Realmwalker

by Jonathan Franks

  Realmwalker

  JONATHAN FRANKS

  Copyright © 2015 Jonathan Franks

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1517086345

  ISBN-13: 978-1517086343

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my daughter, Samantha.

  It’s possible, Samantha, that without you, I may never have laughed my own first laugh of true joy. I hope your own life is filled with love and adventure and that you can live as fully and give as much of yourself as our heroes do.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  introduction

  PART ONE

  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

  Part Two

  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

  PART THREE

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my early readers: Christina Zastrow, Eric Kirsner, Felicia Franks, Frank O’Brien, and Oz Heller. I’d also like to thank Darren Callahan and Kevin Leonard for their continued support.

  Sign up for the author’s New Releases mailing list and get a free copy of the latest novella Plainsmen: The Drop.

  Click here to get started:

  http://www.jonathanfranks.info

  And please consider writing a review of this book on Amazon. Reviews are what keep self-published authors’ works relevant.

  introduction

  It all begins when a child laughs for the first time.

  Some people say it begins at conception. Others, that it begins at birth, or when long-term memories begin to form. Hell, some people say it doesn’t really start until puberty. They’re all wrong.

  A person’s life doesn’t really begin at any of these points. It begins the first time he or she laughs, a real laugh of the pure joy that comes so naturally to babies and with such difficulty to the rest of us.

  James Barrie’s fanciful stories of the boy who wouldn’t grow up were fantastically close to being true, but in the way that things like this happen, the truth was lost as it turned into a story. He wrote, “When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.” He was close, but not quite right.

  As an origin story, it’s beautiful and poetic, and, like all myths that persist over time, it has a grain of truth to it. We know the evolutionary path that we took in order to become who we are, to become homo sapiens, to become humans. There was no proper “first baby.” But there are babies, and the first time a baby laughs its first joyful laugh, that laugh does go skipping about, and that is the beginning of a new fairy. That is when a person’s life truly begins.

  Babies grow into the people they become and life their lives, struggling in their struggles and happy in their happinesses. Their fairies live their lives, too, and they struggle in their struggles and are happy in their happinesses. They often powerfully embody the true nature of their humans, for, as creatures born of our emotion, their existence is closely tied to the spirit who brought them into being.

  We are linked for the entirety of our lives, us and our fairies. If only we could see what they were up to, each of us would have a much keener insight as to who we are as people. Sadly for us all, we journey along our paths without knowing how any of our steps or our missteps will impact those to whom we are connected. And just as sadly, the fairies, even with all of their wisdom and magic, have no more insight about the ways in which their deeds affect the lives of their humans. They know only that when their human dies, so do they; and when they die, their human dies, as well.

  Nobody knows how it happens. Nobody knows how that first spark of joy comes to life. And nobody knows why, but that fairy and that child are forever linked, their lives entwined, spiraling and dancing around one another in a beautiful binary system: growing together; complementing and influencing one another; on a quantum level both bound to and separated from each other as long as they both shall live and when we die, so do our counterparts.

  Up the airy mountain,

  Down the rushy glen,

  We daren’t go a-hunting

  For fear of little men.

  - William Allingham, The Fairies

  PART ONE

  chapter 1

  Her name was Genevieve, but Mommy always introduced her as “Genny-with-a-G.” She didn’t know what “with-a-G” meant because Mommy only ever said that when she was talking about Genny to other people.

  It was a hot, hot day. Mommy and Genny were at the park. Mommy had slathered Genny with white stuff out of a bottle. “Someday you’ll thank me for using all of this sunscreen,” Mommy was saying while she rubbed it on. “You only get one skin.”

  Even if Genny knew what Mommy was talking about, she had a hard time being grateful about it. The white stuff was freezing cold when she put it on. Everything that came out of a bottle always ended up freezing cold, even when Mommy tried to warm it up in her hands first. And it smelled funny.

  Mommy was sitting on a bench with Genny on her lap, talking to another woman, who also had a baby on her lap. Genny looked the other baby over, then lost interest. There was so much else to see here. The sky was so colorful. The grass was, too. It was so different than the white ceiling and shiny wood floors at home. She watched a beautiful butterfly flit from bush to bush.

  Then she heard the tree saying something above her head. She looked up at it. Every time she looked at a tree, she was surprised that it could be so tall, taller than Mommy or Daddy were, and that was pretty amazing. Looking up at the tree, she heard the noise again and saw the tree wiggling back and forth, way up there.

  Then it dropped something on her. A twirling, whirling thing, spinning its way down from way up in the tree down straight onto her nose. It stuck there for a moment, glued in place by the sticky white stuff Mommy had smeared on her nose. It tickled, and, deeply, happily, and completely satisfied with life, Genny giggled.

