The Chronicles of Trellah, Book One: The Perpetual Rain

by T. S. Graham

  “Now you’ll suffer,” he rasped.

  Sophina’s scream was stifled as the old sailor jabbed his hand through her rib cage. Then, with a pain beyond the realm of imagination, his fingers wrapped around her left lung—and squeezed.

  She was instantly paralyzed below the waist. Somehow she found the strength to tug at his arm, but her hand just sank through his frigid wrist as his lethal fingers probed deeper into her lung, stopping the flow of oxygen to her blood.

  “It’s time for you to die, Sophina,” hissed a female voice.

  Sophina looked up to find Mrs. Emerson’s steel-blue eyes glaring at her.

  “I wasn’t who you thought I was,” said Mrs. Emerson with an emotionless smile. “When I failed to draw you in . . .” Her voice trailed off as her features began to morph: her nose lengthened, her eyes turned green, and red whiskers sprouted across her widening jawline.

  “. . . I became someone who was much closer to your heart,” said her father, finishing the sentence that Mrs. Emerson had begun.

  Sophina’s dad morphed back into the old sailor as the hand released her lung—and closed around her heart.

  “Now, you become one of us,” he growled as the rhythmic thumping in her chest stopped, abrupt and certain.

  A noose of darkness tightened around Sophina as the rest of the ghouls crept out of the quagmire. She saw the world of sunlight she had left behind to embrace her father. It was within her reach, but she lacked the strength to even try.

  The woman who had begged for her help in the swamp wasn’t Mrs. Emerson. The man she had embraced with such joy wasn’t her dad. It was him all along.

  Not that any of that mattered now.

  Sophina’s pain melted away as a new kind of euphoria displaced her fear. She had heard that this was what happened before you die: Chemicals released by the brain take hold of your perceptions, providing comfort in the final moments. She just never thought she’d experience the phenomenon so soon.

  An orange light appeared in the tiny circles of her vision that remained. It waved back and forth in slow motion as the hand released its cold grip. She sensed her body slump to the ground, but felt nothing.

  Thump.

  A muffled heartbeat drummed deep in her ears as her head hit the sand.

  Thump . . . thump.

  Then, there was silence. As the world faded to black, Sophina felt her body being enveloped by a cocoon of warmth.

  She was beyond caring. Why should she when everything was so peaceful?

  * * *

  Whack!

  Sophina’s eyes flew open as a fist slammed down upon her chest. Air inflated her tender lungs as she gaped up at the brilliant sky, oblivious to where—or even who—she was.

  As her mind nudged toward full consciousness, she realized that she was lying on her back upon a sea of green sand. Mrs. Tanner was on her knees beside her, red-faced and panting. A flaming torch fashioned from a piece of twisted driftwood was anchored in the sand beside them.

  Mrs. Tanner pulled Sophina up and held her for a good long time.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Tanner sobbed. “I saw your watcher turn into Mrs. Emerson—and then become your father. I didn’t know that watchers could be shape-shifters. If I had known that I would’ve warned you.”

  “I’ve never seen a necrah display such abilities,” Talfore said bleakly. “The one who stalks this child is dangerous indeed.”

  Sophina clutched her chest, for each beat of her heart felt like a punch to the inside of her rib cage.

  “I thought it was really my dad,” she forced out. “I was so happy.”

  Mrs. Tanner lifted Sophina’s chin and looked in her eyes. “This may be difficult for you to accept, but you should be relieved that it wasn’t your father.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “For the same reason you should be glad that it wasn’t Mrs. Emerson. Spirits who accept their death and move on have no reason to come here. It means that your father didn’t join the realm of the necrahs; he’s where he was meant to be. And Mrs. Emerson may still be alive after all.”

  “My dad was meant to be with his family.”

  “And someday he will be again,” assured Mrs. Tanner. “But not for a good long time; your life is just beginning.”

  What Mrs. Tanner said made sense to Sophina, even if she wasn’t yet ready to accept it. Her mind was traumatized, but her body was a different story. Considering what had just happened, she felt remarkably well. She could feel the drahtuah at work within her body, helping her cells repair the damage that the old sailor had inflicted.

