Spirit Thorn (A Tale of Parallel Worlds)

Spirit Thorn: A Tale of Parallel Worlds

By Zacharias O'Bryan

ISBN: 978-1-4523-4903-9

Published by Smashwords

Copyright © 2010/2013, Zacharias O'Bryan. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Smashwords Edition License Notes.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold, given away, or transmitted to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to the e-book retailer from which it was downloaded and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, brands, and media are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Contents

Kestrelle's Prayer

Prologue

Chapter One: A Voice at Midnight

Chapter Two: The Song of the Earth

Chapter Three: Hunting Molly Greenfingers

Chapter Four: Gaff Hook, Shotgun, and Poverty

Chapter Five: Braden is Enslaved

Chapter Six: Escape to the River

Chapter Seven: A Fire for Kestrelle

Chapter Eight: The Council of Creatures

Chapter Nine: Devoured by Dragon's Tooth

Chapter Ten: Bodies on the Bar

Chapter Eleven: Kestrelle is Captured

Chapter Twelve: Noonlight Canyon, Otters' Playground

Chapter Thirteen: The Chamber of Minds

Chapter Fourteen: Earl and Mervin, Captain and Hero

Chapter Fifteen: The Trial in River Town

Chapter Sixteen: The Dark of Braden's Soul

Chapter Seventeen: Kestrelle's Destiny Fulfilled

Chapter Eighteen: Braden's Destiny, Kestrelle's Voyage

Chapter Nineteen: A New Journey, A New Song

To Our Readers

About the Author

Kestrelle's Prayer

My Thorn-Spilled Blood,

My Heart's Own Stream,

Each Crimson Drop,

The Seed I Bring.

My Thorn-Spilled Blood,

May It Suffice,

From World to World

In Sacrifice.

Prologue

From Dr. Rodger Swift's Abandoned Lab Journal—

The Mind Beings–whatever their origin or substance–remain invisible to most humans most of the time. Folk tales of the elf-angel-wizard variety portray them crossing into our world as enemies. But haven't they frequently stood among us as friends?

Many of these beings have proven quite intelligent, and often, for unknown reasons, have exposed themselves to great personal danger to interact with us, even to help us.

And why not? Not all fairy tales begin 'A Long Time Ago.' Isn't it possible that the greatest story in the whole sweep of history taps at our window this very moment?

Cassie and I have chosen to join this legend. We expect our son Braden will follow.

Chapter One: A Voice at Midnight

Mom? Dad? Whatever it was that dragged you off, I'll be facing it tonight.

Fourteen-year-old Braden Swift was not in the habit of talking to himself. But he knew that nightfall might bring his death—and already the sun was low. Any familiar voice, even his own, was a comfort.

Although the back yard was empty, his memories were not. Over the years his mother, Professor Cassie Swift, had taught him much: how to shape his first D-chord on a guitar, how to coax an ant lion from its pit-trap in the dust, how to compute the harmonics of a bumblebee's wing. And his father, Professor Rodger Swift, had smuggled him into the university's observatory dome, just the two of them. Together, they had pointed the telescope's thirty-inch mirror at Titan, Saturn's largest moon, the land of methane volcanoes. No one else in town could claim such parents. Then again, no one else's parents had vanished.

Tonight, just as on that evening a year ago, July lightning crackled from cloud to cloud—the exact weather he needed, but there wasn't much time. He doubled his work pace, nailing flattened tin cans over holes in his tree house's moss-softened roof. It probably would not rain—today's lightning was dry. But if the roof were to fail, a year's work could be ruined.

Would it even matter? Who could possibly care what happens here?

"Bran-don!"

Uh-oh. Mustn't forget the Hamlins. The Hamlins always cared, big time, about anything that was none of their business. Braden twisted a fingernail inside his left ear, as if the offending voice could be dug out like earwax.

It's Braden, not Brandon, he explained for the thousandth time, and I don't have time to talk.

Never mind that, said Mrs. Hamlin, her lizardish neck puffing and deflating. She propped herself against the back fence, which slumped dangerously under her weight, and she stared up at him. You tell those folks of yours, it's high time they dealt with this toxic mess of a yard. She frowned her wilting disapproval across the Swift's waist-high grass, wild Shasta daisies, blue cornflowers, blackberry thickets, and native Oregon roses.

