The Greenstone Saga

Degrees of Diabolicalness - Part III

2010-08-12T08:50:00.000-05:00

Continuing on where we left off last, let's wrap up our series on the Degrees of Diabolicalness that the all-time greatest villains had with probably the most enduring one...

Third Degree of Diabolicalness: They surpass being merely a "bad guy" and become the very embodiment of evil to their world

I think this trait is what separates a great villain from a mythic villain. A great villain is the source of conflict, struggle and pain for the hero, whereas a mythic villain literally is the symbol of conflict, struggle, pain and yes, evil, for an entire world.

Think about those final three villains from our March Madness style bracket of evil. Isn't the Wicked Witch the very personification of evil in the Land of Oz? Doesn't her dark shadow of cruelty and terror cast a worrying spectre over the entire stretch of the yellow brick road? I'm fairly confident that if you were to ask any residents of the Land of Oz what they thought evil was, there answer would be a swift and shuddering, "The Wicked Witch."

But the beauty of a villain that embodies evil is that their impact goes beyond mere fear or pain. They get inside your mind, tempting you, twisting the world to reflect what they believe it should be and draw you in to a world where there is no good or evil, only power. The world as you know it to be is an illusion. The only real world is the world they see and envision, a world that should be governed and ruled by them because it would be a better, more orderly world, wouldn't it?

In essence they get you, the reader, to question the world itself and who you are/what you believe just like they do to the hero. And it is this questioning of self and of how we see the world that lifts the villain to another level of tyranny because forcing a hero to overcome obstacles put in their path is one thing, but having a character who is so clearly evil be so convincingly manipulative to the point that the hero begins actually questioning the path they are on altogether, well that's just evil incarnate isn't it? That kind of psychological wound goes above and beyond ordinary conflict into the realm of a crisis of identity, belief and purpose. And doubt and despair in the heart of a hero is hard to watch, difficult to endure because a hero's belief and resolve is usually the only beacon of good in their world/story.

Lastly, a mythic villain provokes an almost visceral reaction within the reader. This is usually helped with a great musical theme (for movies) or distinct visual characteristics of ambiance and description (for literary mediums). Darth Vader had both of those in spades. Anytime you heard that classic theme of the Empire (yes that's right, the music you're hearing in your head right now) your chest tightened, your eyes fixed onto the screen and you couldn't turn away.

Now add on to that the ingenious breathing noise, the James Earl Jones voice, the dark and metallic outfit meshing man and machine so ruthlessly together, and then the cold, calculating efficiency of Vader's movements and actions, and you felt something every time Darth Vader was on the screen.

When you thought of evil in the galaxy, two hollow black eyes within a large helmet stared coldly out at you.

Which is just awesome, isn't it?

Degrees of Diabolicalness - Part II

2010-07-29T15:04:00.001-05:00

Second Degree of Diabolicalness: You understand a little too well what fatal flaw led them down the dark path and why they do what they do

In my opinion, this is always what makes the absolute best villains: you can relate to them even in the face of their ruthless and outright diabolical machinations. No matter how vile, no matter how sick or cold-blooded their actions, you can see the method behind the madness and most of the times, and here's where it goes from scary to scary brilliant, it makes perfect sense.

To me, Batman's villains are the best example of a hero whose greatest enemies are ones that the reader can sympathize with more than we might ever think we should. Why? Because we know that given their situation, it's entirely possible to envision a reality where we would have done the exact same thing. People can label comic book and fantasy superheroes as being unrealistic all they want, but the truth of the matter is that the reason these forms of literature work so well (when they do) is because they utilize the archetypes that readers identify with, putting themselves into the shoes of the villain and saying, "Yep, I can see how it came to this."

Using Batman's gallery of rogues as the example, let's see if we can sympathize with the plight of the fall from grace that his villains experienced...

