A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1

by Shannon Wendtland

  Melody looked down, and I followed her gaze. She was making fists in the grass with her toes. The frown lines on her forehead smoothed somewhat; she was feeling the bubbles.

  “Now what?” asked Sam, sitting back and looking at the mess we had made as Gram ladled the last of the resin into the remaining cupcake reservoirs.

  “Now we wait. They will cure in a couple of hours since it is so warm outside. Then we’ll take them out of the molds, let them air out for the rest of the day, and this evening I will send some home with each of you.” Gram smiled. “It will be up to you to bury them.”

  “Bury them?” I asked.

  “Why did they glow like that?” asked Sam, staring dubiously at the sticky pans on the table. “I guess I just don’t understand how they could do what they did.”

  “It’s simple, really,” said Gramps, leaning back in his chair. “The more negative energy around, the faster they can transmute that negative to positive. With the swarm of parasites in Melody’s room, the pogs were working overtime. But that isn’t the question you should be asking,” he said, his voice growing serious.

  “What do you mean,” I asked, turning to look at him. “What is the question we should be asking?”

  “What we really need to know,” he said to Gram, whose face was also serious now, “is how they knew where to find her…”

  “And how they got past my wards,” Gram finished.

  A cold ball formed in the bottom of my stomach. Until now, I felt like we were doing some sort of craft project, but looking from one of them to the other, I could tell that they were serious, that this was a big deal, and that maybe (even though I didn’t see anything), maybe I should be scared. “What kind of wards? Like spells?”

  Gram nodded toward the house. “Spell is a word I don’t like to use, since it implies a different connotation: witches and wizards and that sort of thing. I prefer to think of it as ‘setting an intention.’ If you look over there, there are pogs already buried at the four corners of the house, under those rosemary bushes. And not just one layer either. Farther out, you can see the persimmon bushes. There are pogs buried beneath, and another layer out past that are the cedars, with pogs buried beneath those as well.” She shared a long look with Gramps before she scanned the table, making eye contact with each of us. “That’s three layers. Three levels of intention. And still they managed to cluster in Melody’s room. If Sam and Gideon hadn’t realized that their dreams meant something, that Melody was in danger, it could have been very bad indeed.”

  Gideon? I arched a brow and filed that away for later. I looked up at G. with a grin on my face, expecting him to look embarrassed or irritated, but his brow was wrinkled and there were bags under his eyes. He looked worried.

  Melody spoke. “What do you mean, very bad?”

  Gram looked her straight in the eye. Gone was the soft cheerfulness that I was used to; instead there was a steely glint in her eye and a squareness to her stance. “I mean Very Bad, as in: severe fatigue, premature aging, coma, death.”

  “Shit,” said G. who moved over to slip my hand in his. “That could have happened to me?” Instead of just taking his hand, I slid my arm around his waist and held tight.

  “It could have, but not as likely. They only went after you because you were a threat. What they were really after was Melody. She’s like a bright light to them—irresistible. They would have drained her dry.”

  Like a battery. I felt as if I were trapped in some sort of surreal TV show, like The Twilight Zone or something. We couldn’t really be talking about this, could we?

  “Why am I like a bright light? What is special about me?” Melody asked.

  “Your connection to the earth, your ability to complete the circuit…” said Gramps. “The four of you are…”

  “In over your heads,” said Gram, silencing Gramps with a look. “This is enough for one day. It’s a lot to take in. Let Melody get back on her feet before we--”

  “Margaret, don’t you think it’s been long enough? You had your way for the first seventeen years and look what’s happened. We’ve got a new quarrel on our hands—”

  Quarrel. Battery. Completing the circuit. I felt a shiver wash over me and goose bumps formed on my arms. I took my hand from G.’s to wrap my arms around myself. Some things were starting to click into place.

  “Enough, Harold! I mean it. I am not going to talk about this now. I am not ready yet. Matthew –”

  “Fine, Margaret. Have it your way. But this is going to blow up in our faces, and you know it.” Gramps backed up his chair and wheeled angrily away.

  Gram watched him go. Then she turned on her heel and strode off toward the clubhouse.

  Melody was looking off after her grandmother, her eyes unreadable.

  “Mel, did you hear what he said?”

  “I heard.”

  “About what?” G. asked, taking my hand again and giving it a squeeze.

  “About the quarrel,” Melody said, still staring off after her grandmother’s retreating figure.

  “Why does that sound familiar?” Sam asked.

  “Because it’s from my dream,” G. said.

  Hello, Othello. Mel and I shared a long look, and then we both looked up at G. “Spill it,” I said, snaking my hand back into his again. “And you better not leave anything out.”

  44. G.

  We were up in Melody’s room, hanging out. The mood was a little tense, but also thoughtful. Sam had already heard about my dream, at least a little bit, but even he was sitting there with a sort of frightened look when he realized how similar my dream was to his.

  “That explains the pictures I saw, or at least one of them,” said Tara, scooting closer to me. She put her hand on my knee, and for the first time since I met her, I didn’t think about how badly I wanted to make out with her. There were too many other crazy things colliding for attention in my head right now to think about getting to second base.

