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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468563870 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 05/10/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Riley Moon
Curse of the DragonBy Joseph Falletta
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Joseph FallettaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-6386-3
Chapter One
Passerbys
I awoke to the sound of Lou and his noisy cart. Father warned me he would be over early today. I could hear my destiny squeaking up the drive. I still was half asleep, enough to ignore my imminent fate, burying my face in a pillow, rolling over to get comfortable again. I knew Lou would first head for the main house to talk to my father, who probably had been up since sunrise. Still, this was my last chance to steal twenty more minutes of complete bliss, as they got side tracked on the weather or some other monotonous subject. Lou and Father never had a short conversation.
I can't wait in a few weeks I will be eighteen, even if I don't look a day older then twelve. I'm a Selvain boy, our kind tend not to age as fast as humans. Still father says that's when I will become a man. I don't understand the difference a few days will make, but I still am eager.
It will be wonderful, the whole town will come out to celebrate and Father says if I want, I can have a whole pie to myself. Well ... maybe the whole town won't be there, actually no one at all. I don't have a lot of friends. Most of my kind, live in small villages deep in the forest, I grew up in a small town called Maguire here on my father's farm. Even if I don't have the birthday I always dreamed of, surrounded by all the popular kids, I can still dream of pie.
Lucky me! I think I scored at least thirty minutes of pie time, before I heard the clank of the heavy metal latch on the large barn doors. A cool updraft of cold air would be my final warning, as the barn doors slid open, shedding light on a variety of lathes, vices and other assorted tools. I pulled my blankets a little bit tighter prolonging the inevitable, cringing in expectation of what was next.
"Ring, Ring." If "Ring, Ring" could fully describe the clanging of a gaggle of old cow bells. A rope tied to a broken shovel handle, ran from below up the side of the barn, through several eyehooks into the loft. Ringing directly next to the layered blankets that had been placed on several empty fruit boxes, I used as a bed.
If the bells were not echoing through the barn they were definitely echoing in my head. Father and Lou were ringing for me. I could picture them standing there, still talking, looking up, waiting impatiently for the first signs of life.
Alester was not truly my father, yet I did call him so. He raised me more like a son than a servant. I always had free run of the place, my own space. I was encouraged to speak my mind. We always shared everything, like a family, even if there were only two of us. Father rarely even raised his voice to me. I was oblivious to punishment having never seen the crack of a whip, or the back of my father's hand.
My father also gave me books and taught me to read and write, because Selvain children are not welcome at school with the other kids. I do not see what all the fuss is about. So what my ears are a little pointier, my eyes a little bigger, my skin a little darker and green. That's no reason to treat me so differently.
Gosh, when I really think about it, I am the only Selvain that lives here in the tiny town of Maguire. The only time I see other Selvains, they're driving the fancy carriages of the more well to do as they pass by Father's farm. Heads down, eyes forward, not much to say, but an occasional polite "Good morning."
Lou Wickets was a tall, older man, who was a little overweight, sporting a well manicured beard. His silver sideburns followed his jawbone till they reached his chin, connecting to his handlebar mustache, leaving his chin as bald as his head. He spent his days in his garden, his nights harassing my father. He is our good friend.
He lives with his wife and daughter, just a stone's throw up the main road. Julia, his wife, was quiet unlike Lou who never stops talking. She also is the first to cook, clean or do any monotonous chore, while Lou is the first to sit down and theoretically talk about how to tackle the job at hand, as she gets everything done. Julia has long blonde hair with very kind eyes, the kind of eyes I pictured my mother would have, if I ever was to meet her.
Lou's daughter's name is Katinka, but we call her Kat. She is as small-town as a girl can get. Petite little thing, she can't weigh a hundred pounds, soaking wet. Her hair is beautiful, like her mother's, only she would dye the tips of her hair different colors using the juice from fruits and berries. Little Miss Prissy, if she was not fixing herself up or pretending to be in charge, her face was buried in a book. She never missed a day of school and always had an opinion on everything, especially, on what makes a person important. "Influential people go to school," quoting her teacher, "Knowledge is power." One would think that just by listening to her she was much older, but she's really more than two years younger than me.
Self-delusion is a wonderful thing. Kat would fold the ends of her dresses momentarily changing the length, then stretch or pinch the arm cuffs, always accessorizing with brightly colored scarves, anything to mimic the fashions of passing travelers she saw on the road. She would make believe she was on top of the world of fashion, parading around, pretending, she was in style. None of that mattered to me, all I ever noticed was her smile, it stretched from ear to ear, chasing away any frown I ever had.
Sometimes in the early morning hours, I would secretly watch her and the other local kids, as they waited by the roadside for the cart that would pick them up for their classes.
Kat would stand in the way on an imaginary pedestal, offering free advice, always referencing an ad from a prestigious dress shop she would probably never see. Their slogan was, "Always dress for success with ... blah blah blah." The other kids would ignore her, but I never could. Even with all her faults, she is my best friend. In a peculiar way, she taught me it is O.K. to dream of grander things.
