Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara (Book 1)

by Cantwell, J. B.

  “His son Brendan?” This conversation was quickly spiraling out of control, and a note of panic crept into my voice, the temporary comfort of the warm bed forgotten. “Look, I’ve never heard of Almara. He’s not part of my family, and I’m not looking for him. This is just a mistake. I think I should just go back home and—”

  “Listen, whether you know it or not, Almara is your ancestor. I guess, then, that whatever power Brendan had must have been passed down to you. It ain’t no mistake, believe me. You finding Almara’s map means that you’re destined to follow him. Though it doesn’t explain why Brendan didn’t come back, himself…”

  His eyes scanned the room and fell on the parchment I had found in the attic.

  “Ah!” he said and, crossing the floor, picked up the crumpled page from the chair next to the bed. “This was next to ya on the ground last night when I found ya. It’s the map, you say? Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” Then he stopped and stood still as a statue, his mouth wide with surprise.

  “Gold,” he breathed. He ran his fingers across the symbol at the top of the page.

  “Yeah, so what?” I said, too irritated to care about the look of wonder on his face. His wide eyes looked into mine, but only briefly before they were drawn back down to the page like a magnet.

  “Ain’t never seen gold,” he said.

  “You’ve never seen gold?” Gold was valuable on Earth, but still relatively common. I remembered the tangled ball of necklaces from back in the attic, carelessly tossed into a box.

  “Heard of it, of course,” he said. “Can’t make an interplanetary link without it.” He tore his gaze from the page and held it out to me. “This is here.”

  “It is?” I asked, reaching for the paper.

  “Look!” He brought the map over to the other side of the bed.

  He was right. On the parchment a detailed representation of the very room we were in had appeared, erasing the marks from the night before. And right in the center was that single, glowing ring of gold.

  “I can’t believe this is finally happening,” he murmured.

  I had had enough. Sickening twists of my stomach, magical inking maps, relatives from other planets. I slumped back into the bed and put the pillow over my head. This couldn’t be real.

  He was tugging at the ends of the pillow, but I fought to keep it over my face.

  “Boy, you’d better come to terms with this. Whether you like it or not, you’ll be questing to find Almara.” But I won the pillow battle and he stopped trying to take it. I felt him sit on the edge of the bed, and I could hear his muffled voice through the feathers.

  “When I was a boy, my father taught me all about Almara. About the quest, about the eight, everything I just told you. But when I got older he shared our family secret with me, the reason why we lived out here in the fields, waiting. It was the duty of my family to wait for Brendan Wood to return, and to help him along his way to get back to his father.”

  I peeked out from behind the pillow.

  “Now,” he continued, “you’re tellin’ me that Brendan Wood is long dead, that you’re his descendant, and that this map is the thing that brought you here. That means that you are the one meant to find Almara. You are the one who needs to find the other links and catch up with him. You are the one I’ve been waiting for all these years.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said stubbornly. “I’m from Earth, not Aerit. My great great grandfather Brendan Wood was from Earth.”

  Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

  He shook his head sadly, and the look on his face filled my stomach with lead. I didn’t know if this was real, everything that was happening to me, but if it was, who was to say that he wasn’t telling me the truth? Was I really descended from this other world I was now walking around in?

  While I thought about this possibility, he stood up and began shuffling around the room, rummaging through papers and trinkets. From the shelf above the counter in the corner he took down several glass jars. They reminded me of Mom’s spice rack back in our apartment, but these held leaves and twigs that looked nothing like her basil.

  I sat up and swung my legs around the side of the bed. My socked feet found the wood floor and I walked over to the table.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Gotta get you ready to go,” he said.

  “I can’t go anywhere,” I argued miserably. “I’m sick.”

  He stopped his shuffling and looked me up and down.

  “You don’t look sick.” He retrieved a large, battered book from underneath the bed and heaved it onto the table.

  “Well,” I argued, “I am sick. Too sick to be following the trail of some lost sorcerer on some other planet. I need a doctor.”

  “Ha! You ain’t gonna find a doctor around here.” He began leafing through the tissue thin pages. “Anyways, you look fine to me.” He wasn’t even looking at me.

  “But,” I argued, “if I keep going like this I could have another cardiac episode and die. I can’t go on some quest. I can’t do anything.” I slumped back onto the edge of the bed.

  “Well, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard! You have to go! Ain’t no one else gonna be able to find ‘em. It’s your job and your birthright.” A glint of mischief crossed his eyes, just for a moment. Then he looked back down at the book and said, “Besides, I don’t expect you have much of a choice. How were you planning to get home, anyways?”

  I studied the dark grooves in the floorboards. “Can’t you send me back? If you know so much about this traveling stuff, then you should be able—”

  “HA!” he laughed. “I can plot links, kid, but not links so far as Earth. If I tried to send you back you’d end up in deep, dark space more likely than not. Earth is unstable, out on the far reaches of the Fold. It’s constantly moving. No, you need a master cartographer to get you home. I mean, well, I done a spell or two in my day, and I’m a talent to be reckoned with when it comes to growing food and, you know, some other…essentials. But I ain’t got power like that.” He continued to read, his attention flitting between me and the book.

