An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah

by Inmon, Shawn

  After the impetuous decision to step through the door the first time, he knew he couldn’t risk that again.

  And so, he kept those daydreams to himself.

  He glanced up from his daydream to see two pretty young girls with massive smiles on their faces.

  “It’s done,” they said together. “Do you want to see?”

  “Wait. Do I want to see the secret project the two of you have been sweating over every waking moment all summer?” He paused dramatically, then said, “I do.”

  They laid out a sheaf of art paper in front of him. On the top page, they had hand lettered “The Many Adventures of Alex Hawk. (Manta-ak)”

  Alex was truly surprised. She thought they had been working on creating their own characters or drawing Harry Potter scenes, which was their latest obsession.

  “It’s you, Dad!” Sanda said proudly.

  Alex turned the first page. It showed him standing in the basement with a black, shimmering door in the corner. The next panel showed him stepping through it and fighting the karak-ta, then being captured by the Winten-ah.

  “We left out all the boring stuff,” Amy said.

  “Yeah, we just tried to put in all the things people would like.”

  Alex smiled and slowly flipped through the pages. They managed to convey things like Lanta-eh being born on the summer solstice and even showed the half-moon birthmark on her hip. Alex turned a page to see their version of the battle of Denta-ah in a full-color splash page. Alex’s heart stopped. Standing beside him was Senta-eh, bow drawn, about to rain death upon the opposing force.

  Tears sprang to Alex’s eyes. “This is your mother,” he said to Sanda.

  “I know,” she said simply.

  “But... how do you know what she looked like. You got every detail of her right.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Sanda said. “Haven’t I told you? She comes to see me when I sleep.”

  “No,” Alex said, shaking his head and letting the tears roll down his face. “You haven’t told me that.”

  “Doesn’t she come see you, too?” Sanda laid a concerned hand on Alex’s shoulder, imitating the Winten-ah gesture of comfort.

  “No,” Alex said again. “But that’s okay. It’s you she would want to see. She’d already seen plenty of me.”

  Alex turned the pages and saw all the stories he had told the girls over and over brought to life—fighting the Dandra-ta, meeting Tokin-ak, being shipwrecked and stranded on the island. They even drew a picture of the man being dragged away by the gator while he had diarrhea.

  “That one’s our favorite,” Amy said, pointing to it. “Sanda did that one. Isn’t it good?”

  “They’re all wonderful,” Alex said, turning the pages. There were pages that showed the burning of Lasta-ah, the fight to the death with Draka-ak, and the rescue of Lanta-eh.

  “Girls, I am absolutely amazed at this. You conveyed everything without using any words.”

  “We thought we might go back and add some lettering later.”

  “I wouldn’t. I think it’s perfect just like it is. Although you do make me a lot more heroic than I really am.”

  “Dad,” Amy said, “that’s not what Sanda says. She says that everyone there knew you were a hero.”

  Alex picked both girls up in a massive bear hug and held them close, loving them.

  “This is the coolest thing ever. And you’ve given me an idea for a project now.”

  “What, what?” they shouted together.

  “Just like you made me wait to see this, you’ll have to wait a few days. Not too long though, I promise. Can I borrow these pages for a few days?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. “We wanted to give this to you as a Father’s Day gift, but it took us a lot longer than we thought to finish it. We wanted it to be good.”

  “It’s better than good. It’s great,” Alex said.

  Three days later, when Sanda and Amy came out of their bedroom in the morning, there was a steel box sitting on the dining room table. Beside it was a stainless-steel tube with a screw-on cap on one end.

  They ran to the box and saw the inside was also lined in stainless steel. They threw it open, but aside from the lining, it was empty.

  “Is this our surprise?” Sanda asked. “An empty box?”

  “Yes,” Alex answered, “but it’s a very special empty box.” He paused and looked from one of their faces to the other, and back again. “Because today, we’re going to Winten-ah.”

  Both their mouths fell open. High-pitched squeals filled the air, and Alex knew he had miscalculated. They had been begging to go back through the door for years, but Alex wouldn’t hear of it. Now he knew he had overpromised.

  “No, no, sorry. Not like that. We’re going to drive out to where Winten-ah is. I’ve always wanted to see what it looks like now.”

  The girls recovered as young girls are capable of. A drive and hike in the country was also good.

  “But what’s the box for?” Sanda asked.

  Alex held up their drawings they had given him. “I took these to the printers and had a color copy made.”

  “Cool!” the two girls said together.

  Alex produced the copies, rolled them up, and slipped them inside the tube. He dropped the tube inside the box. It fit perfectly.

  “Sanda, do you still have the toy that the visitors gave you on Prata-ah, that day?”

  Sanda put her finger to her chin in an exaggerated thinking pose. After a moment, she said, “Yes!” and ran back to their shared room. Rattling and the sounds of items being tossed on the ground followed, then she reappeared, holding the gray blob.

  There had been a time when she had played with it every day, but as with all things, eventually it was put aside for new interests.