Lou and his family knew my father as long as I could remember. Kat and I were raised hand and hand. Our families spent many moons together on father's porch. Julia would help Kat and me with our studies, while Lou and my father played cards or discussed Commonwealth politics, as if the people they talked about, who are so far away, could make decisions that could actually change our lives. Considering, other than an occasional fishing trip, I can not recall any one of us traveling much farther than Airwindale or Hanson, two of the smallest towns on the long road and our only links to the big cities.
We lived along the main road that stretched the entire length of the Commonwealth. At night, after dinner and our studies, the five of us would engage in our most popular pastime. We would watch the road with anticipation, hoping for nighttime travelers. Passerbys is what we called them. They were the important people headed for the interesting places. Late night travelers who simply, passed us by?
We wondered what important messages they carried to cause them to be in such a rush. Depending on the quality of the carriage and the condition of their horses, we would speculate on their destinations. Kat and I would make up tall tales of secret packages being delivered to suspicious figures in dark alleys of far away towns. Sometimes we would pretend they were great heroes sent out on epic quests, whose noble deeds would someday save the Commonwealth. Every story we would tell would be even more fantastic than the last.
Lou would always interrupt, boasting that the city elders were always digging up old pieces of scrap metal in Avalon then quietly carting them off to private laboratories, always hiding the fact they had proof of long forgotten advanced civilization. He always told us outlandish tales of bloody wars, Kings, Queens, and of course my favorite, stories of dragons. Lou would boast the city's leaders never tell the truth, constantly preaching he would rather be here in our cozy little town than surrounded by the dreadfully deceitful characters one would meet if you traveled to the big cities. Lou always made funny faces pretending to be mean and scary to emphasize his point. He only succeeded in making us laugh.
On slow nights while we enjoyed an open fire and the starry sky. Occasionally, Lou would also do a card trick or two. It was uncanny, the way Lou always knew what card you picked, he also could make cards disappear or burst into flames and then reappear. Lou would smile and say, "It's all in the hands," as we tried to figure out how he did what he did.
Where was I? Oh ya pie, "Ring, Ring." I waited till father rang twice, first looking out, then down from between two hay bales suspended high above the floor below. Hay bales were placed on the edge of the platform making the walls of my makeshift bedroom, in the loft of my father's barn.
Shaking out the dust from my long messy hair, I threw on my cleanest clothes and grabbed for the first rungs of the ladder pole that connected my private world to the ground. I'm small, but strong and nimble, after a few steps down, I allowed myself to fall backwards, flipping out toward a pulley rope that I normally used to haul hay bales and things up to my loft. This time I used the rope to lower myself slowly down, raising a rusty old bucket to the roof of the barn. There was a loud cracking sound as the bucket got caught in the rafters stopping my decent abruptly, just before I hit the hard ground?
That's what I'd like to call a stylish landing. "You rang." I said sarcastically, as if I was unaware of what was happening. I knew I would be fixing Lou's cart, while they discussed, how to, from the comfort of the porch.
Clovis was Lou's horse, a good size stud with brown and white markings. Lou handed me Clovis's reins and an apple he had just bitten, garbling his words as he chewed, "Why don't we start by taking the old boy out to the back pasture?"
Father was grunting as he struggled to unhook the leather straps linking Clovis to the cart. Lou smiled adding, "Don't dally, I brought a bag of apples and a fresh pie Kat made." What he meant was, next I would be carrying them topside. He knew I would hurry. Kat made the best pies.
I used Lou's half-eaten apple to coerce Clovis into joining Kas in the coral outback. Kas was my father's foal, she was a little sleeker than Clovis with similar markings. Kat had braided red ribbons and white flowers into her mane. If Kat was not gussying herself up, she was helping dress up someone else. She was always saying "Only the most important people have horses with ribbons and flowers braided in their hair." She liked to pretend we were more important than we were, always hoping some day we would be one of the Passerbys.
When I returned to the barn, Lou and my father were talking about Avalon. It was a three day ride to the south and lies on the far side of Gourd Lake. Lou always told us stories about Avalon. Once he even showed Kat and I how the priests there measured time by using what he called a sun dial. All you really need is a straight stick and be able to point north. Lou knew lots of unusual things like that. He especially knew a lot about Avalon. His father was lost in the big fire there. To this day the city is still just a ghost town. I was too young to remember, it happened shortly before Kat was born and before Lou and Julia built their home here. My father told us at one time Avalon was the largest city and the capitol of the Commonwealth, before the notorious fire that left the city in ashes.
Lou was going on about the strange things he recently heard about the abandoned temple that rests in the center of the burned out abandoned city. The temple is the oldest standing building in the Commonwealth. Stone ruins where an order of priests once made offerings to the God's to protect us from dragons. Lou was reminding Father it was not so long ago.