  “Do you remember them?” asked Melody.

  “Good thing you guys made me write the dream down. One was a gold crown.” Tara paused and shared a look with Melody.

  I wondered what that was about.

  “And then there was a heavy metal door, like on a dungeon, and it was opening. I couldn’t see behind it because it was too dark. And then a crossroads. The road was old, it was nighttime with a full moon, so there were shadows, and I could see an old building off to the right. In the distance, mountains. Didn’t you guys both dream about a mountain range in the distance?”

  Now it was my turn to share a look with Sam. “Yeah, we were driving toward it. That’s when Lily said we were almost there.”

  “Wait, what?” said Melody.

  “I thought you’ve never met Lily?” said Tara.

  “I haven’t. But she was in the backseat of the car, and Sam was driving.

  Sam nodded. “But in my dream, it was Melody in the back of the car, and…” he paused and looked at her, “and you wouldn’t wake up. Just like the other times.”

  Shit. “How many other times, man?”

  He looked at me. “I told you I had other dreams, and sometimes they come true. I have been having dreams about Melody ever since we met you, pretty much. And in them, she is always sleeping and won’t wake up. But there’s something else,” he said, turning to look at Melody again. “Something I didn’t tell you before.”

  There was a sinking feeling in my gut. Sam and I weren’t especially good friends, but somehow I just knew what he was going to say. “Lily wasn’t just in my dream. She was in yours, too, wasn’t she?” I said.

  Sam looked at me sharply. “Yeah. How did you know that?”

  “I don’t’ know, man.” I held my hands splayed out to the side.

  “Lily was in your dreams of me?” asked Melody, showing more emotion now than she had all day. Maybe it was a spark of anger coming alive in her eyes because she was getting a little color back in her face as well.

  “Only in the last one,” Sam s
aid hastily.

  “We need to be writing this down or something,” said Tara, getting up to cross the room. “Can I use your whiteboard, Mel?”

  I felt a small swell of pride at Tara taking charge and diffusing the situation. She had obviously known Sam and Melody long enough to sense when feelings were running high. There was some sort of weird undercurrent there, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. Had to be a girl thing, I guessed.

  Tara erased the board and started drawing lines from top to bottom, dividing the white space into columns. She wrote one of our names at the top of each column and underlined them. “Sam, you first,” she said. “Give me the highlights of your dream.”

  “Car, uh, road – desert road, thunderstorm, lightning, mountains in the distance, Melody asleep, G. grabbing the wheel, and um, lightning crashing into itself.”

  “Crashing into itself? What does that mean?” Tara asked as she scribbled away.

  “One bolt came from the sky and another came up from the ground to meet it. It was like a giant electrical explosion.”

  “That was in my dream, too,” I said. “And behind it, was this orange glow on the horizon. And right after that was when Lily told me we were almost there.”

  “Hold on, let me catch up. What about the other things? Are they the same?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I said. “Except for Lily in the backseat instead of Melody and…” she was wearing pasties. Maybe I should leave that part out. “And Sam was making eyes at her in the rearview mirror, and I had to grab the wheel so we didn’t hit a semi. Then after that”—Sam gave me an accusatory look and I shrugged. Sorry, man—“came the lightning crash and this golden glow low on the horizon. And Lily said we were almost there.”

  “Almost where?” Melody asked, still seeming a little angry.

  “Orla,” I said.

  Tara paused and then finished scribbling the rest of my information down. “I think I might have… hold on a sec, let me get my stuff on the board, too.”

  Under her name she wrote down: golden crown, crossroads, mountains, dungeon door, arrow in the ground. “Okay, let me just circle the things that are similar. See this? Mountains, road, crossroads, thunder storm, lightning… I think we’ve been going at this all wrong. Orla isn’t a person. It’s not a ship. It means ‘golden queen’.” She paused to circle “golden crown” under her column. “What if… what if Orla is a place? Like… you know, a town or something?”

  Melody snapped her fingers, finally showing real signs of life. “That would make total sense. Except… Except, Matthew’s ghost said to ‘stop Orla.’ How are we supposed to stop a town?” She reached down next to her bed and dug around underneath for her laptop. She pulled it up, opened it on her lap, and pulled up an Internet browser. “Let me look at a map. Maybe…”

  I moved across the room to crowd over her on her bed where she and Sam were sitting and watched over her shoulder. She pulled up a map site, started typing in the name “Orla,” and the blank began auto-populating. “Orlando, FL” was the first choice and right there underneath it was “Orla, TX.”

  “No shit,” I said. “No freaking way.”

  “That’s not that far from here,” Sam said. “We could drive there in a few hours.”

  “More like seven hours,” Melody said. “It’s further than you think.”

  “But still,” Sam said. “We could go and check it out. Find out what this is all about.”

  Tara stood near the whiteboard, watching us with a concerned expression. “Guys, maybe after what happened last night, maybe we should get a little more information before we just rush into this?”

  “Like how?” I asked.

  “Maybe…. We ought to use the Spirit Board again?”

  “It didn’t work last time,” I said. “It was like a bad joke.”

