Two flights of stairs later, Jacob descended to the living room on the main level and the front door beyond. The fire hadn’t managed to engulf this room yet. Jacob smiled. He paused only a moment to reassure his daughters. Even though their mother had been lost to them, they would make it. Life would go on.
They had come through a raging inferno. Jacob had used his last ounces of strength to get them this far, but neither of the girls responded to his voice. Great, bubbling blisters covered their faces. Their hands and feet had been blackened somewhere along the way. Despite his best efforts they were gone—sacrificed to the inferno of his own lust for power with the Master.
Twenty minutes later, when the city fire department broke down the door, they found Jacob sobbing next to the bodies of his adolescent children. The entire living room was engulfed in flames. However, when they pulled Jacob screaming from the nearly collapsed house, he didn’t even have the smell of smoke on his clothing.
The religious community had proclaimed his ordeal, though tragic, a miracle. Jacob had used it to great degree in order to travel the channels through the higher echelons of power. Status had its rewards. Jacob found all doors opening to him and his research into human cloning. Where he had failed before, he now succeeded. Impossibly complex scientific hurdles had been easily deciphered, seeming elementary to his newly enlightened mind.
Staring out over the vast army he had created through his research, Jacob wondered regretfully if his sacrifice had really been worth it. Then he looked at his hands, thinking of all he had been given since that time and all the Master had promised him for the future. Jacob Stein smiled. Yes—he had made the right choice.
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Preview: “A World Within,” by James Somers
INTO THE LIVING LAND
Daniel lay on the ice, his face numb from the cold. He became aware of his clothes being wet across his front as he lay face down on the pond. He had difficulty discerning if his eyes were open or not, but he only saw black. The air felt strangely warm and smelled of grass and flowers—more like spring than winter. He heard a definite rustling, like wind forcing its way through the full foliage of tall trees.
The aching in his head began to subside. Maybe he hadn’t been hurt so bad after all. Daniel noticed he did not hear Derek or any of the other boys’ jeering anymore. Perhaps they had gotten their kicks and decided to leave for more exciting game. Then it happened.
He felt a poke at his body, Derek finishing the job no doubt. Then, he felt it again, two pokes to his ribs this time. Daniel might have laughed at the ticklish sensation if his head had not been throbbing so badly. Then, the finger poked at his head and he heard the distinct sound of someone close to his face, biting into something like a piece of fruit. The juice squirted onto his cheek.
Daniel winced and opened his eyes, expecting to find his bullies, but instead a thing stared at him. It spoke with fruit juice dribbling down its furry little chin.
“What are you then, big nose?” the creature asked.
Daniel screamed. His head throbbed hard, turning screaming to wincing.
“Well, I’m not that ugly,” the creature said, placing his curled little hands on his hips, a piece of half eaten fruit in one of them.
Daniel realized his jaw must be dangling agape. The creature sat on his haunches, but wouldn’t have been more than four feet tall on his tip-toes. He had a lemur-like face, but long ears like a rabbit falling back behind his head with ringlets and bangles hanging on them. His short silver fur covered most of his body, and his hands and feet were ape-like and appeared good for climbing things.
“What are you?” Daniel asked, bewildered.
“I asked you first, big nose,” the creature said gruffly.
Daniel realized he’d been insulted. “I’m Daniel and I haven’t got a big nose.”
“Well, it’s bigger than mine,” said the creature. “I’m Meineke.”
“Are you a monkey, Mr. Meineke?”
“Look, if you don’t want me calling you big nose, then don’t go calling me a stinking monkey! I’m a Wil, of the noble family too.”
“A Wil, what’s that?”
“What’s a Wil? Oy, you’re not from around here are you?”
“Oh yes, I am. This is my family—” but suddenly Daniel realized the world around him had changed. The frozen pond remained the same, but everything beyond its edge had changed dramatically. No more did a wide clearing sparsely populated by trees encircle the water’s edge. This had been replaced by a thickly planted forest of trees that looked centuries old, twisted malevolently by time. The winter wonderland had been transformed into a fog-laden forest of gnarled trees where evil itself seemed to hang in the moist air.
