The Door to September: An Alternate Reality Novel: Survival in Prehistoric Wilderness (Back to the Stone Age Book 1)
Page 40
In the dying light of day, they found a semicircular stand of holly interwoven with bramble vines and dragged the Ra into its thorny embrace. After propping it up sideways, they gathered a store of firewood to last the night and lit a new campfire.
John barricaded the entrance with sharp-limbed deadfall, while Liz spread dry reeds on the forest floor and covered them with bearskins. She threw the tiger pelt on top. He pushed six thin and flexible branches into the ground and tied their tops together to create a vaulted frame. He roofed it with the boat sail and more hides.
By the time they’d finished, it was fully dark. The pheasant and mushrooms were sizzling on the fire, and blueberry leaf tea was steeping in the cooking skin. Firelight threw flickering orange gleams over Liz’s face as she drizzled seawater over their roasting dinner.
She filled the Arsenal mug with warm brew and held it up, making a toast. “To life.” She took a long sip and passed the mug to him.
“To us.”
Later they ate pheasant and drank more tea as the owls hooted, and furtive nocturnal creatures prowled the woods. The moon and Jupiter rose above the tree line and floated across the infinite gulfs of space. In the night stillness, holly branches hung motionless above their heads like protective arms outstretched in solemn blessing.
“Do we need to keep watch?” she asked.
He listened to the dark forest, where for the first time in a year no tigers roared. After studying the towering barricade of sharp tree limbs, he shook his head. “To hell with it. We’ll hear if somebody tries to tear that apart.”
Exhausted, he slept like a log, and even George woke up only twice, demanding his milk.
Chapter 94
My Land, My Home
The next day they set off at dawn, heading northeast. An hour later they stood atop a dune on a small peninsula and watched the white-topped combers rolling in from the limitless blue of the sea to the east. To the north spread the four-mile-wide stretch of water that separated them from the perilous ursine shore. The waves coming off the sea continued to roll into that wide inlet.
“I wonder if that’s the river or the sea?” he said, gazing at the restless expanse of water.
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
John took her hand, and they headed along the beach to the south side of the island. He felt giddy, like a teenager on a seaside date rather than an explorer surveying a newly found land. Suspended in his sling, George wiggled his feet, looking this way and that at unfamiliar sights. Compacted sand crunched pleasantly underfoot. Liz first, and then John pulled off their moccasins and walked barefoot. Seashells and chunks of driftwood were strewn in a wide band along the high-water mark by the action of waves. Cockles and mussels clung to rocks in an occasional tidal pool.
Some time later, they reached a low-lying headland. Farther south, a sandbar jutted out to sea. Waves broke over it, throwing spray in the air. The breeze carried an iodine tang of salt and seaweed.
Liz glanced at her phone. “A two-hour walk. So, the seafront is six miles long.”
John whistled. “Eighteen square miles.”
“A bit less, considering the rounded edges. But who cares about math on a day like this?”
He laughed and shook his head.
A lonely oak tree grew at the tip of the promontory. Wind-blasted and stout, it had many branches starting low down the trunk, and John found it easy to climb. After reaching the top, he looked around. The opposite shore lay at least three miles away and appeared as marshy as the land on the southern edge of their island. White-crested waves rolled unimpeded down this stretch of water that was neither river nor sea.
He peered down the south coast of their new home. A hundred yards away, a reed-fringed lagoon glinted beyond a stand of willows and alders. Further along the shore lay reed beds, interspersed with willow thickets and narrow waterways. Deeper inland, white-trunked birches and gray-boled aspens stood in intermingled regiments, their branches mantled with the golden leaves of fall.
He called down to Liz, “I think the south shore is best explored in a boat.”
She laughed. “Come down, John.”
Held in the crook of her arm, their baby peered up at him with an expression of utter astonishment.
John gazed down the gnarly trunk at their upturned faces and murmured, “Don’t worry, Georgie, when you grow up you can climb trees, too.”
Leaves rustled in the wind all around him, and seagulls cried shrilly over the sea. His heart swelling with joy, with love, he leaned his cheek against the rough bark and thought, dear Lord, if you must take this all away, at least I had this moment.
***
Flood meadows lined the south shore, dry at low tide, and John and Liz easily bypassed the worst tangles of thickets. The abundance of game animals was astounding. Dozens of deer and moose grazed on the lush grass.
He said, “Clearly, there are no large predators here at all.”
“There are now.” Liz’s fingers strummed the string of her bow meaningfully. “Although with tons of mushrooms and acres of hazel groves, we wouldn’t need to hunt often.” She no longer carried her weapon at the ready, and he had tucked his axe under his belt.
Hand in hand, carefree, they walked in silence through sunlit groves where mushrooms played hide-and-seek among the ferns, where the wind carried the clean fragrance of pine, and where blackbirds piped and chirped.
They still had to build a permanent home and gather food for the winter, but John didn’t see those tasks as daunting. This was their land, their world, and they were not giving it up to anyone.
He squeezed Liz’s hand. She squeezed it back, beaming radiantly, and their baby cooed and gurgled, gazing up at their faces from his sling.
The End
From the Author
Every journey, however long, must end. Thank you for traveling with me. I hope you enjoyed reading The Door to September as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The idea for the book came to me one September while I was pruning elder trees in my garden and making a wigwam out of the branches. I built it for my daughters. Well, that’s what I told my wife. The truth is, I built it for myself—primarily to see if I could still remember how it was done. Thank you, Sergeant B, for teaching a hapless officer cadet like me how to survive in the wilderness. May you live again in these pages.
