Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son

by J B Cantwell

  Our feet crunched through the dead stalks as we walked. Cait’s eyes drifted around, and I could tell she was concerned about where her path had taken her. I couldn’t blame her. Between the biting wind and the expanse of dead fields, it was not a friendly looking place.

  “Things used to be different here,” I said, looking across the fields, myself. “Before I was born, this place was a lot like Aeso.”

  She looked up hopefully, as though the landscape might change back to the familiar green of her homeland with my story. I continued.

  “I never saw it, though. Only pictures.”

  “What’s pictures?” she asked.

  It was the first time she had really spoken. But I didn’t know what to say. What’s pictures? I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. Of course she wouldn’t know. They might have wizards and magic in the Fold, but we had our own kind of magic on Earth. We called it technology.

  “Have you ever made a drawing?” I finally asked. “Or a painting? Like with a paintbrush?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you’ve made a picture before,” I said. “You draw a picture. You paint a picture. Only the types of pictures I’m talking about are made a different way, with something called a camera.”

  She looked confused.

  I sighed.

  “It’s sort of hard to explain,” I continued. “You use the camera, and you take the picture.”

  “Where do you take it?” she asked.

  I stopped, staring at her, and then suddenly burst out laughing.

  “No, no,” I said. “You don’t take it anywhere. The word take is like the word paint. It’s like, you make the picture.”

  She looked down, seemingly embarrassed by my laughter.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” I said, backpedaling. I put one hand on her shoulder, squeezing. We walked on. “It’s just hard to explain. Anyways, you take the picture, and it’s kind of like drawing with a brush. But what comes out has more detail than a painting.” I looked up towards the distant hills, remembering. “It’s almost like having a memory that you can hold in your hands and look at with your eyes.”

  She was silent.

  “I’ll show you when we get there,” I said, feeling a little defeated.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. Her little moccassined foot kicked against the dry stalks as we walked.

  “To my grandmother’s house,” I said. “My father’s mother.”

  “I know what a grandmother is,” she said quietly.

  I suddenly felt ashamed at having laughed. She was just a little kid, a day and a half out of being possessed by the Coyle. And now this, hurtled to a planet she didn’t know or understand.

  I stopped walking again, turned to her and knelt down.

  “I’m sorry I laughed,” I said, looking her in the eye. “I remember feeling just like you when I came to Aerit for the first time. There were lots of things I didn’t understand. I felt stupid. And scared. Really scared.”

  She folded her arms in front of her chest.

  “I’m not scared,” she said stubbornly.

  For a moment I was taken aback. Then, without knowing where the understanding came from, I suddenly knew what to say.

  “I know you’re not scared. You’re way tougher than me.”

  And you’ve been through way more.

  “I’m just trying to explain,” I went on. “There might be lots of things here that you don’t understand right away. So if you see something new, just ask me about it, okay? I promise I won’t laugh anymore. Deal?”

  She pulled the blanket close around her face, looked up at me with untrusting eyes.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Do you want to ride on my back? You remember I’m pretty fast, right?”

  I turned my back to her, encouraging her to climb aboard. Suddenly, she smiled.

  “Okay,” she said, gripping her little arms around my neck.

  I stood up and folded her legs into the crooks of my arms, turning to face the direction we had been traveling in. But before I could take a single step, I froze.

  A sudden sense of danger overwhelmed me as I saw the flat, open land before me. In another life a simple jog might have meant my death. My heart, diseased since birth, had prevented me from accomplishing anything more exciting than a brisk walk for the majority of my life. In all of my thirteen years, the only time I had ever breathed easily, or run fast, was back in the Triaden.

  Was my heart, now beating Earth’s oxygen into my veins again, still healed?

  “Come on,” Cait urged, squeezing her legs against my sides as if I were a pony.

  I chuckled, trying to push fear away, and took a few tentative steps.

  Nothing happened. My heart did not explode in my chest. My breathing was normal.

  I pushed a little faster, a slow run now.

  My heart beat, strong and steady. My breath came, free and clear.

  Could it be possible?

  I felt my body launch forward like a truck hitting fifth gear, and suddenly the dirt was flying beneath my feet. Cait squealed with delight at the speed, but I wanted to go faster. My breath came in gasps now, but I didn’t care. I pushed my legs harder. And harder.

