A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1

by Shannon Wendtland

  “Yes, I am,” said the woman in a friendly tone.

  Sam continued with his business while Thompson stared at me and I stared back. Finally he spit on the ground next to my feet, gave me one last glare, and walked away.

  #

  “I’m glad that’s over,” Sam said, pretending not to be impressed with himself. “But I have to admit, it was sort of addicting to be in the middle of the bidding like that. I can see why those people on the storage shows do it week after week. I bet I could be on one of those shows.”

  I grinned, glad the shakiness in my legs was finally wearing off after the adrenaline rush was gone. “Nah, man. You just blew your wad. You’re going to have to get Lily to give you another couple of gigs to make up for all the cash you spent today.”

  “I know.”

  He sounded woeful, and it made me laugh.

  “Dude, you’ve got a car. And it’s a sweet ride at that! And”—I paused, holding my hand out—“it finally stopped raining. Maybe it will be nice enough later to take the top down and go for a ride.”

  “Yeah,” he said, brightening. “We’ll need sunglasses and dental floss.”

  “For what?”

  “To keep the bugs out of our eyes and teeth.”

  We both laughed and I happily slid into the passenger seat as soon as he unlocked the door. I touched the brown leather upholstery, appreciating the smooth buttery softness under my palm. As I settled in and leaned back, I was hit with a sudden, strong burst of déjà vu. This was just like my dream – my hand caressing the upholstery, the weird greenish yellow lighting from the storm clouds in the sky. I shivered. I turned to look at Sam, and he had his hands on the wheel, but the expression on his face was pensive.

  “Weird,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I hope this wasn’t a bad idea.”

  “Me, too.” I guess we’ll see.

  69. TARA

  “I’m telling you,” I said, my hand slapping down on the open pages of my notebook on the table in front of me, “that we have to go.”

  “How are we going to go? It’s a six or seven hour drive, there’s nothing out there except tumbleweeds and pump jacks, and we start school on Tuesday.” Melody shook her head, not wanting to hear anymore.

  But we had to go. Matthew had made it clear that we were supposed to do something about the vortex, and added to that, I had been doing some reading and researching on my own. “Look, the records say that the energy during a solar eclipse is unbalanced… as in more dark than light. When it’s dark outside, at a time that it is supposed to be light, the balance leans to the left. So like, during a storm, natural disasters occur, right? Tornadoes, etc. But during a solar eclipse, there is no visible storm. Instead it’s a spiritual one. A spiritual storm -- that sounds exactly like a vortex, right?”

  Melody was not looking at me. Instead she was drying and putting away the dishes, and for a moment I thought she wouldn’t answer me at all. But then she said, “So is this a spiritual battle now? Or is it supernatural? I mean, my brother’s a ghost, and evil entities from another dimension tried to suck me dry so… I’m voting for supernatural.” She still wasn’t looking at me, but the set of her shoulders was annoyed.

  I’d seen her like this before. This was Melody being set in her ways. She seemed easygoing and fun, but the fact was, she was very stubborn. “I can see what you mean. But why does it have to be different?”

  “Because I just can’t handle a war between good and evil right now, oh-freaking-kay?” She balled up the damp towel and threw it across the room.

  I took a breath. I’d seen this version of Melody before, too. She needed to be talked back from the ledge. We couldn’t do this without her, and if I couldn’t convince her that she had to come, she would regret it later. “Okay, fine. Supernatural, then. You weren’t attacked by the entities in the daytime, right? And everyone, even Hollywood, says that the witching hour is 3:00 a.m. Why do you suppose that is?”

  She held a hand to her temple, her eyes closed. “I don’t know.”

  “I think it’s because it’s completely dark outside at 3:00 a.m. There’s no last vestige of sunset on the horizon anymore in the summer time, and it is still several hours before dawn. I think it’s the time when the earth is at its darkest, literally. And if that’s true, if these things are amassing here, if they are coming in through the vortex, then obviously they would be stronger and harder to stop during a solar eclipse. Maybe…” I thought hard and fast, “Maybe that is the most vulnerable time?”

