by Ka Newborrn
The Secret North
Ka Newborrn
Copyright © 2020 Ka Newborrn
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Ka.Newborrn.com | Knowbelle.com
eISBN-13: 978-1-7354511-0-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020911835
For Geneva, Camille and Jerald
"All around the constellations are stars glowing and twinkling without being attached to a design."
C. Erickson
"Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life."
Nayyirah Waheed
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Epigraph
Epigraph
THE SECRET NORTH
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
SCEPTRELIND
GLAIVELIND
SCEPTRELIND
NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI
NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI
NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI
HARLAN, KENTUCKY
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PARADISE, OHIO
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSSETTS
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSSETTS
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
TRANSIT
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA
TRANSIT
JEMEZ, NEW MEXICO
SCEPTRELIND
TRANSIT
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
TRANSIT
Acknowledgements
About The Author
"And through an open window where no curtain hung I saw you."
Marty Balin
THE SECRET NORTH
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
1979
Odette
Outside, the sun and wind fused pastel predictability into the August sky’s afternoon canvas, leaving it up to Odette to enhance an insufferable composition with texture, form and abstraction.
Daylight deferred to darkness as she stared, with awareness uncommon for a six-year-old, at the framed piece of world affixed to the easel of her kitchen window. Backlit by a wash of pink factory lights and refinery smoke, an apartment complex bordered an incline of trees that stood entangled in rusty pipeline roots.
Feeling wistful with the passing of each moment, she closed the window shade and combed her surroundings for delights to bind her to the safety of immediacy. Like an envelope of instant oatmeal emptied into a mug of water piping hot from the tap, or a ticket to the land of television, where spun sugar girls bared their teeth in celebration of short shorts, baby fresh skin and “bouncin’ and behavin'" hair. And there was always the frenetic burst of dancing induced by rhythms found buried in Mama’s record collection.
“Ah ha ha ha ha,” she chuckled in her throatiest Suzanne Pleshette impersonation, resting the half-eaten mug of oatmeal on the television set and batting her eyelashes coyly. “Stop it. Stop it, Bob, I can’t stand it!”
Clad in her mother’s orange satin robe with arms stretched out to the world, she spun, twirling away from the television and into the family room closet where she grasped the handle of the dented trunk that housed her small collection of Barbie dolls. Soon Superstar Ken, Malibu Christie, Fashion Photo Barbie and SuperTeen Skipper were lined up neatly on the couch beside her.
“Go to your room, you’re grounded!” barked Superstar Ken.
“But Ken,” SuperTeen Skipper whined, “Fashion Photo Barbie just got her driver’s license. We’re going for a ride in her pink Corvette.”
“Fashion Photo Barbie is a bad influence!” Superstar Ken glowered, placing his pink plastic arm around Malibu Christie’s brown shoulders. Malibu Christie nodded and flipped her synthetic black hair in agreement.
“It’s not fair!” wailed SuperTeen Skipper.
Using her thumb and index finger, Odette clumsily rotated SuperTeen Skipper’s head from side to side, showing off the straight pins that she had stuck into the doll’s ears earlier in the week.
“You pierced your ears without our permission!” Malibu Christie added tersely.
“We have rules in this house! You barely have breasts! I have big ones!” Odette twisted the doll’s plastic torso suggestively.
SuperTeen Skipper looked to Fashion Photo Barbie for support, but the buxom doll smirked indifferently. “Fine!” she spat defiantly. “I’m going to my room!”
“Who cares?” Superstar Ken answered distractedly. He turned to Malibu Christie. Their lips met as they stretched out their plastic arms to each other and embraced.
“I’m running away!” SuperTeen Skipper announced. Superstar Ken and Malibu Christie ignored her.
Dancing madly in circles with the emotion of the moment, Odette stood up, grabbed SuperTeen Skipper by the hair, and crouched down into the cobweb and dust bunny filled space behind the television set. “No one will ever find me here,” she whispered.
Odette traversed the cobwebbed space for what seemed an eternity, fighting for footing as the gusty winds of the dust bunny storm gave way to a full-fledged tornado. She accidentally stumbled into a nest of hissing, dust covered electrical cord snakes and screamed as one lunged out and bit her on the ankle with its brass prong fangs.
Clutching her ankle and fighting back tears, she felt a waxy surface at her feet and looked down. A playing card blanketed in dust rested halfway under her foot near the antenna plug.
A woman’s voice called from the card. "Hello, Odette."
“Who’s there?” Odette responded. She knelt directly onto the card and gently brushed the dust from its surface, revealing an elegant and composed Queen of Clubs.
The Queen’s voice was smooth and regal. “They just don’t understand,” she offered sympathetically.
