Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  “What?” she asked. “Why? We just got started.”

  “Cait’s going to be sick, Mom, stop the car!” I shouted.

  Cait’s eyes were suddenly bulging, and I turned her head to face the door on her side, pulling desperately on the handle and getting the door open just in time. She vomited all over the pavement. I held her long brown hair away from her face and tried to hold my breath at the same time.

  A new knot of worry tightened in my stomach. It had never occurred to me that riding in the car might be a problem.

  Mom put the car in park and stepped out.

  “Oh, honey,” she cooed, coming around the side of the car. “Oh, no, that’s not very fun. Cathy, can you pass me a bottle of water?”

  She brushed the remaining hair out of Cait’s eyes. Cait spit onto the ground repeatedly, her body clearing itself out. When it appeared she was finished, Mom straddled over the sick and put her hands beneath her armpits, hauling her out of the car and into a tight embrace. She walked with her away from the vehicle and, finding a spot on the side of the road, sat down, cradling her in her arms.

  My heart suddenly swelled with pride and admiration for my mother. Though her words were inaudible from inside the car, I did make out the comforting murmur she had always used with me in times of trouble. They sat for a few minutes, Mom gently rocking Cait, and soon a giggle escaped the little girl. It was a welcome sound.

  The two stood up, Mom taking her hand and leading her around to the other side of the car. I shut the door on the vomit side as Mom opened the door on the other, grateful for the luck that had sent the entire episode of sick landing outside the car instead of on the seat. I scooted over to allow room for Cait, but her smile vanished at the sight of the open car door.

  “It’ll be okay, hon,” Mom encouraged. “Remember what I said. Just look out the window the whole time and take little sips on your water. It’ll help. You can talk to the rest of us without looking at us, okay?”

  Slowly, Cait nodded, climbing into the seat next to me, immediately training her eyes on the horizon.

  Mom slid into the driver’s seat again and put the car into gear. Grandma dug through her purse and produced a small plastic bag, passing it back to us.

  “If you feel sick again, put it in here, alright?” she asked. I handed the bag to Cait, and she nodded.

  The car started moving forward again. I leaned over and cracked her window wider. Immediately her face relaxed, and as the cool breeze fluttered through her hair, a little of her color returned.

  “I don’t like traveling this way,” she said to nobody in particular. “Riding with Aster is much smoother. And faster.”

  I smiled to myself, then noticed Mom’s eyes staring at me, perplexed, in the rearview mirror.

  Of course, she would have no way of understanding what Cait meant. To her, it had been at the edges of her ability to grasp that I was healthy at all, that something as awesome as Kiron’s link could even exist in the real world. The thought of her ailing son practically flying across the plains seemed too much to ask of her at the moment.

  The car drove on, and none of us spoke. Eventually, Cait drifted off to sleep, the plastic bag clutched tightly in her fist.

  I stared out the window, watched the dead earth pass us as we rocketed across it.

  Grandma had her window down, too, and her fingers drummed lazily against the crack where it disappeared into the door. Her face was serene and calm as she gazed across the land.

  Noticing me watching her, she smiled.

  “I told you,” she said. “I always did want to travel.”

  Chapter 7

  Mom and Grandma drove in shifts. Every couple hours we would stop, stretch our legs, search for signs of the still far-off mountains on the horizon. After a few shift changes, I had an idea.

  “Maybe you should let me try driving,” I suggested.

  Grandma looked at me in the rearview mirror, and Mom turned her head slightly at my voice. Then, together, they both started laughing.

  “What?” I asked, defensive.

  They didn’t answer, and their silence irked me. Sure, I was only thirteen, but I had been through more than any other thirteen year old I’d ever met. If I could fight in battles and lead revolutions, I could figure out how to turn a steering wheel.

  But I didn’t argue. California was a long way from here. Eventually, they would get sick of driving, and then I’d be the one laughing. Still, I folded my arms tightly across my chest and glared out the window.

  The clouds were starting to form, threatening the usual afternoon rain, and I leaned over Cait’s sleeping body and rolled up her window.

  “How long has it been?” I asked, trying hard not to sound like a little kid. Grandma glanced back again.

  “Eight hours,” she sighed. “Six to go.”

  I was bored. I couldn’t help it. I would have much rather jumped the whole way than sit in a car for days on end. I pulled out the diary and flipped through it.

  “January 12, 1893

  Six attempts I have made in the past year to make my way home. The linkmaking I do in secret, of course. Josephine would not understand the magic of a frame if she were to see one, though she is no fool. The technology of this place is not yet advanced enough to avoid the fear I’m sure the process would bring her, despite her intelligence and her delicious knack at humor.

  But each time I make the attempt to use the links I create, I make sure I am near her, her hand in mine. Sometimes I whisper the word, hoping she will be distracted and not think me mad. Sometimes I find other ways to slip it into conversation. Stories are good for disguising my true intentions. I will sit us around our outdoor fire, have the children hold our hands, and at the end of the tale shout the command to the heavens. They find it great fun, and will later traipse around the farm using the words of power from my homeland in their games. It makes my heart sing and hurt at the same time, watching them. I fear that they will never truly know their father if I fail in my attempts to bring them to the Triaden.