  Mel slumped into a kitchen chair across the table from me and put her head in her hands. I just watched her, afraid to say anything else. The moment dragged on, and when I thought it was a lost cause, I slid my chair back from the table, a farewell on my lips.

  “So what do we do?” Her voice was muffled. She sounded very tired.

  “I think we tell our parents and grandparents that we are going camping before school starts as a “so long” to the summer, and we go out to Orla to shut down the vortex.”

  She looked up at me, frowning. “No, I mean, how do we shut down the vortex?”

  I slid the photo of her brother and grandparents across the table to her. “We ask Esmeralda.”

  #

  It was my day off, but Melody and I helped Esme stack the boxes in the back of the store anyways. “Hey, Esme. Let’s say I wanted to dampen someone or something’s energy. You know, to protect myself from it – what would I need to do?”

  She looked over her shoulder at me. “That’s a very interesting question. Why do you want to do something like that?”

  “I don’t necessarily, but, what if I did? I mean, what if there was a bully at school?”

  “Or what if I was getting attacked by those… creatures again?” asked Melody, handing me another carton of candles to stack.

  She paused thoughtfully. “Energy is life. So therefore, to dampen energy, one must dampen life. Something like sulfur would work for that. But in the case of your entities, it would only make them stronger, because they thrive on deadly orgone energy.”

  Melody frowned. I frowned with her.

  “Then how would you dampen them?”

  “Joy. It is always joy. Or love, but bringing yourself to love the darkness comes with problems of its own.”

  Crap. It’s not like we could buy a bottle of joy and whip it out at the last moment.

  “I don’t understand,” said Melody, now resting her arms on the counter. “I remembered you saying that when the creatures came for me, but there was no way I could be joyful. All I felt was afraid.”

  Esme nodded and came over to stand near Melody. “You are different. They can taste your energy like dinner, and when you are afraid, it is not only dinner they taste but ambrosia. For you, fear is like sulfur—it is deadly. You have to find a place, a moment, a thought, that brings you joy, and you must envelop yourself in it. You must live it from the inside out. And when you do, your energy changes, and instead of feeding the creatures, it will burn them. And if they do not leave, it will destroy them. But you are not capable of it now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You must embrace this part of you. If you don’t embrace it, then you fear it. If you fear it, then no amount of joyous memory you conjure will be able to counteract that fear. It will be useless, like shooting yourself in the foot.”

  “I’ll never be normal again, will I?” said Melody quietly.

  I looked at her sharply.

  “No,” said Esme, reaching across to hold Melody’s hand. “But you still define yourself. And if you want to reject your gift, you can do that. But you can’t unsee what has already been revealed to you. And really, what point is there in rejecting a gift that you cannot unsee?”

  I nodded. I didn’t have any interest in rejecting my ability to communicate with the Akashic Records, but then again, black-tentacled beasts hadn’t tried to eat me in my sleep, either.

  When Melody didn’t reply, Esme turned back
to her chores. As she pulled out a cloth and a spray bottle to clean the glass counters, she shooed us away. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Enjoy the sun. It gives life in more than one way.” She smiled at me then, though there was an unsettling glint of steel in it.

  70. G.

  Sam was looking a little green. “Of course we have to go,” I said.

  He nodded. Tara’s shoulders relaxed a little bit, and Melody seemed at least neutral about the plan. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but she seemed different to me somehow. Maybe she was just tired.

  “One other thing,” said Sam then, sounding a little hesitant. “We have to bring Lily.”

  “What? No way, Sam,” Tara said. “She doesn’t belong here with us. This isn’t any of her…” I could tell that she was about to say business, or maybe family, but I cut in.

  “Tara, she was in my dream. And now Sam has the car – the same one that was in my dream and his. Lily has to come.”

