by RJ Johnson
The Twelve Stones
R.J. Johnson
Published by Rick Johnson at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 R.J. Johnson
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R.J. Johnson. The Twelve Stones
When you’re an independent author, it can be difficult to get the right kind of resources that a traditionally published author would have. At the time when I first published The Twelve Stones I was unable to afford an editor. However, thanks to the many new fans my little book series has found, I was able to get The Twelve Stones edited to my satisfaction. I hope that if you are reading the sample right now and considering a download that you give my independent book a chance, and ignore the reviews that go after the typos that previously existed and other such missed opportunities. I did the very best I could with the resources I have. That said, I hope you enjoy reading the journey as much as I enjoyed writing it.
R.J. Johnson
[email protected]
Chapter One
Southern California
1990
On first glance, it appeared to be just like any other day in the unremarkable mountain town fifty miles north of Los Angeles. The sky was a deep blue, with a few friendly looking clouds floating lazily in the soft breeze. It was the kind of day that inspired magic, a fact that two young men were about to learn for themselves.
A stream, swollen with the recently melted snow pack fed from the peaks above, cut across a shallow wash meant to serve as a temporary runoff. The valley’s hasty development had come with an annoying price. During the latest housing boom in the valley, many of the houses in this neighborhood were rushed into production, with little to no respect for the surrounding land.
And of course, nature did what it always did in its fight against man: it found another way. Instead of flowing down the mountain in the natural channels formed over the millennia of spring thaws, the water formed an annual lake over the access road that led into the neighborhood above.
After years of dealing with an unsympathetic city council, people called a neighborhood meeting to deal with their common problem. They decided to dam off the access road, then have everyone chip in, rent equipment, and build their own new road through the forest and into the neighborhood. The inconvenience of driving an extra quarter mile was a small price to pay compared to the boat rentals they needed just to get home every spring.
What resulted was an aesthetic marvel. Where poor designing and planning had gotten the neighborhood into their collective pickle, a former civil engineer named Ted McCray (recently moved from the city below with his son after the death of his wife) brilliantly turned the whole mess into opportunity. Under his direction, they tore up and rerouted the road, then recovered the materials and used them to dam the end of the stream. The results created a small lake and park, with the river continuing down the mountain unmolested.
Life came to the lake quickly. Soon, a spot that had once left the residents furrowing their brows and checking their insurance policies had become a beautiful lake and meadow, increasing their home values by five percent overnight.
“Come on!” a voice insisted, breaking the quiet calm that had so far passed uninterrupted all morning in the beautiful scene. The green and vibrant mountain field stood in contrast to the dark rising peaks behind it, their tops still dusted slightly with snow.
The wind whispered through the pine trees, beckoning the children further into the forest with a promise of adventure. The California poppies were in full bloom, their golden petals jostling gently against the two young boys’ shorts as they made their way across the field. The smaller boy stumbled slightly as he tripped over the uneven surface of the gopher-torn ground.
The taller boy looked back at his friend and grimaced. “You come on! You’re the one who’s going too slow! I’d like to get there before I’m a million years old.”
“I’m trying to keep up. You’re going too fast!” the smaller boy shot back.
The pair made their way towards the banks of the newly formed stream, the smaller of the two finally catching up to his friend. They both stood for a moment, watching the fast-moving water below them flow. Only a month before, there had been nothing but a ditch full of jagged rocks and random bits of trash. Now, fed by the deep snow pack in the peaks above, the ditch had become a fully raging river, the water moving deep and fast as it twisted through the meadow, finding its way down and feeding the man-made lake behind them. The taller of the two boys unstrapped a backpack and set it down as he examined the stream before him.
“Wow, your dad built all this?” the smaller boy asked.
“Just after we moved up here,” his friend mumbled through his backpack as he looked for supplies.
The smaller boy leaned forward to get a better look at what his friend was doing. Closer to the bank, the ground was wet and unstable. The smaller boy’s weight wasn’t much, but with the combined burden, the slope could hold no longer and fell away beneath him.
The taller boy felt the ground give way underneath him first as his arms flailed about, looking for anything to keep from falling into the freezing stream. His hands grasped at air for what seemed like an eternity as his body began to slip down the side of the bank. Only at the last second did his hands catch onto a branch overhanging the stream, stopping his fall only inches before his body fell into the water. The boy sighed with relief.
The smaller boy was more fortunate, as he was farther from the edge of the riverbank and managed to fall backwards quickly enough to avoid the river. He looked up, watching his friend hang from the tree like an overactive monkey.
“Hey Alex, you OK?” the smaller boy asked, his voice more than a little frightened.
Alexander McCray, a boy who always sought adventure and danger, looked at his friend standing on the riverbank opposite him and laughed. He let go of the branch and slid down, towards the side of the gully where the water didn’t quite reach. The bark tore at the tender skin on his hand, and it bled generously. For a moment, Alex found himself wishing for the safety of his Nintendo and a glass of chocolate milk. He shook the thought away and grinned. No, they were here on a mission. He called up to his friend.