  But the blinding speed I was searching for eluded me.

  I focused on a point on the horizon, willing my body to shoot towards it like a bullet from a gun. My feet hit one after the other, again and again until I was running with all the efficiency of one of Earth’s machines.

  But I could go no faster.

  Finally, I slowed, first to a jog, then a walk. I stopped, panting hard, releasing Cait from my back. She slid down to the ground, her hair a mess, a huge smile on her face.

  “That was fun,” she said. “You’re faster than Rhainn-y.”

  I smiled back. But inside, my heart hurt. Not from the effort of the run, but from the lack of speed I had so desired to feel. I had run fast, that was sure. But nowhere near as fast as I could in the Fold.

  My ability to run was the only piece of magic I had known since the moment my feet touched the ground on Aerit, Kiron’s home planet. I had left the staff with Kiron, believing that its magic wouldn’t work on Earth. But part of me had hoped that I was wrong, that somewhere within Earth magic stirred, and I would still have the uncanny ability to run faster than any animal that had ever traversed these lands.

  I leaned over as I caught my breath. Sweat broke out over my body, and I shivered as my skin met the cold air.

  There was no magic here, I realized now. It had been as I had believed. Any magic Earth contained, it seemed, was as dead as the plains surrounding us.

  But I was still healthy. Still strong. The lack of obvious power was not a death sentence.

  Standing back up again, I put my hands on my hips and looked down at Cait.

  “Maybe we should walk for a while,” I said.

  “No!” she said. “Again! Again!”

  I smiled.

  “In a little while, okay?”

  “Awww,” she complained. But she fell into step beside me as I started walking again.

  I slid my hand beneath my shirt, holding it over my chest. I could feel my heart beating beneath my fingers. It felt strong. New. The breath I sucked in and out of my lungs was clear. My chest did not clench.

  I was healed, it seemed, both on Earth and in the Fold. But the speed I had found, the speed that had protected me, saved me from so many dangerous encounters, was gone. I fretted over its quick disappearance. Would it come back to me, the magic I had felt coursing through my veins, when I returned to the Fold? Or did a return to Earth mean that my time as someone extraordinary was over?

  I had been brought to the Fold, a crease in the fabric of space that allowed easy travel between planets, by accident. I hadn’t known that the blank letter I had held in my hands was actually a link, a portal to a place far from here. Upon arriving I had learned that my ancestors had not come from Earth. That my existence had been, basically, an accident. />
  But now, with Earth in a state of steep decline, and the three planets that made up the Triaden in the Fold at war with the armies of the Corentin, things had changed. Without my presence, without the accidents that had brought me into being and later sent me hurtling across the cosmos, Earth and all of its inhabitants would have unknowingly met an unimaginable enemy. Everything around us that my eyes could make out, the remnants of a society that no longer existed, would have been utterly destroyed once Earth became close enough for the Corentin to stretch out his rule and blanket this planet with darkness. The people who remained, who had survived the Long Drought and made lives for themselves in the towering cities, would have fallen to him as so many others had already.

  Others could fight him. Others could make their attempts to restore order to the planets that now swung wildly out of alignment.

  But only I could come back here and bring them the gold they needed to do it.

  I reached out my hand automatically, and Cait took it. Together, our feet crunched through the dead stalks, alive only long enough to be obliterated by the poison rains that now haunted everyone who remained.

  We walked for hours. Sometimes side by side, sometimes Cait riding piggyback. Far in the distance a couple of buildings came into view. The sky was growing darker now, either from the day ending or the clouds growing thicker, I couldn’t tell. I hoped that one of those buildings up ahead was the farm. There was nowhere to take shelter out here from the cold of a winter night.

  Suddenly, the sky seemed to split open. A crack so loud I put my hands over my ears echoed across the clouds. My stomach dropped painfully. I knew what that sound meant.

  Rain.

  Cait had her hands over her ears, too, but only for a moment. To her, the rain was nothing more than something unpleasant we would have to walk through. Maybe not even that. She might have even taken delight in splashing through the puddles along the journey. If the journey we were on had been on any other planet but Earth.

  She didn’t understand.

  I knelt down in front of her again.

  “Time to get back on, Cait,” I said. “Make sure you wrap that blanket around you tight, okay?” She looked confused at the tension in my voice, but she didn’t argue.

