Megan, Caroline, Alexander, Gena,
Amy, Kelly, Elena, Chaya and Lynda.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1: Snot, Slobber, and Salty Sobs
CHAPTER 2: A Curious Courtship
CHAPTER 3: An Irregular Family
CHAPTER 4: Struggles, Strategies, and “The Song”
CHAPTER 5: Wide-Eyed and Wondering
CHAPTER 6: Left Out
CHAPTER 7: Jeopardy in June
CHAPTER 8: The Unexpected Unraveling
CHAPTER 9: It Couldn’t Be True
CHAPTER 10: The Gate Keeper
CHAPTER 11: Fuzz in Flight
CHAPTER 12: Left Behind
CHAPTER 13: Soaring, Sliding, Splashing, and Surprising!
CHAPTER 14: The Generation
CHAPTER 15: Expansion, Expulsion, and Exile
CHAPTER 16: Seeing and Supposing
CHAPTER 17: Wosdim and Intention
CHAPTER 18: The Shadowlands
CHAPTER 19: Overcoming The POO
CHAPTER 20: Mrs. Amazing and The Seed
EPILOGUE
They were transmigrating, filtering in and out of spaces and pathways as if moving through the hidden doors in a funhouse maze. Passing through layers of time and dimension, the voyagers felt themselves sinking down, deeper and deeper, into an atmosphere that grew denser and darker with each passing moment. There were flashes of light, and cloudy mists through which they traveled toward an inevitable destination — a destination they desperately wished they would never have to reach.
“Heeere they commme! Thossse sssssickening Wwwon-dererssss!” A brittle, hissing voice spit the words out with such disgust as though it was choking on the gall of its own hatred.
“It isss farrr worsssseee than we antisss-ipated!” A spying scout screeched in revulsion, alarming many others who had hidden themselves in the shadows.
“The He and She and the sssspppawn of their Generationssss have…Sseedsssss!”
Now the entire cohort was in full battle alert. Their commander shrieked:
“They mussst be neutralizzzed before it’ssss too late. The Pressscribed Order mussst not be quessstioned!”
Razor-sharp shafts and thorns were unsheathed and aimed with chilling accuracy. Deadly in their subtlety, these weapons were cunningly designed to leave wounds that would go undetected. Each one inflicted just enough discomfort to penetrate its victim and unleash an insidious flow of refined destruction, but never produced enough pain to actually reveal the true nature of its immense threat.
Sensing the growing danger, the unsuspecting travelers felt as though they would suffocate in the dread that was quickly engulfing them. Sizzling sounds pierced the air as the darts hit their marks and the thorns and brambles about them scratched their vulnerable flesh. Each prick implanted poisonous invading thoughts that would soon grow to choke out all sprouting opposition.
“You’ve been tricked!”
“Give up your silly fantasssiess.”
“You are forssssssaken.”
“It’ssssss all your fault…”
Creepy voices whispered cruel thoughts, gleefully inflicting their venomous little torments.
“You are on your own.”
“You cannot trussst in these mythsss!”
“You have failed…”
“No Purpossssseeee to thissss…”
The voyagers let loose cries of panic and dismay with the penetration of each pernicious word.
Cheering with glee, the attackers retreated into the periphery, gloating over the impact of their warcraft. Victory was surely at hand. If these meddlesome interlopers did not resist, they would soon drift into acquiescence. Watching with evil anticipation, the assailants were thrilled to see their victims succumbing to a lethal mixture of doubt, fear, and depression.
“Successssss!” came the jubilant hisses. They were certain they would prevail.
Suddenly, a string of their curses filled the atmosphere. The He and his boy-spawn were putting up a fight! With them victory could not be assured. At least not, yet.
But the She and the girl-spawn were another matter. They had failed to resist.
Faye faultsom gulped down the lump in her throat and held her breath. She hoped, desperately, that this would shut off the leaking hose behind her eyeballs which threatened to flood her tear ducts and leave her in a snotty puddle. She sat across from Constance, her oldest daughter, whose restrained anger and carefully chosen words cut her as much as any tongue-lashing might have. Nothing prepared Faye for the words Constance squeezed out of her knotted insides that evening.
“It wasn’t a childhood I remember particularly fondly, Mom. And…I don’t believe
…in your imaginary world…anymore…”
As she exhaled, the fifty-year-old mother of four felt as though tectonic plates were shifting within her. She would not be able to swallow the resulting tsunami of tears, nor keep it from bursting over her shores, once she heard Constance’s car pull out of the family driveway as the sun set that evening. Those few words, along with other revelations that her daughter painstakingly parceled out, left Faye no place to hide. She could not escape the reality that her hopes of nourishing and protecting the garden of her daughter’s heart were somehow ruined.
Inside, she felt a hollow reverberation of pain followed by the knowledge that something along the way had crushed her daughter’s imagination, the one thing Faye had tried to nurture and guard the most fiercely in her children. Where had they, where had she, gone wrong? A flood of emotion roiled inside her, churning up images and memories of her own barren childhood, uprooting her dreams for Constance and disorienting her. She lay in the dark for hours going over and over things in her mind, as her husband slept soundly next to her.