Two-Face - Harvey Dent suffered from anger problems because of an abusive childhood and the resulting schizophrenia that sprang up because of his inability to cope with the trauma. Yet, Dent still tried to channel his seething rage into the orderly confines of the law, of justice, until the fateful day when a mob boss who continually escaped the corrupt justice system Dent devoted his life to, even his trust and ideology to, permanently scars his face and hands resulting in the final trauma that pushed Dent's mind to the brink of feeling powerlessness in an abusive world. This event forever left Dent incapable of personally differentiating between right and wrong because life is simply too unfair, to senseless for reason to determine justice. But chance, well, chance is pure and unadulterated. The flip of the coin has no bias, has no corruption. Fifty-Fifty. Fair.

Mr. Freeze - It wasn't enough that the love of Victor Fries' life contracted a rare and terminal disease, forcing him to experiment with cryogenics (while using Gothcorp's corporate resources for his personal means; though wouldn't you do whatever you had to do to save the person you love?) in the process to keep his wife in a state of suspended animation until the day she might be cured. The man who was forced to only gaze upon the beloved skin of his lost Nora, his heart longing to hold her as their separation went far beyond barriers of cold as his very soul slowly became more frozen than the ice walls encapsulating her, would have to suffer a tragic accident of his own making when he accidentally fell into the cryogenic solution he invented to save his wife. The resulting effect of having to survive in temperatures no other human could endure effectively cut him off from humanity, from Nora. Fries was cold and alone--forever. The fact that Gothcorp cut the funding necessary to keep Nora alive proved to be the tip of the iceberg, finally freezing any and all warmth for others from the icy heart of the now self-named Mr. Freeze.

The Penguin - After the death of his father due to pneumonia, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot would never be allowed out of the house without an umbrella. After all, his mother had already lost a loved one that way and would not lose another. Now perhaps always carrying an umbrella even if it was 100 degrees and sunny might have been enough ammunition to be bullied itself, but toss on young Oswald's large, beak-like nose and rotund weight issues and well, poor little Cobblepot was an easy target for playground teasing and verbal abuse. Especially since he seemed to only be able to find friends with the birds of his mother's pet shop. After all, they never mocked him. They sang and chirped with him around. Eventually Oswald discovered what we all know to be true; the more money and power you have, the less and less people make fun of you as money and power breed respect and adulation, even if it's out of greed. And sometimes the only way to get the money you need to escape bullying and abuse--is illegally. But the ends justify the means, don't they?

And of course...

The Joker - It's almost a joke, right? Life makes no sense. A man can workout every day of his life, watch what he eats and be a good man to everyone around him, loving his wife and spoiling his children in the best way--and drop dead at 35. All the while a chain-smoking, abusive alcoholic wife-beater and fiend of a father will live to be 90. Well, that is until he's taught a lesson. Isn't that the joke? You can try harder than anyone for your entire life to be a great comic and yet, never make someone laugh. Or maybe you're just trying to swipe a chemical company's payroll so you can pay the rent and not starve to death and a deranged man in a rodent suit shows up, ultimately ending up with you taking a plunge into a vat of God-knows-what. There's no sense in any of it. There's no such thing as order or balance in this world, which is what the law and society is built upon. The only constant is chaos. And people need to see that. So all you can really do is laugh at it all because, well, it's all one big joke. The question really ends up being merely this: Are you in on it? Hahaha.

And we didn't even discuss the eco-centric Poison Ivy fighting against a world of ecological destruction, the conundrum loving Riddler who can't help but leave clues to his crimes, the wrongly convicted and venom befuddled Bane, who was forced to grow up in a prison because of the sins of his father despite doing nothing wrong himself...I could go on and on.

The reason a villain must be sympathetic to become truly legendary is because what terrifies and fascinates us about evil is when it's not black and white, not cut-and-dry, but a consistently changing shade of gray. And when we can understand, if not even empathize, with someone who has clearly taken a stroll down the dark side because of some event or decision that we ourselves can make sense of even if it is obviously wrong, well, that character no matter how evil becomes valuable to us as a reader because they hit close to home. We sympathize not because we ourselves would make the same choice, but because we can see how suffering from some horrible tragedy or illness could spark the questions and conclusions that these always tormented people came to.