  “We’ll light more torches and go back to Trellah,” said Mrs. Tanner to Talfore. “Who knows what kind of damage she has suffered.”

  “No!” Sophina shouted. “I can make it the rest of the way.”

  “You were dead,” Mrs. Tanner pointed out. “I had to revive you!”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Clearly the drahtuah is aiding your recovery,” said Mrs. Tanner. “But we’ve barely traveled two miles and I’ve almost lost you twice. I’ve had enough scares for one day.”

  “But he can’t hurt me anymore. He’s used up all of his tricks!” Sophina zeroed in on the old sailor, who still glared at her through the tangle of deadwood. “Do you hear me? You’ve got nothing left!”

  Her watcher smiled as he slunk backwards into the murk.

  “Why are you smiling?!” she bellowed after him.

  But the old sailor was gone, leaving the other necrahs to gawk at her hungrily.

  “We must decide,” Talfore pressed. “There is little time to waste.”

  “We’re going,” Sophina said firmly. As she strode off, she called over her shoulder to Mrs. Tanner: “By the way, thanks for saving my life!”

  “You’re the most stubborn child I’ve ever known, Sophina Murray,” griped Mrs. Tanner as she fell in step behind her. There was frustration in her voice, but Sophina was sure that she detected a hint of admiration as well.

  Up ahead, the beach gave way to a large clearing. Sophina could see the necrahs slinking along beside them, and was happy that they would soon leave their domain behind. She ignored them by focusing on the spot where Mount Vahkar’s eastern slope met the valley floor, the place where their ascent would begin. It felt like they had been traveling all day, despite the fact that it was still early morning.

  A grove of dead skyscraper trees flanked the left side of the clearing, providing little shade for a necrah to hide in. The field was bordered on the right by another wall of swamp forest, but the span was at least a quarter-mile wide, so what lurked there wouldn’t pose a threat.

  A herd of vacharos grazed the plot. They were grossly underfed, their ribs showing under their black-and-gray hides. The largest bull bleated a feeble warning call as they approached, prompting the calves to plod beneath the bellies of the nearest adults.

  “Food for the vacharos has always been plentiful,” said Talfore, disillusioned by what he saw. “They will not survive if the drought continues.”

  The bull pawed the ground as they passed by too close for his liking.

  “Keep an eye on them,” Mrs. Tanner suggested. “They’re not as tame as the others.”

  Sophina doubled over as a wave of pins and needles shot down her left arm. She tried to wiggle her fingers to reawaken the nerves but found she barely had the strength to move. And the numbness was spreading—up the left side of her neck and face.

  “Mishus . . . Chan-ner!—”

  Sophina was horrified to hear the slurred words come from her mouth. “Wha . . . whach hap-penin’ to m-me . . . ?”

  “No . . . it can’t be,” Mrs. Tanner gasped, catching Sophina as she slumped to the side. “Sophina, I think you’re having a stroke.”

  A stroke? I’m too young to have a stroke! Sophina screamed silently. She wanted to yell out in protest, but her face felt like it was sliding off her skull, rendering her mouth useless.

  “Your left side is paralyzed,�
� Mrs. Tanner described, failing to disguise her panic. “A blood clot must have formed when your watcher’s hand was inside you, and now it’s broken loose and traveled to your brain.” She scooped Sophina up into her arms and turned to Talfore. “We must get back to the cathedral! The Keeper has herbal blood thinners that could help her if we hurry!”

  A horrible realization struck Sophina as she was carried back in the direction from which they’d come: The old sailor had smiled because he knew this would happen! It was just a matter of time until his poison took hold, and now he was waiting for her miserable spirit to join him in the swamp. That’s also why she had been so furious with Mrs. Tanner after she’d escaped the necrahs; she’d suffered a small stroke then, too, from the brief but multiple times their hands had breached her body. Strokes could cause severe mood swings, something she had learned in health class just last week.

  Sophina felt Tahra land upon her chest. He sniffed her left cheek and lapped at it with his warm tongue.

