Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son (31 page)

I nodded. “It’s true,” I said. “And she’s the best mother anybody could ever ask for. Did you know that?”

“Does she kiss your head before you go to sleep?” she squeaked.

I smiled. “Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, she does.”

“Will Rhainn be there?”

For a moment, my smile faltered. I considered lying, but then I decided that would be no way to begin.

“No,” I said. “Rhainn won’t be there. But you know that your brother and I are friends, right?”

She gave a tiny nod.

My smile, despite all attempts to keep it, faded completely, and I looked at her seriously.

“I’m going to try to get him back for you,” I said. “With everything I have. I promise. Do you think I could be like your brother for a little while? Until we sort things out back here?”

She stuffed her face into Larissa’s skirt again, wiping her nose on the coarse fabric. Then, her sad eyes found mine, and she nodded in agreement.
 

I held out the chaser, which must have looked like a big, shining marble to her little eyes. She looked at it, unsure, and then took it into her little fist.
 

“You listen to Lissa now, okay?” I said. She nodded again, more enthusiastic this time.
 

I stood up, turning to Kiron. I wanted to hug him, but I could see that he was struggling. Too many of his beliefs had been upended in the past day. So I settled on a long, hard look. And a nod.
 

“Aster Wood,” he said, returning the nod. “I never woulda thought.”
 

I laughed.
 

“Nobody would have,” I said.
 

Then, at long last, I held the link up above my head. It caught the rays of the morning sun, gradually lightening the shadows as they slipped away, the night done. For a moment I closed my eyes, thinking again of the words I had sent to the Blackburn the night before.
 

For my life. For the chance.

Thank you.

The unspoken words echoed everywhere within me, and I felt that anyone, everyone, must be able to hear them. Maybe they could. They were for the Blackburn, but also everyone who stood here beside me now. For Jade in her lonely mountain. For the Watcher in the murky depths.
 

I opened my eyes again, letting them drift across the group of most unlikely friends I had found myself among. Their faces, still smudged with smoke and dirt and blood, encouraged me, lifted my spirit as I shifted my gaze to the link in my hand.
 

I opened my mouth, smiled as the tears ran down my face, and spoke.
 

“Home.”

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Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son

Aster Wood Book 4 is the next installment in the Aster Wood series, which follows the saga of a young man fighting to save the Maylin Fold from the evil of the Corentin.
 

Turn the page to read an excerpt.

Excerpt from

Aster Wood Book 4

by J. B. Cantwell

Copyright © 2015 by J. B. Cantwell. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact
[email protected]
.

I hit hard.
 

My bare arms scraped against short, dead cornstalks as I skidded across the field, finally coming to a stop in a cloud of dust. A mouthful of dirt, bone dry, choked me, and I coughed. My eyes watered as a cold wind blew against my face. I stared around, trying to get my bearings.

I was home.

But my heart sank.

It was just the same as it had ever been. Stark. Vast. Dead.

I hadn’t expected to feel anything other than joy at returning, finally, to Earth. But the barren landscape was a shock, something I hadn’t seen in many long months, and it did not welcome me. No breathtaking vistas awaited. No gently trickling streams. No warm sunlight beneath teal skies. Compared to the planets in the Triaden, it seemed nothing of beauty remained in this place.

My fists dug into the dirt, loose and gravelly, and I pushed myself up to standing. The scrapes on my arms stung, but they would heal. The coughing gradually ceased. I rubbed the dirt out of my stinging eyes.
 

I was in Adams county. I knew that, even though I had spent most of my childhood in the city. I recognized the odd rock formations to the east, with the telltale shapes I had gazed upon since early childhood. Somewhere out here was Grandma’s farm. I spun on the spot, searching the brown, lifeless horizon. Overhead, storm clouds threatened.

Cait burst through, landing nearly as hard as I had. Her little body rolled over and over like a carelessly thrown doll, bumping and scraping along the ground. She cried out with a particularly rough thump to the knees and tumbled to a stop just a few feet away.

I rushed over to her, my temporary disappointment immediately replaced with worry over the little girl.
 

“Cait,” I huffed, my throat still choked with dust. “Are you okay?”

Her giant blue eyes looked into mine for a quick moment, her face frozen with a look of shock. Then, the corners of her mouth turned down. She whimpered.

“Owie,” she said, her mouth opening wide into a silent cry, fat tears dripping down her dirty cheeks.
 

She unfolded her legs from beneath her and inspected them. At the sight of the blood on her knees, she cried louder. Suddenly, her eyes became frightened, and I noticed her shrink away from me as I approached. She had trusted me. She hadn’t counted on scraped knees. That hadn’t been part of the deal.

“Cait, it’s alright,” I said, kneeling down. I moved one hand out to inspect her leg, but she snatched the injury away. I paused, thinking, then sat down in the dirt beside her. “You’ll be okay,” I said, trying to employ the same soothing sound my mother used when I would get hurt as a young child. “It’s just a couple of scrapes. It’ll heal fast. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

She ventured a look in my direction, sniffed hard, then shook her head. The tears still came, but they were silent now.

“Good,” I said. “Now, I told you I’m going to take care of you, remember?”

She stared.

“We’re on Earth now,” I continued. “Everything’s going to be better here. The Coyle,” I paused, not wanting to upset her further. “He can’t get to you here. Do you understand?”

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t shy away again. Another blast of winter wind hit us, and we both shivered.
 

“Come on,” I said, standing up and reaching out both my hands to her. “It’s not going to get any warmer. Let’s start walking.”
 

I pulled out the traveling cloak from my pack and draped it over both of us. Instantly, the wind was blocked as though we had our own little room to protect us from it. It had been Kiron’s gift to me when I had first met him, and the cloak had kept me warm through much more severe elements than these.
 

As Cait and I took our first steps away from our landing spot, I bent and scooped up the chaser she had used to follow me here, stuffing the fat ball into my pocket.

“Better?” I asked, tucking the blanket back around us again.
 

She looked up, eyes round, and nodded.
 

“Can you walk?”
 

Another nod.
 

Guessing that we were northwest of the farm, we started off, the hills on our left side. It was difficult to tell the time of day with the cloud cover, morning or afternoon, but the fact that it was still light at all was comforting. As much traveling as I had done at night in the Fold, something about the idea of walking around on my own planet in the dark made me nervous. There may not be evil wizards on Earth, but there were other, less obvious perils.
 

My first days in the Triaden seemed like years ago now. Was it possible that only eight months ago I had been a sick, weak kid? My ailing heart had cursed me since birth, and only upon arriving at Kiron’s doorstep had I found the magic, and the will, to heal. I had journeyed so far since then, met wizards and demons and fought battles that the people of Earth would never have believed. Eventually, I discovered my own unique sort of magic, tied to the vibrance of life that pulsed in the Maylin Fold and my tendency to find hope within the most dire circumstances.
 

But that magic wasn’t with me here in this frigid, barren place. I had left my wood staff, the vehicle that brought my power to life, with Kiron and the others. They would need every weapon they could get to fight the Corentin and his armies in my absence.
 

And they would fight Jade, too, I realized. To fight the enemy would be to fight the girl I had met and befriended at the very start. The girl, my own flesh and blood, who had eventually fallen to the possession of the Corentin. She had tried to kill me more than once since then. And yet I still felt that feeling, that tiny spark of hope that someday I could free her from the prison the Corentin had created for her within her mind.
 

I picked up the pace as I thought of her, of my friends facing off against her. I hoped I could find the gold I needed on Earth and return before another drop of blood was shed. Before any more of my friends fell victim to the Corentin, or his minion, the Coyle. Time was running out.
 

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.