Father was mocking Lou's frivolous suspicions of some ominous danger still lurking there. Laughing and making funny faces at the mention of real dragons, facetiously blaming the fire on the carelessness of the priests. Lou was not amused. His face was always serious when the old city was mentioned.
They didn't notice I was listening as Lou still jabbered away. He was talking about some gossip he had overheard from several of the Passerbys who had come down the road leaving Newhaven, the closest city to Avalon. They told him strange lights were seen in the forest around Gourd Lake and rumor was whole families have been reported missing in the small towns around Hanson, another stop on the way to Newhaven. And that's not all, It was said one traveler was attacked by a huge wild bear, and hunters have seen animals ten times larger than normal. Lou went on. Even stranger occurrences have been reported, like crop's, not just dying out or being eaten by bugs, the plants appear to be changing into vicious creatures then eating the livestock and attacking the farmers. Then he added, lets not mention Mount Helos started blowing smoke. Lou confirmed what he always insinuated, the Passerbys believed evil spirits from the temple were to blame.
No one could spin a yarn like Lou, and he always was overly zealous when anything was said concerning Avalon, especially when the temple was mentioned. My father laughed and blamed the tall tales on the Newhaven Brewing Company and their wicked ale. That and the healthy imaginations of sailors who spent one too many days out of dry-dock. Lou took the stories much more serious, bothered that my father was overlooking the temple's past.
Eventually they both noticed I was eavesdropping. They immediately stymied up, turning their heads, in sync. Giving me, The Look, that said, "Get movin, mister." So I grabbed the pie and the bag of apples and headed for the house. I had a regular list of things to-do. None more important right now, than having a nice big piece of pie.
Father's house was dwarfed by three cottonwood trees that hung over his little farm house, with the huge covered porch. The porch really was bigger than the inside of the house. It was where father spent most of his time relaxing. I laid the bag of apples by the front door, on one of the rocking chairs that faced the main road, placing the pie on the table next to Lou's old box of cards.
Father and I made the big table years ago. The tabletop was cut from a single slice of an old cottonwood. We had cut down the massive tree when we cleared the area on the back side of the barn for a hen house. The heavy table was nine of my feet wide and was centered on the porch just outside our front window. The window shimmered with a multitude of colors because it was fashioned out of the severed bottoms of old wine bottles. The table had five chairs, all carved out of stumps, cut from a single limb. One of the chairs around the table had a knife stuck in it. So I got comfortable and cut myself a piece of pie.
I always loved the great cottonwoods. I am very agile tree climber. Some of the largest cottonwoods stand in our village and I can climb higher than Kat ever could. It was one of the few things I did better than her and the other children around here.
The town of Mcguire is very small, there are only a couple of store fronts, so most places are used for more than one purpose. One is a bed and breakfast, which doubles as the hospital. Mister Glamchi runs the desk and his spouse is a midwife. There is also a tavern called 'The Beaten Path' that doubles as the general store. You could always tell when you were near the bar especially on a hot day when the wind was moving in your direction. The stale sent of pipe smoke and the empty barrels of ale that are neatly stacked to the roof-line leave a formidable smell in the air.
The largest building is the townhall, it doubles as the local school house. There are also several big houses; one of them has a red barn which is also the local stable. All the structures surround a small park that is more like an empty field that had been cleared for local farmers to set up shop and the occasional town celebration. Life in Maguire is pretty simple.
I was finishing my second piece of pie when Lou and father finally reached the porch carrying a basket of eggs. I just smiled my face full of pie. As Father bellowed out, expecting no less of me. "Riley, you little shit, you better have saved some for us! Now that you're done fartin around, you have chores to do." Pausing to take a deep breath, "and Lou will need the back left wheel on his cart repaired, and don't forget to feed the chickens when you feed Kas!"
Lou adding in a softer voice, "Clovis could use a good brushing too."
Content, my belly filled with pie, I shuffled down the porch steps to the path that led back to the barn to start my busy day. I did most of the work around the farm, now that Father was getting old and grey like Lou. It seems all Father does these days is just gossip with the neighbors, play cards, and plan how he going to fix his next meal.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Riley Moon by Joseph Falletta Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Falletta. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Opening Prayer....................xiiiChapter 1. Passerbys....................1
Chapter 2. Keeping Secrets....................21
Chapter 3. Lou....................45
Chapter 4. Mix Pride In Your Faith, For Getting The Truth....................67
Chapter 5. Family Ties....................89
Chapter 6. The Funhouse....................101
Chapter 7. Be Ready....................115
Chapter 8. Truth Is On The Menu....................127
Chapter 9. Finding Your Faith Losing Your Innocence....................145
Chapter 10. I Believe, That's Not True....................165
Chapter 11. Watching Eyes....................181
Chapter 12. Control....................197
Chapter 13. The Jokes On Who!....................219
Chapter 14. Learning To Sea....................235
Chapter 15. Easy As One, Two, Three....................245
Chapter 16. Past Aggressions....................261
Chapter 17. All you need is the right tools....................269
Chapter 18. Help....................285
Chapter 19. Temple....................301