  As time wears on, though, I find myself torn between the duty to my own father and the Fold and that which I feel towards my new, young family. I cannot leave them here if I find a way back. Marcus has died in the last year, leaving me to lead the farm duties on my own. Josephine already has her hands full with the little ones and the many other chores she is forced to undertake, though she makes no complaint.

  I should not have married. I should have stayed focused on the task set before me, on righting the wrong I, myself, caused.

  But she is my love.

  Aside from the logical reasons, I would not leave her under any circumstances I can imagine. And, of course, the children. They grow stronger each day. Grace’s babbles have become commands. William’s messes have become inventions. Who knows what they might accomplish if given access to a deeper power they do not yet know they possess?

  I wish I could share this crucial part of my life with Josephine. I wish I could tell her where the father of her children is truly from.

  So I seek to find a way to reunite the two families I am now part of, and to keep everybody safe in the same motion. When the deed in the Fold is completed, I will let my beloved Josephine lead me where she may. Perhaps she will find the mountains behind Riverstone to be as beautiful as the plains of Earth.”

  The rain was pelting the windows now. I closed the book and looked out at the colorless landscape, dark and dangerous with the coming of the rain.

  Cait was awake, staring out her window. Her hands gripped the handle on the door, her knuckles white from the tightness of her grasp.

  “Hey,” I said, tapping her shoulder. “You okay?”

  She turned, and I saw that she was not at all okay. She scooted over and huddled up beside me, mashing her face into my chest.

  “Hey, it’s alright,” I soothed, realizing what the problem was. “The rain can’t get us inside the car.”

  “It’s so loud,” she whimpered.


  “I know,” I said.

  I was tempted to ask her about her own experience with rain, to relate the noise to that she might have heard on her own rooftop back home.

  But then I remembered that she no longer had a home to speak of. The last time she had seen it, she had watched her parents die at the hands of the Coyle.

  My impatience ticked up a notch as I settled for just holding onto her. The threats we faced here were nothing, I knew, compared to what those back in the Fold were battling. My thoughts drifted to the friends I had left in the Hidden Mountains. Were Kiron and Chapman and all the others still safe?

  The rain grew louder, and thunder cracked overhead. Cait jumped, wrapping her tense arms around my middle. I hoped that she would adjust to the journey, that the process of navigating through the mess the Corentin had made of Earth would become easier for her as the days passed by.

  But I knew the truth. Facing pure evil, no matter how often you do it and no matter how many different, diluted forms it may take, is never something that becomes easy.

  As night fell, Mom turned the car down a wide avenue. Once, stoplights had directed the traffic in this part of the world, but now they hung, swaying slightly in the wind, black.

  We were in an old suburban neighborhood, long abandoned by the people who had once lived here. As we passed house after corroded house, I thought of Grandma and her determination to stay out in the country on her own. She really was alone. The people in this town might have found ways to make life work here, like she had in the country, but they had all abandoned their homes when the danger struck. Grandma was one of the very few who had remained in her home anywhere, determined and unwilling to join the masses who had fled to the cities.

  It was spooky driving down the road, like tiptoeing through an ancient cemetery. Strangely, I felt more scared in this place than I had in many of the much more dangerous situations I had experienced in the Fold. The place felt haunted, and I searched the dark streets half expecting to find supernatural beings hiding in the shadows made by our car’s headlights.

  I didn’t see a single person, though. Nobody stepped forward to inquire about the strange car coming into the town. But the chills that had started running down my spine didn’t stop. The houses reminded me of videos I’d seen of shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean, the walls eaten away by years of rain, roofs collapsed, untreated metal rain gutters warped and twisted so that it looked like they were slowly melting into the ground.

  These had been people’s homes. Children had played in these cracked streets, parents had tended their front gardens where now there was only dust.

  It was a graveyard.

  “There,” Grandma said, pointing. “Let’s try that one.”

  She was looking at one of the smaller homes, this one made of brick. Most of the roof was gone, but the walls were in much better shape than the other wooden houses on the street. We pulled into the driveway, the brakes on the sedan squeaking loudly as Mom stopped the car. She flicked off the lights and killed the engine, and we all sat in silence for a few long moments.

  Blackness. The rain had stopped, but it was so dark that I couldn’t tell if the clouds still hung overhead. When my eyes failed to pick out even a single pinprick of light in the sky above, I decided the clouds had remained.

  “Well,” Mom said, dropping her hands from the steering wheel, where they had been clenched, “should we go in?”

  Nobody answered, but a minute later Grandma opened her door. Mom followed, clicking on a flashlight she had stowed in her car door. Cait hugged me tighter, but I grasped her arms, releasing myself.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’ll be okay. It’s just a house.”

  In the darkness I could just barely see her terrified eyes looking up into mine. I tried to appear brave, in control, as if I believed my own words. I opened my door and stepped out onto the driveway, holding out a hand for Cait, who took it and followed. I reached back in and grabbed my backpack, another gift from Kiron, given under such different circumstances than these that it felt like a lifetime ago. Together, Cait and I followed Mom and Grandma up the stone walk.