  When Emily had given the blob of material to her, she had also given a small bottle of the green liquid to Alex. She had warned, “This will harden the design, but don’t do it until she is done playing with it, because it is permanent.”

  Sanda had never created a design that she liked enough to be permanent, so Alex had never applied it.

  “Do you still want to keep this? “

  “Do you want it?”

  “I could use it for this project, yes.”

  “Then you can have it,” Sanda said, making a final pronouncement on the subject.

  Alex took the gray material and warmed it with his hands. It could be stretched amazingly thin, and that’s what he did, rolling it out on the table until the round ball was a paper-thin rectangle. He set the box in the middle of it, then wrapped the material completely around the box.

  When the box was completely sealed inside, he produced the bottle of green goop.

  “Are you sure? Last chance.”

  “I’m sure,” Sanda said with one vigorous nod.

  Alex poured the liquid on the box and spread it to cover the material completely. A minute later the green faded and the box seemed to be encased in a heavy granite covering.

  Alex looked at the girls, who were wide-eyed.

  “Okay. Get your packs. Let’s go!”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Return to the Cliffside

  Alex had purchased the biggest king-cab pickup he could find, which allowed Mondak to ride in the back, though he did fill the space completely.

  Alex, Amy, and Sanda sat up front for the short drive out of town. No road went anywhere close to where Winten-ah would eventually sit, but Alex did note that the highway ran along a similar route to the path they had made between Winten-ah and Danta-ah.

  Alex kept his eyes peeled for landmarks and eventually pulled over at a wide spot in the road. They threw their packs on and started through the forest that ran alongside the road.

  Mondak acted as their trail buster, as he always did on their hikes.

  It seemed impossible to Alex, but they managed to get lost several times on the hike. They ended up backtracking and reversing course several times.

  And then, there it was, as
familiar as a long-ago lover.

  The cliffside caves of what would one day be Winten-ah.

  It wasn’t as neatly delineated as it had been the last time Alex had seen it, with the forest kept to a straight line, then the open field, then the cliff and caves.

  Instead, the forest intruded much farther into the field, and there was only a small clearing leading up to the cliffs.

  The cliffs themselves were different, too. Vegetation grew everywhere, vines hung down, obscuring many of the cave entrances.

  Alex scanned the horizon and his mouth fell open. Standing at the far edge of where they field reached was a gigantic bear. It was turned sideways to Alex, and for just a moment, he was sure that when it turned, it would be missing its left eye.

  The bear did turn, though, and looked placidly at Alex through two good eyes before it wandered away into the forest.

  “Dad, what is it?” Sanda asked.

  Alex shook the cobwebs from his brain. “Nothing. Let’s go take a better look at the caves.”

  They hiked up to the lowest level of caves. Alex walked them along the ledge and pointed to a spot.

  “There’s no waterfall yet, and a good thing, or this might be more of a tourist spot. But, this is the exact spot where we built our very first tiny house.

  “We should do it again!” both girls shouted together.

  “What?”

  “Build another of your houses right here.”

  Alex thought of the amount of material needed to build one of his houses, and how difficult it would be to either haul the house here after completion or haul the materials to build it. Not to mention that they were probably standing on land owned by the government, who didn’t take kindly to squatters.

  He gave the idea a non-committal “Maybe,” then said, “Let’s explore the caves.”

  Alex wondered if this whole experience might be confusing to Mondak. If it was, the dog didn’t show it. He was simply happy, running from spot to spot as if he was still a puppy.

  At the spot where their house had once been, Alex took out his camp shovel and dug down a bit. It was mostly rock on the ledge, with a covering of soil and weeds.

  He placed the box down into the hole and threw some soil around it.

  “Why are you doing that?” Amy asked.

  Alex stood and contemplated his handiwork. With the box covered in granite and the soil partway up its side, it already was starting to fit in with its surroundings.

  Alex reached his arms out and Amy and Sanda each slipped under one.

  “I’m doing this,” Alex Hawk said, “because I think this might be the start of the story.”

  Epilogue

  Winten-ak

  Winten-ak pulled the collar of his fur jacket higher against his neck. Snow flurries were falling, and the temperature was dropping lower still.

  It had been a difficult few days for Winten-ak and his family and friends, all of whom looked to him for guidance and leadership. He had led them on a successful hunting expedition three days earlier. They had made their kill, dressed the meat, and returned to their home village of Grasta-ah.

  They returned triumphant, with enough meat and fat to sustain the village for another few weeks. They were only triumphant until they were close enough to home to smell the acrid smell of a village that had been put to the torch.

  While they were away, an invader had attacked, defeated Grasta-ah’s defenses, and claimed those they did not kill as new members of their own village.

  The village had been pillaged and burned, so staying there was not an option.

  Winten-ak had never liked where their village had been, anyway. He had always known that they were too vulnerable to attack and no amount of fallen trees or sod hills was going to change that.

  And so, the refugees of Grasta-ah had trekked around the area, hoping to find a new place to make their home. Two days of walking had brought them no possibilities.