The tree-bark was gunmetal gray spotted with black, and the trunks of the trees were monstrous in width. The branches looked like grisly claws raking the sky in opposition to the sun, and great roots covered the entire forest floor like a nest of snakes within the crag of a rock. The dark clouds above seemed married to the treetops while wisps of fog created a murky veil that made it impossible to see what lay in the distance.
“Where am I?” Daniel surveyed his new surroundings with a mixture of fear and awe. Had he hit his head this hard? Where was his home, his families land? All of it had disappeared, except for the pond, and had been replaced by a nightmare forest from a world he could only have imagined.
Meineke continued chewing on his fruit, speaking as his food sloshed about. “Why, you’re right there,” he said, pointing a finger at him matter-of-factly.
Daniel blinked slowly, becoming exasperated with the little creature’s literality. “I mean, what is this place?”
Meineke stood up and spread his arms to the forest around them. “This awful place is Parengore Forest. It’s the home of the Spider Elves—scary huh?”
Daniel kept his eyes searching the various layers of the forest, expecting something terrible to erupt from the murk at any moment. He felt like a hundred pairs of eyes might be watching him from the veil of fog and shadows.
“It’s not so bad,” he lied.
“Yeah, right. Well, I normally wouldn’t be caught dead around here if it weren’t for the Wielder.”
“How did I get here? Last thing I remember, I was getting beat up by Derek Wentworth.”
“I haven’t a clue,” Meineke said. “I left my companion to find a place to conduct nature’s business and you were lying here, gone to the world.”
Daniel racked his brain. None of this made any sense—the Wil, this forest, Spider Elves, and his house no longer anywhere in sight. Perhaps, I am dreaming. “Who is this Wielder person you said you were with?” If he was dreaming, then he might as well find out what the dream was all about.
“Oh, I’m not traveling with him. Me and my companion are looking for—” Meineke paused, listening. His ears twitched and perked up over his head. The little creature became as tense as a cat caught in the act of raiding a garbage can: ready to bolt at the slightest threat.
“What is it?”
“Shush!” Meineke hissed. He bent his head low, allowing his ears to pick up the vibrations traveling through the ground. He reminded Daniel of an old Indian scout listening for the cavalry. His eyes widened. He straightened quickly. “Come on, they’re coming!”
“Who?”
“The Spider Elves—run!” And with that, Meineke bounded away from Daniel and the approaching rumble. Daniel watched the Wil run, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Was this real? He took another fraction of a second to consider it. Whatever a Spider Elf is, I don’t think I want to meet one!
Daniel started to run after the Wil when a thunderous explosion of gnarled tree branches delivered a monstrous creature into the short clearing around the edge of the pond. A gargantuan, hairy spider, the size of a Clydesdale, appeared. It carried a man of some sort riding upon a makeshift saddle just behind the crown of black eyes upon its head.
The rider’s
hair flowed silvery white down across his shoulders with pointed ears protruding through. He wore a thin beard of the same color and his skin was a ghastly, pale gray. A silver breastplate made of layers of metal scales adorned his torso and shimmered with violet color. He carried a long, intricately crafted lance in his right hand and brandished it in Daniel’s direction. The elf’s form appeared beautiful and terrible all at once and his steed made him all the more dangerous. Daniel froze in fear.
More ghastly riders appeared, coming through the trees behind the first with their horrid mounts—their eight legs traversing the surface of the mighty, forest root system with ease. Daniel tried to run, but he slipped on the ice.
His skates had transformed into his normal shoes. The elf rider urged his spider-mount forward to attack the boy with its two foot long fangs. Daniel saw the venom dripping as its mandibles opened to reveal the black daggers.
A large gray bird snatched Daniel away from the jaws. It bore him up swiftly, carrying him by the shoulders. Was he now to be this predator’s next meal? “Don’t worry, lad, I’ll get you out of here,” Meineke’s voice said through the bird.
