by Zoe Parker
Cadence of Ciar
The Fate Caller Series
Zoe Parker
Cover by Jessica Allain of Enchanting Covers
Editing, Proofreading by the page.
Copyright © 2018 by Zoe Parker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
The first in a Multiple Mayhem series…
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
To the wonderful reader of this book-
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Afterword
Also by Zoe Parker
To my children, always.
To my HotBuns, you give me the strength I need to put one foot in front of the other.
To you, the reader. Thank you for joining me in this mad, mad world.
Deep within the winter forest among the snowdrift wide
You can find a magic place where all the fairies hide....
~Author Unknown
The first in a Multiple Mayhem series…
Spread your wings and let the Fairy in you Fly! ~ Author Unknown
Ever have your life move in a terrifying direction so fast that you get motion sickness? I have that feeling right now. It’s flinging my stomach all over the place and filling me with absolute dread. I’m headed to a place that scares the crap out of me and my body knows it.
Standing at the edge of the forest, staring at the beat up wooden sign displaying the town name Redwood in bright, red letters gives me an awful sense of doom that I can’t shake. Nausea is another side effect that reinforces the desire to turn around and run as far away as I can.
Flattening a hand against my stomach, I pray for it to calm down. I don’t want to projectile vomit in front of everyone. That would suck and show them how afraid I am and that’s not something I want to do.
This crappy pukey feeling appeared the minute Nagan told me I was moving back here to this place I want to forget but can’t. No matter how hard I try, it sticks with me like a deep splinter buried inside of the most vulnerable place inside of me.
This is the town that where it all started. This is the mouth of hell I mistakenly thought I was never going to have to deal with again but because I trust Mada—I trust Nada, I’m here.
Redwood is where I was born. Where my mom went the rest of the way to crazy and tried to kill me. The woman who, although awful already, snapped and stabbed me twenty times with an enchanted dagger.
I catch myself subconsciously rubbing one of the scars on my stomach through my shirt. I shove my hand in my pocket to keep from doing it again. It’s a nervous tic I can’t seem to shake.
“Keri, I know this is hard on you and I am sorry for that but Mada has predicted that this is the next part of your journey and the will of the forest, and all that horseshit,” Nagan says, from where he stands beside me at the edge of the Dark Forgetful Forest.
A forest that for me, has lived up to its cheesy name because I was forgotten about, until now.
I look over at Nagan—more like, up at him—my centaur foster-father. His tail flicks in irritation, but I know that for once it’s not with me. He’s no happier about me leaving than I am. It’s something he made abundantly clear while he prepared me for this crappy journey.
Strangely, I don’t feel any bitterness about it. Especially towards Mada, the Mother of the Forest. I’ve always known that one day I’d have to leave the safety of the hidden places and leave my family behind.
I look over my shoulder, squinting to look deeper into the shadows of the trees feeling the Sluagh behind me. All them are just as sad as I am, and I genuinely don’t want to leave them. They’re the ones who put band-aids on my scabbed knees. Who taught me how to run through the trees as nimbly as a squirrel and how to disappear into the shadows like a ghost. They also taught me how to fight like one of them and how to cuss even though because of my mother’s constant swearing, I don’t. It’s a thing.
They’re my family and they’re a great family and no matter how much I wish it, none of them can come with me. The Sluagh are feared for a lot of reasons, the least of which is their inability to turn into a humanoid.
“You are not going alone because we will not have you unprotected. Ciar is going with you,” Nagan reassures me and shocks me at the same time.
In surprise I look behind me and from within a canine face covered in fur so black it disappears in the shadows, green glowing eyes meet mine. On four silent paws Ciar creeps to my side. Even as a canine he’s still a head taller than me.
Ciar is a Puca but not just any, he’s the original and up until now I thought he hated my guts. On top of that, he’s even older than Mada and she’s so old that the dirt on her tree is petrified. So how does someone older than Mada’s dirt plan on fitting into a Menagerie?
“I thought you hated me, Ciar?” I ask.
Nagan raised me to be blunt and to speak my mind. But with Ciar that’s a lot easier to think than actually do. I’m a little afraid of him sometimes, something I’ll admit without any shame. There’s something about him that says the smart decision involves running in the opposite direction.
Stronger people than I get that feeling about him.
‘Never that, monster girl,’ he answers, in my mind.
