Gaia's Secret
Authors: Barbara Kloss
Tags: #romance, #coming of age, #young adult fantasy, #fantasy action, #sword and sorcerer, #magic and romance, #magic adventure
Copyright 2011 Barbara Kloss
Smashwords Edition
only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
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I love you.
Chapter 7 - Decisions, Decisions,
Decisions
Chapter 11 - An Uncomfortable
Night
Chapter 14 - Off the Beaten
Path
Chapter 15 - The Shadow's
Creatures
Chapter 16 - Awkward
Beginnings
Chapter 18 - The Festival of
Lights
Chapter 19 - Competition is
Ugly
Chapter 29 - Glittering
Captivity
(a segment from Gaia's Orbis Terrarum)
The Unexpected
A
bolt of blue light
exploded from the bruised clouds above, and Cadence froze.
No, she didn’t stop. She didn’t slow or jerk
to a halt. She just…froze, with her front legs clawing at the air
and her mane splayed in chaos like it was styled that way. And what
was worse, I was frozen, too.
My body hovered inches from the saddle and my
dark hair floated in a cloud around my face. I tried to wiggle my
fingers off the horn but they wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. I
couldn’t even blink.
It was like my mind existed in another
dimension, like someone hit the pause button on my life and time
came to an abrupt halt. And I was watching it as an outsider.
But
what was that light?
I searched the golden fields and there, way
off in the distance, was a shadow. Not a scorch mark, but a shadow.
A man veiled in a black cloak. I couldn’t see his face, but I could
feel him watching me. My blood ran cold. Strangers didn’t frequent
these parts, and when they did, they wore Wranglers and cowboy
boots. Not cloaks.
Something burned in my hands and I glanced
down. The horn was…glowing. The crystal, the one buried in the tip,
radiated a blue light. It pulsed with life and singed my hands, but
I couldn’t pull them off. They were stuck, clamped around the
horn.
I looked back towards the shadow and wanted
to scream.
I hadn’t seen him move, but he was closer. He
just appeared, a few hundred yards away, and now I could see his
face. He didn’t have any hair and the bones in his face were sharp
and emaciated. His skin was so pale it looked blue and where his
eyes should’ve been were two black, empty pits.
But I felt him staring at me.
Slowly, he raised his arms to the sky. The
air around me pulsed and in one sweep, he brought his arms down.
The grass flattened before him as if being pushed down by an
invisible force. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even
scream.
The force barreled through the fields like a
wave, flattening everything in sight. It would only be a matter of
seconds before it hit me. The horn of the saddle singed my palms
but still, I couldn’t let go. It burned and burned, sending fire up
my arms.
Twenty yards…ten yards…
I braced for contact.
Sharp pressure engulfed me and the light in
my palms blazed white. Air exploded in my ears with a cry of fury,
and everything went silent. When I looked back, the man was
gone.
The clouds vanished, the sun shone brightly,
and Cadence ran on like she never stopped. Birds chirped overhead
and the breeze whipped the hair in my face. I looked down but the
glow in the horn was gone. There was no sign of what happened,
nothing.
Had I imagined it?
I think I need to get more sleep.
I brought Cadence to a halt. I lifted my hand
to wipe the sweat from my brow, and froze. There, seared along my
index finger was the faint outline of the crystal.
I never knew my mom. The day I came into the
world, she went out of it. At least, that’s what Dad always said.
Asking him about it never did any good. Even after all these years
his forehead would do that crinkly thing, his lips would fold into
themselves and his eyes would glaze over. And then he wouldn’t say
another word to me. For about a day.
Dad was private about, well, a lot of things.
I assumed that was why he moved us to the middle of nowhere,
otherwise known as Fresno, California. Living in the middle of
nowhere meant having more conversations with cows than people. And
staining your skin forever with the stench of manure and hay. And
not needing an alarm clock because your neighbors had roosters so
loud you could swear they woke up all of China. But I learned to
deal with it because I thought it would end. Right now, actually. I
thought I’d get my freedom right when I graduated high school.