  She stared at me open mouthed and took a quick glance over at Melody who was staring off into space. “But—”

  “Tara, it’s okay. G.’s right. If we have to do this, then I guess we have to do it all the way, and that means Lily has to come.” Melody looked at me, at Sam, and then at Tara. Then she looked down at her hands again. “Let’s stick with the camping idea. At least then it won’t be a complete lie.”

  “What won’t be a complete lie?” The voice came from the doorway of the clubhouse, and I jumped, the gravelly edge putting me on alert. I relaxed when I realized it was Melody’s grandfather.

  “Ah,” said Tara.

  “The, uh…” said Sam.

  I had nothing.

  “We’re going camping,” said Melody. “It’s the end of our last summer together as high schoolers. We figured it was about time we did some sort of coming-of-age thing.”

  “Right,” said Tara. “We just hadn’t, ah, figured out where we were going yet.”

  “Interesting,” said Gramps. “Your aura’s a bit off, though. It’s like you’re holding something back. Care to fill me in on the rest of your plan?”

  He motioned to me and Sam to help him with his wheelchair and the step up into the clubhouse. I was surprised to see that he could get up and move, albeit slowly, without a cane, though he was clearly not strong enough to hoist the wheelchair into the room by himself.

  When he got situated, he sat back down and rolled across the room to the little kitchen table we were sitting at and looked at the contents spread on the surface. Before we could think to stop him, he picked up the photograph from Fredericksburg. His face twisted slightly; I thought it looked like sorrow.

  “Where’d you get this?” he asked finally.

  Silence reigned. Finally Melody shrugged and said “Matthew’s garage. I saw a vision of him and he was telling me to look in the garage. When we went there, we found that, and this.” She slid the piece of paper and the scrap of cloth across the table. “Now we are trying to decide what to do about it.”

  Gramps looked at the items and then looked at each one of us individually, his eyes slightly unfocused. “I see,” he said. Then he motioned for Melody to give him her phone. He dialed a number and when it picked up, he said, “Margaret, would you come out here, please? I think we have a situation.”

  #

  I sat back and watched. There was no way I was interfering. I was going to leave the theatrics up to the girls and let the chips fall where they may.

  “No, absolutely not,” said Gram. “You are in no way prepared for this kind of ordeal.”

  “No thanks to you,” said Gramps, blandly.

  Gram whirled on him. “Harold, stay out of this.”

  His expression was bland, but his shoulders were set. “I have --for her entire life-- stayed out of this. But now she’s an adult, or very nearly one, and she’s ill-equipped to deal with the hand she’s been dealt. If you will not let them go to Orla alone, then we at least, must go with them.”

  Sam looked at me, eyes wide. This wasn’t at all what I had expected. After the debacle with the Golden Queen, I expected Melody’s grandparents to write us all off as delinquents, but that wasn’t what was happening.

  “What do you mean go with us?” I asked tentatively.

  “Gideon, he said exactly what he meant,” Gram said, irritated.

  “You know I am right, Margaret. They have a lot of raw talent and youth on their side, but they lack experience, and that we have in spades.”

  “But we are not a full quarrel.”

  “I know that, but they are.”

  “What about Esme?” asked Tara, her voice hesitant. “She’s a part of your quarrel, isn’t she? Along with… Matthew?”

  Gram pursed her lips and stared off into the distance. “Yes, she is. But I’d rather not have her politics involved in this.”

  “Politics?” asked Sam, echoing my own question. It was a strange word choice.

  “Never mind.” She shook her head firmly. “You had better tell us everything,” she said, motioning for me to get up out of my seat.

  I gave it up gladly.

  71. MELODY

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Were my grandparents actually helping us to formulate a plan to stop the vortex in Orla? Were they really planning on going “camping” with us to some lonely old ghost town in West Texas to stop an out-pouring of supernatural entities? I assumed that was what this was all about – else why the panic from Matthew’s ghost? It had to be bad. It had to be like that night in my room, only a hundred times worse. I shivered.

