A Quill Ladder

by Jennifer Ellis

  Then he sat down to wait. Farley, who had whined and howled when he realized he was being left behind with Mark, plunked himself down next to Mark, and Mark allowed himself (just slightly) to lean against the dog’s warm brown body.

  *****

  Abbey felt the familiar whoosh of travel and then had the impression of the dark sky and Madrona of the bubble, and a pregnant woman in a brown dress, looking very much like Abbey, except with a very tanned face like a mask and a strange pattern of freckles on her forehead. The woman reached for Jake, and then a blinding pain seared through Abbey’s skull and she passed out.

  She awoke under a blanket, being jostled about in one of the bulbous-tired carts of her future, driving across the desert. A man with shaggy, light-colored hair gripped the wheel. Abbey rubbed her eyes.

  “Sam?” she said.

  A much older Sam flicked a look over his shoulder at her.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there and you weren’t.”

  “Where’s Jake?”

  “At the hospital. He’ll be okay. He can come home in a few days. But Abbey, my Abbey…” He paused. “I guess you’re my Abbey too, but that seems too strange to even think about. Anyway, Abbey insisted that you go home tonight. You passed out because, as you know, you can’t be too close to yourself. I’m just glad that’s all that happened. It was dangerous coming here like this. But I guess, how could you know?” He seemed almost annoyed, and Abbey wasn’t sure what he meant.

  My Abbey. Did that mean she and Sam were married? Dr. A. Livingstone. It seemed likely. She felt as though maybe she should be elated, but she experienced strange and fleeting thoughts of Jake. “Where are you taking me?”

  “The old swamp stones. Although there isn’t much in the way of a swamp these days.” He checked the GPS tablet on the dash of the cart. “I think we’re there.”

  They got out, and sure enough, Abbey saw traces of the stones beneath the constantly blowing sand.

  “There isn’t a swamp here at all,” she said, starting to shiver uncontrollably in her tank top.

  “No. Our future didn’t get much in the way of water. Thank God you invented the bubble material or we’d all be dead.” Sam shifted about uncomfortably and pulled his wool coat in tighter around himself.

  Abbey supposed seeing one’s partner as a teenager would be more than a little odd.

  “I’ll go then,” she said. “Thanks for the ride.” She walked toward the stones.

  “Be careful,” he called after her. “I love—” he started, but then seemed to realize the inappropriateness of it. “We’ll take care of Jake.”

  She gave him a little wave and then stepped on the stones, and a few seconds later, she was standing under the Madrona in the swamp, freezing to death, and Farley was leaping all around her, and Mark was awkwardly swaying from foot to foot, looking like he might want to hug her too.

  “Your mother has taken Caleb to the hospital. She says he is going to be okay,” he said formally.

  She was safe. Caleb was safe. Her mother was safe. Jake was going to be okay.

  Her phone barked with a text, and she automatically pulled it out of her pocket. It was from Sam. Present Sam.

  < Coming to see you. It seems my research is being funded by a Quentin Steinam >

  *****

  Mark wanted to get home. He pulled out Ms. Beckham’s phone to text her that Abbey was back and was okay. There was already a text on Ms. Beckham’s screen, from Peter Sinclair.

  < Don’t worry, Marian. I’m okay. I have not run off with Selena. I’ve gone to try to deal with this once and for all. I’m the only one who can do it. I’ll be back in a few days, if not sooner. I love you. >

  Mark stared at the text. What on earth did it mean? Then the phone beeped with another incoming text. From Caleb, which was probably Ms. Beckham.

  < Urgent: Mark, my key is missing. Did I drop it somewhere around the tree? Or on the boardwalk. Please look. >

  Mark looked at the ground all around him, and finding nothing, extended his gaze out across the steaming swamp, where the mud still blurped in places from the heat below.

  That key could be anywhere.

  *****

  Abbey rolled over in bed for the twenty-seventh time, unable to sleep.

  Caleb had returned from the hospital bruised and stitched and with two broken ribs. She and Mark had not found her mother’s key in the swamp. Sylvain, apparently still alive as her mother had predicted, had called Abbey’s mother at midnight, and after some debate, it was agreed that Sylvain would call Jake’s parents and explain that Jake was helping him on an emergency business trip. However it was evident that they were both concerned that Jake’s parents would be unconvinced, and that further cover-up would be required.

  Abbey’s mother, after some cursing regarding “Peter’s stupidity,” explained that she would be heading off in search of Abbey’s father tomorrow, and Sylvain would be taking care of Abbey, Caleb, and Mark.

  Abbey counted the slats of light on her ceiling for the third time. She had left her blind half open deliberately so she could see Mrs. Forrester’s house. The lights had flicked on at 1:00 a.m. So Ian was back then. Or someone was.

  She should be sitting at her desk writing a list of all the things that she didn’t understand: like 309, the strange hachures on Kasey’s map, the murder of Abraham Dunham, the strange document in her closet, altys, and Sylvain’s talk of zero declination. But she was too tired.

  It seemed that they were now traveling at a very rapid velocity. Momentum was directly related to velocity. Objects with a lot of momentum were difficult to stop.