  “Well, how am I supposed to get back home then?”

  “The only way you’re gettin’ home is to find Almara. Sounds like you ain’t got a choice but to move on, don’t it? And it’s my job to get you closer to him.”

  “But I can’t move on, don’t you get it?” I said. “Even if I were related to Almara, I can’t keep running around like this. I’ll fall down dead before I ever find him.”

  “Hogwash!” he boomed. “Besides,” he peered down at me, “that stew wasn’t just plain stew. I knew you were in trouble when I dragged you in here last night. Worked a bit of my own magic over the pot before I let you slurp any of it up.”

  “You…drugged me?”

  “What? Nah! I gave you the medicine you needed to recover. And now you’re just fine, ain’t ya?”

  I stood there, partly angry, and partly curious. I did feel better, loads better, than I had yesterday. Here I was, standing, arguing with the old man. My heart rate had stabilized, and my chest didn’t feel tight with the panic of the previous day.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess I feel alright. But, you know, I really shouldn’t be going anywhere until I’ve—”

  “You’ll be goin’ whether you think you should or not,” he said. “If you want my help to get you to the next link, then you gotta do your part. You sure do argue a lot for a Wood.”

  He turned his back on me and rummaged around a bit more. Then his hunting stopped. “Yeah,” he said, “I ain’t got the acorns.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Ignoring my question, he grabbed a piece of parchment from under a stack of books on the table, retrieved a long feather quill and began to scribble on the paper. “You need to go…here.” He had drawn a rough map on the page, and pointed his finger now at a large X off to one side.

  I looked over his shoulder at the drawing.

  “What’s ther
e?”

  “The largest oak in spittin’ distance. You need to go get me as many acorns as you can carry.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I got real work to do, boy. You’ll see when you get back.”

  He finished writing, then walked to the door and picked up a large, woven basket that was fashioned to be slung on a man’s back.

  “Here,” he said, “put this on.”

  I hesitated to do as he said. My eyes peered through the small window that looked out over the garden. The afternoon sun shone on the vegetables out front.

  “I don’t know,” I began.

  “Kid,” he said, “do you want me to help you or not?”

  I did want him to help me. But I also wanted to stay alive.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Get over here, then.”

  I trudged over and he roughly strapped the enormous basket to my back. It was lighter than it looked, but awkward to wear, and I stumbled to the side as the back end of the thing stuck out, throwing me off balance. Then he stuffed the parchment in my hand. “This’ll get ya around the place, I expect.”

  I looked at the paper skeptically.

  “Gather every acorn you see or can get to; we need just the right one. When the basket’s full, you come on back. I got things need tending to around here before you can get movin’ on the next jump.”

  “But, wait, you know where I’m supposed to go next?” I asked.

  “You just worry about what I tell ya to, and I’ll worry about gettin’ ya on the trail. Alright?” He stood back and put his hands on his hips, clearly not interested in any answer but the one he wanted.

  I nodded, feeling dejected.

  “You’re sure I’ll be ok?” I asked. My hands folded over my chest protectively.

  I swear he practically threw me out the front door as he said, “Be back my sundown. Got it?” And he slammed the door in my face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stared at the front door, trying to decide what to do. A little window was set at eye level on the wood. As I studied it in a daze, the door to the peephole opened and Kiron shouted through it.

  “Get out of here, boy!” He closed it with a snap, and I could hear him mumbling in irritation on the other side of the entry.

  This guy was crazy, no doubt about it. Here I was on some alien world, a world Kiron thought had produced my ancestor. Crazy. But as I looked up at the sky, a strange teal-blue, a tiny finger of doubt scratched at my brain. What if I was the one who was crazy? Or, at least, what if I was wrong?

  I turned and walked down the front steps, where I found my boots. Sitting, I laced them up and stared around at the tiny homestead.

  A large vegetable garden grew directly in front of the house. Surrounding it was a tall, mesh fence, but no plastic like at Grandma’s. The rains must be safe here, then. I remembered Kiron’s story about how the weather had returned to normal after Almara set out. But a lifetime of avoiding toxic rain had me looking skyward, and I was relieved that not a single cloud floated in the sky above.

  To the side of the house was a chicken coop made from an assortment of leftover pieces of wood. Five fat hens clucked their way around the yard, scratching and digging, and one enormous rooster kept watch over his girls. I had never seen a chicken up close before; farmed chicken and fish were the only foods that were grown outside the city and trucked in. I took a couple of curious steps in their direction. The rooster immediately puffed up his feathers and ran straight for me. Surprised, I simply stood there and watched him bear down upon me. He squawked and bit at the leather of my boots, the toughness of which I was quite thankful for at the moment. It would have been funny, but he wouldn’t stop coming for me, and I felt strangely alarmed at this small, vicious animal. I flailed my legs as he attacked, trying to get him to let go of my pant leg, but in the end he successfully chased me from the place outright.

  I swear I heard muffled laughing from inside the house.