The fact that he has no lips means he can’t speak from his mouth and he has always spoken to me in such a way. But I can talk out loud, so I say, “Ciar, I can take care of myself. You don’t—”
‘Don’t tell me what I need to do,’ he interrupts.
Well, there goes that argument. It’s a guaranteed loss the minute he responds in a contrary way. I never win one against him, no matter what we’re arguing about, which is often. He and I can’t seem to see eye-to-eye on much of anything.
For this and many other reasons, him coming with me makes absolutely no sense. Mada didn’t order him to, no one orders him to do anything. Ciar may live in the forest but she isn’t his boss. He does what he pleases. Something made him want to come with me, because that is the only reason he would.
He turns his big shaggy head—that, in my opinion looks more wolfish than the dog that Pucas are reputed to be—to study me with those green eyes. I shiver, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.
Needing a distraction, I turn back to contemplate the sign and I can’t help but be sucked down into a vortex of memories. I was nine years old when Nagan found me bleeding in the ditch, dumped there by my mother. He told me that I was minutes from death and they were barely able to save me.
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br /> She is not someone I like to think about, not when I can help it. Every good memory I have of the woman is completely eclipsed by one specific moment, she left me—her only child—to die like a piece of garbage. The only thing that saved me are the creatures standing around me. My friends from so long ago, my family now and they mean more to me than anything else in the world. They make up one of the most revered and feared group of creatures in existence, the Wild Hunt.
That same Wild Hunt went after my mother a few days after I was found. This is one of those crimes in our world that you can’t get away with, not for long anyhow, and never without some kind of magical backup to protect you. Murdering a child or attempting to is one of Faerie’s cardinal sins and the magic that gives us life and sustains us won’t abide by it. Neither will the Sluagh. They saw through her fake persona while no one else but me did.
I don’t really know much about my mother’s past, truth be told. I know she was some type of—Fae because the Hunt going after her is proof of that—it’s the specific type that I’m not sure of. Because she played at being human so well, even smelled like one, I was fooled right along with everyone else. I grew up with the false belief that my father was Fae and my mother was a human who was left to raise me alone.
Now, because she’s dead, no one can give me answers. I know I’m not human because I’ve never looked human or even like a Halfling but, I don’t know what I am. Even the Sluagh who chased my mother for weeks until they found her don’t know her actual Fae nature. All they know is that the magics exposed her as Fae. Nagan told me once whatever it was, wasn’t the pretty elf-like kind. The Sluagh started the Wild Hunt before the Hunt magic called them. He says my pain called them. Which means I’m connected to them somehow.
With a sigh, I take one last, long look at my beautiful family and then step out of the forest onto the road. Taking my first steps towards a future I don’t want but will face head on.
I’m not a coward.
Nagan stomps the ground with a hoof and snorts. I can’t turn around to look again or I’ll beg to stay. My pride won’t let me beg, at least as long as I can keep from looking.
“I’ll miss you all.” With those last words, I begin to walk and manage with an incredible amount of will, to not look back.
Screeches and roars echo behind me.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve ;lovers to bed; ’tis almost Fairy time. ~ William Shakespeare
Managing to walk all the way through the town without turning around or acknowledging the people gawking at me, is a solid win to me. I can feel them staring, their gazes are like little bugs crawling all over my skin. I’m torn between feeling dirty or feeling angry.
Winding my way through the streets, Ciar a silent shadow behind me, I find my destination at the end of a dead-end street. Stopping, I stare at the front doors of the Menagerie in trepidation. Above the door, in big golden letters is the year twenty-seventy-five. The year they built this crappy place.
The schools advertise themselves as a simple haven for magic users to learn and discover their places in the world. Nagan calls them ‘chicken-coops.’ He says the powerful and rich let the ‘hens’—the students—get fat and compliant. Then when the time comes they get plucked out like they’re going to the soup pot.
It makes a weird kind of sense and for the most part is true.
When Faerie and the human world Earth collided hundreds of years ago, it merged into this massive one that they cleverly named, Faerth. That moment in history was aptly coined the ‘Collision’. The result of that event trapped all the races—from both worlds—together in Faerth. Which from what I’ve been told looks like two eggs leaning together in a skillet.
An unfortunate event for the humans who were here then, they didn’t stand a chance against the waves of magically empowered races they were faced with.
Surprising both sides, magic seeped from Faerie back into the human’s dead realm and awakened the dormant magic in humans and the other creatures of this planet. In the long run it helped more Earth creatures to survive but didn’t stop the conquering of this joint world by the Fae.