  -

  She opened her eyes. She was standing in a cave. It was very dark, but the stone floor was etched with strange, glowing symbols and circles and triangles, all centered around the very spot where she now stood.

  She wasn’t alone in the cave. The glow from the runes reflected in many pairs of eyes all around here, but she couldn’t quite make anyone out until someone stepped forward enough to be visible in the pale, golden glow.

  “Welcome, our new arrival,” the figure said. She was a beautiful, slender figure, wearing a short gown of a shimmering, iridescent green material, matching green moccasins, and a simple silver circlet crowning her rich, golden-blonde hair. As she took another step forward, her wings became visible, as well. Extending nearly arm’s length above her head, her wings were made of several cells of shiny, nearly transparent membrane, laced together by delicate, jet black veins. They shone beautifully in the golden light.

  She continued, “Welcome to our home.”

  Dozens of voices followed
her, echoing in the chamber. “Welcome to our home.”

  The fairy with the silver circlet approached, stopping at the perimeter of the sacred circle carved into the ground, then circled, saying, “You are one of us. You are part of us. This is now your home.”

  The other voices said, in unison, “Welcome to your home.”

  “I’m Nai, and I am the Sovereign here.” She continued, “Now, we find out what you’re meant to be.” She stopped walking directly behind the new arrival.

  “Be still,” Nai said, just as the new arrival began to turn around to face her. The new arrival didn’t move, but waited.

  Nai’s voice was low as she spoke again, singsong but in an unsettling cadence, in a language the new arrival didn’t understand. The runes and shapes on the ground briefly flashed a brighter shade of gold, then slowly changed to a vibrant green. The geometric patterns on the floor seemed to shift and change. The changing colors and patterns on the floor and Nai’s voice softly rising and falling in pitch were all the new arrival could process. The rest of the world had faded away.

  She shook her head to help regain some clarity and she realized that Nai was no longer speaking and was standing in front of her. The circles on the floor had stopped glowing and were now overgrown in a thick tangle of leafy vines.

  The new arrival looked back down at the ground, startled. “Ivy?” she asked.

  Nai was smiling broadly, a friendly, welcoming smile, apple-red lips parted to reveal perfect, cloud-white teeth. “Welcome, Ivy.” Nai turned away and addressed the audience, still unseen in the shadows.

  “Please, everyone,” she raised her hands, palms turned upward, to shoulder level and the golden glow returned, bright enough to alight the entire chamber. Ivy looked down and saw that the vines were gone, leaving only the inscribed stone floor of the cave.

  Ivy could now see that there were a few dozen others in the cavern with her. Male, female, short, tall, slender, fat, well dressed, dirty, there were all sorts. Each had wings similar to Nai’s. Ivy frowned and started to turn around to look at her own back.

  Nai stopped her by placing a hand on Ivy’s shoulder. “Welcome our newest: Ivy.” The cave erupted into the claps and cheers of the other fairies. Nai stood behind Ivy once more, a hand on each of her shoulders. Ivy got a chill as Nai traced her fingers down her back and then felt a raw, aching, pulling sensation at her shoulders. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the feeling.

  She felt Nai’s hands return to her shoulders and turn her around. “Open your eyes,” she said.

  Ivy opened her eyes to see water on the far wall of the cave. The water stopped running down the wall and became absolutely still, forming a perfectly flat mirror. Ivy took herself in for the first time.

  She was of medium height compared to the other fairies in the chamber, with deep, curly brown hair hanging down over her shoulders. Her pointed ears peeked out from her hair. She was wearing a simple, ivory-white fitted smock that exactly fit the shape of her body, fitted, but not tight, and thigh-length. The moccasins she wore were similar to Nai’s, but they were also that same creamy, off-white color. Ivy took in all of this in a moment. Her attention fixed on her own wings. They came to much sharper points than Nai’s, but seemed otherwise to be much the same. She flexed them and they shimmered gold and green in the light radiating from the floor.

  “Come,” said Nai, applying a gentle pressure to turn Ivy around again. “Come with me.” She took her hand from Ivy’s shoulder and held it out to her. Ivy took Nai’s hand and walked uncertainly to the mouth of the cave. Her legs felt a little wobbly and sore as she walked.

  The entrance to the cave was a small outcrop in the side of a mountain, big enough for Nai and Ivy to stand on together, but not much larger. The view took Ivy’s breath away. The sky was a rich blue, cut sharply in contrast to the vibrant green of the grass far below them. The carpet of green grass stretched as far as she could see, broken only by orderly groves of trees and perfect squares of wheat in the distance.

  She looked down the side of the mountain. At its feet was a thick wood, and soft curls of gray smoke rose from various parts of it. She could barely make out structures and their thatched roofs through the canopy of the trees.

  “That’s where we live,” Nai said. “Your house is waiting for you. Shall we?”

  Ivy’s eyes grew wide as she looked from Nai back down the side of the mountain. She started to protest, but Nai cut her off.