  Once the rooster was convinced that I was far enough away from his brood, he stood and regarded me, blocking the path as I turned to look back. He allowed me scant moments to take in the little dwelling. The building was made entirely of stone save for a thatched roof. A wisp of white smoke curled up out of the chimney. Behind it a thick pine forest stretched out for miles. The adults back in the cities would long to see a place like this, to stay here, away from the cement forests at home. They would remember the feeling of green all around, of living things shooting up from the ground. But to me, this was the stuff of fantasy, a lost history never to be witnessed again.

  How was this happening?

  Quick as a flash, the rooster lost his patience with my delay. He screeched and thrashed at my clothing and fingertips until I was well down the path away from the little farm.

  My heartbeat slowed from the flight down the trail as I walked. Usually when I overexerted myself, the squeezing in my chest would linger for days, sometimes from something as simple as walking up a flight of stairs. But here, the pain had all but vanished.

  The technical term for my illness was Ventricular Septal Defect. Oxygen had trouble making it to the parts of my body where it was needed, leaving me weak and short of breath a lot of the time. The surgery I had to close the hole when I was five was partially successful, partially not. The hole had closed for a time and it looked like I might be home free, but then gradually it began to open again. Mom and I had talked about more surgery with the doctors back in fifth grade, but they were concerned that my heart might be so weak that I wouldn’t survive the stress of anesthesia.

  I wondered if Kiron was right, and if I really was well enough to be hiking along this strange countryside. I would take it slow, I told myself, just in case.

  I studied the map carefully as I walked. The paper showed a rough outline of the surrounding area. I kept a lookout for the landmarks, but mostly I trekked along absently, too distracted by everything I had just learned.

  The stories Kiron told were bizarre. If he was telling me the truth, he must be hundreds of years old. And a man named Brendan Wood had once lived here, that was certain. Could I believe that this person was really my relative?

  No, I thought. It’s not possible.

  But then my eyes focused again on the unusual terrain that surrounded me.

  It shouldn’t be possible that I’m here at all. Why is it not possible that the Brendan Wood from Aria and the Brendan Wood from Earth are the same man?

  None of this mattered, of course, because whatever the truth was, I seemed pretty stuck here. Sure, I could decide that Kiron was nothing more than a crazed old man and go along on my way. But where would I go? Looking out over the rolling hills, I saw no other signs of life. Well, not human life. Birds flew overhead, squirrels and rabbits crossed my path more than once. But it didn’t look like there was anybody else around apart from Kiron who might be able to steer me towards the answers to my questions, much less home.

  I decided to trust him. True, I had little choice, but the decision came easily because he seemed, mostly, to be a kind man. He was gruff and old and cranky, yes. But he had fed me and comforted me and given me a direction where there was previously none.

  I stared at my feet as they crunched through thousands of tiny, fallen branches and leaves, not looking up as I crossed over into the shade of a grove of trees. The greenest of the leaves stuck to the sides of the leather, making my boots look like they were being eaten by the forest.

  An hour passed. Then another. I began to get frustrated with my lack of progress. I had only seen one landmark so far, the petrified remains of a long dead tree sticking out from the hard earth. I trudged onward down the trail until I came to a small grove of apple trees. Fat, round fruits littered the ground all around where I stood. I gathered up an armful and found a place to sit, resting my back up against one of the thick trunks.

  As the sweet, tart juice of the apple dribbled down my chin, I wondered what my mom was doing right that m
inute. She must have abandoned her summer trip by now, gone back to the farmhouse to Grandma to search for me. Guilt seeped into me as I thought about the job she had been called away for, the opportunity now lost. Had she called my dad? I didn’t know if she would, but I wondered what he would think, learning that his first son had vanished into thin air.

  He wasn’t normal, my father. His reaction would never be able to be predicted.

  “What was he like?” I had asked my mom years ago, hungry for details about this man I was tied to, but who seemed so ambivalent about me. Her fingers paused on the lamp switch on my bedside table at the question. She looked at me, hurt shadowing her face. I was instantly sorry I had brought it up.

  But then she smiled, the outline on her lips conflicting with the pain in her eyes.

  “He was a very nice man when we met,” she said. “He loved to sing. Everywhere he went he was singing or whistling or humming. I could never get him to shut up.” She laughed in earnest at the memory. Then her face gradually fell. “But some people aren’t built to handle the stresses of life. Some people…get lost.”

  “Is that why he left?” I asked, flinching a little as I waited for her answer. She sighed and put her warm hand against my cheek.

  “Your daddy got sick, hon,” she said. “We tried to help him but he just wouldn’t let us. By the time he left he couldn’t see logic at all anymore.”

  I remembered this. Over time he had become a frightening man. Some mornings when I was very little, I’d look out the window and see him tromping through the street in nothing but his undershorts, ranting at the top of his voice. Once, my mom went out to try to talk to him, to get him to come inside out of the cold fall air. He had hit her with the back of his hand. She fell to the ground, her hands raised in front of her face in defense. But he just walked away, talking to the people only he could see.