Prophecy of the Stars Book 1
Destined
Rae Hendricks
Copyright
© 2019 by Raven Heidrich
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Acknowledgements
So much has gone into this book, it has felt like a marathon. I think there are a lot of people I need to thank for this particular book, and so, bear with me.
To my husband for listening to me complain about the formatting as I tried to get it just right, thinking I was going to lose my mind. And thank you to my daughter for her patience as I slaved away over this thing.
Thank you to those who were willing to beta read when I was a little lost as how to make this book the best it ever could be.
I want to thank Heather Adkins and Rebecca Hamilton for introducing me to ways to improve both my marketing and writing, and even my time management, with without these new techniques I don’t know if this book would have ever gotten done.
And a big shout out to all of my author tribe for the way they always root for me even when it seems the rest of the world wants me to fail.
Chapter One
Miss Andrews? Shiloh!”
Shiloh Andrews snapped up at the sound of her name, only to see Mrs. Wilson unhappily staring her down. Mrs. Wilson taught high school trigonometry and was very serious about doing so. Shiloh, on the other hand, had the bad habit of using her math class as an opportunity to watch the afternoon P.E. class just outside the window and imagine that she was anywhere but Lynnwood High.
“Don’t tell me that watching a soccer game is more exciting than tangents.”
A small group of people in the classroom snickered, but Shiloh did not think that Mrs. Wilson was the type to let out jokes--especially about her own class. “Um, no ma’am,” she muttered, hoping that this whole conversation would be over in the coming seconds.
If Shiloh had been a different type of teenager, maybe more brave or rebellious, she would have given her teacher a different answer. The woman deserved it for how much she thought of herself and her teaching methods when really much of the class was boring and pointless. Of course, math was necessary in life, but Shiloh couldn’t necessarily see the value of trig specifically if she wasn’t planning a career that required it. And she certainly did not see the value in a teacher stuck in her ways and lording herself over the students.
But having no friends to impress because she wasn’t popular, and not wanting to get in trouble and disappoint her parents, she made sure not to cause any trouble.
“I didn’t think so! Pay. Attention!” The sour woman turned on her heel and strutted back to the board, clearly very proud of herself. “There is going to be a quiz tomorrow! I hope you’re all prepared!” The class collectively groaned, and a thin, terse frown graced the teacher’s face. But much to everyone’s relief, the bell signaling that school was out rang a few seconds later. Shiloh breathed a sigh of relief herself. ‘Another week over,’ she thought. She couldn’t wait to be done with high school for good because she thought it to be a massive waste of time. She didn’t relate to any of her peers and found herself coasting through each school day, just trying to get it over with.
Maybe college would be more up her alley, or a career. She secretly longed to find some place she could fit in. But she still just never had.
Stepping out into the chilly November air, she began her short walk home. She dragged it out as long she could; not because she didn’t want to go home--she loved her home and her parents very much--but to appreciate the colors of the changing leaves and the smell of fall.
She was adopted, and her parents had never bothered to hide it from her. It was hard not to know, just by looking at them. Shiloh’s jet-black hair, deep blue eyes and tall, lanky body contrasted quite starkly with both of her adopted parents’ brown eyes and tanned skin. Her mother was short, curvy, and blonde; almost her opposite in every physical way. Still, she didn’t feel adopted. She didn’t know if that was something one would even feel, but her parents never once made her feel any different than someone who had not been adopted. In fact, it was rare that she even thought of it, because she felt that this family was hers, biological or not. But that didn’t mean other didn’t prey upon the facts, especially at school functions. Even counselors for years were sure she must have been in need of help since all adopted children had deep seeded issues. They couldn’t accept that she was okay and loved.
A while back, she had her mind set on gathering as much information about her birth parents as she could, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. She didn’t want her parents to think that they weren’t enough, or that they were doing anything wrong at all.
She watched other students walk in pairs and groups—giggling and shouting in the streets. She felt a slight tinge of jealousy but let it pass by her. She didn’t have much in the way of friends at school—she just had no interest in much of what they talked about. She supposed that it was mostly her fault for not making an effort, but she didn’t feel the need to pretend to care for things that she simply wasn’t interested in. After all, it was all temporary. She heard it from her parents all the time, how they had met their long-term friends in or after college. They had even found each other in college. This had soothed her many a night at an early age when it still bothered her that she didn’t seem to belong with the other kids. She probably wouldn’t keep in touch anyway.
Taking a turn onto the main street, she indulged her senses in the smell of coffee from a nearby café, taking a moment to glance inside the shop at the patrons. The people inside were busily working on laptops, reading thick novels and sipping on fancy lattes. She imagined herself as one of them, writing a novel over an Americano, or even just taking work calls with an espresso in hand. She wondered if they felt right in the world, like they belonged doing exactly what they were doing. She hoped that they did and silently wished that someday she would feel that, too.
