by Inmon, Shawn
He found the Winten-ah version of an honor guard waiting for him. A dozen men and women, led by Senta-eh. Sekun-ak, as chief, never went on hunting expeditions, but today, he stood in the front rank.
Lanta-eh was also waiting for him. When he approached her, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
She said, “I know this is how you say goodbye.” She stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around his neck. It was the first hug he had received in six years, and he almost didn’t know how to respond.
Then he remembered, and put his arms around her and hugged back. Lanta-eh brushed her lips against his cheek and said, “Thank you, Manta-ak, for rescuing me. I knew you would, but you did not know, so it was harder for you. Hold on to your doubting ways. That is what makes you who you are.”
Alex was never good at expressing himself, so he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and let her go.
The party marched across the open field, and the cheers and echoes of the children, standing at the mouth of the caves, cascaded down on them.
When they reached the forest, the guards shouted, “Gunta, Manta-ak!”
Gunta could mean a number of different things, but on this occasion, Alex knew it meant, “good-bye.”
From the moment they hit the plains with the tall, waving grass, all thoughts of ceremony fled and the group focused on the task of staying alive. The grassy plain was the domain of the ronit-ta, the gigantic dire wolves.
The ronit-ta avoided the area to the far east of the plain because they knew that there were bowmen in the trees that could take them out at a great distance. Once the group passed the safety of that protection, though, they knew they could be attacked at any moment.
Alex thought back to his second day in Kragdon-ah, when he had been a prisoner, not a hero. That day, he had been weaponless, but had still picked up a fallen cudgel and broken the back of a ronit-ta just as it jumped at a helpless warrior named Janta-ak. He had saved Janta-ak that day, but he had died anyway, at the battle of Denta-ah.
As expected, halfway across the plain, they saw the gray, curved backs of the ronit-ta. They approached from all sides at once, hoping to panic the humans into flight.
These humans would not be panicked.
Senta-eh called a halt and she and the four bowmen she had selected to march with her nocked arrows and waited for her command. When she judged that the rising backs had given away the location of most of the wolves, she ordered them to fire.
Not all arrows connected, but three did, and that was enough. One wolf went down, courtesy of a neck shot from Senta-eh and two others yelped and ran away. The pack, for the moment, was broken.
They hiked at a steady pace the rest of that morning and afternoon.
Ahead, the hills rose up on two sides, creating a verdant valley.
Alex glanced up the first hill they passed. That was where he had spent his first night in Kragdon-ah, where he made his first friend. Doken-ak, who had also been killed at Denta-ah.
So many deaths.
They didn’t pause for the night, though. There was still plenty of daylight left.
They pushed on through the valley and Alex was surprised at how much of the surroundings he remembered.
At dusk, they approached the end of the valley, and he could smell the tang of salt water.
Alex’s pulse raced and it was all he could do not to run ahead of the group.
I’ve waited six years. I can make it these last few minutes.
Finally, the rolling roar of the waves reached them, and Alex knew they were close.
Just around that hill, the door will be there, and I am home.
Alex stopped and turned to face his friends who had brought him safely there.
He hadn’t planned it, but he snapped a salute at them.
It was a gesture that was unknown in Kragdon-ah, but Sekun-ak mimicked it sharply.
Alex let his gaze fall on Senta-eh, fixing her forever in his memory.
He looked at Monda-ak and said, “Come on boy. Time to go home.” He turned on his heel and jogged to where the hill sloped down to the beach.
He turned the corner.
The door was gone.
The Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure
concludes in
Return from Kragdon-ah
Available September 2020
Author’s Note
Ideas or inspirations for books can come from many places. Sometimes it hits like a lightning bolt—as it did for A Door into Time. One moment I’m thinking about what to have for dinner, the next I see a guy stepping through a door in his basement and being flung into a stone age future.
Since Lanta-eh was kidnapped at the end of the last book, I knew that Lost in Kragdon-ah would center around the hunt for her kidnappers. Beyond that, I had no idea what would happen.
Then, a few days before I started writing this book, I re-watched one of my favorite movies—Apocalypse Now. My wife Dawn got me a Blu-ray copy of the Special Edition a few years back because she knows I never tire of watching it. The thrum of the helicopters mixed with The Doors’ The End in the opening scene? Sublime, at least to me.
As I watched Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard trying to hold onto his fragile sanity as he searched for Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, one of those blasts of inspiration hit me. Sheen’s trip upriver felt exactly like I saw Alex Hawk’s rescue mission.