“Meineke, is that you?” They soared up toward the twisted branches of the nearby trees.
A blast, like a clear bubble, flew off of the end of the elf’s lance. It hit Daniel and Meineke in flight, sounding like a thunderclap. Daniel fell away and landed among heaps of decaying leaves within the gaps in the massive tree roots. Meineke tumbled in the air on a collision course with the thick trunk of a craggy, old tree. His form morphed almost faster than could be seen and he righted himself in time to land on the vertical face of the tree trunk. Meineke hung there in his original form—claws set into the porous bark like a defiant squirrel.
He leaped down to the ground with the same elegant agility and found Daniel among the smelly, old leaves where the roots hung over them both like prison bars. “Come on, Daniel.” He led the boy back into the leaves and intertwining roots.
The Wil tunneled, finding their way through the labyrinth created by the roots. Pockets of dead space appeared here and there among the leaves as they tried to keep moving away from the Spider Elves. The spaces between the roots were too small for the spiders to enter, but Daniel heard them moving around above, searching for their prey.
Meineke spotted a patch of light and they rushed toward it. The pair came up through a rotted out trunk that had a large enough hole in its side for them to emerge onto the forest floor again. They ran again with the Spider Elves about twenty yards behind them. Daniel did his best to keep up with Meineke. The Wil seemed a natural for such an environment, leaping from root to root and ducking under others to stay ahead of the elf riders and the nightmares they rode upon.
As they ran through the dense forest, Daniel noticed a distinct groaning emanating from all around them—as though the forest moaned in agony over the situation. The harder Daniel ran and the closer he and Meineke’s pursuers got to them, the louder the noise became.
The trees swayed their craggy top branches, yet Daniel felt no wind. Could the trees be moving on their own, he wondered. He ran into an area where the roots heaved up in tight bands, becoming a wall before him. Meineke had circumvented it while Daniel was paying more attention to the movement of the forest than his way. He realized, too late, that he was cornered next to a huge old tree with massive boughs.
One of the elven riders came to a halt behind him. His mount hissed, baring its venomous fangs for the kill. Meineke had disappeared. Daniel turned, attempting to climb, but he couldn’t find a purchase anywhere for his incapable child’s hands. The tree vibrated beneath his palms and he heard the sound of wood twisting under duress. The giant spider lunged forward with fangs dripping deadly venom. Daniel screamed as the sleek black daggers came at him. He had no defense.
The ground shook like an atom bomb unleashed, throwing Daniel back on his side into the dirt. He looked back at the fiendish predator, only to find one of the massive branches of the tree above him grinding the spider and its rider into the ground, like a man squashing a bug under his thumb.
The branch lifted slowly, revealing a ghastly residue from the kill. Daniel thought he might vomit, but only before the rising branch revealed another elf rider twenty yards away. The rider looked aghast at his former companion’s remains dropping from the branch, intermingled with hunks of arachnid pulp, back into the stew surrounded by eight splayed legs.
The elf rider howled a war cry, leveling his exquisite lance at Daniel’s position. A glint of light caught his eye as an object sailed over his head in the direction of the elf. The warrior pulled his lance back to defend against a long, curved fighting knife. The blade whirled at him and clanged off of his weapon.
A sleek figure, veiled by billowing crimson robes, glided to the ground in front of Daniel with the elegant fighting knife’s twin in hand. Emerald eyes flashed with the stranger’s beauty from beneath her hood as she turned and noticed Daniel before moving on into the fray with the Spider Elf. Daniel was instantly captivated. Had he been able to take his eyes off of her, he might have seized the opportunity to run.
The mysterious woman evaded a strike by the elf’s lance, then rolled across the ground and under the deadly spider. Her blade, cuffed behind her arm, unfurled as she came to kneel beneath the beast as it reared up on its back legs, trying to find the elusive prey. She took the opportunity and drove the blade deep into the joint between the sternum and the joints of its legs and then leaped away as it reflexively jerked its appendages inward. The other knife lay nearby on the ground. She retrieved it quickly as the startled elf tried to recover from the collapse of his mount.
