Agent of Prophecy

by M. A. Rothman

  “Come on, everyone!” Dad yelled from downstairs. “We have a plane to catch!”

  Ryan just barely managed to pull the suitcase’s zipper shut. He dragged the heavy bag from the bed and staggered down the hall with it.

  Dad met him halfway down the stairs. “Goodness, Ryan, how much did you pack? Give it here—I’ll help you with that.” He took the suitcase from Ryan and lifted it with ease. “Would you find your brother and see that he gets his stuff to the car?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  Ryan went to look for his little brother. Aaron wasn’t in his room, though his suitcase was sitting there, already packed. He grabbed it and set it by the front door.

  “Aaron!” he shouted.

  His mom called from the kitchen. “I think I saw him heading for the garage. He’d better not have run off, we’re going to be late as it is!”

  Mom was less enthusiastic about the vacation than Ryan was, probably because their last family vacation, four years ago, hadn’t been her cup of tea. They’d spent the whole time exploring Japanese ruins and learning about making samurai swords. Ryan and Aaron had been in heaven; both of them were heavily involved in martial arts, so they thought it was amazing. Mom, however, would have much preferred to remain in the United States, soaking up the sun at a lazy resort.

  And perhaps this time she would get her wish. Or not. Ryan didn’t know where they were going, and neither did his mom. Only Dad knew.

  His father had always loved surprises. They’d all been pestering him for months about their destination, but all he would do was wink and say, “Sorry, that’s top secret.” All they knew was that it would be “warm and wet,” they wouldn’t need passports, and that they were bringing Silver, the family cat—which meant they couldn’t be going too far, Ryan reasoned.

  Ryan found his brother rummaging through the shelves in the garage.

  “I brought your suitcase down for you, you lazy bum.”

  Aaron was fifteen, two years Ryan’s junior. He rolled his eyes. “I would have gotten it.”

  “What are you doing in here anyway?” Ryan asked.

  “Trying to find clues.”

  “Clues to what?”

  Aaron scoffed as if this should be obvious. “To where we’re going. Dad has to have left clues around here somewhere.”

  “Well, you won’t find anything in here.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I already looked.”

  Aaron put his hands on his hips. “You could have told me that earlier.”

  At that moment, Dad walked in with Aaron’s suitcase. “There you boys are. Don’t go anywhere, I’m just finished loading up. Aaron, use the bathroom if you need it. Ryan, come help me shut down the smith.”

  Ryan followed his father to the shed that had become Dad’s workshop—or “smithy” as he’d started calling it ever since he’d installed a blast furnace. Dad could get a little nutty when he latched on to a new hobby, and he always dragged the boys into it—for good or bad. Ryan had enjoyed learning about the history of metalsmithing, but after countless hours of banging away on the anvil and working with red-hot metal, he’d decided it wasn’t for him. Not only was it hard, sweaty work, it was a challenge to get the metal to just the right temperature and all too easy to accidentally ruin something he’d spent hours working on.

  It also bugged him that his little brother was so much better at it than him. Everything Aaron made turned out well, while Ryan usually ended up with a pile of malformed junk.

  He helped his dad make sure everything was shut down and locked up—not that his dad needed his help—and then headed back to the garage, where Mom was running through one of her typical last-minute checklists.

  “Well?” Dad asked her.

  “We’ve got everything,” she said.

  “Including Silver?” Dad asked.

  Mom pointed to a cat carrier in the back seat. “He wasn’t happy about it, but yes.”

  Dad grinned. “Then let’s get going. Vacation awaits!”

  Their destination proved to be Tucson, Arizona. Or at least, that’s where their plane landed. They then loaded their things into a rented SUV and Dad took the wheel, driving them southeast through scenic landscapes. They were surrounded by the vast Sonoran Desert, dotted with towering saguaro cacti and prickly plants that resembled creosote bushes.