There aren’t many (or any, really) plot point similarities between Lost in Kragdon-ah and Apocalypse Now, aside from the fact that part of the story takes place on a river. And maybe, just maybe, Alex’s reaction to losing Werda-ak mirrored Willard’s mindset at the very end of Apocalypse.
I wasn’t quite done seeking inspiration for this book, though. One night, as I was walking my dogs, a section of poetry kept banging around in my mostly-empty noggin. It was from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. My senior year in high school, which was a looooong time ago, I’d had to memorize a few stanzas of poetry from it.
Try as I might, even more than four decades later, I can’t un-memorize the damned thing. At the oddest times, my brain will hand me, “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote...” and I’m off and running. Thank you Jim Bartee, wherever you are, for making me memorize that all those years ago.
When I returned from walking the dogs, I burst into the room and said to Dawn, “I know what the next book’s going to be! It’ll be Apocalypse Now meets The Canterbury Tales!”
She fixed me with the classic, deadpan Dawn look and said, “Oh, that’ll be a big seller.”
She’s a funny girl.
I didn’t intend to write this book in Middle English, like Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. I just fell in love with the idea of people meeting on a journey and telling each other stories. That is how the characters of Untrin-ak, (aka Reggie) Tokin-ak, and Versa-eh came to be. Not surprisingly, I came to love each of those characters and their stories.
And then, there’s the death of Werda-ak. When several of my beta readers got to that section, they messaged me some very not-nice words about my choices as a writer. I don’t know if you noticed, but I put Werda-ak through the ringer in the book—falling into the river, getting beaten up in Rinka-ah, almost dying from the poison of a Dandra-ta in Matori-ah. And then, I let him escape unscathed in the final battle until they were clear and safe, or so they thought.
I experimented a little bit with the structure of the story here. Typically, stories of all sorts feature what writers often refer to as all is lost, or the long, dark night of the soul. It’s the point in the story where victory seems impossible, or some near-mortal blow has been struck against our hero. In a normal structure, that occurs just before the triumphant victory by our hero.
I messed about with that by handing Alex his greatest victory—saving Lanta-eh—and only then giving him his greatest defeat—the death of Werda-ak.
Why do I do these things? Only a therapist and many hours of therapy could likely answer that question.
&n
bsp; In the Author’s Note for A Door into Time, I explained how my best friend for the last fifty years—Jerry Weible—came to do the nifty drawing I included in that book. I was so pleased when he was willing to take another crack at this book as well. I think I’m going to have to frame the drawing he did of Alex’s first horse. The expression in its face gets me every time. Eeyore incarnate. With any luck, I’m hoping to entice Jerry back for the final book in the trilogy as well.
I’d like to thank Mark Sturgell as well. Mark has been my proofreader for a number of books, but for the last three, he’s also served admirably as my graphics support person. He takes Jerry’s drawings and makes them perfect to be inserted at the appropriate places in the book.
I have a full team of proofreaders I need to thank. Why? Because I make a lot of mistakes! Deb Galvan has been my go-to proofreader for more than a dozen books now. She does a wonderful job at making me look better than I am, and I wouldn’t dream of launching a book without her. Marta Rubin, Aimee Haire, Dan Hilton, and the aforementioned Mark Sturgell also contributed mightily to catching my mistakes and typos. Any remaining errors are my responsibility alone.
The covers for all three of the Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure series were created by Michal Karcz. A year ago, a writer friend of mine sent me a link to Michal’s website. I spent several hours lost in Michal’s creations, which, to my eye, don’t look like anything else on the market—and that’s a good thing. I told him I wanted an old-school vibe for these stories that were inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Robert E. Howard. Man, did he deliver.
Diego DeLaVega again served as my consultant on Alex’s military mindset. It was important to me that Alex represented service people as accurately as possible. Diego was exceptionally helpful in consulting with me on that very issue.
More than anything, I need to thank you for reading Alex Hawk’s adventures. A Door into Time is the fastest-selling book I’ve ever had in its first three months of release. I hope that means that it has struck a chord with you—something familiar, yet new and different. That’s what I was going for, and I appreciate that you’ve come along for the ride.
Shawn Inmon
Seaview, WA
June 2020
Glossary
This book is set in a world many millennia in the future. Thus, languages have evolved and none of our words have survived. The following is the naming conventions used throughout the book:
-ak —- Male
-eh —- Female
-ah —- Geographic
-ta —- Animal
Here are the most notable characters, animal names, geographic locations, and Kragdon-ah words:
Alecs-ta —- Beast of burden, much like a donkey.
