by Smith, Skye
MAYA'S AURA
Destroy the Tea Party
(Book Eight in the Series)
By Skye Smith
Copyright (C) 2012 Skye Smith
All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.
Cover Illustration is a part of "The Moon" by Alphonse Mucha (1902)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Revision 0 ISBN: 978-0-9881314-8-4
MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Cover Flap
NOTE: This is the eigth novel in the “Maya’s Aura” series.
This naughty novel of magic and mayhem begins with Maya visiting Nana, her great grandmother, who lives alone on an island in Boston Bay. Nana, a historian, is using Maya’s psychic aura to visualize the memories of their long dead foremother, Britta. The psychic memories are so vibrant, so real, that Maya looses herself to them.
Britta is a new immigrant to America who’s forced labor is auctioned on the dock to repay the cost of the ship’s fare from England. Thus she becomes a redemptioner, an indentured servant, a debt slave. Worse, because she is a comely young debt slave, everyone assumes that her body is for hire.
Welcome to the adventures of a teen working at a dead end job in a coffee shop to pay off her debts. This in an era when the economy is bad because of the cost of wars and a banking crisis. An era when multinational corporations are putting locals out of work and banks are foreclosing on the unemployed. An era when the only men getting richer are the bosses who run the smuggling, the slavery, and the drugs.
Welcome to Massachusetts in the era of the Boston Tea Party.
MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
About The Author
Skye Smith is my pen name. My family convinced me not to use my real name because my stories are so critical of predator males. You'll understand and forgive me this as you fall in love with sweet Maya, my main character.
For those of you who like stories about vampires, witches, and magic, you won’t be disappointed by my very different, more realistic take on it all. My vampires are parasites wearing business suits. My witches are healers ignored by the modern world. My magic is based on aura’s, and everyone has felt or seen an aura at least once in their lives.
The novels so far in the "Maya's Aura" series are:
1. “The Awakening" …… - published - She discovers her strange aura.
2. "The Refining" ………. - published - She learns how to use her aura.
3. “The Ashram” ……….. - published - She searches for answers in India
4. “Goa to Nepal” ………. - published - She follows a quest into the Himalayas
5. “The Charred Coven” ... - published - She fights black craft in England.
6. “The Crystal Witch” …. - published - She learns psychic craft in England
7. “The Redemptioner” … - published - Psychic dreams of her ancestor Britta.
8. “Destroy the Tea Party” - published - Britta’s adventures in Boston in 1773.
MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Forward
This is the eighth novel in the Maya series, but you can read any of these books out of sequence and still enjoy them, so long as you know the premise that they are based upon. In other words, if you haven’t already read novel seven, “The Redemptioner”, then read this forward before you read chapter one.
Maya has a mystical and powerful sixth sense that she calls her aura. Her aura is like a super sensitive sense of touch, but without actually touching. It is a proximity sense because it can reach out to another person, and even into another person. You may also think of it as a healing touch, for she has used it to cure dis-ease in bodies and minds.
There is some kind of connection between auras and quartz crystals. For instance auras can be stored in, reflected from, and focused by quartz crystals. For some reason, when a crystal is charged with an aura, it is also charged with the thoughts of the person. If Maya falls asleep with another person’s crystal close to her neck, her aura interprets any memories stored in the crystal and Maya visualizes them as if they were her own dreams.
In both the seventh and eighth novels in this series, Maya is wearing a crystal pendant that belonged to one of her foremothers, Britta Fisher, and this has her dreaming of Britta’s memories, which have been stored in the crystal for hundreds of years.
In the seventh novel “The Redemptioner” Maya sees glimpses of Britta’s journey from England to Rhode Island, and glimpses of her first year in New England. In 1772, teenage Britta and her younger brother Jon took a ‘deferred payment’ passage to America to be with their mother, who was transported to the new world under allegations of witchcraft.
Payment for such a passage was due on arrival. As was usual in the era, this meant that Britta and Jon must sign away years of their life to work for a local businessman, who will repay the shipping company for their passage. In other words they become indentured servants, aka bondsmen, aka debt slaves, aka redemptioners.
Their bond master is Mr. Sabin, who owns a tavern near to the docks in Providence, and the teens must work for him in the tavern for two years. Britta’s hopes for the New World were twofold, find her mother, and find a kind husband with prospects, but both hopes are now crushed by their bond to Sabin.
Her mother was supposed to have been transported to Boston, so they have landed at the wrong place. Worse, no kind man with prospects will ever offer marriage to a redemptioner ale wench. Not that men don’t make offers, they do, for young and comely redemptioners tend to lose their virtue quickly, and ale wenches often earn extra money by doing ‘favors’.
Sabin’s Tavern is a favorite with the businessmen of Providence, and she serves them all. The rich, the powerful, the ships captains, the slavers, the smugglers, and their lawyers and agents. The richest, most powerful ship owner of all is John Brown. He has his fingers in everything whether legal or illegal, moral or immoral.
