Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  Almara’s mark.

  I stopped, confused, and Kiron and I exchanged a glance.

  How did Almara’s mark get here?

  Kiron came to stand beside me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How could he have been here before us?”

  The diamond shape, encircled by two oval rings, surrounded by stars. It was a symbol I had seen many times before. It was on the map I had found in my grandmother’s attic. It had been displayed prominently in Chapman’s shop in Stonemore to secretly signal to fellow Almarians.

  And it was carved directly into the Kinstone which Jade now held.

  I had always thought Almara had invented the symbol, himself. We all had.

  “Kiron?” I asked.

  I could tell his brain was working as hard as mine was to make sense of what we were seeing.

  “Maybe he wasn’t the only one,” Kiron said. “Maybe the symbol is older than we all believed.”

  “Oh, this isn’t Almara’s mark,” Father said. His voice made me jump a little. He had been quiet since the day before.”

  “What do you mean, not Almara’s mark?” Kiron asked.

  “This mark was created by Jared,” he said with such matter of factness that it confused everybody.

  “How do you know about Jared?” I asked. I couldn’t remember ever mentioning him in front of Father, though I did find my mind wandering and landing on him in recent days.

  Father looked confused.

  “Well, I don’t really know,” he said. “But I feel certain that this mark was made by him. Not this Almara.”

  We all stared as the mystery surrounding Father increased once more.

  Cait’s hand in mine made me jump. She was tugging on my arm, her face red and sweaty in the morning heat. She dragged me closer to the symbol.

  It was carved into the dry earth, the lines cut so deep that even the wind of centuries couldn’t wear it away. And it was huge. The diamond, itself, was large enough to hold three men within it.

  Cait led me to the it, then carefully pushed me until I was standing directly within the diamond.

  The ground beneath us shook and reared. Donnally and Tristan both lost their footing and tumbled into the dust. In that moment just as I regained my balance, the ground within the diamond began to move downward.

  “Kiron!” I shouted.

  The platform was moving fast now. In seconds I was already waist-deep beneath the ground. Kiron quickly strode over and jumped into the hole beside me. In this way, together, we sank into the ground.

  For several long moments the only light we could see was the diamond window far above our heads. Finian and Elidor both looked over the edge at us.

  “What do you want us to do?” Finian shouted down.

  “Wait there!” Kiron boomed. “They’ll kill themselves if they try to jump this far.”

  “How are we going to get out?” I asked, starting to panic now.

  “No idea,” he said. “But you saw the symbol. Seems like this is the place, don’t it?”

  Yes, it did.

  Finally, cold air washed over our faces. I could just make out a small room beyond our shaft, and the diamond clunked into place with a sound like a metal plate meeting concrete.

  “Let’s go,” Kiron said. “A little light, please.”

  “What?” I stumbled. “Oh, right.”

  I tapped the staff gently onto the plate, the tip instantly coming to light, brighter than any torch.

  We stepped off the platform.

  The room was small, no bigger than a large bedroom back on Earth. In the center rose a delicate pedestal. Above it, a small earthen bowl hovered.

  Kiron fumbled in his pack, producing the giant Book of Leveling. He flipped to the right page, the page about Yunta.

  “Three stones,” he breathed. “Quick. Get them out.”

  I dug into my own pack and pulled out a variety of pieces of gold, two small as peas, one as big as a tangerine.

  “Any three stones?” I asked.

  Kiron looked worried. This was part of the plan we hadn’t discussed yet, or even thought about. How much gold would each planet require? We had the recipe right there in the book, but without a way to measure …

  “Let’s just take it one step at a time,” he said. “Start with the smallest.”

  With a shaking hand, I held out the smallest of the pebbles. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I dropped the gold into the basin.

  Immediately the bowl lit up, glowing as if it were made of gold, itself. Slowly it began to rotate in place.

  We both heaved sighs of relief.

  Excited now, I grabbed for the second pebble, dropping it into the basin without hesitation.

  The bowl spun faster, just fast enough to fling the stones to the edge without them being thrown over the rim. The whole chamber seemed to vibrate with the power coming from the pedestal.

  My breathing came fast and shallow now. Just one more.

  Kiron seemed to be trying to decide between two stones for the third, and final, one to add. Finally deciding on the smaller one, he held out his hand and let the gold drop.

  The room exploded with energy, knocking us back against the stone walls, the gold in the basin shooting out of it like bullets and lodging into the walls behind our heads. Around and above us the earth rumbled, quaking beneath us. From above, we heard the shouts of our companions, surprise and fear in their voices.

  And the shaking didn’t stop. We waited, thinking that it would end like any earthquake might, but it continued on and on until it felt like my brain would turn to jelly in my skull.

  “What do we do?” I shouted over the rumbling.

  Kiron was getting to his feet now, climbing his hands up the walls for support. He found a hole where one of the gold stones had lodged and, using his disk, drew it out from the wall.

  “Hold this!” he yelled.

  I reached out my hand and caught the gold as he dropped it.

  I couldn’t understand it. What had gone wrong? Then I remembered.

  The size.