“Just another day in the life of an adventurer!”
Alex began to look for a way out of the gully without having to cross the cold mountain stream. After looking at the unappetizing options around him, he decided the only way to get out was by using the branch for leverage so that his feet could find some traction against the slippery slope. Huffing and puffing, he moved his body slowly up the muddy slope, and back once more over the ledge.
After catching his breath for a moment and dusting himself off, Scott looked down at his friend’s hand. “You’re bleeding!” he cried out.
Alex looked at his right hand, where a three-inch gash was open along the side. “Naw,” he replied, “just a scratch.”
Scott grabbed Alex’s hand and looked at it closely.
“Easy!” Alex said.
“This is deep, Alex,” Scott said, worried. “We should get you to the hospital and get you some stitches. I’ve had ‘em, three times actually, and they’re not so bad, really. They’re just…”
Alex smiled as he took his hand back and stuffed the scratch into his mouth. Muffled, he tried to reassure his friend,
“I’m fine. Besides, we’re kids; we’re supposed to get banged up, remember? Just get me a Band-Aid out of my pack and I’ll be fine. It’ll bleed a bit, but that’ll stop soon. Trust me.”
Pushing his glasses up to his face, Scott nodded. Alex walked over to where he had dropped his backpack and began going through it, looking for his medical supplies. Scott watched his best friend unpack each item reverently in his pack, examining each with a critical eye.
For the first third of his school life, Scott had been a magnet for mockery. He had given up on finding a reason behind it. There rarely was; bullies rarely needed one. Scott tried his best to be careful and not to offend anyone, or even appear too smart in class, but wearing glasses and being three inches shorter than everyone else made him an easy target. The older boys in the upper grades were the worst generally, but bullies of all ages had surrounded him for those first few years.
In eighth grade, things began to change. After the first few years of torments and taunts, Scott had resigned himself to being the class punching bag. It was only last year that Alex had appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Scott out of the circle of freshmen in high school and escorting Scott to the bathroom, where he could be safe and clean up.
Alex had done what he could to help clean the gravel out of Scott's knees, and by the time Scott had stopped crying, Alex had smiled and introduced himself as a friend. From then on, Scott and Alex were inseparable. That incident had instilled a loyalty in Scott that was generally born in foxholes. He would follow Alex anywhere, and unfortunately, that usually meant into trouble. Still, he was Alex’s willing sidekick till the very end.
“Alex?”
“What is it?” Alex asked as he unzipped his backpack, taking out a bag of chips. He opened them and munched happily as he checked the map of the area he had taken from his father's office.
“What are we doing?”
“I told you, we’re here to make our fortune.” Alex smiled at Scott as he took out a tin plate people used for baking pies. “You see this?” Alex waved the tin plate in front of Scott’s face. “This is the key to us dropping out of school and make a million dollars. “
Scott’s face went wide in anticipation. “A million dollars?” he asked in wonder, his ten-year-old brain instantly calculating exactly how much that would buy in video games, soda and movies. “How are we gonna do that?”
“Easy,” Alex responded, bending down to the rushing creek with a gleam in his eye. “We pan for gold.”
“There’s gold in this stream?” Scott asked skeptically, as he leaned in closer to examine the bottom of the stream in front of them.
“Of course there is, stupid. It’s a stream in a mountain; don’t you ever watch any movies?” Irritated, Alex turned away from his companion, dipping his pie plate into the rocks and silt.
“I did this once at Six Flags; all you gotta do is dip your plate thingy into the stream, get some dirt in there, and then wash it back and forth like this.” Alex pulled the pie tin from the river and demonstrated the back-and-forth movement as he rocked the pie tin filled with water and sand in his hands. “The water washes out all the dirt and stuff we don’t want, and then the gold settles at the bottom of the pan. Simple-dimple.”
Scott’s eyes went wide in wonder. “Wow Alex, how’d you learn to do this?”
“My mom took me…” Alex stopped short, unsure how to finish the sentence. “Before she…”
“Yeah…” Scott never knew what to say when Alex brought up his mother. She had died in a car accident a few years ago, with him in the car. Alex had survived the accident, and Scott suspected he carried around a lot of guilt because of that. Only once had Alex talked about her, when he was explaining to Scott why his father had moved them away from the city. His father had been a well-respected civil engineer in Los Angeles for ten years. But after the accident, nothing had made sense for either of them. Alex's father had moved to the mountains. He had hoped that a new start, and the slower pace of life, would give them some comfort—or, at the very least, an illusion of peace.
“Right, yeah.” Alex continued his work in silence, concentrating on the movement of his hands dipping into the freezing waters instead of those final few moments with his mother. The crash and squeal of metal tearing apart was one of the worst memories Alex had, and he tried every day to avoid thinking about it.
Hoping the awkwardness would pass, Scott watched for a few moments in silence as Alex dipped the pie tin in and out of the stream.