Mr. Hamlin, a pale ill-fed man, peeked from behind her bulk. In a piping echo, he added, The missus is right, oh yes-yes! She wouldn't trust that oak tree. It sheds limbs. Her exact words. The missus believes that if your folks won't pull it down, Mother Nature will. Umm-hmm.

My folks … they're kind of gone, in case you forgot, said Braden. With a well-aimed backhand swing of the claw hammer, he demolished a thirty-year-old split-wood shingle.

Mrs. Hamlin's neck inflated and deflated in double time. Mr. Hamlin did his best to comfort her by massaging her temples, but she was a long way from finished: Another thing, Brandon…

It's Braden.

… quite apart from the fact that I distinctly heard you talking to yourself…

She's right again! Oh yes indeed. I heard you, added Mr. Hamlin.

Shush, Dear, said Mrs. Hamlin, stepping immediately in front of her husband. She continued, …and ignoring, for the moment, your absent, negligent parents—don't you have any friends? Umm? I cannot help but observe this disaster-in-the-making that you call your life. Tree house indeed! Was the city planning department notified? A building permit issued? Wiring inspections? I think not.

Mr. Hamlin scrambled to his left, again becoming visible. His boney skull wagged back and forth, signaling his concern and regret.

Mrs. Hamlin, pleased with the progress of the conversation, had reached the core message of her prepared pronouncement: Research scientists agree that the adolescent male is unbalanced —oh yes, even dangerous—when left to his own devices. Owing to their criminal tendencies, young men require sports teams, chaperoned clubs, organized activities. In a word, they require Adult Supervision.

That's two words, Braden pointed out.

Which is hardly my point, young man. And did you know…

Those researchers—do they ever study how to get meddlesome people to live their own lives? So other people can get something done? He pitched a rotted shingle carelessly onto a junk heap fifteen feet below.

Why, you impertinent juvenile thug. I intend to report this sorry matter to the County Children's Services Division.

Mr. Hamlin coughed, Now-now, dear, and he patted her shoulders. Had her eyes been lasers, they would have melted a bullet-sized hole into Braden's forehead. Mr. Hamlin tugged at her arm with one hand, stroking it like a pet with the other. Sniffing a vast quantity of air, she thrust her several chins proud and high as she and Mr. Hamlin retreated to their weekly chore of disinfecting their vinyl pond with chlorine bleach.

Had they bothered saying, We hope Cassie and Rodger will soon be found? Nope. Which surprised Braden less than zero.

As he tacked the last patch into place, Braden brushed a fingertip over a galvanized roofing nail. Sure, its chalky zinc plating might forestall rust for a decade—but if this past year proved anything, it proved that nothing lasts. His family sure hadn't.

He mopped sweat from his forehead and considered Mrs. Hamlin's complaints. Whatever friends Braden might have had, they lay in the past—before all of the late-night work and excited whispering had pulled his parents away, before their final series of experiments, before their evasive answers, before they installed locks on their writing desks and secret passwords on their computers.

Before they vanished without so much as a 'goodbye.'

So maybe old Lizard Neck was right about 'negligent' and 'absent.' They should have warned him about their work, the risks involved. Now, after their disappearance—their deaths, perhaps —it was too late.

Honey, it's dinner time. It was Aunt Dede at the screen door.

I can't. I'm not done.

I'll hold your meal.

Braden checked his watch: 8:48 p.m. If tonight was going to duplicate that night of a year ago, 8:55 would be the moment. That left him seven minutes. It was time to connect the grounding wires that encircled each window frame. If only his parents had also built such protection. If only…

But 'if only' doesn't count.

The troubles had begun with fireball lightning. Six reliable witnesses agreed: A pulsing glow the size of a desktop computer had traversed the university campus, coasting toward the Physics Building, entering the laboratory via a third-floor air duct. Rodger and Cassie, as usual, were working late. The witnesses observed the lab windows throbbing and flickering with heat, but no flames. Within minutes the firemen arrived, sirens blaring and tires screeching. After chopping through an exterior door, they raced upstairs, smashed the laboratory lock, and found… nothing.