Actually, let me rephrase that: I just
finished
high school. Graduating implies that huge ceremony
with caps and gowns and some person on a stage handing you a rolled
up diploma. Graduating implies celebrating with all of your friends
and being excited about where you were going to go next. And, let’s
be honest, none of that happens when you live on a farm and you’ve
been home-schooled all your life. All I did was take an exam. No
cap and gown. No friends. No ceremony. I guess if I’d really wanted
to have a celebration, I could’ve invited the neighbors. All five
of them. And their stupid roosters. Some party.
What would we celebrate anyway? My future? I
have no future plans, thanks to Dad. I can’t figure out why he
cares. He’s gone most of the time on international business anyway.
You’d think a successful businessman would want to see his only
daughter excel on her own. Apparently not. I probably would’ve
driven myself to San Francisco by now and flown out of here, but he
won’t even let me get my drivers license. I don’t know where I’d
even go, but I’d go somewhere. Preferably somewhere without
cows.
Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me
clarify that my dad’s not a tyrant or anything. He just happens to
suffer from a severe case of overprotection. Everyone thinks their
parents are overprotective, I know, but mine installed video
and
thermal surveillance in our house, around the perimeter,
and a few miles down the road. You be the judge.
So, you can imagine how well he reacted when
I told him my plans to study abroad. Actually, I couldn’t say
anything about my future without that same look crossing his face
like it does when I ask him about mom. But I had to. Thinking about
being stuck here any longer gave me this drowning sense of despair,
like the world was charging forward, leaving me behind. In a pile
of manure. Was it possible to devolve?
And what was my reward for finishing high
school? Dessert. By itself, dessert wasn’t so bad. But this was
dessert at the home of my worst enemy.
My stomach did a flip. I couldn’t believe I’d
agreed to go. When Dad came home early from Rome, I knew he had
something up his sleeve. I thought it had to do with my future:
that maybe he was finally ready to talk about it. But no. He had
decided to torture me instead.
“I’ll be in the car!” Dad yelled from the
hall.
Why was I so nervous? I hadn’t seen Mr. and
Mrs. Anderson in years. Three, to be exact. But it wasn’t like
he
was going to be there. He’d made it pretty clear three
years ago that he hated me, and had proved it by never speaking to
me again. Actually, not speaking to me would have been the nicer
thing to do. He just disappeared. Somehow apathy hurt a lot more
than hatred.
It was no use. All of my clothes were stained
with Eau de Farm. I put on my only white blouse and dug through my
creaky wooden drawers until I found a pair of jeans that didn’t
look like they’d been attacked by a barbed wire fence. I hid the
tears along the bottom of my pant leg with a clean pair of riding
boots, pulled my long, dark hair back into a braid, and paused to
look in the mirror.
I looked as nervous as I felt.
There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. They’re like another set of parents.
Yeah, but they were
his
parents.
“Daria Jones!”
“Coming!” I leapt over my pile of books,
bolted down the hall and out the door.
Dad already had the engine of our Subaru
thrumming as I climbed in.
“Did you tell Mr. Arashiro—?”
“Already taken care of.” Dad backed the car
out of the driveway.
Mr. Arashiro was my ju-jitsu instructor. He’d
been coming to our house every week since I could walk. Part of my
dad’s over-protectiveness. While Dad was gone, he consoled himself
knowing I’d be able to defend myself. And, I could. Against a cow.
Maybe.
We left our lawn of brown grass behind and
started for the Andersons’. Other people lived out here because
there was land to be had, but not us. Why we lived on the only plot
of land you could mow in a single day, I didn’t know.
It wasn’t long before the mountains loomed
overhead and we entered Yosemite Valley. The Andersons lived in the
Valley, as very few did. Their family had purchased property there
before it turned itself into a National Park, affording them a
luxurious home in one of the most beautiful locations on the
planet. The sun always seemed to shine on them. Giving them such a
residence was rubbing it in.
I’d spent many summers there while my dad was
away on business. The Andersons were like family to us. Sonya
Anderson had been the mom I never had, ever since I could remember.
I liked her husband, Cicero, well enough. He was Dad’s best friend,
and overprotective just like him. I didn’t mind that, because he
was at least reasonable about it. He wasn’t the one installing
thermal sensors. But the other reason I had loved going there—the
main reason—was to visit their son, Alex.