Because we all know that the line between right and wrong, between good and evil, between just and unjust is spider-silk thin. Even a saint is a sinner, too.

Which is why the hero is so heroic. Typically, the hero experiences trials and tragedies just like the villains and even though it's entirely logical for the average person to give in and make evil choices because of what happens to them or the situation they find themselves in, the hero does not. The hero rises above the tragedy, the trials the tribulations and embodies defiance in the face of despair.

Back to the Batman analogy; Bruce Wayne went through a tragedy similar or even greater than all of his villains and yet, he did not succumb to the despair that the darkness he experienced demands. He rose above it, above himself and his own raging desire for vengeance at any cost, and decided not to make everyone else feel the pain that he did or destroy that world that precipitated the tragic deaths of his parents, but to do everything he could to prevent anyone else from feeling the grief and loss he endured as a boy by saving the world and city from the very darkness he personally knows exists within the heart of evil.

Again, the better the villain, the better the hero.

Degrees of Diabolicalness - Part I

2010-07-29T09:59:00.002-05:00

They're half the reason you fall in love with the story even though they're typically the source of conflict and what makes the hero's journey so harrowing, enveloping and often times excruciating. They're the person you can't help but love to hate and consistently find yourself awestruck at their ability for evil.

That's right, I'm talking about the villain.

A little while ago I got together with some friends and we did a march madness style bracket of all the modern villains, individually ranking them from a1 seed villain (Darth Vader) all the way down to 16 seed villains (Biff Tannen) and then averaging them all up to get the final rankings for the seeding. What's so interesting to me is that despite our three very, VERY different opinions of who the best villains (and movies, and heroes, and comic book characters...you get the idea) of all time were, three of the final four villains were the same in every person's bracket. That's right, out of 64 modern villains, three of the final four were unanimous inclusions in every single bracket, defeating every other villain in their way.

Despite our personal tastes and differing perspectives on what makes a legendary villain so wonderful, Darth Vader, Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West all earned a spot in the final four (the last spot was split between the Joker, Sauron and Voldemort; again, this was a modern villains list so more classical villains like Faust, Medusa, etc, weren't eligible). Now the reason I bring this up is because after further reflection, every single final four member possessed three traits, or as I like to call them, Degrees of Diabolicalness, that raised them from mere "bad guy" status to the "when you think of a villain, you think of them" place in modern history.

First Degree of Diabolicalness: They delight in their superiority, flaunting their power in the face of all who would challenge them

Maybe it's a sick grin of knowing that they're stronger and more powerful than the poor souls before them right before they crush whoever is in their path, maybe it's the swagger that their body language exudes with each egotistical and narcissistic word or maybe it's simply an unforgettable laugh that is permanently burned into your memory because of the evil it embodies (seriously, the Joker and the Wicked Witch may honestly be the definition of this one), but the greatest villains of all time always seem to revel in the knowledge that you are but a pawn to them, a bug under their magnifying glass of evil glee. They know they are more powerful than you and, by golly, it's just really fun to flaunt that fact.

And to their credit, they can't really be blamed, can they? After all, that same power is usually what got them into villainy in the first place and boy is power rather intoxicating. Now maybe their power is more psychological (maybe it's their limitless drive, unbreakable conviction, or even maniacal psychosis) than it is mystical or purely about strength, but rest assured, they're stronger than you are and anyone else who comes across their path. And they know it. They cherish it.

In fact, the most real world example of this would be sports teams who showboat or make a spectacle out of their superior collection of talent. Not only are they going to crush you beneath their heel, but they're going to toy with you, maybe force choke you from across the room as you gasp for breath knowing that at any time they can let go--or finish the job with an entertainer's extravagance and you can do absolutely nothing to stop them. I mean, that kind of might and superiority is hard not to enjoy, right?