“Oh, Honey, it’s just a separation thing,” he had said. “She just needs to find herself and be her own person…don’t overreact…”
Her husband’s solid logic was, of course, the most clearheaded way to see things, for every family has its blemishes and rough patches. Of course they had made their mistakes as parents — many of them! As for Faye, there were lots of things Constance could find to criticize about her mothering. But Faye knew something deeper and more alarming was at work.
Mrs. Faultsom could not shake the strange feeling that some dark thing had taken root in Constance and, having dug itself deep into her being, had sprung up and wrapped itself tightly around her heart. Now the light in Constance’s eyes had dimmed. She was growing detached and distant. Angry. Cold. She had ceased to believe in Wonder.
It was an uproarious tangle of red curls and wet freckles that met her pillow that night as Faye lay her head down. She drew her legs up to her chest and huddled under the comforter. Frank snored determinedly as she dabbed her eyes, stifled her sobs, and blew her marathon-running nose on the ball of tissues she pulled out of her nightgown sleeve. Easily moved to tears, Faye could always find a place to pocket away a stash of hankies.
Her only comfort was the snuffling of the family hound dog, Cornelius, as he rooted his way back up and out of the covers from the bottom of the bed for a fresh breath of midnight air. As if sensing her distress, the dog panted excitedly and gave Faye a sloppy, sliding kiss on her cheek before returning to his spot down under th
e covers. At least she couldn’t fail Cornie.
Wiping off his slobber and the salt from her dribbling tears, Faye flipped back through the pages of their lives, to the time when she had met her husband and they had both discovered the existence of the strange and mystical realm of Wonder together. She had always loved to hear the deep and reassuring sound of Frank’s voice recounting the details of their courtship to their children. Tonight, that was a safe place for Mrs. Faultsom to begin reviewing her life, with recollections of a season full of the promise of their courtship and their intriguing revelations.
Little six-year-old constance faultsom curled up in her daddy’s lap and asked to hear the story once more. “Dada, tell me again how you and mama met and why ya liked ’er? Didn’tcha think she was kinda silly at first?”
Frank, a bit taken aback, chuckled.
“Well, yes, your Mama has always been pretty unique but that’s what makes her so special.”
“Tell me again ’bout the funny things she always wored.”
“Ok, yes, your mom wore these puffy deals that she tucked into her…ah…blouses. They were kind of like what football players wear under their uniforms to make their shoulders so big and bulky.”
“Boulder Pads?” Connie tried to name them.
“No, sweetie. Shoulder pads. Everybody wore them back then. People thought they were pretty stylish, but now that I think about it, I guess they did make your mama look a bit funny.”
Constance giggled and begged Frank to continue. “Daddy, tell me the whole stowy ’n’ tell it the wight way…”
Franklin Farnsworth Faultsom, with his thick dark hair, mustache, and tortoise-shell glasses, crowned by a set of thoughtfully expressive eyebrows, had a flare for formality. A student of ancient civilizations, he always told the tale of his and Faye’s courtship as though he were narrating an impressive piece of world history. Even though most of it was beyond her comprehension, little Constance loved to hear the sound of his big descriptive words. Even when she didn’t know what they all meant, she somehow understood them because her daddy had a way of telling this particular story that his little girl adored.
“Ah huummm…” Clearing his throat to set the stage, he would thus begin.
“Young twenty-something, buttoned-down Franklin Farnsworthy Faultsom, who sported wingtip shoes and bulky cable-knit sweaters, with spiffy bold patterns on them, was amused and intrigued by the offbeat and breezy personality of Miss Faye Andoria Green. He first encountered her at a local plant nursery one fine April morning as she selected flower varieties. He found her quirky way of talking to the seeds as she chose them to be more than a little charming.
“Although he could have had his pick of the maidens from his upper-crust circles, he found this mod-bohemian nymph quite captivating, and he pursued the redhead with her shoulder pads, wild curls, bangles, and irrepressible idealism.
“It wasn’t long before Frank and Faye realized that they both saw things, odd little things — often out of the corners of their eyes. They would sometimes sense that something other was whispering to them through a portal that hung open in the air. At times it was as if a breeze had blown in from another room…no, from another realm.
“And they both knew things; things one doesn’t know with just the mind alone, but things that lit them up on the inside, as if someone had let fireflies loose in their stomachs. They knew there was another dimension. More than that, they both sensed that something or someone from there was beckoning them to enter.
“But alas, few in their world believed in true Mystery anymore, and it was very much analyzed and “pooh-poohed,” as if belief in the miraculous was some sort of intellectual or psychological deficiency. It was fashionable only to think in terms of the concrete and the ‘prove-able.’ Rational minds simply denied the existence of nonmaterial realities, attributing them to chemical reactions in the brains of those who reported them.”