  “Just spread your wings, Ivy.” Her voice was smooth and reassuring, as though she had explained this many, many times before. “Feel how strong they are when you flex them and move them. Feel the wind with them.”

  Ivy did as she was told. She stretched them wide, enjoying the feeling of them as they caught the gentle breeze. She flitted them about, then quickly discovered she could keep them going in a gentle buzz. She increased the speed slightly and felt her weight lighten on her feet.

  Nai smiled again at her. “Come. Let’s go home,” she said, and they flew down the mountain to the village in the trees below.

  chapter 2

  Pepper was sitting in what he considered to be his throne. There really was no concept of royalty in his particular realm, but he was definitely the one in charge, and he felt he deserved a place of honor. Other realms had kings and queens, sovereigns and governesses to watch over them. The Reaping... Well, The Reaping had Pepper.

  The Reaping wasn’t actually Pepper’s native realm. He was originally from the Winter Kingdom. It had been seven long years since his banishment, forced to leave the cold and beautiful crystalline elegance and blinding white plains for a life in this place. This was a realm of brambles; of bubbling, sulphurous streams; of skies blood red by day and inky black, stained with orange clouds by night. It had taken him years to get accustomed to the heat.

  Pepper stood abruptly, startling Hish, the other fairy in the room with him, his number two. Pepper ignored Hish’s surprised look as he strode to the balcony and looked outside. He could see the shimmering waves of heat hovering over the ground, far beneath his stone tower. He glimpsed at the twin mountains, closer than they seemed. The mellow, orange glow of lava streams laced the side of the mountains like veins. They were hypnotic to watch.

  He turned around and leaned against the railing, feeling disgusted. He looked at his throne. It was a large object, made partially from carved obsidian and from petrified wood. The arms were made from the ribs of a spidermouse, shaped by magic after Pepper, himself, had slain the creature.

  He turned to Hish, who had resumed writing speedily, yet carefully, on a long scroll. Hish was a seer. Pepper had discovered him not long after he had come to The Reaping, telling fortunes to other fairies for scraps or for shelter. Hish had been ridiculed as a fraud by his peers after several of his visions and prophecies did not occur as he had predicted, but Pepper’s own gift allowed him to identify and discern true magic. Hish’s gift was, indeed, true magic.

  Since their meeting nearly seven years ago, Pepper had formed a theory about Hish’s visions and premonitions. When Hish had a premonition about an event in the near future, that event’s outcome was far easier to influence than an event farther off. Hish had an ability to focus on near-term, specific events, which was rare for seers, but it had allowed Pepper to capitalize on that information and unseat his rival fairies. In one instance, Hish had identified which goblet the baronet would later drink from later that evening, and what time that would be, so that Pepper was able to ingratiate himself with the baronet as well as poison him, assured of his death at the appropriate moment.

  They both knew that Pepper could not have risen to power here as fast as he did without Hish’s help. They were partners, and if Pepper wanted Hish out of the picture, clearly, Hish would be the first to know, most likely before even Pepper, himself. But Pepper truly had no intentions of severing their partnership. Hish was a trusted friend and a valuable asset.

  “Why did you start like that when I got up?” Pepper asked
.

  “I was engrossed in my work,” Hish said. “I had actually forgotten you were there.” He shrugged, then took a slow, deliberate drink from the ornate, fluted snifter of brandywine. He sighed, then smiled. “Good stuff.”

  “After all this time, I’m still surprised when something startles you.”

  “I can’t see everything coming. I’d have to be Seeing all the time.”

  Pepper nodded and turned around to face outside again. He felt a trickle of sweat dribble down his back between his wings. He shuddered with the sudden chill it left. He yearned for a stiff, frigid breeze, missing the feeling of wind so cold it pulled the tears from his eyes and froze them to his lashes, knowing that he would never return and feel that blast of cold again.

  Hish had told him that he would leave this realm, but not to return to the Winter Kingdom. That prophecy was quite clear that he would never return there again. Indeed, he had given up trying. It said that he must bridge the Realms and travel out of this place to avoid a death not of his own making. A threat that comes neither from without nor from within, but from afar, and without malice.

  Seeing the prophecies took one set of skills. Deciphering them required another. Pepper and Hish hadn’t found anyone who could reliably do that. They had named every Realm they knew between them and had come up with nothing. He didn’t know where he had to go. He only knew that time was short. He’d see only one blood moon again. The next blood moon was just a year away.

  Hish’s voice broke Pepper’s reverie. “New arrival.”

  Pepper almost told him that there were no signs of one, but as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, he saw the rivers of lava part, revealing the entrance to the Cave of Greeting. Every realm had a similar cave. Some were open to the elements and to visitors all the time. Others, such as the one in The Reaping, only opened when a new arrival was imminent.