  “Wha . . . wait!” she blurted clearly. “I . . . I can feel that!” A different kind of tingle had begun to spread through her left side—a sign that her condition was fast improving.

  “P-put me down!”

  Sophina flexed her arm as Mrs. Tanner laid her upon the ground.

  “Your paralysis—it’s going away,” said Mrs. Tanner in astonishment.

  Sophina felt the muscles in her face begin to tighten. And her leg, which had hung useless just moments ago, bent at the knee when she willed it to do so.

  “Try not to move,” suggested Mrs. Tanner. “More clots could jar loose if you’re not careful.”

  Sensation steadily returned to Sophina’s left side as Mrs. Tanner took a vial of drahtuah into her hand. “If only I had more time to study how it works,” she said with regret. “It could be the key to finding a cure for every disease known to man.”

  “You’ll have all the time you need when we get home,” Sophina said. “I’ll be your lab assistant.”

  “When we leave, it’ll be for good,” Mrs. Tanner explained. “We won’t be allowed to bring drahtuah with us.”

  “There’s a vial under your lab table,” Sophina reminded her. “We can study that.”

  “Yes, I almost forgot,” said Mrs. Tanner in a faraway voice. “Perhaps there’s enough there for some trials.”

  “I feel fine now,” said Sophina, standing up without effort. “Let’s go.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “You can’t talk me into going back, so don’t even try.”

  Sophina saw Mrs. Tanner’s defeated expression, but didn’t care. If drahtuah could help her recover from a major stroke within minutes, it was hard to imagine a scenario in which her life would be in danger—especially now that the necrahs would soon be out of the picture. How could she cut and run now knowing that she was practically invincible?

  “Then at least rest a bit longer,” Mrs. Tanner suggested. “You’ll need all of your strength for the climb. A fall from up there is never minor.”

  Sophina followed Mrs. Tanner’s gaze up to Mount Vahkar’s precipitous eastern ridge, and decided that a few more minutes of rest wasn’t such a bad idea. The tips of her fingers were still a touch numb, after all.

  Her eyes continued to scan the ridgeline up to the Umbyan City of Ice. At this angle, all but the very tops of its frozen edifices were hidden by the perimeter wall that rose up above the lip of snow bulging over the edge of the cliff. It was an imposing sight despite the many thousands of feet that still separated them from the summit. She wondered what the Umbyans looked like. Perhaps she had already seen their likenesses in the etchings of the Great Cathedral.

  She was about to ask Mrs. Tanner what she knew about the Umbyans when she caught sight of movement aloft. A chunk of the perimeter wall had broken loose and was tumbling down the glacier, knocking giant boulders of ice free as it went.

  Sophina was spellbound by the sight of the avalanche as it exploded over the cliff, and they all watched in stunned silence as the load of ice and stone plummeted toward the far shore of the lake until—

  Boom!

  The earth shook on impact as a wall of water rose to staggering heights. The wave surged forward faster than a bullet train, sucking the water back from the beach on the near shore like a giant vacuum before it slammed aground and broke over the deadwood forest. A smaller gush of muck-clouded liquid emerged from the inland side of the grove and continued into the field, but it stopped well shy of where they stood. Luckily Mrs. Tanner hadn’t carried her back far enough to be in harm’s way.

  The water retreated as Sophina stared across the lake at the piece of wall that remained exposed above the churning surface. Much of the facade had crumbled on impact, but what was still intact revealed a row of window holes. She hoped that no one had been inside the wall when it had broken free, despite her hosts’ ill feelings toward the Umbyans.

  Mrs. Tanner turned to Talfore with a troubled look. “The ice is melting faster than I had hoped. I trust you know of a way to get past the Umbyans undetected. Something tells me there will be a steep price to pay if we’re caught.”

  Sophina looked to Talfore for a reaction, but something else stole her attention. The sun, which had shined with unusual intensity all morning, now felt weak on her skin.

  “Why is the sky getting dark?” she asked as she looked up. She expected to find a passing cloud obscuring the sun, but what she saw instead caused her freshly mended heart to skip a beat. The crimson orb that had chased the necrahs into the mire was now nothing more than a crescent sliver.