The Fae aren’t slow so the ‘invasion’ was a fast process. In the beginning the humans fought back in large numbers, as allies united against a common foe. At that time in history, there were quite a few messy battles fought but the humans lost every single time. Thousands of them, maybe even hundreds-of-thousands, died in those dark times.
They should’ve paid more attention to their lore they had compiled from Fae visitors to their dimension. Fae conquer by obliterating the competition. Luckily for survivors, the King of Lafayette—the current King of all Fae—decided to put an end to it. He offered them a life out of slavery with the Fae put in place as the world rulers.
The humans didn’t have a choice, they agreed. Those who didn’t disappeared from history.
Each continent was divided amongst the different Fae royalty or reigning powers with the King ruling over them all, well most of them. Some are termed ‘Ancient’ and have no recognized rulers, like Mada.
The king is a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve only seen him on TV with his little pink Elven queen giving speeches about peace and whatnot.
He’s the one I can blame him for this ridiculous place because he’s the reason it exists. His idea of cohabitation of the races or as his motto carved into the archway states, ‘A way for them to get to know one another, work together and to mend the divide between them all in order to live a good, harmonious life on Faerth.’ This Menagerie—yes that’s its real name—is the place that they send all magic users under 30 for training to become productive members of society. It’s a bunch of hoopla.
It’s, obviously since I’m standing in front of it, a real place. I know the truth of this place, Nagan told me so. This is where they evaluate and train only the strongest while the rest are sent to be some type of menial laborers;4. Like maids and construction workers to name two I know offhand.
Nagan’s chicken coop theory holds water.
Quite frankly, I don’t want to be here. I’m no longer a child of this world and its stupid rules. This world abandoned me in that ditch all those years ago. That apparently doesn’t matter, because Mada had a vision saying this was where I need to be, so here I am. Supposedly my Awakening draws near.
Awakenings make me nervous. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard plenty about them. All creatures—since the Collision—are born with magic. Sometimes this magic is latent sometimes it’s not. None of it is strong magic, most can’t light a candle—like me for example.
Awakening changes things, the basics that I understand are that—supposedly—Faerie herself touches the person with some mystical woohoo that makes them grow magically stronger in order to accomplish their specific… task, I guess is a good word. The fancy title is ‘Calling’. Some are called to mind the gardens or the waterways. Some do the bigger jobs like dealing with the weather or powering certain technology. The list is endless and without them the world wouldn’t work the way it does.
I guess a lot of it seems boring but they do get a more powerful punch than a run of the mill magic user. Now-a-days, Awakening and receiving their Calling is something folks strive for. It’s why this place exists and it’s why the rich pay for it.
The useful and powerful Awakened ones are snapped up by those benefactors. The ones who don’t? They’re sent to do things like roadwork, waste facilities—garbage removal, etc. Then you have those like the Sluagh, they were born for a specific task for Faerie, they don’t need to Awaken.
The rest of the world pray for it and if you Awaken—and survive-- then you become a coveted powerhouse that’s offered everything under the sun to reside in one of the wealthy houses. No manual labor, ever.
Those are even the rules if Awakened and you have no blood family strong enough to ‘protect’ then you’ve got to have a ‘protector. Stupid rules and ones that concern me a lot more than I like admitting. I don’t want to be
long to some Fae ‘protector’.
It’s not something I have a choice in.
Mada said that I’ll have an Awakening and she’s never wrong. Personally I was content to stay in the forest the rest of my life and avoid all this mess. Unfortunately the rules interfere with that because even though I’m part of her family, it’s by love but not by birth or blood. If I Awaken and I’m still in the forest, there’ll be consequences for them all.
I can’t have that and that’s why—I look at the front of the Menagerie again—I’m here.
As much as I want to argue it and say she’s wrong I know she’s not. People come from all over the world to the Great Tree—Mada’s tree—of the forest for their fortunes to be told. They leave her the weirdest shit as payment too. It’s how I got the mPod in my backpack. It’s considered an insult not to leave tribute and there are consequences. Not that I’ve ever seen them, Mada is best at predicting Awakenings and sometimes even what their calling will be, I remember her telling me that Callings are a lot harder to predict and they can be fickle.
I can’t forget the most important part of the entire thing, at least concerning me. There is only a fifty percent chance of surviving your Awakening. That’s one of the other reasons Awakened people are so coveted because fifty percent of them die.