  The front door was locked, but the windows on either side were broken. Someone had already cleared the sharper glass edges from the one on the right, and Mom slipped one leg through and climbed inside. She came around, unlocking the door, and we all followed her in.

  Her flashlight bobbed along the walls as we walked, kicking the pieces of roofing out of our path that had come down over the years. Then, the low ceiling suddenly gave way to sky, and we found ourselves in what remained of the kitchen. Over every surface, chunks of roofing material were scattered. But most of the actual roof was gone, long since rotted to dust by the driving rains. Beneath the film of decades of decay, the once familiar trappings of family life remained. A long, stone countertop ran the length of the space. A refrigerator, one door open, stood empty and partially melted, only the aluminum handle retaining its true original shape.

  As we all stood, frozen in what was once somebody’s home, the only sound was our tense breathing. Part of me expected someone to come blazing out of the hallway, set to defend their property. But the truth was, nobody was here, which was somehow even worse. Finally, Mom spoke.

  “Our best bet is the basement,” she said, craning her neck around a corner to look beyond the room. “It’ll be the most protected. This roof must have lasted for at least a little while, and the walls would have taken some of the brunt of the weather. I’ve seen places like this before.”

  I believed her, but I couldn’t remember ever having been inside a home like this. Grandma’s farm was built centuries ago, before things like full basements even existed. But if Mom was right, we might get lucky enough to find a dry place to sleep tonight.

  She took a few tentative steps out of the kitchen, finding another hallway off to one side. We followed her, and soon found a wide staircase leading down below the house. Once, the stairs had been carpeted, and the stubby, rotten remains of it hung in chunks over the creaking wood.

  Down below was left mostly unchanged. The roof above seemed secure enough, and it must have kept most of the rain out all this time. Here, the carpet was thick. A large screen television stood in one corner of the room, bigger than any I had ever seen, with two couches arranged around it. Off to one side, a long, wide table stood prominently displayed.

  Mom smiled.

  “Cathy, look,” she said. “They still have the cues!” She walked to the wall behind the table and taken down a long, wooden stick from a panel where several others were mounted.

  “What’s a cue?” I asked.

  Mom looked at me, the happiness in her eyes faltering for a moment. Then she recovered.

  “This is called a pool table,” she said, bringing the stick over. She bent down, rummaging in a compartment set deep within the table. A clacking sound echoed from the wood, and when she lifted her hand out she had two round balls in it. She placed them on the table and began searching for more.

  Grandma turned, smiling at me and Cait.

  “Back in the old days, the snows would come down fierce in this part of the country,” she said. “Kids would be stuck inside for days on end sometimes with nothing to do except drive their parents crazy. The farmhouse doesn’t have a basement. It was built in the days before such things. We only had a small cellar to hide in when the tornadoes came. But later, people started building these big basements and used them as living spaces for the family. Don’t need a tornado cellar when you’ve got a whole giant room underground.”

  Mom had produced several of the balls now, each painted a different bright color. Cait was already at the side of the table, one ball in each hand, rolling them back and forth and clacking them together. She smiled.

  “So, this is a game?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Mom said. She was gathering all the balls and placing them within a triangle of wood she had fetched from the wall. Cait and I stood back, watching her intently, while Gra
ndma explored the rest of the room.

  Mom removed the wood and took the one ball she hadn’t put into the triangle to the other end of the table, placing it onto the fabric surface and then leaning over the table with her stick. Then, with a burst of energy, she flicked the stick, hitting the ball, which rocketed across the table and slammed into the others. They burst out of their formation, clicking against each other and the table edges as they slowly came to rest.

  Mom sighed, smiling wide.

  “That felt good.”

  Across the room, Grandma slumped into one of the couches and put her feet up. A loud sigh escaped her.

  Cait walked over to the wall, grabbing one of the cues and aiming it at the table like Mom had.

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Mom said, placing a hand over the wood. “You have to be careful. You don’t want to rip the felt.” She propped her own cue up against the table, then went around behind Cait, holding the stick at the same time as her, showing her how to position her body. Then, together, they took a shot. The balls met with a satisfying click, and Cait smiled.

  I couldn’t resist. I took down a cue as well and the three of us took turns shooting at the balls, though Mom was the only one to get any into the pockets, insisting that was the whole point of the game.

  It felt good to play something, to do something that had no other purpose than fun. Eventually, Mom stood back, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned back against a wall, watching. She had an odd, satisfied look on her face. I hadn’t seen her look so relaxed since I had arrived, and it was a relief. It seemed like just seeing her smile was enough to chase away the chills that this abandoned neighborhood had brought me.

  Eventually, she yawned and joined Grandma on the couch. But she didn’t make us stop playing. They had been driving all day while Cait and I had slept for much of the journey, and she didn’t seem to mind the noise. Finally, long after they had both dozed off, I put my cue back up against the wall.

  “We should probably go to sleep, too,” I said, stretching my arms wide with a groan.