When John Brown burns the customs schooner Gaspee in an outright act of piracy, Britta’s brother Jon is at his side, and witnesses everything. Fearing violence to the boy either from the customs agents, or from Brown and his crew, Sabin spirits Britta and Jon away from Providence and across the border into the Province of Massachusetts’s Bay.
Once there, Sabin sells their bonds to Mrs. Lydia Caldwell, who husband owns the largest dairy plantation in the region. Britta is to be her maid, while Jon is to assist the husband in managing the Black chattel slaves that work the dairy. The Caldwell’s are slavers who breed slaves like they breed dairy cattle.
For Britta, life in a small farming community of Puritans is different, but just as bad as her life in a dockside tavern in Providence. Although the number of lusty men that pester her has dropped from countless to just two, she must now suffer the shunnings of the local pious women.
The summer heat simmers with lust, which becomes adultery, which results in a murder, and a cover up. With her husband dead, Lydia escapes embarrassing questions by temporarily moving to Boston, and she takes Britta and Jon with her. Since the estate is tied up in legal wranglings, money worries force Lydia to open the Anchor Coffee Shoppe near to the market and the docks of Boston.
One of their first ‘regulars’ is one S
amuel Adams, a government clerk and politician who is in trouble with the tax officials. Sam and another politician, Jemmy Otis, decide to rent a meeting room in the same building as the coffee shop for the use of a committee that they are setting up. In the months that follow, Britta meets all of the Adams and Otis families, as well as many anti-governor politicians. She even helps them by delivering messages, and passing on the news she hears while serving coffee.
Although there is still no trace of her mother, Britta does meet and fall in love with a kind man with prospects, namely Jim Otis, the son of Jemmy. Against the wishes of his mother, they become engaged.
Okay, that’s enough about “The Redemptioner”, now enjoy “Destroy the Tea Party”.
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MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Table of Contents
Title Page
Cover Flap
About the Author
Forward
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Autumn in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts
Chapter 2 - Mary's Cafe, near Hull
Chapter 3 - November 1772, Anchor Coffee Shoppe, Boston
Chapter 4 - The Committees of Correspondence
Chapter 5 - The Town Meeting at Faneuil
Chapter 6 - Britta learns self defense
Chapter 7 - Lydia is betrayed
Chapter 8 - The Austrian Ball
Chapter 9 - The Killing Cold
Chapter 10 - Britta's Coffee Shoppe
Chapter 11 - Discovered
Chapter 12 - The Company speaks
Chapter 13 - Jemmy's Demon
Chapter 14 - Love Letters
Chapter 15 - The British Coffee House
Chapter 16 - Lobster feast at Nantasket
Chapter 17 - Lydia hands back the bonds
Chapter 18 - Britta becomes a Spy
Chapter 19 - The Marranos
Chapter 20 - The Occupy Movement
Chapter 21 - The Tradesmen stand up
Chapter 22 - Francis Rotch comes to stay
Chapter 23 - Big John Brown
Chapter 24 - Abducted
Chapter 25 - Trapped in the Dory
Chapter 26 - Destroy the Tea
Chapter 27 - Cleaning up after the Party
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MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Chapter 1 - Autumn in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts
Damn, Maya cursed herself, late again. She should have had this minivan back to Mary at the cafe an hour ago. Mary was on her own there because her folks were still on vacation in Florida. Now it was night. It meant she would have to do the run over to Nana's island in the dark. Thank God she brought the runabout over and not the aluminum cartop boat.
Shopping always seemed to take longer than it should, especially when the local liquor store was out of Prosecco. Maya laughed at her self. Five miles each way just to find her favorite wine.
She could see the big street light above the marina now, so she was almost there. Oh good the lights were still on in the cafe. Mary would still be there. She slowed for the speed bumps and pulled into the parking lot. It was late in the season and there was only one other car there.
First though, she maneuvered the minivan close to the ramp of the guest dock and unloaded all the shopping bags onto the runabout, before driving over and parking beside the one other car. Mmmm, nice one. One of the new Corvettes. Someone has money to burn.
The half dozen steps up to the cafe's deck always rumbled and let Mary know there was someone coming. The sign on the door said closed but she tried the knob anyway. It opened. "Mary, Mary," she called. "anyone here?" There were voices and laughter from the big booth in the back corner. Mary was sitting there with two young men about her own age, early twenties. Good looking young men.
"Hey Maya," Mary called out and then in a very stern parental voice, "What time do you call this. I'm going to have to ground you." There were peels of laughter from the three of them, like toke laughter.
"Oh, I'm sorry I'm late. Like, you know how it is. I put some gas in her. Here's the keys. Thank you so much for the loaner." She walked over to the booth to hand over the keys.
One of the young men stood up as she approached. Good manners as well as good looking. "We were just finishing off some rum and coke while Mary waited for you. Come and join us. Do you want a drink?"