I’m proud to report that I built a wigwam in half an hour, and parts of this novel were dreamed up inside that rustic shelter. I remember lounging in the wigwam with a book (Stephen King or Dean Koontz, I think) and musing idly how nice it would be to sleep there, when it struck me that I should be careful what I wish for. Very careful, indeed. And the novel came to me in a flash—in a movie form. All I had to do was write it.
***
If you found a typo or just want to say hello, I can be reached on r.magnusholm@tutanota.com.
My publisher, HappySnail Media, is an environmentally responsible business and produces eBooks only, so there is no printed version of this book.
I wrote The Door to September in six months, but it took me a year to edit it with the help of friends on the Critique Circle website. I owe a debt to them all and gratefully acknowledge their valuable contribution.
If you enjoyed The Door to September, you may also like my other three novels. Please see my Amazon Author Page.
***
My best-selling novel, Galatea 2044, is set in the near future where the world is split between the technology-embracing Far East and the stagnant West mired in political correctness. Parts of Britain are under the control of the Islamic Caliphate. London regularly comes under rocket fire—like Israeli cities today.
Short description: Ben Carter is a star programmer working for a London investment bank. He earns two million a year (not including bonuses) and dates glamorous and aristocratic Ann. As part of the elite, he’s well-insulated from the dystopian world outside his cozy bubble.
However, when he is wrongly accused of computer
crimes, his life falls apart. His AI assistant Galatea detects a mortal threat to her beloved creator and reacts. Decisively.
No spoilers, but there’s a lot of sex and violence.
Read a sample of Galatea 2044 today
***
My other novel, Roula: A Virtual Reality Novel, is about Artificial Intelligence that arises within a VR game, breaks out into the real world, and takes over by stealth. Roula is a near-future science fiction techno-thriller like Galatea 2044 but is much less racy.
Follow a very special nine-year-old girl on her journey. Don’t worry, she grows up fast.
Short description: A rebellious programmer developing a Virtual Reality game succeeds in making one of the non-player characters self-aware. The consequences are terrifying and far-reaching.
Roula’s world is a Mediterranean idyll where life is sweet and easy. Ancient Greek gods and miracles are real, and people lack for nothing.
However, not all is as it seems. When Roula discovers magical abilities, she’s alarmed. Humans are not meant to do magic.
As Roula’s talents grow, she learns that her world is in terrible peril. But what can a nine-year-old child do?
Read a sample of Roula today
***
If military fiction with graphic combat is more to your taste, please have a look at House of Cain: A War Novel.
I completed it in 1999—before I became a futurist dreaming of a robotic Utopia and eternal life of leisure. WARNING: House of Cain contains extreme violence that some critics claim borders on horror. But what else is war if not real-life horror?
Short description: The new Tsar of Russia is eager to smash NATO’s weakest link—the Baltic States.
Jack Ridgeway is a young and carefree British expatriate living in Latvia. He treats the reservist call-up as a free vacation—a welcome break from his mundane office job. But a routine mission turns into a nightmare when his border patrol runs into a Russian scouting probe.
Will Jack survive this clash of civilizations? Will the war stay local?
A fast-paced novel with plenty of action: shot through with adrenaline, tracer rounds, and burned cordite.
Read a sample of House of Cain today.
***
Follow me on Twitter. I am a fast typist, but a slow editor. I don’t write sequels or series (although I might make an exception for The Door to September), but I do #followback, though not instantly.
Yours faithfully,
Ron Magnusholm
Notes and References
[1] Some species of yew can grow huge. For example, the English yew, Taxus baccata can grow up to ninety feet tall, with a trunk of up to thirteen feet in diameter. By contrast, the North American yew Taxus canadensis might be too small to shelter you from the rain.
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[2] 40 degrees Fahrenheit is 4.40C.
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[3] While Jupiter is 1000 times less massive than the Sun, it is by far the largest object in the Solar system. Jupiter radiates more light than it receives from the Sun, as it produces energy through a process known as gravitational contraction.
Jupiter would need to be at least 13 times more massive to initiate deuterium fusion. Then it would be classed as a miniature star—a brown dwarf. Astronomers estimate that at its closest approach to Earth, such a Super Jupiter would produce more light than the full moon. However, if Jupiter were 100 times more massive, it would be a star on the main sequence and classified as a red dwarf. Our Sun is a yellow dwarf.
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[4] 50 degrees Fahrenheit is 100C, and 60 Fahrenheit is 15.50C.
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[5] Himalayan legends of yetis often mention bears. DNA analysis of suspected yeti hair identified a bear. The word Yeti even means a bear in Tibetan. Also, there is a hypothesis that black bears seen standing on hind legs gave rise to the Sasquatch or Bigfoot myth.
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[6] When a phone is fully switched off, its battery can last for many months. Apple gives the following advice: “If you plan to store your device for longer than six months, charge it to 50% every six months.” Source: apple.com.
My old, unused Blackberry stayed charged for over a year, although its battery was at 100% when I switched off the device.
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[7] People in Britain jokingly refer to Health and Safety Regulations as “Elf and Safety” in protest against the often nonsensical and overly bureaucratic language employed in the aforementioned legislation.
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[8] Research shows that wolves and dogs can see blue and yellow. However, as the density of color-detecting cone cells in their retina is much lower than in a human, their world is largely black and white. They likely see greens and reds as gray. Their visual acuity is about eight times lower than ours, but canines can see much better in the dark and have a far wider field of vision.
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[9] Many plants contain Saponins, which, as the name implies, produce a sudsy effect when mashed in water. Even the most common grass contains enough of the substance to be useful for washing in the wilderness. Try it if you ever get the opportunity.
This knowledge has largely been lost when modern soap was invented.
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Copyright © by R. Magnusholm
The right of R. Magnusholm to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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