  They walked through a thick forest, and found a small clearing. When he looked up, Winten-ak smiled for the first time in days. At first, the cliff in front of him had looked like just that—a cliff—and nothing more.

  As he looked more closely, though, he could see that the thick vegetation and crowded hanging vines hid at least a few caves. There was a gentle hill that rose to the lowest level of the cliff, but after that, the climbing would get much more difficult.

  And difficult climbing makes for a home that is easier to defend, Winten-ak thought.

  He turned to his wife, who had marched without complaint for these past few days. He leaned in close.

  “I think this will be our new home.”

  She looked up in surprise.

  “This?” she asked, sweeping her arm to indicate the clearing.

  “No. That,” Winten-ak said, pointing up.

  The heads of the twelve people with him—his hunting group and the few survivors who had managed to run and hide during the massacre—looked up as one.

  Winten-ak did not bother to explain further. He was the leader. They would do as he said, or he was not the leader after all.

  He did point to a small waterfall, though, and say, “Water falls from above. We won’t have to trek any distance to find fresh water.”

  He strode up the small incline to the first level, where the water pooled in a natural opening.

  He knew he had made the correct choice. This could be their home for many years. Many generations, perhaps.

  Winten-ak skirted along the edge of the pool to see what was beyond it. He tripped over a rock buried in the dirt and stumbled. When he looked back to see what had tripped him, he saw the edge of a corner sticking above the dirt.

  Curious, he knelt and dug at it with his knife.

  Something compelled him to keep digging, though his wife called his name.

  After a few minutes of digging, he pulled out a neat rectangle.

  Finally, his wife approached and said, “What are you doing?”

  “I found this strange thing. It reached up and tripped me, almost as if it had been waiting for me to come and find it.”

  Winten-ak pulled his stone hammer out of his belt and tapped at the rectangle. Underneath a thin veneer of rock was a shiny surface.

  Warrior of Kragdon-ah

  Alex Hawk will return in February of 2021 with an all-new adventure called Warrior of Kragdon-ah. It is available for preorder here.

  Author’s Note

  There it is. The end of the trilogy that popped into my head in the summer of 2019.

  It started with a single image: a man stepping through a door in his basement and into a strange land.

  I lived in a tiny town on the Washington coast as I wrote this entire series, so it’s not surprising that I saw Alex step out of that door and onto a sandy beach, even though he thought he was a hundred and fifty miles inland.

  Here’s a little behind the scenes info. I was walking on a stretch of sand as I was daydreaming about that scene. Ahead, there was a colony of seagulls. Hundreds of them, just sitting, thinking their gull thoughts. In a flash, I decided I would use gulls to attack Alex when he first came through the door.

  But then, my cover designer, Michal Karcz, gave me the cover for the first book, with the funky-looking flying creatures on it. I liked his creation so much better than the gulls that the karak-ta were born. I’m not sure where the idea that the karak-ta eggs were psychotropic came from. Some dark recess of my imagination, I guess.

  I had originally conceived of this story as a trilogy only. Three books, then done.

  But, as I wrote the final pages of this third book, another image popped into my head, once again set in Alex Hawk’s basement. I can’t tell you what that image is, but it led me to an entirely new story. Possibly even three more new stories.

  So, if you enjoyed these Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventures, I have good news for you. I am planning on writing at least a fourth book, and possibly a fifth and sixth.

  The fourth book will be called Warrior
of Kragdon-ah.

  I have promised readers of my Middle Falls Time Travel series a new book, so I will begin writing that first. I will publish that book—The Stubborn Lives of Hart Tanner—in December.

  I will start writing Warrior of Kragdon-ah then and will publish it in late February 2021.

  If you’d like to make sure you never miss one of my new books (I have a whole new series planned that will begin in late 2021) please join my New Release Alert List. Here’s the thing about my New Release list: I only send an email when I have something new coming out, so you’ll only get six or seven emails per year from me at the most. Also, of course I will never share or sell your email address to anyone. I value your privacy as I do my own, and I very much care about my own privacy. And, there’s a bonus! When you sign up for my New Release list, I will send you a free ebook—Rock ‘n Roll Heaven. It’s a rock ‘n roll fantasy about a small-town rocker who dies and wakes up in the afterlife, face to face with Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and other icons of rock ‘n roll.

  Now, about Return from Kragdon-ah itself. When I started this trilogy, I knew that the first book would be about Alex leading an army into war, and that the second book would be a mission to save Lanta-eh, The Chosen One. The third book remained mysterious in my mind, even as I sat down to write it.

  Now that it is done, I am pleased with it. My intent with this third book was to answer all questions the first two books asked. Two questions loomed larger than all others: would Alex ever return to Amy, and how did the doors get there in the first place? Unless you skipped to the Author’s Note at the back of the book, you now know the answers to those questions.

  From the moment I sat down to write the first book, I knew that Alex would make it home, though the trail would be long and twisty to get there. And yes, I knew from the beginning that the doors were placed there by human beings before they left the planet for greener pastures.