  “I know.” Tara’s face scrunched in thought. “But we did it somewhere completely unrelated to anything that’s going on. Maybe we should try it again here, in the clubhouse.”

  Melody shook her head. She didn’t actually come right out and say no, but we could tell that she wasn’t keen on the idea. “It’s too much.”

  “What if we wait a little bit. Maybe try in a few days? After we do the whole grid-thing with the pogs and everyone’s had a few nights to sleep on the idea?”

  Melody was still shaking her head, and Sam put his arm around her shoulders. She pulled away a little, so I put my hand down on her shoulder on the other side. I tried to convey solidarity and comfort, even though I was dying to try the Spirit Board again, too. I could tell Tara felt the same way.

  “We don’t have to decide anything now, you know?” Tara said, crossing to kneel by the edge of the bed next to Melody. “We don’t have to do anything else today. Except relax. And maybe, eat some ice cream?”

  The mood lightened immediately, and I realized all over again what drew me to Tara. It wasn’t just her Rapunzel hair or her curvy figure, it was her sunny disposition. “I could get us all discounts at The Blossom,” I said. “Mac won’t mind.”

  “What do you say, Mel?”

  Melody looked up from the laptop in her lap, and there was a ghost of a smile on her face. “As long you guys promise we can pretend to be normal for a few days. I just don’t know how much more of this crap I can take.”

  Her voice cracked a little on the last word, and she finally crumpled a little bit, her head falling onto Sam’s shoulder. Tara leaned in to give both Melody and Sam a hug, and I finally didn’t feel too weird to join in, so I did.

  45. MELODY

  I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even bear to shut my eyes in the dark. I tried sleeping with some lights on, and I even tried sleeping in the living room with the TV on, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling that in every shadowy corner lurked a ganglion of tentacles and fangs waiting to suck me dry – dry like a dead battery. I shivered.

  I gave up on pretending to sleep and decided to channel surf. It was after three in the morning and there was nothing on – as if there’s anything on the rest of the day, I mused.

  Floorboards in the hallway creaked and I snapped to look, eyes straining in the blue light from the television. My blood turned to ice in my veins, and for a moment I thought my heart stopped beating. It began thumping again, with heavy, rapid beats. I tried to hear past the rush of blood in my ears, but there was nothing. And then I heard it again. Creak… scrape… I practically leapt from the couch, clutching one of the pogs I had made and taking little comfort in its steady buzz. Movement from the shadows finally took form and I almost laughed out loud when I realized it was Gramps trying to roll quietly through the hallway in his wheelchair. He saw me in the living room and grinned.

  “Late night snack attack. Otherwise known as breakfast for us really old folks,” he said, wheeling up to me.

  I leaned down to give him a hug. I made it nice and firm, hoping he wouldn’t feel how shaky I was now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

  “Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

  “No,” I admitted, following him into the kitchen where I pulled down a cereal bowl while he helped himself to the milk and a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. “Every time I close my eyes, I see those things looming above me and I just”—I shivered again—“can’t seem to shake it. And I’m having this weird pain in my chest, too. Like a… panic attack?”

  Gramps poured the milk and cereal, nodding as he took his first oversized bite. “That’s your heart chakra. That’s the energy they like to feed off of the most. Interestingly, it is also the most potent energy you can use against them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “First thing to understand is that you, me—we are energy beings wearing meat suits. As an energy being, you have several—let’s call them interfaces—in which you can give or receive energy. There are seven major interfaces, and the one right there under your breast bone, is the heart chakra. It is where you give and receive love, among other things. It is
the seat of joy. It is also useful for healing. But we can get into that another time.” He took another large mouthful of cereal.

  I tried to digest what he was saying. “Chakras, like in Yoga?” I’d heard of chakras before, though I had never given them much thought.

  “More or less. The reason you feel a pain there is because they drained your heart chakra first, and it is running very low on juice. It’s spinning much too slowly to keep up with the rest of your energy body and it’s causing you some discomfort. And the anxiety you feel is a symptom of that. You just need to charge up.”

  “How do I do that?” I smiled at him when he made a motion that he was trying to chew faster.

  “You spent time with your feet in the grass, pulling in the earth’s energy, healing yourself. And because of it, you’re all out of whack. You’re having a hard time being focused and feeling tired and forgetful, too.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. He took another big bite, slopping milk on his chin.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “But Gram said that was because they drained me.”

  “Yes. And because you’re out of balance. Trust me, I know more about this particular subject than your Gram.” He arched an eyebrow at me before plunging another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

  “Really? Funny because it’s always her saying weird things about stuff that’s going to happen, and it’s always her walking around with the smudge stick, saging the house.”

  “She sees things I can’t, whereas I can feel more than she can. You’re like me, Melody. And you’re just going to have to trust me on this. You’re out of whack. I can feel it from here.”

  “So what do I do? I mean besides sitting outside in the grass? Do I do some yoga?”

  “That would help, maybe even more than a little, though I never tried it myself. Instead, you’re going to need to spend some time with some rocks.”

  “Rocks? Like my obsidian?”

  “Obsidian is a good start. It will ground you. But what you need, even more than that, is a good long soak in my tub.”