  I wandered to the front corner of the room where the photo of Matthew and I was still propped up against the wall from the other night. I looked around and saw the glint of a few missed splinters still hiding under the loveseat.

  “Maybe I should call her now?” I heard Sam say.

  “Don’t tell her what we’re up to,” warned Gram.

  I let the screen door bang behind me as I left to get the broom, relieved for a break from all the woo-woo talk. Footfalls from behind me preceded Tara’s voice.

  “Where you going?” she asked, slightly out of breath, catching up to me.

  “Just to get the broom – to sweep up the broken glass.” It’s like the universe wasn’t going to let me forget. How many times was I going to have to sweep?

  “I’m sorry about the whole Lily thing,” Tara started.

  I could tell she really was sorry, but truly, I wasn’t bothered about that right now. Instead I was just numb. “Don’t worry about it. G. and Sam both seem sure that she needs to be there, and there might be a good reason for it. I don’t even care about that. I kind of don’t care about anything right now – none of it will bring Matthew back.”

  Tara followed me inside, and I rummaged through the pantry for the dustpan.

  “No, it won’t. But closure is good, right?”

  I looked over my shoulder at her; she blinked behind her glasses, the blue of her eyes went battleship gray in the dim light. “You know, I was just about at a point in which I didn’t feel torn up every time I thought about him. I was really on my way to being normal again and now, here we are, ripping open that wound, pouring salt on it… I wish we had never used that stupid Spirit Board.” I paused to take a breath and close my eyes. “I wish he had never shown up,” I whispered.

  I felt Tara reach around from behind me and throw her arms around my shoulders. She put her face on my back and said, “I know.”

  We stood like that for a moment or two longer, until I became vaguely embarrassed that someone was giving me a hug. I wiped at my eyes a little bit, and then we ventured back to the clubhouse, broom and dustpan in hand.

  “It’s decided then,” announced Gram with finality.

  “What’s decided?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.

  She looked at me, a frown line between her eyes. “We need to be in Orla before the solar eclipse, with enough time to set up. There’s nowhere to camp out there, so we’re just goin
g to have to stay overnight somewhere along the way.”

  “Or drive straight through…” Sam suggested, hesitantly. “I mean, we could, right? Just leave at night and keep driving straight through until morning?”

  “We could, but you all really need to be in the best shape possible for this – that means a good night’s sleep and a decent meal. You will need all the energy and focus you can muster.”

  I approached the table and looked at the Texas highway map spread out across the table. Someone had highlighted the route to Orla with an orange marker, and I traced it with my finger. And as I did that, a small tingle went up my finger and into my arm. I pulled my finger away from the paper and then put it down on the orange highlighted line again. The tingle came back. “Weird,” I said.

  “What’s weird?” asked Gramps, wheeling up next to me.

  “When I put my finger on the line, I feel a tingle in my arm.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “Feeling energy from a map is not that different from feeling it from a photograph. The same principle applies. The question is, do you get a good sense or a bad sense from it?”

  The others had stopped talking to watch me as I traced the line again. I frowned, trying to concentrate on what I was picking up. “It feels normal until right about here,” I stroked a part of the map with my finger again. “Here there’s a little resistance, as if I am pushing my finger over a… bump?”

  “Very good. That is how it feels to me, too. But not everyone will feel it the same way. See if you can figure out why you sense the energy change there.”

  I ducked down to get a closer look at the map. There were the usual lines for farm to market roads, highways, and the interstate. But in that particular spot along the route, the only thing that stuck out as being different was a mountain range. “There’s something like mountains there,” I peered at the map. “The Callahan Divide.”

  Gramps grinned at me. “Very good.”

  I smiled slightly and looked up to see Sam looking at me. He nodded to me with a tight-lipped smile and I felt a tiny butterfly flutter in my stomach. I smiled back at him, and I think I might have blushed a little bit too.