Because when it comes down to it, they can't help but know that they're beyond any of the foes in their ruthless path to domination and conquest. They're a little too aware of just how outmatched their opponent is and, well, that's just awesome. Crushing the hope and confidence of the underdog in their wake when they can't possibly stand a chance is just too much fun.

But boy do we love it when that underdog grabs a sling and stone and slays the giant. It's seeing the mighty fall at the weaker hands of the true and the just that gives us that heroic satisfaction. It proves that the villain fails not out of a lack of might, but a lack of heart, unyielding hope and self sacrifice. A lack of soul, even. Because if the hero beats someone who is not stronger than them or more ruthless and cut-throat than anyone else around, what's so great about that?

No, we need that villain to be nigh unstoppable, even a god among mortals who strikes fear and panic in everyone but that that one group of people, that one person with the resolve to say, "You shall not pass." That one person who is more courageous and focused than afraid even though they feel the panic and raw power of the evil they most vanquish. Otherwise the triumph would not be nearly as momentous. Thus the hero, and the heroic victory and colossal struggle we long to see, the one that keeps us turning the pages, is only as great as the villain that must be overcome.

Tune in this afternoon for Part II...

Sneak Peek: Chapter Five

2010-07-22T10:11:00.021-05:00

Chapter Five

First Impressions

“I don’t think I’m the right person to tell you that, Jaden,” Gwen said, her eyes lowering to the floor and avoiding his gaze.

“I can’t imagine anyone better than you,” he said.

Percival eyed Gwen with a look that reminded Jaden of when his mother had to tell him that his first dog, Lady, had died due to bone cancer. He wished he could read minds because Percival clearly knew something, something about how Jaden fit into all of this madness that Jaden obviously did not.

And he was growing tired of feeling out of the loop.

“Gwen,” Percival said in a whisper, “if you think it would be best for you two to be alone so he can hear it from someone he—”

“Of course not,” she said, straightening up, “don’t be silly, Percival. Jaden, there is a time and a place to have that discussion and right now is not appropriate for either.”

Whoa. What was that about?

“I, okay,” Jaden said, “sorry to bring it up.”

Percival buried his furrowed brow into the chart and Jaden tried to avoid eye contact with Gwen.

There was something about the sternness of her voice, the cold and harsh tone to her words that unsettled Jaden. He had never seen Gwen look the way she just had, so rigid and deflective in her posture. She usually moved so fluidly when they would walk across campus, her sylph-like arms exaggerating her stories and expressions as they waved to and fro with such joyful vigor. The Gwen he was used to seeing was always smiling and laughing, her cherub cheeks stretching to the sky instead of clenched in a calculated austerity.

The nagging feeling that Jaden didn’t know who the real Gwen was gnawed away at his mind again, taunting him with suggestions of embarrassment and betrayal. Perhaps she was just that good of an actress and it had all been a part of her cover. He could handle that one, but the nagging sense that Gwen was somehow ashamed of her feelings for him grew.

“I’m not who you think I am.” Her words resonated once more within his mind and almost on cue, Gwen turned to him and even though he couldn’t be sure, a fading glimmer from her eyes seemed to reappear if only for a moment.

Did she know how he really felt? Had she—

We’ll talk about that later.

The shock of her voice jolted Jaden, his aching sides screaming their disapproval at the sudden movement.

What did she know? How much had she heard?

I’m sorry but we’ll talk about that later, all right?

He nodded, glancing over at Percival who appeared oblivious as he eyed the chart for a third time a little too thoroughly.

He tried to empty his mind and think about innocuous things, like what kind of stone was around him or how old Percival was since he looked like he couldn’t be much older than his early forties, even with the outdated spectacles and olive green suspenders suggesting a more vintage age. Then more pressing concerns entered Jaden’s mind, like if Percival was even a real doctor.

“Oh,” Percival said, breaking the long silence, “I thought of another question I’d like to ask you, Jaden.”

“Okay. That sounds great,” he said, happy to have a change of topic and a break from the excruciatingly awkward silence.