  And she wondered if she had hit someone with an axe.

  Author’s Note

  If you are interested in looking at the maps provided in A Quill Ladder at higher resolution, please go to the reader bonuses section of my website and check them out.

  Readers have a lot of influence over what succeeds and what does not. The most helpful thing you can do for a writer is leave a review. A single review carries a lot of weight, so please, if you enjoyed this story and want to read more, go and provide your thoughts on Amazon.com, or Goodreads, or wherever you like to talk about books. I will be ever so grateful. Click here to leave a review on Amazon.com.

  Other Books in the Series

  A Pair of Docks

  Derivatives of Displacement Book 1

  Get it here

  Siblings Abbey, Caleb, and Simon discover a set of stones that allow them to go back and forth between their world and what appears to be...the future. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones who know about the stones, and they soon realize their lives are in danger from a man known only as Mantis. Abbey, Caleb, and Simon must follow a twisting trail of clues that will lead them from their neighbor with Asperger's to a strange professor who claims to know the rules of the stones, and to multiple futures.

  A Grave Tree

  Derivatives of Displacement Book 3

  Read an excerpt at the end of this book

  Get it here.

  Abbey’s parents are still missing, possibly trapped in a parallel universe, and the adults around her won't give her any answers. So when she and Caleb once again travel to a possible future—one in which Coventry City is very much not as it should be—it’s up to them, and their neighbour Mark, to find her parents and set things right.

  Book Four of The Derivatives of Displacement coming in July 2016

  Also by Jennifer Ellis

  In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation

  Get it here.

  In a world torn apart by economic collapse, Natalie and her husband Richard establish an island of relative safety on a communal farm. Death—by starvation, raiders, and sickness—stalks them daily, and their survival hinges on working together for the common good. But in a lawless land with no shortage of suffering, good is a malleable concept.

  Apocaly
pse Weird: Reversal

  Get it here.

  Contrary to Sasha Wood’s expectations, the isolated International Polar Research Station on Ellesmere Island turns out to be a dangerous assignment. After researchers and sled dogs go missing in a freak storm, their distress calls go unanswered from the outside world. Cut off and stalked by polar bears, Sasha and station caretaker, Soren Anderson, search for their missing colleagues in the frozen tundra as their instruments reveal a shocking truth: magnetic pole reversal has occurred and the north has become the south.

  Novellas in Anthologies

  “The River” (in Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel)

  “Resistance” (in Tales of Pennsylvania)

  “Manufacturing Elvis” (in Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy)

  “The Poetry of Santiago” (in Tails of the Apocalypse)

  A Grave Tree Excerpt

  1. Ghost in the Machine

  Abbey stared out the window at the torrential rain that pummeled Sylvain’s small cabin west of Coventry. Farley sat beside her and let out low whines every few minutes, as if she might have forgotten that he was there and had not yet been walked. Caleb, evidently not nearly as gloomy as Abbey about missing school again this week, sat on the couch staring at his phone. Mark typed away on his computer at the desk in the corner, no doubt researching isogons, maps of constant magnetic declination, which he had told Abbey about rather relentlessly over lunch. Sylvain busied himself with dinner preparations in the elegant country kitchen; the cabin, while small, was extremely well appointed.

  “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to walk you by myself, then,” Abbey said loudly to Farley.

  “Have fun,” Caleb said. She could see that he was rather intently snapchatting with someone, and she caught a glimpse of Anna Andrews’s lustrous mahogany hair. Russell, Anna’s older brother, had been up to deliver supplies to the cabin several times over the past three weeks, always regarding Abbey with his hungry, almost feral, pale blue eyes.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sylvain said. “I’m in the middle of making a roux. I can’t leave right now.”

  He emerged from the kitchen wearing his long white chef’s apron over his tall, spindly body. The first time Abbey had seen the apron, she’d been forced to stifle a laugh. Sylvain spent much of his time at the cabin hunching over bubbling sauces and caramelizing onions. Whatever complaints they might lodge regarding their extended isolation, they couldn’t claim they weren’t being well fed. Mark, who apparently preferred that different foods not touch each other, ever, except in sandwich form, would probably beg to differ.

  “I’ll just go by myself,” Abbey said. “You’re tracking me anyway.”

  She held up her phone, on which Sylvain had installed a tracking device so he would know where they were. There was little need for it, as he hadn’t let them out of his sight in several weeks. He even insisted that they all go together on their Farley walks.

  To make matters worse, all of the windows and doors had sensors on them, and if opened, they would emit a beep that would alert everyone in the cabin to someone’s departure or arrival. They were essentially in a prison, albeit a fairly comfortable one. Fortunately Sylvain had not taken away their Internet access. But they were under strict orders to tell everyone that they had gone to New York on a family vacation—except Simon, of course, who would still be at the detention center down in Coventry for a few more weeks.

  “Don’t worry. It’s pouring. I’m just going to go down the trail about a hundred meters. Farley has to get out. You wouldn’t want him to have an accident in the cabin, would you?” Abbey raised her eyebrows at Sylvain.