“Find anything yet?” Scott asked.
“It’s been less than a minute, dude. Jeez, Scott, miners would get out here and do this for at least an hour before they got a buncha gold.” Alex scratched through the plate, looking for anything golden.
“Can I do it some, then?” Scott asked as he peered over Alex’s shoulder.
Alex rolled his eyes. He liked his best friend well enough, but sometimes he could be a little irritating. Scott was a nervous kid, always asking questions.
“I only brought one pie tin, but you can look for bigger nuggets if you like…” Alex held his breath. Scott was a single child, and sometimes prone to temper tantrums when he didn’t get his way. They were never serious, nor did they last for long; it was just something Scott had yet to grow out of.
To his relief, Scott wasn’t offended. Instead, he began peeking over the riverbank, looking back at the rest of the park and the trees beyond.
“That’s OK. I’ll just go play in the tree over there,” Scott replied.
“Whatever floats your boat, bro!” Alex called back to Scott, who had already retreated towards a particularly large and sickly pine tree.
Alex played with the pie tin for a few minutes while Scott explored the meadow, as rabbits and animals attracted by the abundant water source began to realize that the two boys were not a threat and began to move freely about again.
Rhythmically, Alex fell into a routine, taking the pie plate tin, washing it in and out of the water and sand several times, stopping occasionally when his hands grew too cold from the chilly mountain stream.
It was at this moment that a stone, long and thin, with the curve of a claw from some vicious beast, began hurtling its way down the mountain stream. An odd-looking stone, it had a deep black color and projected an undeniably otherworldly feel. Dashing itself against rock after rock, it flew towards Alex’s gold-digging efforts as if it had a mind of its own.
Filling the pie tin with a fresh batch of rocks and dirt, Alex felt the cold water begin to numb his hands. He withdrew his hands and flexed them, leaving the pie tin to sit underneath the rushing water for a moment. Blowing into his fists, he wiped them dry on his shirt and stuffed them under his armpits as he glanced around looking to see what Scott was up to.
Faster and faster, the stone traveled down the swollen river. It bounded off a few various rocks before finally settling into Alex’s pin tin with a gentle clinking sound. Alex, his hands now sufficiently warm, glanced down at the stone now sitting in his tin. He grabbed it, held it closer to his face, and examined it closely.
“Meh,” Alex grunted to himself, “you’re pretty, but you ain’t gold.” Alex tossed the stone off to one side and returned once again to his work. As he bent down to pick up the tin, he was surprised to see an identical stone sitting in the middle of the sand and rocks. He looked over to his side, where he had tossed the previous errant stone. It was missing. Frowning to himself, he stood and threw the stone deep into the meadow. Satisfied that it was gone, he crouched back down to the stream, intent once again on making his fortune.
Something whipped past his ear at an incredible speed. Alex slapped at his head, intent on killing whatever it was that had just invaded his airspace. He missed, and as he turned, he saw the mysterious stone at his feet, laying innocently in the noontime sun.
Alex’s eyes narrowed as he picked up the stone again. It felt warm, warmer than it should have been, considering it had come from the frigid waters of the mountain stream. It vibrat
ed softly in his hands, creating a tingling sensation that wasn’t unpleasant, only…unexpected.
“All righty.” Alex muttered to the stone in his hand, “Either you’re some sorta boomerangy stone thing, or...” he trailed off, he laughed. It probably fell out of his hand as he went to throw it. Shrugging and still addressing the stone, he added, “You’ll be less trouble in here.” He slipped the stone into his pocket, his thick jeans unable to mask the soft vibration from the stone against his hip.
He was about to return to his work when Scott yelled to him from across the meadow.
“Hey, you dare me to climb this tree?”
Alex looked up towards Scott, who had traveled to the other side of the meadow. If there was one thing he loved about his friend, it was how Scott was always trying to show off for him. Alex waved back at his friend. Scott mistook his wave to mean he should start climbing the tree.
The vibrations on his hip began to intensify, and Alex slapped his pocket. “Cut it out,” he muttered, but the stone happily ignored Alex, and continued to vibrate once again against his hip.
“Come on,” Alex said out loud. He took the stone out of his pocket and let it lay in the palm of his hand. His eyes settled on the stone, and for a moment, the world paused.
The stone was flawless. It sat comfortably in Alex’s hand, almost as if it had molded itself to the contours of its environment. Alex didn’t know why, but as he stared into the stone, he was overwhelmed by a calming influence. It was the feeling of Christmas; warm, soft, comfortable, with a pleasant afterglow of peace and love. Alex had felt that way when he was smaller, each and every time his mother had tucked him into bed before he fell asleep.
On reflex, Alex closed his eyes and began to smile, basking in the pleasing power of the rock in his hand.
As Alex basked in the glow of his new find, on other side of the meadow, Scott climbed his way to the top of an old and tired-looking pine tree. He stood triumphantly at the top, waving his cap and screaming at Alex.