“Were you conscious for the entire trip here?” Percival asked him, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Images of Jaden’s dreams bubbled up into his mind but he didn’t really want to share those since he wasn’t even really sure what those visions or memories were.

“Actually,” Gwen said, “he drifted in and out of consciousness. But, why don’t you ask him what’s really on your mind, Percival? I’d like to hear it just as much as you would.”

She smiled and Percival blushed, clearing his throat in an obvious attempt to sidestep his sheepish embarrassment.

Jaden hated being out of the loop—again.

“Well,” Percival said, clearing his throat another time, clicking and re-clicking his silvery pen without compassion, “I just wanted to confirm that you did, in fact, strike Diederik Drake.”

“The guy Merrick was fighting with when we got back to the coffee house,” Gwen said, noticing the look of cluelessness Jaden knew he must have had upon hearing the name. “Did you hit him or did something else happen?”

Percival stopped clicking and looked up, eyebrows arched over the folder.

“Yeah,” Jaden said, “I hit him. Why?”

Percival and Gwen looked at each other with the same stunned expression, both of their eyebrows now stretching towards their hairlines.

“Curious,” Percival said, already hastily writing something on his clipboard. “Can you describe how you hit him, please?”

“Uh, I closed my fist and—”

“No, no,” Percival said, pausing in between scribbles, “how were you able to land a punch without him evading it, especially one with such force that it proved capable of knocking Diederik unconscious.”

Huh? Everything had happened so fast. There was never any intent or master plan. He just reacted as quick as he could.

Gwen scooted closer to Jaden, gently laying her cool hands on his forearm.

“It’s strange, I know,” she said, “but any specific information you can remember would be invaluable to us in the future.”

He tried to think of an answer other than, ‘Well, I just hit him,” or some other response dripping with either confusion or veiled sarcasm. The task proved quite challenging as Jaden was beginning to feel frustrated by not understanding what was going on or why everyone seemed to take such an interest in his actions. But he could tell that both Gwen and Percival had asked out of all seriousness and sincerity, which took some of the ridiculousness out of their request.

“Well,” he said, weighing each word the best he could, “Diederik was trying to hit Merrick on the head with that lamp post that Merrick had somehow ripped out of the ground. And Merrick had his back turned because he was checking on Gwen so I, I mean, I just jumped up, clenched both my fists together like a club and swung as hard as I could.”

Jaden mimicked the movement and a deep, sharp ache forced him to stop. He gingerly ran his fingers over the large purple and blue bruises and dark red cuts covering his hands. He’d have to remember to ask Percival how hitting a person’s face could do so much damage to the person doing the hitting.

“So I hit him on the chin before he was able to do anything to Merrick.”

Percival scribbled a fury of sentences into the manila folder, his forehead etched with wrinkles of focused contemplation.

Gwen shook her head, her face blank. “Wow.”

They acted like Jaden had just revealed to them the meaning of life.

“Am I missing something?” he said.

Percival’s pen scratched the paper in quick strokes, as if he was in a world of his own, a trance of thought and postulation. It was odd, but Jaden could almost swear that he could almost detect Percival’s awestruck excitement at this news and what it might mean, as if his sensation of ecstatic surprise was somehow tangible.

“You’re not missing anything,” Gwen said, “well, kind of. You see no one, not even Merrick, has ever been able to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Actually hurt Diederik before.”

“Let alone render him unconscious,” Percival said in the midst of turning the page over and continuing to write. Jaden began to feel self-conscious that all of Percival’s notes were going into a folder that had Jaden Montgomery Scott as a title.

“But,” Jaden said, “I saw Merrick landing what seemed like two-ton haymakers on him. The guy flew back hundreds of yards. I’m pretty sure he felt those.”

“And yet Diederik still kept coming,” Gwen said, “didn’t he?”

Jaden tried to respond but the words caught in his throat. He hadn’t thought of it that way. But still, just because they had never seen someone hurt this Diederik guy, doesn’t mean it’s never happened.

