Sojourners (eBook)

Peter West (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
652 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-9956-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Katie and Jared are ordinary siblings who discover an extra-ordinary music box hidden in a local thrift store. They soon realize that it holds the key to a new reality, a dream world under siege by a necromancer and his legions of death. They are met there by noble unicorns, a clever squirrel, and an enigmatic stranger in possession of a familiar amulet bent on opening a long-forgotten portal. With the help of friends, new and old, they must rise above their years to fight a battle spanning the fabric of time and space in order to save a world beyond their own.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Katie and Jared rode their bicycles into the old town square, a weathered remnant of days when city life revolved around a singular point. At its head was the town hall, an imposing brick building with a clock tower and elegant stone lions to guard its main staircase. Around the perimeter were storefronts with large glass windows and second-story apartments where the proprietors would live when such things were fashionable. The stores were now anything but fashionable. The windows had long since dulled to a pasty gray while the bricks slowly crumbled under the progressive weight of time. But it was the park that lay at the center of things that kept this place alive and vital. It was not elegant, only a plot of manicured lawn with a large willow tree at its center, its graceful branches arching above like some vast umbrella providing shade for those below. It featured diagonal sidewalks with small monuments at each corner, memorials to some distant events in the city’s past with plaques now worn and difficult to read. Jared liked the one with the old cannon barrel the best, a place where he could climb and pretend to fire volleys of shot into the opposing storefronts leaving only desolation in his wake. Katie discouraged such dreams of carnage, but such were the aspirations of an eleven-year-old boy.

It was a bright summer morning, a magical time when children were momentarily free from the relentless expectations of parents, a time when they could set their own agenda and pursue their own dreams. The two siblings often came to the old part of town for its simple charms, its superb climbing tree, and the peculiar collection of merchants that surrounded the green. This was a different place, where time seemed to slow down and people didn’t seem in quite such a hurry, a place where grown-ups took the time to say hello and knew even the children by name. It was also close enough to home to reach by means of adolescent transportation, thus eliminating the tedious process of negotiating a ride from their parents. Most of town was strictly off-limits for bikes due to the congestion of suburban life, but the square was still close enough and safe enough to reach on their own. Here they could just be kids, free to play and explore until the town clock struck twelve.

The two pedaled purposefully down the road before jumping the curb and coming to a stop alongside the laundromat, where a heavy rain spout served as a perfect spot to lock their bikes. Jared sported a multi-colored BMX with trick hubs on the front wheel while Katie rode a mountain bike with a decidedly feminine lavender finish. Neither seemed likely to be stolen, but a bike was their primary form of transportation, their ticket to mobility and freedom, and certainly not something to be left to chance. After carefully securing their locks, they turned to the question of what to do. It was obligatory that every visit include a climb up the willow tree. It was said to be far older than the town itself, with heavy gnarled limbs that hung low enough for them to shimmy up to the myriad of branches that sprawled outward above the park. Their approach was well rehearsed. Katie would give her brother a boost followed by her own leap to one of the low-lying limbs. Now thirteen, Katie had grown quite tall and could easily manage the ascent with monkey-like dexterity. She was rail thin with long blond hair and willowy arms that looked a bit long for her stature. She was headed into eighth grade, soon to be deposited at the bottom of the high school food chain in a state somewhere between childhood and adolescence. Fortunately, her awkward passage through childhood was fading and she was beginning to find her strength and confidence, fueled as they were by a keen intellect and determined nature. Despite her years, she still enjoyed these trips to the square where she could take her mind off the pressures of growing up in a fast-paced society, free to be a child again, if only for a brief time.

Jared was two years younger, having reached the top of the elementary school hierarchy, finally safe from the oppression of the big kids who stalked the playground in search of the young, the weak, and the unprotected. Not that Jared had ever been easy prey, possessing what Katie liked to call street smarts, that innate ability to avoid being in the wrong places at the wrong time paired with enough bravado to bluff his way out in situations that could not be avoided. He was tall and lanky like his sister, with an unruly head of brown hair and angular features that gave him the appearance of being older than he really was. People often mistook him as the older of the two, a fact that needled Katie to no end, but one she had learned to live with. The reality was that she liked her brother and rather enjoyed the occasional times they could spend together sheltered from the constant pressure of her peers. No need here to dress up or make pretense, she could just be herself with no questions asked.