“No, Your Majesty,” Odette agreed, rubbing her ankle. “I wasn’t bothering them. I was just walking.”
The Queen was gracious. “I meant Superstar Ken and Malibu Christie, not the snakes,” she clarified. “The snakes are here to protect me. They won’t bite you anymore, now that they know you’re a friend. Give me your hand.”
The little girl reached beneath the plane deep inside the card until her clammy hand firmly grasped the Queen’s lightly sketched one.She completed the ritual by jumping up into a spontaneous dance, scooping her plastic companions into the dented trunk and closing the closet door behind them. Her reality was now intertwined with a little bit of magic and an illusory veil of the finest design. She was free to visit whenever she wanted; the Queen of Clubs was the gateway. She was free to travel to distant worlds and look behind the eyes of different girls; all it took was solitude.
Odette slept peacefully that night. When morning came, she opened the window shade. Dusk deferred to sunlight as she stared, with awareness uncommon for a six-year-old, at the framed piece of world affixed to the easel of her kitchen window. A castle was bordered by an overgrown ridge of butter-hued flowers and
wild fruit brambles. Beyond the flowers and brambles sprawled a herald of trees illuminated by a rose gold halo, roots curved gracefully about the base of a warbling stream, the atmosphere thick with dark, moody clouds. Her soulful eyes were no longer blind to the perception of what is beautiful and validated in splendor, or what is loathsome and left alone to decay.
SCEPTRELIND
1979
Ester
From the time that she was old enough to crawl, Ester wanted to grow up to be a famous Luminatrix like her idol, Lilith Brisbane.
“Daddy!” she shrieked from the family room sofa after dinner one night. “Lilith’s interview is starting right now! Turn it up!” She perched herself on the sofa arm while her mother cleared the dinner dishes. Her father picked up the remote control and raised the TV volume.
Onscreen, a sinewy young woman with blazing red hair layered stylishly about her shoulders sat at a restaurant table as a reporter pointed a microphone in her direction.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me on such short notice, Miss Brisbane,” the reporter began. “You must be exhausted, having only returned to Glaivelind Forest last night.”
“Team caffeine for the win.” Lilith’s smile was charming and casual as she raised a demitasse of espresso to the air in an impromptu toast. She tossed her hair out of her face before downing the contents of the cup and turning her attention to a passing server. “May I please have another?”
“Anything for you, Lilith!” The young server sported a hairstyle identical to Lilith’s. She grinned shyly before taking the cup away.
“Not a bad looking young lady, that Lilith Brisbane,” her father remarked.
“Shhhh!” Ester screeched.
The camera panned the length of Lilith’s body. She wore dark sunglasses and was dressed in a simple black cashmere sweater, dark denim jeans and vintage crocodile boots.
“She eats seaweed and wild mushrooms for dinner!” Ester chimed excitedly. “She spends two hours a day in inversion boots and an hour jogging. Mom!” Ester barked in the direction of the kitchen. “How come you never make seaweed and wild mushrooms for dinner?”
“And yet you look so rested, like you just stepped out of a spa.” The reporter leaned in close. “Must be rough, coming home to a riverfront castle the likes of yours on thirty acres in Glaivelind Forest.”
Lilith pushed up the temple of her sunglasses with her index finger and crossed her legs at the ankles. “The Kaspare River sang me a lullaby when I got home last night. And drinking the best bottle from my wine cellar before bed didn’t hurt, either.”
The reporter chuckled and turned to the camera. “Do you have plans to see your fans while you’re home?”
Lilith dabbed her eyes behind the sunglasses with a paper napkin. “I’d do a million meet and greets if I could, but I can’t. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Fill us in about your latest cases,” the reporter gushed.
“The Jonas Case was first,” Lilith began. “Jonas was a mechanical engineer and all-around, proverbial ray of sunshine. His father disparaged him as a child, so he developed a nasty inferiority complex. For three straight months he corrected my grammar incessantly, even when I was right. And I generally am. But I never stopped him because it was the only thing that seemed to relieve his chronic constipation.”
The server reappeared and placed a fresh demitasse on the table. Lilith thanked her and turned her attention back to the reporter. The reporter giggled. “So, the takeaway from the Jonas Case was a lesson in constipation, Miss Brisbane?”
Lilith downed the espresso and smirked. “Men are fragile and need to be right, even when they’re wrong. Be kind to them. Handle them with kid gloves. And don’t waste your money on expensive toilet paper.”
Peals of laughter ensued. The reporter giggled freely and carefully dabbed away a tear. “Carry on, Miss Brisbane.”
Lilith paused reflectively. “Then there was the Brady case. Brady carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He took care of his alcoholic parents as a child and never really had a childhood of his own. His parents never nurtured him, never paid him any attention at all, really. He constructed his own societal rules and passed them off as having an elevated sense of self control. He was a bit of a sociopath, really.”