  “Arizona in the summer,” said Mom, checking the weather forecast on her phone. “What were you thinking, Jared? It’s supposed to be over a hundred and ten degrees today. We’re going to melt!”

  Ryan was silently in agreement. He was used to the cool of the Pacific Northwest; he couldn’t even imagine what one hundred and ten degrees would feel like.

  Dad’s face fell. “It won’t be too bad,” he said, unconvincingly.

  Mom forced a smile, perhaps sensing his change in mood. “You’re right. We’ll have a good time as long as we’re together.”

  “Um… Dad?” Aaron said. “Is there going to be shampoo where we’re going?”

  Dad perked up again. “No, there won’t be any shampoo.” He turned to Mom, smiling. “There won’t be any room service or electricity, either. We’re going camping.”

  Mom’s smile vanished, and she sighed. “We’ll have a good time as long as we’re together,” she repeated, as if by saying the mantra enough times it would be true.

  At the entrance to the campgrounds, a ramshackle lodge stood next to a river, with a large sign out front that read “Canoes for Rent.” As Dad went inside to check in, Ryan and Aaron hopped out of the car and made straight for the river.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to go fishing,” Ryan said.

  “Do you think Silver will freak out about the water?” Aaron asked. He’d brought the gray-and-black-striped cat from the car, insisting he needed the fresh air.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Ryan took the cat from his brother’s arms and set him down on the bank. Silver sniffed at the water, then pounced on a tiny grasshopper near the river’s edge.

  “There’s your answer,” Ryan said. “Silver will be fine. He’ll have lots to distract him out here.”

  At that moment the grasshopper leapt from shore to a large stick floating in the water. The cat jumped after it—and got dunked. The boys cracked up as the cat came back to shore yowling and wet.

  Dad exited the lodge with backpacks and life jackets for everyone.

  “Aw, do we have to wear those?” Aaron groaned.

  “Yes, Aaron, we all have to.” He gestured back toward the lodge. “I’ve rented lockers for most of our stuff, so let’s start unloading the car.”

  “What do you mean, you rented lockers?” Mom asked. “Aren’t we taking our stuff with us?”

  “Of course not! All that stuff would never fit in a canoe. I’ve rented two canoes; we’ll take them downriver where I have a plan for a camping spot for tonight. Take no more than what you can fit in a backpack; we’ll leave the rest here at the lodge.”

  “Only what you can fit in a backpack,” Mom repeated, grumbling. “You might have told us that before we left home, Jared.”

  Ryan and Mom took one canoe, and Dad and Aaron took the other. As they pushed away from the pier, Mom looked back at Ryan uncertainly, a paddle in her hand. “What am I supposed to do with this thing?” she asked.

  Dad and Aaron were having no such trouble. “Race you guys to the turn in the river up ahead!” Dad shouted, and he and Aaron shot into the lead.

  Ryan leaned forward and showed his mom how to hold the paddle. “It’s easy, Mom. When I say ‘stroke,’ put the flat side of the paddle in the water so its facing you, pull it toward you as hard as you can, and then lift the paddle out of the water. That way we can keep the same pace and stay on a straight line.”

  “Okay…” Mom nodded and gripped her paddle.

  “Stroke… stroke… stroke…,” Ryan chanted.

  They kept a steady pace, carving a straight line downriver. Up ahead, Dad and Aaron were
paddling madly, but their strokes weren’t coordinated, and their canoe swayed left and right. Soon Ryan and Mom went right past them—much to Mom’s delight and Dad’s chagrin—and by the time they reached the next bend in the river, they had such a lead that they stopped paddling and waited for the others to catch up.

  “Come on, slowpokes!” Ryan shouted.

  Mom laughed, and they high-fived.

  They’d been riding the current, paddling on and off for about an hour, when Dad called for the two boats to pull up side by side. They were traveling between cliffs, one of which was covered with greenery near the waterline.

  “Okay, guys,” Dad said. “This is our destination—for now. There’s a cave system in these cliffs, and I brought headlamps for everyone. We’re going to explore a bit of history.”

