Journeys Beyond the Peaks
By M.F. Erler, Illustration by R.P. Feser
Prologue
My
name is Alexia Sullien, but most people call me Lexi. Right now, I’m in our thatch-roofed hut on
the edge of my father’s compound. His
name is Darien, and he’s the commander of this Rebel Safe-zone.
In front of
me is a small cook-fire. My younger
brother, Andre, and I have rigged a tripod above the fire out of pieces of
discarded metal, which is something scarce here in the wilderness. Therefore, it’s very valuable even if it is
old and rusty, and no one can discern its original use.
Even more
precious is the cast iron kettle attached to the tripod by a wire handle. As I stir the stew bubbling inside, I
wonder—not for the first time—where our mother, Daiah, got it. She says she’s had it so long she doesn’t
remember.
“Did you
get it when you were living with the Redlarks in the Wilds of planet Terres?” I
asked her one day, just a couple of weeks ago:
Her face
clouded with anger at my question. “I
don’t like to think about Terres,” she mumbled.
“Those weren’t good times. Terres
in the late Thirtieth Century—was a tightly-controlled Galactic System
planet. First, I ran away from
Terres-City, the only settlement on the planet.”
“Didn’t
that help, Mom? To be free in the
Wilds?”
“I thought
it would, Lexi. But the Redlarks were
too free. Their use of drugs, sex, and
evil spirits seemed like freedom at first, but they were just a different kind
of bondage.”
Mom had never
talked of any of her past like this before.
Perhaps it helped that Dad and Andre weren’t around. They’d gone out hunting for deer. And maybe she felt I was old enough now, at fifteen
Standard Years. Anyway, I didn’t want
her to stop, so I asked, “How did you ever manage to escape Terres?”
She shook
her head and stared at the dirt floor of our hut for several seconds before she
answered. “It wasn’t easy. When the opportunity came, I thought it was
just good luck. First, I met Dominic,
your father’s uncle.”
“I’ve heard
Dad mention the name, but he’s not here in our compound, is he?”
“No, he’s
in an out-clave far distant, in another country on Earth.”
“Did you
meet Dad then, too?”
Now she
smiled slightly. “Oh, no. That was much later. Dominic had run away from the City, too. But he realized much sooner than most that
the Redlarks were a big mistake. He and
his wife and son left us to join a small group of Rebels.”
“The Rebels
aren’t the same as Redlarks?”
“Definitely
not. We’re Rebels now, but we’re
certainly not Redlarks.”
“We’re
Believers in the True King, right Mom?”
“Yes, we
are,” she smiled again. “The forces
guiding the Redlarks weren’t from the System, but they were still evil—like
some of the reports of strange dark powers we’re hearing now. Besides, The Book warns us of this, too.”
“Why is
that ancient book so special?”
“Well,
Lexi, Believers say it was inspired by the Lord himself, the True King.”
“Is he a
king here on Earth? If he is, why do
Believers like us have to hide?”
She
sighed. “Your dad’s answer to that
question is always the same—”
“I know—the
Lord’s Kingdom is not of this world. Do
you believe that, Mom?”
“I do,
Lexi. And as I look back at my life now,
I can see it wasn’t just luck that brought me to where I am today.”
“How do you
mean?”
“Well,
after I met Dominic, your dad’s uncle, he helped me see where truth really
was. So I followed him when he left
Terres. Back then, no one knew where
Earth was, or if it was just a myth. But the Rebels somehow knew, and that’s
how I got here—with Dominic and his followers.
After we’d been here awhile, I met your father, with a different group
of Rebels. He’d left Terres as a System
soldier, but was converted to the Rebel’s cause.”
“Wait! You mean you and Dad were both from Terres,
but you didn’t meet there?”
“Strange,
isn’t it? We came to Earth by two
different paths. Now, I know the King had
it planned for us. It wasn’t by chance,
after all.”
“I’ve heard
Uncle Jon mention Redlarks, too. Was he
there when you were?”
She looked
at the floor again before she replied.
“Yes, but it was long before we became relatives. He came to the Redlarks shortly after I did,
for the same reasons, trying to find freedom.
We even shared a hut for awhile—”
Her voice
stopped in mid-sentence.
“What’s wrong, Mom? Are you okay?”
In reply
she reached over and took my hand. “I
shouldn’t have told you. Please don’t
mention it to Jon or his wife, Martina.
She’s Darien’s sister, and therefore my sister-in-law, so I don’t want
to hurt her. What happened between Jon
and I was during a dark and lost time in both our lives. It’s best forgotten. None of us were Believers then. Now things are as they should be. Jon has married Martina, and I’m married to
her brother, Darien. And we have
beautiful children.”
As her
voice faded away, I saw something shining in the corners of her eyes.
***
So here I
am, just stirring the stew and thinking about all this. In the cold winter months, Jon and his family
come to live with us here in the compound.
It’s only in the warmer seasons that they go to a cave they’ve
discovered.
I like it
when they’re here with us because Jon has been teaching all of us first-borns
to cross the GAP. I don’t understand the
science of it, but I know it’s a shortcut through space. My cousin Celestia, Jon’s daughter, says they
can go from here to their cave in the blink of an eye. Once she took me to the cave and back, all in
less than a day. It was amazing.
First, I
was standing on grassy ground beside our hut.
Then she took both my hands in hers, and we closed our eyes. The ground felt like it fell away. The next instant I felt a rocky floor beneath
my feet. When I opened my eyes, we were
in a dimly-lit cave.
“Wow,” I
remember saying. “Can you teach me to do
that?”
She grinned
and nodded. But then she said, “With
lessons from my dad, you can learn even more than this, like how to go backward
and forward in time, too. The GAP—the
Galactic Antipaterminal Passage—can cut through any dimension of space or time,
Lexi. But it takes practice. I’m just learning myself.”
Then she
took my hands again and closed her eyes.
The next breath I took was beside our hut, back in the compound.
With that
kind of motivation, it’s been easy to take in everything Uncle Jon and Celestia
have taught me. And I’ve been practicing
a lot. I start to name to myself the
places I’ve crossed to, while I keep an eye on the bubbling pot.
Just as I
reach the end of my mental list, the air crackles beside me. Looking up, I expect to see Celestia, but
instead my uncle comes into focus.
“What’s up,
Uncle Jon?”
“I need you
to help someone, Lexi.” He always gets
right to the point.
“Okay. Who?”
“It’s not
just ‘who’—it’s also ‘where’ and ‘when’.
I need you to cross the GAP to the past.”
“Me? But I’m not that experienced.”
“You have
more innate ability than you know,” he smiles slightly. “And you’re the best- qualified GAP-crosser
available right now. This task needs a
teenager. Your cousin, Celestia, is too
old.”
“Uh-
okay. But I haven’t had much practice
with Time-GAPs.”
He pulls
out a strangely-fluted amber lamp. “This
helps with time-crossings,” he says.
“I’m sending you to the late Twenty-first Century.”
“Why then?”
“I think
I’ve told you about Danny, who I visited in the early Twenty-first Century.”
“Yeah, the
name sounds familiar.”
“Well, his
son Evin needs our help. And the only
way to do that is through his children.”
Even as he
continues giving me instructions, he somehow lights the strange lamp. Shadows of brown, with flashes of yellow and
orange, begin to circle the walls of the hut.
Then I feel the floor fall away as soon as he touches my hands.
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