“Then I must have just caught him off guard or got lucky,” Jaden said. “But it definitely felt like I had hit a concrete wall. Hence the battered hands I guess.”

“Indeed,” Percival said, “but that does not lessen what you did in the least bit, now does it? In fact, I would say it further reveals just how extraordinary it actually was.” Percival emphatically finished a last notation in the folder and returned his pen to his shirt pocket. “Well Jaden, it was a pleasure to meet you and I’d shake your hand but, well, I can’t go and do that and keep my Hippocratic oath, now can I?”

Percival chuckled in his high pitched cackle again and Jaden couldn’t help himself but laugh a little as well. Jaden liked Percival, he seemed flawed and wonderfully—normal.

“Well, Jaden, I’ll leave you in Gwen’s capable hands.” Percival closed the clipboard and tucked the metallic case under his right arm. “I simply can’t wait for your report on him, Gwen.”

Perhaps Jaden had spoken too soon about Percival being normal. Report?

Percival smiled and nodded at Jaden, gazing at his knuckles one last time before muttering, “just fascinating,” under his breath.

Gwen seemed to be avoiding Jaden’s glances after Percival said the word “report” and Jaden couldn’t understand how it was possible for him to have even more questions than answers now.

“But what about those other people, Gwen?” Jaden said, “What happened?”

“Um, Percival, he’s good to go?”

“Yes,” Percival said, heading for the large door, “just give me a second to put his file away and I’ll accompany you two to the hall.”

“Okay,” she said.

Percival inserted Jaden’s paper work into the metallic filing cabinet against the wall and turned back, heading for the other side of Jaden’s bed.

Jaden wondered where they would be taking him but was too excited to get out of that bed to say anything. He made a concerted effort to ease off of the bed himself without using his hands but he underestimated how weak his legs had become and how cloudy his head still was. He slid off the side of the bed and barely managed to catch himself on the edge, his ribs stinging with a fresh stab of pain, before Gwen and Percival steadied him.

“Whoa, easy there,” Percival said.

“I’m fine, just a little woozy.”

And embarrassed.

Gwen and Percival stood on both sides of him. He took a few short steps, adjusting his balance to his weakened gait and dual escorts. Percival opened the thick wooden door, revealing a long stone corridor before them. Gwen went through it first, Jaden second and Percival trailing.

“I don’t really remember all that much, Jaden,” Gwen said, slowly easing Jaden up the walkway with Percival’s help on Jaden’s other side, “but this is what happened as best as I can tell you. Once Merrick brought both of us to the car after you were knocked unconscious, everything felt all right. I didn’t feel like we were being followed and Merrick made sure to take different routes while driving here.”

Merrick had carried him? Jaden would have expected Merrick to drag people before he would ever carry them.

Gwen stayed glued to Jaden’s left and Percival kept his hand on Jaden’s right shoulder. He felt like a toddler taking his first steps with two overprotective parents. Though after almost falling flat on his face, he couldn’t help but appreciate their caution.

“But why drive? If Merrick could carry both of us while running really fast, I mean, I saw what he could do,” Jaden said, “then—”

“It would have been a bad idea,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Percival said, “Merrick is extremely talented with the physical ability, which means that his body has adapted to traveling at high speeds and the forces and strains he can place upon it. You and Gwen on the other hand, well, let’s just say that there’s a reason why aithêrs without the physical talent typically don’t ever get carried or transported by the ones who do.”

“I see,” Jaden said, feigning understanding and wondering if he had heard Percival misspeak since aithêr didn’t even sound like a real word.

A long stone tunnel stretched out before him when they got around a small bend a few feet from the medical ward’s door. They were walking inside of what appeared to be an intricate system of interconnected caverns. The medical ward had clearly been built at the end of a long hallway of rock that opened up into a small dome. Even though the walkway was no more than six feet wide and maybe eight feet high, the corridor did not feel cramped. On the contrary, it exuded an atmosphere of spaciousness and comfort. Elegant rugs lined the walkway’s floor and bronzed archaic lamps hung on both sides of the stone hallway about every ten feet. Despite the surprising touches that made the stone walkway resemble a luxurious hallway, the path was on a significant incline and Jaden had to focus not to stumble.