  Mom looked dubious, but Aaron and Ryan craned their necks to look up at the cliff. This was going to be cool, Ryan could tell.

  “The natives of this area,” Dad said as he passed out headlamps, “natives who lived here for thousands of years, mind you—came to these caves to commune with the spirits. According to their stories, the veil between worlds is thinnest right here at this very spot. I expect we’ll find lots of very interesting petroglyphs, and maybe even a spirit or two if we’re lucky.”

  “What’s a petroglyph?” Aaron asked as they guided their canoes toward the cliff.

  “It’s a carving or painting on the stone,” Dad replied. “Kind of like an Egyptian hieroglyph. The natives used them to tell stories and communicate ideas. I’m hoping to find some that are really old.”

  “How old is really old?” Aaron asked.

  “Well, Native Americans have been on this continent since the last ice age at least, so… pretty old. If we find a carving that depicts an extinct animal—say, a mammoth—then you know you’re looking at something special.”

  Dad was steering them directly for the base of the cliff, and as they got closer, Ryan understood why. Through the canopy of greenery, a cave opened directly into the cliff from the water. The tips of their canoes parted the hanging vines, and they paddled right on through.

  Mom swatted at a plant that grazed her face. “Jared! You just led us through a bunch of poison ivy! Kids, don’t touch your eyes, mouth, or anything.”

  “My feet are itching,” Aaron whined.

  “You have shoes on, Aaron,” Mom said, shaking her head.

  “My arm itches,” Aaron whined.

  “Then dunk it in the water,” Mom said. “In fact, it might be a good idea to find a place to park our canoes so we can all take a dip in the water. A swim would be nice anyway. I’ve never sweated so much in my life.”

  Ryan pointed to a wide shelf of sand up ahead. “How about there?”

  “That looks perfect,” Dad said. “In fact, since there’s plenty of driftwood scattered around here, I’ll see if I can make a fire for us.”

  “I don’t think we need a fire,” Mom said. “I want to cool off, not warm up.”

  “It’s pretty cool in this cave,” Dad said. “And you’ll need the fire to dry off your clothes after you swim in them.”

  “I brought my suit.”

  “Yes, but we did just push through poison ivy. It’s all over your clothes now, so… what better way to wash it off, right?”

  Ryan grinned.

  Mom groaned.

  As the fire crackled merrily, Ryan lay next to the flames and tried to dry off, along with his clothes. They were all soaking wet—all except their hiking boots, which they’d removed before swimming, and Silver, who had no interest in getting wet again—but they were cool, and it was fun being in this dark cave lit only by a flickering fire.

  “Boys, put your hiking boots back on, the rocks around here are kind of uneven and have sharp edges.”

  Ryan grabbed his socks that stuff in his boots and began putting them back as he looked over to where Dad was studying something on the cave wall. “You find a petroglyph?”

  “No, just noticing there’s a thick seam of mica in this rock wall. You never know, we might even find some gemstones in this cave, like the old miners used to.”

  “How far back do these caves go?” Mom asked.

  “They go on for miles,” Dad said, “though the map I picked up only covers a part of them. I figure we can explore for the rest of the day, find a spot like this to spend the night, then explore some more before heading to the canoe drop-off downstream.”

  Ryan sensed that his mother wasn’t pleased with the prospect of spending a full day—and night—in this dank enclosure.

  “Come on, boys,” Dad said. “Let’s try some hand fishing.” He’d brought equipment for that, too. Fishing line, weights, hooks, and bobbers designed for fishing with a handline. The two boys sat cross-legged in the sand and began to assemble their rigs.

  Just as Ryan managed to thread a weight over his line, a deep rumbling shook the cave. He looked up in alarm, and so did Aaron. Even their father looked concerned.

  “What was that?” Aaron asked.