She looked at Mary, who was giving her an encouraging smile. Obviously the one standing was the odd man out. She was tempted. He was so good looking, and very well dressed. GQ casual. College boy. Well heeled college boy. Reluctantly she said no. "I'm late back to Nana's place as it is," she explained, "and I don't like driving boats in the dark."
"Maya lives over on the island," Mary explained. By the sound of her voice she had drunk more than one rum while waiting.
"Oh come on," said the man standing. "You can stay a while. One drink just to be friendly. Then I'll let you take the 'Vette around the block."
Maya's warning bells were going off. They always went off when men were overly friendly. She sighed. Sometimes she hated her suspicious nature, you know, that little old lady with better sense who sat on her shoulder at times like this and whispered "No, no, no," into her ear. She felt like accepting just out of spite, just to prove that she didn't need to be so suspicious of men all the time.
The old fashioned sea clock on the wall chimed eight o'clock. "No, sorry guys. I've got groceries to deliver and a half mile of open water to cross before I sleep. Besides, if I don't get back to the island soon, my great grandmother will be calling the harbor patrol."
"You're sure?" asked the dishy one who was still standing.
"Maybe another time," Maya replied. "Are you in town for a while?"
"Only until Sunday," he smiled, "then it's back to class."
"Sorry," Maya said. Why was she apologizing. She sounded like a frigging Canadian saying 'sorry' and 'excuse me' all the time. "Mary," she had to say it twice to get her attention. "Mary, your keys are like, there on the table. Thanks a bunch. Say hi to Bret for me." Bret was her computer nerd of a younger brother.
As she was turning to walk away Mary whispered something to the two guys. They both laughed and said "Noooo, your kidding." Maya cringed and hurried her step. She knew all too well the sound of a young man's reaction to finding out that she had acted in a B grade slasher/vampire movie. Thanks a lot Mary. Now she certainly was not going to hang with them.
Once she had all the shopping bags stowed against wave action, she was again grateful that she had brought the runabout rather than the cartop. For one thing it had electric start, which she now used, effortlessly. For another thing it had lots of running lights, which she now turned on, all of them. Most importantly, it had two mated outboards. That made it one of the safest boats in this marina because even if you had trouble with one, the other would still get you home.
Well actually either one was more than enough to get you home quite quickly. It was just a seventeen foot runabout and each of the Yamaha forties had enough power to raise the light boat out of the water to plane. With both of them running, this runabout could fly.
Before she took in the lines, she reached into a seat chest and pulled out the floater jacket that Nana always kept in this boat. It was a cross between a life vest and a ski jacket. She would need it out on the water, not for floating (she hoped) but to keep her warm. She could feel the chill of the fall fog coming off the water. It was that time of year, Fogust.
As she motored slowly out of the marina, she looked over towards the cafe. The cafe's lights were still on and the flash car was still parked. She sent some good wishes Mary's way. Things were pretty bleak in this little town for young people, what with the recession and all. A lot of the girls were going back to the old way of making a future, by marrying someone with good prospects.
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"You got home late," said Nana,
her ninety something great grandmother, as she handed her a cup of English style tea, in bed, what a treat.
"Sorry, Nana," Maya said slurping that first sip of morning tea that went down like ambrosia. "I tried not to wake you. I even left the boat tied up to the dock so that the boat house winch wouldn't wake you."
"As if old women ever really fall asleep. You dreamed again last night. Crystal dreams. I made some notes to help you remember them."
"No wonder I am so thirsty. It's all that talking in my sleep. It dries out my mouth as if I were snoring." Maya had this extra animal sense that she called her aura, which allowed her to do many extraordinary things. One of those was to store and retrieve memories from quartz crystals. You know, the crystals that spiritual women wear as pendants down their cleavage. The memory retrieval worked best when she was dreaming, but then she had the other problem of remembering the dreams.
"I'm glad you left the boat out, dear," said Nana as she lifted a dainty tea cup to her own lips. "I forgot to tell you that I have to go and get some blood work done at the clinic today."
Maya looked up and sighed. She could have gone shopping today and saved a trip. Well, such were the frustrations of living with a ninety year old. "Okay, but like let's do it early okay. You probably shouldn't be drinking or eating until after the tests. Put that teacup down."
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Maya let Nana drive the boat, like once it was out in open water. It was the quickest crossing ever. As Nana took over the wheel she pushed the throttles to full and the lurch of the acceleration threw her off balance and with the bouncing of the speeding hull, she couldn't reach forward again to close them down. By the time Maya, who had been thrown to the deck, could crawl hand over hand back to the wheel, and shut the throttles down, they were almost at the marina.
"That was your fault," exclaimed Nana accusingly. "I never turn on both engines at the same time. It wastes gas. I'm actually quite a good driver." To prove it she puttered up to the dock so slowly that it took more time to go that short distance than it had taken to come over from her cottage on the island.