“How much do you remember about being in the car?” Gwen said.

“Not a lot. Though I remember that bright overhead light really well.”

Gwen smiled and for a split second, she seemed like her old self again.

“But I still don’t understand who those people were outside of the coffee shop, Gwen? And why they would want to kill me?” The air seemed thin around him with each step up the stone hallway as the steep walkway finally leveled off.

Silence.

Gwen looked at her feet again and Percival’s wide hazel eyes were amplified by his round glasses. She did not answer him and Jaden knew that as long as Percival was around, she never would. So he dropped it, but not before wondering what could be so bad that she would want to talk to him alone about it.

They reached the end of the tunnel, the corridor opening up into a vast room. Jaden looked up to see the stone ceiling climb dramatically, at least twenty feet high in the middle of the large room. Various other offshoots and pathways led in and out of this domed cavern, the diameter of which was easily fifty feet in all directions. This appeared to be the major hub of the cavern’s connecting pathways and he could hear the distant echoes of conversation out of a corridor to his left.

He didn’t know why, but the chatter of voices lifted his spirits. Long shadows fell on the ground and moved inside one of the sloping walkways across the room to his right. He took a couple steps while looking at the ceiling.

“Hold on a moment,” Gwen said, stopping before they entered into the large room.

Jaden followed her gaze and the distant outline of people sitting around a large table in the middle of the room caught his eye. There was no way he wanted their first sight of him to be one where he was being chaperoned like a weak toddler into the room.

“I can stand without you guys,” Jaden said squinting from the pain of trying to hold himself up, “I’m better now.”

“Are you sure?” Gwen said.

Jaden nodded, taking a few short steps to prove his point no matter how much his ribs burned and his legs ached in protest.

“I’m going to go on ahead,” Percival said, smiling and patting Jaden on the shoulder gingerly, “I’ll give you a moment to collect your thoughts.”

Gwen nodded to Percival, who turned and walked towards the distant table. She took a deep breath and Jaden almost thought that he could feel a tangible sense of sadness within her, a mixture of melancholy and longing but didn’t say anything.

“This is where it all starts,” she said, facing him with her back to the table, “just remember that were here to protect you, to help you. And that you’re not alone. And, know that I…”

She paused, taking Jaden’s purple and blue hands into her own slender and soft palms.

“That you what?” He tried to make his voice sound casual, instead of nervous and probably a little too eager.

“That I’m on your side,” she said, letting go of his hands. “I promise, the answers are coming. Just promise me that you won’t rush to judgment, Jaden. On anything.”

“I, okay.”

She led him to the middle of the vast room toward a large, octagonal wooden table. The sound of groaning chairs being turned echoed throughout the adjoining tunnels as Percival reached the table ahead of them and pulled out a large chair to sit down in.

Jaden.

Gwen’s voice echoed inside his mind when they were about thirty feet away from the table. Jaden looked towards her as they walked closer to the others.

They can’t hear me from here yet.

Jaden looked back at Gwen. Why couldn’t they hear her?

Because I don’t want them to.

Gwen smiled.

Jaden forced a smile back.

She was not scary. Nope. Not at all. He absolutely did not feel exposed or uncomfortable with the fact that she could still read his thoughts and stop others from hearing her own.

Gwen stifled a laugh, pretending it was a cough.

But if she was able to keep others from detecting her thoughts, why had he been able to sense her thoughts back at school if she hadn’t intended for him to?

That’s a good question.

He could not stop himself from thinking that this inability to keep his thoughts private would get old. And fast.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to watch what you think about while we’re at the table with everyone else because others will be able to hear you. I’m not the only one with gifts.