Alex Hawk —- Former Special Forces member flung forward in time.
Banda-ak —- Husband of Ganku-eh. Died protecting Winten-ah.
Batama-ah —- Mountain monastery and home of the holy men.
Braka-ak —- Member of the pirate force who gets left behind and shipwrecked.
Dan Hadaller —- Fellow time traveler who was in Kragdon-ah before Alex Hawk.
Denta-ah —- Tribe that used stama. Destroyed in A Door into Time.
Det —- “Yes,” in the universal language of Kragdon-ah
Dandra-ta —- Dragon-like creature that Alex must fight in Matori-ah.
Doken-ak —- Alex Hawk’s first friend. Died at Denta-ah.
Draka-ak —- Chieftain of the Lasta-ah.
Duntas —- Tiles used as currency in some areas of Kragdon-ah.
Fenda-ak —- Servant to Preta-ah in Tonton-ah.
Frina-eh —- Young healer in Matori-ah.
Ganku-eh —- Once-chieftain of the Winten-ah.
Grita-ta —- Fox.
Godat-ta —- Grizzly bear.
Grinta-ah —- City on the inland sea.
Grunda-ta —- Coyote
Grunta-ak —- Mighty warrior from Rinta-ah who Alex must fight.
Gunta —- Hello, goodbye, I wish you well, in the universal language of Kragdon-ah.
Harta-ak —- Captain of the barge that rescues Alex.
Jabril-ak —- Son of Nanka-ak, who is chief of the Matori-ah.
Kel -— “No,” in the universal language of Kragdon-ah
Kilta-eh —- Healer of the Tonton-ah.
Klaka-ah —- Town on Okrent-ah where weapons are made.
Kragdon-ah —- The name of the entire world in the future.
Kranda-ah —- The mighty river formerly known as The Columbia.
Krista-ta —- Winten-ah for fish.
Lanta-ah —- The Chosen One.
Lasta-ah —- Actual name of the home of the kidnappers.
Lusta-ah —- Original name Alex hears of the home of the kidnappers.
Magda —- Someone who complains a lot.
Manta-ak —- Alex Hawk’s name in Kragdon-ah.
Matori-ah —- Island village where Alex fights the dandra-ta.
Monda-ak —- Gigantic dog. Loyal best friend to Alex Hawk.
Nanka-ak —- Chieftain of Matori-ah.
Niten-eh —- Healer of the Winten-ah.
Okrent-ah —- Inland sea formed when the Great Lakes emptied.
Otkan —- An outcast.
Preta-eh —- Chieftain of the Tonton-ah.
Rapka-ah —- Small village on the Okrent-ah, close to Lasta-ah.
Reggie —- Fellow time traveler who travels Kragdon-ah as a bard.
Rinka-ak —- Young chieftain of Rinta-ah.
Ronit-ta —- Dire wolves
Rinta-ah —- Town beside the Kranda-ah that built the bridge across the river.
Rundi-ak —- Spurned lover of Versa-eh, son of chief of unnamed village.
Rutan-ta —- Mountain lion.
Sekun-ak —- New chief of the Winten-ah. Close friend of Alex Hawk.
Senta-eh —- Tall, beautiful warrior and bow fighter who travels with Alex Hawk.
Stama —- Kragdon-ah word for technology.
Stinda-ta —- Alligator
Tinta-ak —- Massive warrior Alex defeated, who then became his biggest supporter.
Tokin-ak —- Blind old wise man from Batama-ah.
Tonton-ah —- Village built in the trees.
Traka-ta —- Large pigeons.
Trema-ak —- Monk from Batama-ah and friend of Alex.
Untrin-ak —- Traveler Alex meets in Rinka-ak.
Vanda-ak —- Winten-ah name for Dan Hadaller.
Verda-eh —- Young woman in Tonton-ah who is close to Untrin-ak.
Versa-eh —- Strong-willed young woman, daughter of The Trader.
Werda-ak —- Teenage boy and tracker who travels with Alex Hawk.
Winten-ah —- Cliffside home and name of the tribe Alex first meets.
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The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister
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The Vigilante Life of Scott McKenzie
The Reset Life of Cassandra Collins
The Tribulations of Ned Summers
The Empathetic Life of Rebecca Wright
The Successful Life of Jack Rybicki
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