Here atop the willow tree, the two had a commanding view of the plaza, a privileged spot from which to watch the goings on of people as they passed by. From up there, one could imagine so many things, detached as it was from the world below and enveloped in a surreal land of thin green leaves. It was a magical place of make-believe, but one that Katie knew was slipping from her grasp. One disadvantage of increasing age was the loss of imagination that fueled abundant childhood joy. As much as she enjoyed standing aboard a sailing ship or looking down from atop a high mountain, an acute awareness of reality was slowly displacing wonder. It would not be much longer before climbing the willow tree would be set aside, along with an assortment of stuffed animals, dolls, and other toys of youth. It was a bit sad, she thought, that one must give up such pleasures to pursue the uncertain journey of age, but such was the cruel reality of life.

A sudden shout from Jared disrupted further thoughts. “Hey, look, Mr. Franklin’s opening the thrift store. Let’s go see what he’s got!” Franklin’s Thrift Store resided in one of the corner stores with faded windows facing in two directions. It used to be a drugstore but like most other enterprises on the square, it had given way to competition from more glitzy emporiums elsewhere in town. What was left was a hodgepodge of stores that were eccentric in nature and unlikely to draw much attention from developers. There was a small engine repair shop, an old-style barber shop, a vacuum store, and of course, Franklin’s Thrift Store, which offered a menagerie of used items from all over the county, all proceeds going to the Spring Valley Orphans Fund. This was Katie’s and Jared’s favorite store owing to its exceptional pricing and variety of unique goods.

It was hard for a kid in school to do much on the paltry allowances offered up by parents. The siblings had long ago concluded that the whole thing was a ruse to rebuff requests for any number of things a kid might want. “Just save up your allowance and you can buy it yourself.” Even Jared could run the math and discover that it would take weeks of servitude to buy even a modest article from a retail store. But worldly price tags did not apply at the Thrift Store, where one could find countless items within the economic grasp of indentured youth. And of course, Mr. Franklin was well disposed to offering special deals to the oppressed children of the community, including jars of old-style candy at bargain prices.

“Sure, let’s do it!” said Katie as she shimmied down the tree and leaped dramatically to the ground, announcing her arrival back in the real world. Jared also swooped down from one of the branches, running ahead purposefully toward the corner store. The door opened with the cheerful chime of Christmas bells, an uplifting touch to what might have otherwise been a bleak environment with heaps of items haphazardly piled in random locations, all under the sterile gaze of flickering fluorescent lights. None of these made any impact on the children, who found the general disorder of the store to be part of the fun. You could never predict what treasures might be discovered beneath a pile of clothes or behind a dusty piece of furniture. Here, their diminutive size and general agility gave them an advantage of sorts over the adults who walked gingerly down the makeshift aisles, politely looking at what was visible rather than searching to discover what lay beneath.

The game was the same each time they visited—who could find the best deal for a dollar. Haggling with Mr. Franklin was part of the game, of course, but he was careful not to give an unfair advantage to either. “Strictly business,” he would say when he made his final offer. After that, you had to make your final decision one way or the other. Of course, adjudicating a winner when the shopping was done was a matter of interpretation, but somehow, they always knew who came out on top even if neither would outright admit it. On this day Katie started in the clothing section, looking for one of those top-drawer brand names that might have been inadvertently discarded during spring cleanup, while Jared searched behind some furniture, where access would be difficult for adults. For his part, Dap Franklin leaned casually against the counter, watching with some interest as the game unfolded before him. He had seen it play out before and was always curious to see what unique items might emerge from the eclectic assortment of stuff that lay before him.

Mr....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.6.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-9956-2 / 1667899562
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-9956-5 / 9781667899565