  The sky was darkest behind us, and it was a relief to realize that we wouldn’t be running into the rain, but away from it. I took a wild guess that the buildings up ahead were two miles out. How long would it take me to get there in this mortal body?

  I broke into a run, immediately winded by the effort mixed with my panic.

  Wait. Pace yourself, or you’ll never make it.

  I forced myself to slow down. Between my pack and Cait, I had nearly eighty pounds on my back.

  The sky cracked again. And again. It was only a matter of time. The clouds were right behind us.

  Be careful. Don’t fall.

  I had seen the people who had been caught out in the rain in the hospital when I was a small child, their skin taught and red as though seared with a hot iron. If I fell and twisted an ankle, hit my knees in the dirt the way Cait had, it could be the difference between life and death.

  The raindrops started. I felt the first one on the top of my fist, the second on the tip of my nose. The acidic water rested innocently on my flesh for several seconds. Then it began to burn.

  “Owww!” Cait yelled from my back, clearly struck, herself. “Owww, it hurts!”

  “I know,” I called back. “Hang on. Make sure you’re covered by the blanket!”

  Her cries became howls of pain as I ran through the fields. We had to get there. Had to reach beneath the protection of the old buildings up ahead. I heaved us through the dirt, which was quickly becoming sticky mud.

  How long had it been? How far had I come? A half mile? A mile?

  The water began to puddle at my feet, and it splashed up around my calves with every stride I took.

  I panted, pushing myself to go faster, all the while keeping the buildings up ahead in sight.

  Were they getting closer?

  Rain made its way into my eyes, and they stung as if I had opened them under ocean waves.

  They were getting closer. Up ahead, I could see the road, long disused and crumbling. I didn’t bother to look for cars as I stumbled across the pavement. There would be no traffic out here. There would be nobody at all.

  “Are you okay?” I choked as I ran.

  Cait’s quiet whimpers of pain seemed to bounce around the inside of my skull.

  My face burned. My bare arms felt like they were on fire. I couldn’t tell with my stinging eyes, now that we were close, if this was the farm at all. But it was shelter. It was a way out of this pain, and I pushed with everything I had to get us there.

  The water seeped through my pants, coating my skin with the sharp sting of acid.

  Why had I come? In that moment I wished I had stayed in the Fold. What good could come from returning to a place like this? Earth was ravaged. Destroyed. And now it would destroy us.

  The mist that hung in the air was finding its way into my throat, and I coughed. It seared as if I was drinking boiling water.

  Cait had gone quiet now, but her fingers gripped hard around my neck. I put my head down, trying to shield my face from the spray. I looked up from time to time, watched the looming farmhouse getting closer and closer.

  The rain seemed to sense that our respite was close. The sky opened up and dumped water down upon our backs. Just steps away from the front porch of the house, I was completely drenched but for the place on my back where Cait’s little body was pressed into mine, every other inch of me screaming in agony.

  Then we were there. I dropped Cait, hard, on the porch. She came back to life, wailing in pain. I fell to my hands and knees, crawled towards the door, everything blurred and confused, as if my eyeballs were melting within their sockets. The handle was locked. I pounded on the wood, praying that someone inside would hear us, would help us.

  I slumped down at the doorway, no longer able to summon any strength to fight. Every ounce of energy I had was gone, sapped away from the run, insulted further by the stinging rain. I heard Cait’s cries, but I could do nothing for her. I could barely breathe, myself.

  The world started to go dark, and I fought off unconsciousness. I had to get us inside. I had to protect Cait. I had promised I would.

  Behind me, I heard sounds, muffled by my exhausted brain. The door handle creaked, the wood groaned, and the door to the house opened.

  Someone stepped over the threshold. Then, a cry. A cry that wasn’t Cait’s. I tried to look up, but saw only the outline of a person hovering above me, the shapes made blurry by my damaged eyes.

  “Aster?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, to agree.

  Yes.

  My brain called the words, but my voice stayed silent.

  The person kneeled over me, her shocked face coming into sharper focus as it got closer.

  I stared into the eyes of my Grandmother, warm and full of concern, as the world around me dimmed to black.

  Aster Wood and the Child of Elyso will be available June 30, 2015.

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  Table of Contents

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

 
; Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Excerpt from Book 4