  “My God,” muttered Mrs. Tanner. “How could I have forgotten?”

  Sophina knew what Mrs. Tanner had forgotten, for it had slipped her mind as well, overshadowed by the fervor touched off by the anomaly back home. A rare and exciting celestial event had been predicted to take place over the northeastern United States this very morning: a total solar eclipse.

  “Cey Chintah,” uttered Talfore in a near whisper, “the sign of death.”

  And from the look of it, Cey Chintah had been playing out for some time, for the first stage of the moon’s trek across the sun was nearly complete. They had been too distracted by Sophina’s most recent brush with death to notice.

  Sophina’s knees went weak as a flurry of groans wafted out of the swamp. The calls grew more lurid as the once-stark shadow-line continued to dissolve. “Why are we standing here?” Sophina asked. “When the sun’s gone, those things will come after us!”

  “In the dark there is no place safe from the necrahs,” answered Talfore. “Our fate is sealed.”

  “But you have the firestones. We can set a tree on fire!”

  “A fire that will spread to others,” responded Talfore without emotion. “I cannot risk the lives of thousands to save our own.”

  “The drahtuah!” Sophina appealed to Mrs. Tanner. “We can go to Thomasville and come back when the eclipse is over.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Tanner agreed, already in the act of pulling two vials from her cloak. “It’s worth a try.” She uncorked both vials and set the one containing the powder upright on the ground, then quickly poured the water into it.

  When the portal formed, Sophina was devastated to see the wall of saturated dirt and rock that had been revealed. She was forced to jump back when a thick layer of the muck sloughed off and spilled into Trellah just ahead of the wormhole’s collapse.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Mrs. Tanner said, doing well to disguise her disappointment. “The erosion of Jagged Mountain has raised the elevation of the ground back home. There’s no time to get back to the river, where a portal might be of use.”

  “But there has to be something we can do,” Sophina pressed in desperation. “We can’t let them kill us. I can’t go through that again!”

  “I cannot set fire to the trees,” Talfore repeated, “but if we stay close and work together, the firestones just might stop the necrahs long enough for the sun to return. If we fail, h
owever, you must be at peace when they take you, or you will suffer their fate.”

  Talfore began to distribute the stones from his pockets, but Sophina was far from convinced. She was busy searching for something—anything—that would offer them a better chance than Talfore’s point-and-shoot plan. The necrahs were too numerous for her to trust that it would work.

  “What about that tree?” she blurted suddenly, pointing across the clearing. “It’s far enough away from the others to keep the fire from spreading!”

  Talfore looked at the fallen tree. The base of its misshapen trunk lay within several yards of the swamp forest, but its branches were well in the clear.

  “Please, Talfore!” Sophina begged. “We can save ourselves without putting others in danger!”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “We must hurry.”

  And with that they were off. Mrs. Tanner pulled Sophina along by the hand, for her legs hadn’t recovered as much as she’d thought.

  “Let go!” Sophina implored. “I can make it on my own!”

  “No! I won’t leave you behind again.”

  They flew past a gathering of vacharos that had shrunk into tight groups when the avalanche hit. Seconds later, distant horns blew from the watchtowers of Trellah, and a dome of dim orange light appeared above the tree line as the cauldrons were set ablaze. Unfortunately, the fires were too far away to offer any protection.

  Sophina’s strength surged with each stride she took. Half of the field remained between them and the tree, and only a slice of sun remained. That fact wasn’t lost on Mrs. Tanner, for she released Sophina’s hand and transferred one of the two firestones Talfore had given her from her right hand to her newly freed left. Mrs. Tanner was now ready to defend both of them if the necrahs attacked before the tree was set ablaze.

  One hundred yards to go, and just a hint of sun was showing.

  Fifty yards . . . With one pack of cowering vacharos left to skirt, maybe, just maybe, they would make it without a fight.

  A furious rumble shook the ground and Sophina turned to see the lowered head of a bull vacharo closing in. She tried to veer, but it was too late; a vicious blow to her hip sent her cartwheeling through the air. She tumbled back to earth and was lost in a sea of stampeding giants, blinded by the dust churned up by their crashing feet.