“Some people, however, did feel the absence of true mystery in their daily existences and sought to conjure up fantastical worlds to enter, as they peered into the dark depths of their own cogitations and those of would-be mediums and mystics. These diversions pacified many. But when Faye and Frank compared these phenomena to their own encounters, they found them to be the stuff of sideshows, magic tricks — or worse. Some people embraced the substance of a chilling, gray reality that sought to snuff out the firefly glow of any true marvels. Sometimes it seemed as though Frank and Faye were the last people on earth who actually saw the authentic miracles hidden in the invisible.
“When they first met, the couple spoke tentatively of these things although, as she felt Frank’s reassuring gaze and quiet confirmations pave the way, Faye would often jump into the deep end of things before she could stop herself. It wasn’t long before they were comparing notes about their experiences and it was with great relief and delight that Faye would exclaim:
“Oh! I thought it was just me! You’ve felt that? You’ve seen it, too?”
So began their rather odd courtship. And then one day, they both found their way to some distant place together, and when they did, they knew they had also found each other.”
“Did he kiss her then, Daddy? Were you, was he tewwibly womantic?…” Constance would interrupt.
“Why, of course, he was and is…tewwibly womantic. And yes, I…er…he kissed her and told her he couldn’t live without her, for they shared special secrets — intriguing things that they both knew no one else seemed to understand.”
“So he mawwied her!” Constance would squeal with delight, Frank nodding as she prodded him to continue.
“Daddy, tell me about the special seecwets now! What stuff happened to them?”
“Well, lots of strange things happened to them. Things that seemed like invitations to a party in another world. And they called that world Wonder, because there just wasn’t another word for it.”
At this point Frank would do his best to explain to his daughter what he himself found quite perplexing and utterly inexplicable. To his relief, little Constance was often nodding off at this point in the story, just as her daddy started to dither around in his attempt to describe what he and Faye had experienced.
Once Constance was dozing soundly, Frank would often sit with his daughter cradled in his arms, thinking about what was at stake. Even though there was much that he himself didn’t totally comprehend, he knew Wonder was worth fighting for. Considering this, his heart would swell with tenderness as he thought back to the moment with Faye that had forever set his course.
As young sweethearts Faye and Frank had been walking hand-in-hand late one fall day as the soft glow of the evening sky ignited briefly with the sun’s last wink before it slid below the horizon. A chilly breeze caused them both to shudder. Faye was chattering with excitement about her latest precarious pursuit of exploration. A consuming desire for Wonder filled her soul. She was running headlong into the unknown without hesitation.
“It was like I was in two places at once, all day! It was so weird and yet so normal. I couldn’t figure out which place seemed more real, and I can’t shake the feeling that this whole thing is so much bigger than we are. And…Franky, you are the only person I’ve ever met who understands. No one else seems to get it at all. I just can’t make myself fit in and I don’t want to.”
Now a breeze of uncertainty chilled Frank’s heart.
She was such a handful, this Faye Green. So passionate and willing to go out on a limb. He knew that a life with her would be far from ordinary and would surely upset the apple cart of any predictability. He let go of her hand. Although he, too, felt a calling from somewhere beyond himself, sometimes Faye scared him. Frank had always had a clear and conventional life mapped out before him. Success was just around the corner if he stayed on track. But Faye was anything but conventional, and she had this way of always drawing him into unchartered waters. A life with her would never allow him to fit the mold he had always been expected to fill. Where were they really
heading?
Thinking that he’d better distance himself from the fetching redhead with whom he was so smitten, Frank turned to look at her. He was just about to put the brakes on things with Faye, when he was suddenly overcome with a feeling of destiny, as times, spaces, and faces flashed before his mind’s eye. A welcoming pandemonium unfolded in which there were voices of children shouting, singing a very odd song, and giggling wildly. He felt himself whooshed upward, and then sliding straight down. He was experiencing a panorama of weird sounds and smells, of reverberating music, dancing lights, and a bizarre, fuzzy yellowness. Feelings he couldn’t name overtook him. It all happened so swiftly that he wasn’t able to process these impressions, but he felt Faye there in each and every layer of sensation as he stood looking into her verdant green eyes. Then it all quickly vanished.
A few moments later he heard himself speak.
“We are intended to be together. There is so much more to discover, and we have to find it together.”
This came as a revelation to him from his own lips.
“Franklin Farnsworth Faultsom, are you proposing?” Faye blurted out as her verdant greens welled up with tears.
“Why, yes, I guess I am…Faye Andoria Green.”
Flinging herself at the tall, solid man who stood before her, Faye threw her arms around him and melted into his chest. As Frank enfolded her in his arms, Faye felt they were both transported to a vast field of fragrant colors stretching beyond the horizon in every direction. It was so glorious that it filled her with awe. Now she was bawling and desperately searching for tissues as her nose unleashed its slimy goo.
“Oh! There goes my nose! What a mess I must be!” How Faye wished she could be one of those graceful, elegant creatures she so admired. But this was not to be. As she looked up at him, Frank daubed her cheeks dry with his sleeve cuff and kissed her nose. He gazed at that adorable speckled face of hers and caught glimpses of his children to come, emerging like butterflies from the cocoon of a very unusual way of life that he knew simply had to be.
Mrs. Amazing and the Seed Page 1