At this distance, the long lance was of little use to the elf. The female warrior maneuvered inside his line of attack with her second blade. She finished him off while he sat entangled in his spider’s harness. She then returned the knife to its place somewhere under her robe. The woman retrieved the companion blade from the spider’s corpse and then walked toward Daniel.
He hadn’t noticed the Wil standing next to him again, until he felt the creature’s small hand leaning against his hip. “She’s something, isn’t she?” Meineke said with a sigh.
Daniel looked at him and noticed blood staining his short fur. Startled, he asked, “Are you all right, Meineke?”
Meineke inspected his body. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not mine.”
“Oh,” Daniel said, trying not to imagine where the stain had come from.
The woman approached with her other weapon, sheathing it with its twin under her cloak. She pulled back her hood, revealing auburn locks that hung around her shoulders like arms guarding her virtue. She was beautiful, yet strangely menacing at the same time, and again, her emerald eyes fixed Daniel where he stood.
Meineke stepped forward and said, “Thanks for the save, Marissa, I thought that Spider Elf had me for sure.”
Marissa disregarded Meineke’s gesture, walking past him to Daniel. “Man child, are you injured?”
Is she speaking to me? “Oh, yes, I’m fine, thank you for saving me, ma’am.”
Marissa looked at the tree above them. It had settled back into its place of stillness. Her gaze shifted behind her to the remains of the first Spider Elf. “It would seem that I’m not the only one that helped you.”
Daniel looked up at the tree and the mess it had made of his attacker. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m not really sure what happened. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever—well honestly, this whole day has been strange for me. I’m still not sure how I got to this place or even what world I’m in.”
Marissa looked intently at the young man, studying him in search of any deceit in his expression, but appeared to find none evident. “You are in the Living Land, man child,” she said, looking around the forest.
“I’m thirteen.”
“What?”
“I’m thirteen now, nearly fourteen. I’m not a child anymore,” Daniel said boldly.
A slight gr
in appeared on her lips and then faded quickly. “So you are.”
“Marissa, this is Daniel,” Meineke said. “I found him face down, back there a ways, on top of a frozen pond.”
“We’ve no time to discuss this now,” she said. “One of the riders escaped and he’ll return with reinforcements quickly.” Marissa pulled her hood up over her head, preparing to depart. “I trust, young Daniel, that at nearly fourteen, you will have no trouble keeping up with our pace.”
No sooner had she said this then she leaped away, scaling the roots like she was born to the task. “Let’s go, lad,” Meineke said, running after Marissa.
Daniel set out after them, trying to hold the pace with Meineke. The Wil obviously went slower than normal on Daniel’s behalf.
“Who is she, Meineke?”
“Marissa is a princess, Daniel, of the Bard Elves that live in the North Country,” Meineke said. “That’s where we’re headed once we meet up with the others beyond the forest.”
“Others?”
“Of course. You didn’t think it was just me and Marissa taking a stroll through the woods, did you? No, we’re on our way to consult Marissa’s father, King Nicholas.”
“How far is it to the North Country?”
“A long journey, Daniel, a long journey, but we’ll be safer after we meet up with the others. At this pace, we’ll reach the forest edge by nightfall and the others will be waiting for us, if nothing has befallen them.”
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Preview: “Percival Strange,” by James Somers
STRANGE WITNESS
The gas gauge empty light came on. “FIN! You idiot!” Archie Winebottle had felt a little sorry about his partner, Fin, getting shot in his hindquarters during the bank robbery and having to leave him behind—no longer.
His getaway car barely managed to creep to the top of the next steep hill as police cruisers came up fast. Archie knew it was over. He hit the brakes, but with the engine dead and they didn’t respond now. The steering wheel locked into place. Archie and the Oldsmobile sailed down the incline like a runaway freight train.