Cassie's purse was still there—credit cards intact—as was her guitar. Rodger's lab journal stood open to the correct date, an uncapped ballpoint pen lying across the page. No entry had been made. The sour odor of burning insulation led the firemen to a melted surge protector and a smoking computer monitor. Later, when police investigated, they discovered that all hard disk files concerning Rodger's and Cassie's research had been accessed and irrecoverably deleted from the lab computer. Further investigation revealed that Cassie's and Rodger's home computers, although unharmed, had likewise suffered loss of all research data. Even their desks had been opened and emptied. The fire pit in the backyard was filled with ashes, stirred to a fine powder.

Ten years' work had been obliterated, an outcome leading to sighs of relief among their faculty colleagues. Rodger's and Cassie's speculations concerning overlapping universes, enthusiastically published in scientific journals, had made the university's physics department a laughingstock. 'Oh, the weird, weird Swifts.'

Of their bodies, no trace was found. No blood, no bones, no clothing. The electronic access codes to the lab proved two facts: 1) They had indeed entered; 2) They had never left. The County Coroner signed provisional death certificates stating 'Probable Death by Cause or Causes Unknown.' Detective Whalen of the police Homicide Squad noted, 'Foul Play Suspected.'

And so Aunt Dede from Coos Bay had moved in with Braden. He was technically an orphan, so she blithely endorsed his September school enrollment papers as if she had the legal authority to do so. School administrators and counselors exchanged worried e-mails about this 'Error in Process,' but thought better of filing a complaint. Wasn't this Dede the same giraffe-shaped aunt who had fled town twenty years ago after burglarizing the dog pound and freeing sixteen mutts? Wasn't she certifiably as strange as Cassie, Rodger and Braden? 'He'll be happier,' the officials whispered. 'The unfortunate child will be less confused—less trouble to us—living with one of his own.'

If the word strange meant different, that hardly bothered Aunt Dede. Quite content with Braden's company, she even re-occupied her onetime childhood bedroom.

Why not take Mom and Dad's room? asked Braden.

Because it's theirs, she said, and her eyes clenched shut for a moment.

Yeah, right.

We don't know the whole story, she said.

What? You want me to believe they're alive?

"I want to be careful with words like 'Alive' or 'Dead,' words which don't tell us anything we don't already know. We'll make a deal: I'll keep you updated if I learn anything, and you'll do the same for me."

The following morning found Aunt Dede's rangy knees and elbows angled across the derelict park bench in the back yard. She was sipping her morning ginseng concoction and sampling the first of her half-dozen daily chocolate bars—a snack that stubbornly refused to make her fat. High time Cassie's and my old tree house met up with a hammer and a paintbrush, she declared, arching her eyebrows at Braden, communicating that it would be his job, not hers. Floorboards and braces are dead rotten, I suppose. And you'll be wanting windows: north, south, east and west. Might as well be vigilant. Anything that would creep into your parents' lab would happily creep around here.

So something did creep into their lab?

Isn't that what the townsfolk say? she shrugged, then returned to her chocolate bar.

By trial and error, Braden learned to build. Rodger's and Cassie's theories had centered on the harmonic waves within the multiverse. They had believed it was harmony that opened doors between worlds. So Braden added harmonic structure to every aspect of the tree house. The new window frames, height-vs.-width, approximated phi, the golden ratio of the ancient Greeks. With glass prisms he split and reassembled the leaf-scattered sunlight, blending and harmonizing the wavelengths into new colors. By fine-tuning several tree limbs with pruning shears, he brought their wind-pulses into exact phase. Even the roofing nails were aligned in groupings representing the harmonics of a musical scale.

On clear starry nights, on wet drizzly nights, even through wintertime snows, Braden labored on the tree house, occasionally collapsing into exhausted sleep without bothering to climb down.

Twelve months passed. Tonight's overhead sky was a near duplicate of the sky a year ago. The final touches were done. He had installed his mom's home computer so he could process any new data. On the floor he had spread