  Each planet required a certain number of gold nuggets, or “stones,” to balance. This had worried me terribly when I had first seen the Book of Leveling, but then I found the guide at the back with a diagram showing the diameter of the stones. I had forgotten it completely until now.

  While Kiron searched for the other gold pieces, I crawled across the floor to where he had dropped the book. On the very last page was the diagram. I grabbed for my pack and drew out a rough, larger piece of gold the size of my fist.

  What I did next seemed to come from the far reaches of my brain. I held out my staff and willed it to hold the gold in midair. It hovered there, still despite the room still shaking around us. This strange magic was new to me, and using the staff was awkward at first, though slippery to the touch, bringing me confidence in wielding it. Only when it stuck to my hands like glue did I need to worry about it not working the way I needed it to. Now, all I needed to do, it seemed, was to think about what I wanted to happen.

  I thought of an apple, spinning it gently on the spot in the air. Then I imagined a knife, and the gold began to shrink in size. On the floor of the cavern, shavings of the stone gathered, jumping with the vibration of the place. I placed the book under where the gold hovered, not wanting to risk losing even the tiniest piece. The ball rotated again and again, growing ever smaller until I thought that it closely resembled the diagram. I reached out for it and held it against the small circle drawn on the last page.

  It would have to be good enough. I plunked it into my pocket, not wanting it to roll away on the unstable ground.

  Kiron came to my side, his eyes wide and mouth open, but no words came. He held out the larger of the three nuggets we had already tried.

  I worked quickly now, shaving the second and third stones until they, too, matched the diagram. This time I didn’t wait to drop the stones one by one. I grabbed all three in one hand, held it out o
ver the basin, and gave the gold back to Yunta that had been stolen from it millennia ago.

  A burst of light filled the room, glowing like the sun as the basin’s spinning began to slow. I shielded my eyes with one arm, unable to look directly at the gold. Gradually, the shaking in the room began to ebb, the roar of the moving earth quieted.

  A deep scraping sound came from the other side of the room. I dared to open my eyes amidst the bright light and saw that the platform that had lowered us into the space was slowly rising.

  We would be trapped.

  “Kiron!” I shouted, pointing.

  We both scrambled to gather our things, me gently closing the gold shavings within the pages of the book, and then made for the platform. Kiron went first; it was now at knee-height, and he hopped up onto it with an ease I didn’t expect. I slung my pack over my shoulders, my staff secured to the back of it, and leapt up to join him.

  My jump wasn’t high enough, and the toes of my boot just missed the edge of the platform. I lost my balance, falling backward until I hung by my fingertips. I shouted, flailing.

  “No, you don’t,” Kiron grumbled.

  With strength I wouldn’t have guessed he had, he gripped onto my wrists and hoisted me up onto the platform beside him. I just had time to pull the staff free before the platform raised us out of the room completely, shutting out the light below to the world above.

  Chapter 11

  Everyone was on the ground.

  Across the expanse of desert, huge cracks radiated out from us, as if a bullet had pierced through the earth and shattered it like a pane of glass.

  Gradually my companions sat up. Some rubbed their heads where they had hit. Others stared around, dazed.

  Father reached me first.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  Concern outlined the features of his face. Something was different. I stared up at him, trying to put my finger on it. Finally, as I stood face to face with him, I saw what had changed.

  It was his eyes.

  They were no longer solid black as they had been. A thin rim of blue was just visible, encircling his irises.

  Instinctively, I backed away from him, expecting an attack at any moment. But no attack came. He watched me, perplexed, and just as docile as he had been before we had gone into the cave.

  I stared, unsure of what to do.

  Cait walked up to Father, her face beaming, and took his hand. She looked at me expectantly, opening her mouth to speak. Still, no words escaped her. Her brow furrowed for a moment, but then she let the disappointment go. She pulled Father closer to me, grabbing my hand.

  I pulled it back as if snatching it away from a fire. But she didn’t let go, insisting. I stared at Father’s eyes, waiting for the attack, as she put our two hands together.

  It was the first time I had touched him. He had touched me, of course, during his attacks. But as our hands met, a warmth spread from his into mine, too hot to be just the heat of his body. It traveled up my arm slowly, finally dissipating into my bloodstream as it met my shoulder. I pulled my hand away then, surprised and rattled. Something was different alright. The feeling of warmth still pulsed in my arm, and there was no denying what I had felt.

  It was his power.

  It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment that Father might have power of his own. He had displayed nothing until that moment.

  “What was that?” I asked, half wondering, half accusing.

  His face broke into a smile.

  “It was him,” he said, his own eyes wide.

  “Him?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Jack,” he said. “Your dad. Only, he seems different. Calmer. He didn’t try to attack.”

  Hope flared in my chest, but pushed it back down, trying not to let it take me over. But I couldn’t deny what I had felt, and what I could see now. Father was controlled, calm. And somewhere within him, power stirred.

  “We need to get moving,” Kiron said from behind me. “Lissa, get a link going for Grallero. It’s next on the list, right?” he asked me.

  I nodded, still in a daze

  “Good,” Kiron said. “I don’t want to be here when those bugs wake up again. And look at the sun.” He pointed.