When she returned to her journey home, her eye caught a figure across the street—staring directly in her direction. The figure felt vaguely familiar, as if it were someone she hadn’t seen in a long time. She sped up to walk towards the person, trying to get a better look at their face beneath the hood they had on. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the figure as she crossed the street. Until, seemingly out of nowhere, a car slammed loudly on its horn and its brakes. Tires squealed to a stop, and her gaze was forced away. She had narrowly missed being killed in the street—all because she thought she saw someone. Giving a small apology wave to the driver, she looked back towards the street— whoever it was, was long gone. Though, she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she had known the person or that they were around somewhere— watching her.
***
On Saturday mornings she woke up early to spend time in her favorite place. When she was alone in the woods and by the river behind her house, she felt free. So
metimes, her father joked with her that she must have been a fairy in another life.
She walked carefully amidst the tall trees shading her from the sun, her notebook carefully tucked under her arm. Finally, she felt at peace amongst the quiet of the forest. The chirps of birds and insects—a welcome background tune—put her at ease. Breathing in the fresh forest air immediately lifted her mood, and she felt any heaviness from the week lift away, and she felt light.
She had followed this path a thousand times. It would bring her down to the water, where she could sit on the rocks and write her thoughts down in her journal. Sometimes, she’d see little crawfish trapped in the divots of the rocks and help them back into the water. Other times, she just sat with her feet dipped in, enjoying the sun on her face.
She could have made it to the river with her eyes closed on any other day, but today was different. Her sneaker hit a rather large root sticking out of the ground, and she stumbled almost violently to the left side of the path, jarring her out of her daydreams in a shock. In her surprise, she reached over her head for a low-hanging tree branch, but her fingers only met air as she fell over the edge of the path—tumbling fast, down into the ravine below. With no time to grab onto anything to stop her fall, she felt sharp rocks dig into her ribs and branches and twigs cut into the skin on her face and hands. Finally, she hit the bottom, groaning.
Covered in bumps and bruises and nursing her right arm, she sat up and looked around her. It was a long and hard fall, and it looked even harder to climb back up. It was surprisingly steep, and she thought herself lucky to only have scrapes and bruises from such a fall. She was in unfamiliar territory, but she figured that, in reality, she wasn’t that far from the path and would probably end up somewhere near the river anyway if she kept walking in the same direction.
She briefly considered just heading on towards home in order to patch herself up, but she didn’t want to hear the grief her mother would give her when she came home covered in cuts and dirt, and besides, she felt just fine anyway. She picked up her notebook a few feet away from where she herself had landed—a little crumpled, but otherwise unharmed. And she set ahead, back on her journey to peace and solitude.
It was not long until she realized that it had been a mistake to keep going onward. She had been walking for what felt like hours, though it certainly hadn’t been nearly that. The sun still hadn’t even reached its high point in the sky. But she did know that walking to the river normally would take her fifteen minutes at her very slowest. Nothing looked familiar, but she began to feel as if something were pushing her further. Like invisible hands on her back, just urging her forward. The forest was becoming thicker and darker. She was going deeper and deeper into the woods with certainly no semblance of a trail. If she kept going, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to find her way back at all, but something inside told her to keep walking. A pull, or a magnetism of sorts. So, she did.
She quickly found herself fighting small branches and thick bushes in order to get through. When she finally broke through into a clearing, a small bridge gave her pause. It looked like something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting, except severely out of place, and quite old. Still, it stood strong. A cobblestone bridge in the middle of the forest, bypassing a sizable creek but leading to nowhere in particular. The bridge looked like it ended just into more dark, thick forest. She glanced around for evidence that there had been any other structures here in the past but noticed nothing else out of the ordinary.
Despite the bridge’s rather strange placement, it was unremarkable at best, and yet, it felt incredibly important. She had a strong feeling that if she were to cross that bridge it would be a decision that she could not take back. She sat directly in front of the closest entrance to the bridge and stared hard at it as if expecting it to tell her all its secrets.
‘What am I doing?’ she thought, almost angrily, at herself. ‘It’s a bridge. Just an old bridge’. She thought to herself that she was watching too many movies, and she forced herself up to a standing position, but still hesitated briefly before stalking quickly over the bridge. Halfway across it felt as if a heavy wind was all but blocking her from reaching the other side. The resistance was almost pushing her backwards, and yet she knew it was no real wind because not a single leaf on any tree in the vicinity was affected by it.
Still, she pressed forward, fighting against the wind, and only a few more feet down, the force stopped—and everything felt completely still once again. She might’ve taken that as a sign to turn back, if she had been any other girl, but instead it made her even more curious about this bridge and where exactly it would take her.