“Then what happened?” the reporter asked. “What was the lesson?”
Lilith ran her fingers through her stylish haircut. Coughing, she turned away to bring the paper napkin to her eye again and absentmindedly removed her sunglasses. Her right eye was swollen shut in a painful shade of blackish purple. She turned her focus back to the reporter. “I’m so sorry. What was the question?” The reporter looked at Lilith’s eye and sharply drew in her breath.
“What is it?” Lilith smiled, momentarily oblivious. “Oh!” Suddenly aware of what the reporter was reacting to, she pushed her sunglasses firmly into place.
“The uh,” the reporter stammered awkwardly, “lesson learned from the Brady Case, Miss Brisbane?”
Lilith cursed silently behind the cover of her left hand. She had not meant to reveal so much. “Roll with the punches?” she smirked.
The reporter changed the subject. “You’ve been nominated this year for an outstanding achievement award. Tell us how that makes you feel.”
Lilith’s stomach screamed. “I’m incredibly honored.”
“You must be crazy with the excitement and anticipation of it all.”
“Not really. I’ve already won, just being included in such a talented group of peers.”
“Is there any advice you would like to give to any aspiring Luminatrixes watching right now?”
Lilith straightened up in her chair and angled her shoulders to the camera. “Your bodies and minds hold the key to the evolution of our planet and, ultimately, the universe.”
She paused to light a cigarette with an art deco torch lighter and raised it to her lips, inhaling. “Take care of yourselves. Rest. Study hard in school.” Smoke poured out of her nose. “It takes a tireless commitment, but your dedication will make a difference.”
✽✽✽
Ester's life in Sceptrelind was a provincial one. She lived with her parents at 7 Storyville Lane in a reddish brick house with a white door, matching shutters and lattice window boxes filled with snapdragons. Manicured shrubs lined the cobblestoned front walk.
Her parents took an avid interest in her schoolwork and encouraged her to outperform her classmates.
“Are you almost finished with your elemental analyses of Andromeda?” her father asked at dinner.
Ester sipped her milk. “Oh, yes, Daddy!” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin and mopped a tiny spill from her papers. “Dr. Baton says I have the most accurate estimations she’s ever seen, and she’s very, very old.”
“Are you enjoying the extragalactic microlensing kit that Daddy bought you for your birthday?”
“Oh, yes, Mommy!”
“That’s my girl,” her father said proudly. He looked across the table and winked.
A week into the school year, Dr. Baton arranged a conference with her parents and informed them that Sceptrelind’s curriculum wasn’t challenging enough for Ester. Excited by their daughter’s prodigious tendencies, they immediately began to research boarding schools.
Mr. Myling wanted Ester to study in Barterlind because it was the financial superpower and free from the biases of organized religion. Mrs. Myling wanted Ester to study in Phialind because it was the global headquarters of the clergy and impressive in structure and discipline. Confident in the fact that her father knew best, she gave her mother a reproving smile and gently informed her that the prettiest, most famous Luminatrixes always had Barterlind educations.
The night before she left Sceptrelind and never looked back, her father appeared to her in a dream. He pulled a snapdragon from the lattice window box and lovingly tucked it into her hand. “Who’s my hummingbird?” he asked. “Who’s my wise little owl?”
She tried to an
swer him, but no sound came out of her mouth. He faded away before her eyes, and the snapdragon crumbled into dust.
GLAIVELIND
1991
Ester
“Why does the water turn red, Elspeth?”
As she bathed, the trees cast their haunted eyes upon the Kaspare River and tried to scare the stygian water into turning red. The riverbank trembled under the wind’s touch. The lingering embers of sun burned out.
Her handmaiden was silhouetted inside a hollowed oak. In the darkness, it was hard to distinguish where her wizened face ended and the tree bark began. The branches were fused at the top in the shape of a flame, as if the foliage had once been charred. By fire or anger, she couldn’t tell. But it left her feeling cold.
The water slid between her fingers like liquid onyx and the crisp air kneaded her nipples into arrowheads. She drew her knees up to cover herself, but the trees leered at her anyway. She held their gaze for a few moments. When she turned her eyes back to the water, she was immersed in a fountain of blood.
Elspeth stiffened inside the hollowed tree. She was used to avoiding the question by now. She chose her words carefully.
“It’s nothing.”
“You know something.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“You weren’t born blind.”
“The scientists say it’s just an optical phenomenon.”
She sat motionless in the void of red.
“Perhaps you miss your family,” Elspeth offered.
She lowered her eyes briefly and thought about her parents.
“What about the hunger?”
“Just a few more minutes before dinner, child.”