  Sylvain’s eyes widened, and she saw his pupils flick in the direction of the fluffy white sheepskin rugs that adorned the cherry hardwood floors. “Very well,” he said. “Don’t go further than a hundred meters, and come right back, or we’ll have to come and look for you.”

  Abbey put on her raincoat, trying not to roll her eyes, while Farley skittered around her, hopping and howling with joy, his claws clicking on the floors. Sylvain was probably cringing in the kitchen at the sound.

  Abbey didn’t know why she couldn’t just go outside alone. This commitment to togetherness—ever since her mother had gone off in search of her father, who had gone who knows where—was beginning to wear a bit. It wasn’t as if Abbey could go anywhere. They were in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a nondescript dirt road that wound its way up the hill and through the woods off the Granton Dam Road. They were at least twenty kilometers away from Coventry, and the only means of transport available was Sylvain’s Jag. He couldn’t possibly think she would steal that. Although, technically, she supposed they had stolen it before—but she hadn’t driven it.

  Thinking about her parents caused Abbey to tear up a bit. Her dad had said he would be gone for a few days, and her mother had said they would be staying with Sylvain for a week, tops. But that was three weeks ago, and there had been no sign of Marian Beckham or Peter Sinclair since. Despite Abbey’s pestering, Sylvain refused to offer any information about where they had gone and what might have happened.

  She opened the door to the sound of the loud beep from the alarm system. Ocean, Mark’s cat, strolled over to the door and marched out, but stopped immediately and shook her now-soaked paws in surprise before turning around and galloping back inside. Farley took off like a shot into the trees, his brown form only barely visible in the deepening afternoon gloom. The dampness assaulted Abbey as soon as she stepped outside; raindrops ran in rivulets off her hood and somehow found their way down her neck and into her hair.

  She jumped when the cabin door opened and closed again behind her.

  “Daily exercise is important for good health,” Mark announced as he joined Abbey on the stoop. Abbey wasn’t sure whether it was the daily Farley walks, their previous adventures, or Mark’s trepidation regarding Sylvain’s cooking, but Mark had grown leaner and more muscular in the last few weeks. A few months ago, being alone with Mark would have scared Abbey a bit—with his Asperger’s, he could be unpredictable and moody—but now she found it comforting.

  She wondered if he planned to provide more thoughts with regard to isogons, but he remained silent as they trudged down the muddy path following Farley. The rain was apparently not a deterrent for small forest critters, or Farley, and soon the Chesapeake Bay retriever was barreling back and forth on the path in front of them, barking and stalking birds and squirrels.

  Cold seeped through Abbey’s rain jacket, and her sneaker-clad feet were soon soaked. They had reached what Abbey judged to be the hundred-meter mark on the trail, and Abbey was about to call Farley back when Mark cried out behind her.

  She spun around to see Mark’s bulky body hurtling the last few feet toward her. For a moment she was certain he would launch up into her arms and cling there as if the forest floor were covered with snakes; she checked quickly to make sure it was not.

  “Something,” he said and then stopped, his arms raised and open palms hovering over his ears. He seemed about to drop into one of his protective crouches with his hands pressed against the sides of his head. He stood there frozen for a few seconds, like a paused movie, or a record player with the needle caught in a groove, then evidently having fought the urge to fall to his knees, he let out a giant exhale and started talking in a jerky monotone. “There’s something in the trees back there. Something white… I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.” He said this last as if it was a mantra that would vanquish any potential lingering phantoms.

  “What are you saying, Mark? Did you see a ghost?”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.” Mark rocked back and forth on his feet and flailed his hands around near his ears.

  Rain pattered on the leaves, and Farley still thundered through the bushes several meters away, apparently oblivious to their spectral visitor, if indeed there was a spectral visito
r. But the birds, which had been trilling despite the downpour just a few seconds before, had gone strangely silent.

  Did she believe in ghosts? Scientifically, there was no evidence to support the existence of ghosts. But the existence of black holes hadn’t been definitively proven either, and she believed in them. There was also the fact that every hair on the back of her neck was standing up, and it was taking all her will not to scream and abandon Mark and Farley while she bolted back to the cabin—except that would take her in the direction of the ghost, even though she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  She reached one hand up, grasped Mark’s fist, and pulled his arm down, so they were standing with their shoulders pressed together facing the path that would lead them back to the cabin. Mark stiffened but stopped rocking.

  “Are you sure you saw a ghost?” she said.

  Mark nodded violently with his eyes closed. Rivers of rain flowed down his face, and his brown hair was caked onto his cheeks. “Just… back… there,” he said.

  “Farley,” she called. “Farley! Come this instant.”

  The dog, not keen on having his romp cut short, turned and eyeballed her as if to assess the likelihood that she would enforce her command. She must have appeared suitably fierce and threatening because he began to saunter toward them slowly, wearing only a mildly obstinate look and stopping to sniff a tuft of grass or two on his way. A meter away from them, he lurched to attention, started to growl, and shot past them into the trees, barking, the whites of his teeth stark against his dark brown muzzle. The sea of green shrubbery vibrated and swayed as he ran through it.

  “Farley! No!” Abbey yelled.