The tall trees on the other side almost completely blocked out the sun, and she shivered in the chill of the air. Maybe it was the cold, or the sudden lack of sun, but this side of the bridge felt somehow different. There was a smell in the air, almost like when autumn starts to creep in at the end of the summer. When she looked around, she found that the trees themselves were larger; the branches hanging over her looked to be half the size of normal tree trunks, just massive in every way. Even the leaves looked different—some strangely narrow and with a dark violet tinge, and others, a deep teal color and as wide across as her face. It was a rainbow of colors surrounding her.
As she trudged through this new forest, amazed by what she was looking at, she noticed that it was oddly silent but quickly let the thought go when she started to wonder if that were a sign of danger. She had read something on the fact that animals would flee when there was an incoming natural disaster or something of the like. The sun was still out, though, somewhere above those massive trees—because she could see it filtering through onto the forest floor in little specs here and there.
She continued walking, amazed at the greenery and hoping that she’d see a bug or a rabbit, something. But she didn’t have to worry about any impending weather disasters, because she wasn’t alone for long.
“Oh! Brother, brother! What do we haaave here?”
Shiloh jumped at the sound of a high-pitched voice coming from above. A small creature swung from a nearby branch and looked inquisitively at her, hanging precariously on one arm from the tree. It looked wretched and gross, but oddly familiar—like something she might’ve seen in a movie or a dream. She stared at it for a long time, stuck on wondering what exactly she was looking at and if it was even real to begin with. They sized each other up, and then it hit her that what she was looking at resembled almost exactly what she’d imagined a goblin to be.
She didn’t even know how she should react. Not that the noisy thing left her with much time or space for her mental wheels to turn.
“Brotheeer!” he chirped again gleefully. Another creature tumbled through the bushes and stopped short when he saw her. “A huuuman!”
The two creatures looked almost exactly alike—and like nothing she’d ever seen before. Their flesh looked to be a dirty green, though it could have simply been actual dirt and grime based on the appearance of them. It seemed as if it might be leathery to the touch, though she didn’t dare find out. Their huge eyes glinted with excitement, bloodshot, yellow, and as wide as saucers. And the smell—they were repulsive. It made her eyes water while she imagined it was the smell of road kill that had been baking on hot asphalt for several days. They stood about halfway up to her five foot four height, but were very rotund and clothed only by tatters of dirty linen.
The first creature snickered happily and dropped down from the tree to greet his brother. “Um. Hello?” she ventured, just incredulous that these things even existed, and that they spoke English, for that matter.
“Such a pretty girrrl..” the second creature almost hissed, his eyes narrowed, and a big, toothy smile graced his face. His teeth were sharp and shark-like, and there were two rows of them in his gaping mouth. He looked like he was eyeing his next meal. Sensing that this wasn’t a friendly meeting, she slowly stepped backwards, inching towards the way she came and hoping that they weren’t planning on
getting to know her any better.
“Brotheeer, where does she think she’s going?”
“Don’t be afraid! Come, come closer, pretty girl.” He gestured two hands, beckoning her, but all she could see was long, black, and cracked fingernails.
The first creature eyed her gleefully, and she didn’t want to imagine what plans he was making for her in his head. Either way, they were decidedly not good. Shiloh didn’t know if she could outrun them or what other powers they might have to capture her if she went back the way she came, but she knew she needed to be prepared to run or fight. She could almost hear the adrenaline rushing in her ears.
“Let’s take her to Scorpio. Think of the rewaaardsss..”
“No! Let’sss keep her for ourselves! She could be ourrss!”
“Don’t be an idiot!”
The two creatures began to bicker amongst themselves about which horrible fate they’d like to impose on her, and she took the opportunity to turn on her heel and run as fast as she could as adrenaline pumped through her body. She dropped her notepad and felt a twinge of regret but kept running—aiming to get back to the bridge.
It seemed that they hadn’t been distracted enough, though, as she heard the leaves of the trees above her rustling violently and immediately knew that they had caught up to her. Grotesque cackling echoed in her ears. Her muscles burned, she could hardly breathe, and her vision was blurry. Still, she pushed forward, knowing that nothing good could come of being captured by this odd set of brothers. Not to mention that she didn’t think she wanted to find out who Scorpio was at all.
More jeering entered her ears, and she couldn’t seem to lose them. Somehow, despite their looks, they were scarily fast climbing through the branches of the trees above.
Branches scraped at her face, and she batted them away, but she couldn’t feel the pain. She was only focused on trying not to trip over the forest terrain. And then it was in the distance. She caught glimpses of that strange, misplaced, cobblestone bridge between the trees. It looked like freedom. If she could just get there, she somehow knew that safety would lie on the other side.
Destined (Prophecy of the Stars Book 1) Page 1
