The boy continued to gaze intently until the submarine had completely surfaced. The undersea boat was interesting, but he had seen it many times before, and it certainly was not magic. There must be something else, but nothing else emerged. After a while, Demos looked at his father, and said with disappointment in his voice, “It’s only our submarine, Father. It’s not magic.” He continued to search his father’s face for some explanation.
Demetri put his hand gently on the boy’s head. “The magic is not the submarine, Demos. The magic is what the submarine has carried here to our island.”
Now the boy looked both interested and confused. “What it is Father? What did it bring?”
“Our future—your future, my son. It is the most powerful magic the world has ever experienced—a Force to control every race, language, nationality and people group in the world. It is magic that controls people’s minds and desires so that they will long to completely submit to it. It has chosen us, and it has come to us here to Labyrinth to live with us and teach us. For now it is in pieces, but later this evening the workers will take it from the vessel and bring it onto the shore. Then you and I will have it assembled here on Labyrinth. One day when the time is right, the magic will call you and send you far away from this island. It will give you the power to rule over all of the peoples of the world—the magic will make them your servants. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.” The child’s gray eyes glinted with excitement. Taking his father’s hand, Demos watched as the last rays of light disappeared from the sky cloaking the ocean in blackness.
Epilogue
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon in Connecticut. The Sinclair brothers had planned to take their children to the zoo, but the weather had prevented their outing. Both wives had gone shopping, and Jarrod and Joshua were left to entertain the children. “Daddy! Tell us a story!” six-year-old Benjamin pleaded.
“Alright,” Jarrod responded. “This is a story about your Uncle Joshua and me. When we were just about your age, our Sunday school teacher told us that the devil is powerful, and that if we weren’t good he would get us!
“When we told Grandpa what she had said, he told us that we were Christian boys, and the devil can’t get Christian boys. And then he told us something else—something very important. He said that the devil is not powerful; all power belongs to God and to Jesus. The devil uses force, but he has no power. Grandpa then told us that God’s power is unlimited. He created everything there is in heaven and on earth. He has the power to protect us and to help us in every situation. There is nothing that is too hard for God because His power can both create and destroy. But the devil is different. He cannot create anything. He likes to destroy things—especially people’s lives, but he has never created one single thing because force cannot create.
“Grandpa said that lots of things have force: floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, but they are only able to destroy. Tornadoes have destroyed many towns, but you will never hear of one passing by and creating a town. The earth is filled with destructive forces, but those forces are nothing compared to God’s power.
“Then Grandpa told us something that he wanted us to always remember. He said that as long as we have the power of God’s Holy Spirit in us, the devil can never defeat us, and we never need to fear him. Grandpa said that one day God would call us to take a stand against the forces of Satan, and Grandpa was right; one day He did.
“But that happened a long time ago, long before the great fire had destroyed Doppelganger, long before Josef and his father had visited Cornucopia, long before we had suffered our great loss, on a cold January afternoon when snowflakes the size of goose feathers filled the sky and floated softly to the ground.
“Someday, when you are grown, God will call you to take a stand against Satan’s forces. When that day comes, trust God to protect you. And whenever you feel afraid remember this: Whenever power and force collide, power always wins the fight.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joyce and Alexandra Swann are mother and daughter. Joyce homeschooled her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees. She is a well-known author and speaker on the subject of homeschooling. For nearly a decade she was a popular columnist for Practical Homeschooling Magazine. She now blogs regularly on parenting, homeschooling, and Christian lifestyle issues.
Joyce and Alexandra have co-authored three other novels: The Fourth Kingdom, The Twelfth Juror and The Chosen. The Fourth Kingdom was a top four finalist in the Christianity Today 2011 book of the year awards. Joyce’s personal story of her experiences raising and educating her family is chronicled in Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother, published in February of 2011. Her novel, The Warrior, which tells the story of one woman’s ten-year prayer vigil for a man she has never met, was released in May of 2012. She is also the author of two children’s books, Tales of Pig Isle and The McAloons, which began as stories that she told to entertain her grandchildren.
Alexandra is author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master’s Degree at Age Sixteen and Writing for Today. For fifteen years she was self-employed in the financial services industry. She was the 2011 Chairwoman of the Board of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Her novel The Planner, which is the prequel to The Chosen, was published in June of 2012.
Find these and other books by the Swanns visit their website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Table of Contents
Available Titles from Frontier 2000 Media
copyright
Prologue
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 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
Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The Force (The Kingdom Chronicles) Page 24