  The sun was nearing the horizon already, threatening to set. We didn’t have much time.

  “Aster, you should make the spheres while we wait for Lissa,” Kiron said.

  Grudgingly, I pulled my eyes away from Father’s, still perplexed by that ribbon of blue.

  Kiron handed me the book, and I opened it to the page with the diagram. Flakes of gold fluttered around on the page, and I quickly collected them in my hands, carefully depositing them into the glass vial I still carried. We would need to melt the gold flakes into a stone soon. That or find a new way to carry all of the tiny shavings. Once the page was bare, I pulled out the staff and a chunk of gold and got to work.

  Having a moment to breathe this time, I stared at the gold in wonder as it turned on the spot, slowly being shaved away as the chunk gradually reduced to the right size for leveling. My staff was slippery in my fingers, but it did not falter. Only once when I raised my gaze to see that Larissa was nearly done with the link did I find that the sphere wobbled, nearly falling to the ground. I quickly regained my focus. As long as my eyes and mind were on the task, the connection with the staff would do the rest.

  It didn’t take us long, but the sun was touching the horizon now, and there was no time to waste. The first faint sounds of clicking reached our ears, and the entire group went into a frenzy, collecting our traveling things and forming a tight circle around Larissa and Cait.

  I took one last look around just as the sun slipped below the edge of the land. As the giant bugs took full form, Larissa shouted “Grallero!” and we spun away.

  And so we said goodbye to Yunta. A place I was sure none of us would desire to visit ever again.

  Grallero.

  We tumbled into the thick, wet grass, the vibrant smell of sweet nectar invading our nostrils in an instant. The sun was dappled as it came through the trees and rested against the green. Occasionally, a shadow would cross overhead.

  This place must be full of birds, I thought.

  And yet I heard none. At first I didn’t hear the sounds at all. My ears ringed, I thought, from the power of our jump. Grallero must have been very far from Yunta for the jump to affect me this way.

  But no. The sound I heard was not a ringing. We all sat up and stared around, fear gradually falling across every face in our party as the threat that sound meant registered. Instinctively, we edged closer together, huddling in a group.

  “What is that?” I asked, still unable to put my finger on what it was.

  Nobody answered me.

  I listened more, my skin prickling with a panic I couldn’t explain. The sound meant danger, I was sure of it. And yet it was a sound I knew for sure that I had never heard before this moment. It was deep, baritone. It reminded me of the sound of a small airplane buzzing through the sky.

  At that thought I shot straight up to my feet.

  Airplanes weren’t the only things that buzzed when they flew.

  “Bees,” I breathed, staring around.

  Suddenly, the shadows I had seen crossing overhead had meaning.

  Those hadn’t been birds. But if those shadows did belong to the bees, that would mean they would have to be enormous.

  The group rose up one by one. Whimpers of terror escaped Tristan and Donnally. Kiron set his jaw.

  “They won’t hurt us if we don’t bother them,” he said firmly.

  “How do you know?” Tristan asked, breathless.

  “I’ve been a farmer nearly all of my life,” Kiron said. “I know bees.”

  My heart was hammering in my chest, and I was finding it difficult to breathe. I had been stung by a bee only once in my life. I was near the growing towers in the city back on Earth, and one of them must have escaped its moist, controlled home within those glass walls. It buz
zed around me, but, never having spent much time outdoors in our ruined world, I didn’t think to try to shy away from it. I had never seen one before, only read about them in books. It landed on my hand, and I was delighted. I cupped my other hand over it, intending to take it home to show Mom the treasure I had found out on the street.

  That was when it stung me.

  Pain like I had never experienced radiated up from the back of my hand, pulsing and burning as the venom of the sting made its way into my bloodstream. I yelped, throwing the now dying bee away from me and cradling my hand to my chest.

  A single bee sting was harmless, Mom had told me once I got home. She tended to my stung hand, removing the stinger and slathering the skin with a balm that took the burning away. But I would never forget the pain I had felt on that day. It was amazing that such a small and insignificant injury had resulted in the dread I now felt. And Kiron’s assurances that they wouldn’t hurt us did little to calm my fears.

  “But listen to that other sound,” Kiron went on. He cocked his head like a dog hearing a high pitched noise. “That sound we must follow.”

  My memory of my own singular experience with bees was still floating in my head, and my panic quieted just long enough for me to hear the other sounds this place played for us. And then, cocking my head in a similar way that Kiron had, I heard it. Our salvation.

  Water.

  I locked eyes with him, and we both nodded.

  When weighing the threat of bees against our desperate need for water, there was no contest. Everyone in the company was parched, lips cracked, tongues dry.

  “Let’s go,” I said, beginning the march towards the sound. “It’s not far.”

  Kiron smirked, turning to follow me.

  And the rest of them did, too. Despite just having been frozen in place by their own fear, one by one they, too, were able to hear the trickling sound of a stream nearby.

  It only took us minutes to reach it, and when we finally did, every one of us lay our bellies flat to the ground and plunged our heads into the icy water, drinking deeply. When I finally had my fill, I rolled onto my back, stomach sloshing.