  Dad tried to wave it off. “There’re some mines in the area. Someone must have set off a charge a few miles away. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Jared…” Mom said. “Being in a dark cave with no hot water is bad enough. I don’t want the roof caving in on me.”

  Dad chuckled. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Ryan waited for a moment to see whether the rumbling would continue. When a minute passed without any tremors, he finally went back to threading his line.

  And then the rumble returned—except this time it was much stronger than before. The ground shook violently. Waves formed on the water. The walls began to crack, and bits of rock began to fall. Clouds of dust blew forth from the depths of the cave.

  The Riverton family did the only thing they could. They huddled together as their world collapsed around them.

  Addendum

  For readers who are familiar with my style of book construction, the addendum is where I talk about the science of the story you just read. But this is without a doubt a fantasy novel, so there’s no science, right?

  Well, yes and no. I will admit that this first installment in what is a four-book series does have the least of what I’d call traditional science. This will evolve a bit in the future, but there are some things that I think are interesting to discuss that have to do with science and relate to this novel.

  I should note that these addendums are intended to give very brief explanations of what might be complex concepts. My intent is to only leave you with enough information to give a remedial understanding of the subject. However, for those who want to know more, it’s also my intent to leave you with enough keywords that would allow you to initiate your own research and gain a more complete background understanding of any of these topics.

  So what kind of science could there even be in this fantasy novel? I’ll admit, it’s a challenge, but I’m up for it.

  For instance, Arabelle’s uncanny ability to pinpoint the direction of someone she knows well, you wouldn’t consider that a scientific element, but I can somewhat correlate that to an upgraded version of magnetoreception.

  “Magnetoreception? What’s that,” you ask.

  Magnetoreception:

  Well, you might have heard of homing pigeons. These are birds that can find their way back to a spot no matter where they are in this world. It almost seems like magic, but that phenomenon is very real and it’s based on something called magnetoreception.

  This ability is based on an organism’s sense of magnetic fields around them and oddly enough many creatures can detect a magnetic field to help them pinpoint location, altitude, and direction.

  It’s not as rare a thing as you might expect. Even some bacteria have a sense of magnetic fields. Mollusks do too, as do many fish along with many land-based vertebrate animals. It could be argued that even humans are in some small sense sensitive to fields around them, some more than others.

  Going back to the example of
the homing pigeon, they have the uncanny ability to be “remember” the location where they were hatched and when taken from that spot, even thousands of miles away, they manage to be able to come back to the exact same nest they were born in.

  Akin to sharks where they can sense the electrical signals of other animals nearby using an organ called the ampullae of Lorenzini, imagine such a “sixth sense” being tweaked. Or we somehow evolved the ability to sense other people at a distance.

  Some things are still strictly-speaking “fantasy” but it’s not as far-fetched as it may initially seem.

  Infravision:

  Infravision? Infravision is a loan word from a popular game that describes the ability to see things in the infrared spectrum. Is it real? Can people do that, and if so, would it be like the ability exhibited by Arabelle where she can see creatures in the dark?

  Well, let’s talk briefly about what does infrared even mean. What is infrared and how does it relate to the whole light spectrum?

  I would hope that we’re all very familiar with a jump rope, and if you wiggle one end of the rope you’ll see that the rope makes wave-like shapes. The distance between each of the peaks is called the wavelength, and the slower and less energy you put into the wiggling the longer the length of the wave.

  Well, light is the same way. Light also travels in a wave, however the length of the wave is very very short. How short? Well, the typical visible spectrum for humans is between 380 nanometers (violet) and 740 nanometers (red). Yes, nanometers, one billionth of a meter. Very small, but very significant.

  Infrared light has wavelengths longer than 740 nanometers that’s where “infravision” becomes interesting.

  Why is it interesting?

  Well, we normally think of light as something that is shining out of a flashlight, or maybe a TV or computer monitor. We don’t think of things glowing with light all the time. Your desk, the rock on the ground, or the squirrel in the woods. The only reason we don’t is because most of us can’t see that glow.