Great. That didn’t complicate meeting new people or making introductions at all.

They approached the table of people and he noticed a dull black and rather large light fixture hanging all the way from the peak of the dome to a few feet above the table. The dark metal fixture had many arms branching out from the middle with a bright lamp at each end. The fixture looked like a darker and much larger version of the antique candelabra in his mother’s living room.

Or what was left of it.

He missed his mother, wondering how she was doing and if those shadowy people had gone after her. Why would they though, if it was him that they were after?

The whole room seemed to stretch on forever the further they walked into it. He felt small underneath the grand light fixture and the closer he got to the table the more the bulbs illuminated the center of the room, revealing Percival and five strangers sitting in scuffed chairs, some made of tan leather and others made of a dark wood with scarlet cushions. The table was longer in the middle than a true octagon, with bright striations of richly colored wood interweaving throughout.

Gwen walked him to a large leather chair at one of the narrow ends of the octagonal table.

A broad-shouldered and burly man on Gwen’s left stood up. He had short wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes and a patch of facial hair just below his bottom lip. He must have been eight or nine years older than Jaden. And he was huge, his shoulders a good six inches above the top of anyone else’s head. He looked like he could snap Merrick in half if he wanted to as he towered over the table, his head even with the light fixture. On his right wrist was a black reflective gauntlet which looked to be made of stone, perhaps onyx, with a gleaming orange stone beaming out of the middle.

Jaden puffed his chest out.

The man pushed his tree-trunk sized arms across the table towards Jaden, who winced at the thought of a handshake.

“Look at you. There’s no denying that you’re Jude’s boy. I’m Nolan. It’s good to see you’re all right after all this time.”

Did this guy really know his father? How would that be possible?

“Nice to meet you,” Jaden said, reluctantly reaching out his battered hand, confident that Nolan could break his arm off if he wanted to.

“Solid bruising,” Nolan said, eyeing Jaden’s knuckles, “you just can’t help but be impressed with that.”

Jaden’s hand disappeared inside of Nolan’s football sized palm and Jaden flinched in anticipation but before he knew it Nolan was no longer shaking his hand.

He gave Jaden a big toothy grin and nodded a salutation to Gwen and Percival before narrowly missing the light fixture while looking back for his chair. Nolan sat down, the wooden chair supporting his tremendous size creaked and whined in protest.

Jaden looked around at the others while sitting down, Gwen on his left.

A sandy-blonde haired man to his immediate right would not stop staring at him, the man’s dark, almost navy blue colored eyes wide with what looked like astonishment as Jaden smiled uncomfortably at him.

“H-hi, I’m Rufus, Rufus Rowan. It’s good to have you here,” he said. He fidgeted with a topaz colored stone in the middle of his gray leather wrist band that looked more like a watch than the Nolan’s.

What was with all the shiny rocks and wristbands?

“Thanks, Rufus,” he said.

“So you feeling a little nervous, yet?” Rufus said with a grin.

And now everyone was looking at Jaden.

“More and more every minute,” he said, his voice cracking midway. Of course that would happen. “But luckily it’s not showing,” he said.

They all smiled.

“We all were nervous, don’t worry about it,” Rufus said.

“I don’t think I was ever that anxious,” said a thin but muscular man beside Nolan. Nolan nudged him, nearly knocking the slender man out of his chair.

“What?” he said with an animated movement of his hands. He had mocha-colored eyes and dark brown skin and he moved with an odd fluidity.

“You were anxious, Synjin,” Nolan said to the slender Synjin, “plenty anxious. In fact I seem to remember you having to race to the bathroom to throw—.”

“Whoa, whoa! I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Synjin said with a pearly smile to Nolan before turning to Jaden, “hey man, what’s up? I’m Synjin. And seriously, I don’t know what Nolan’s talking about.”

Jaden nodded back, smiling at Synjin’s feigned attempt at deflecting a clearly sore story.

“See, nothing to worry about,” Percival whispered to Jaden from his right, “just think of this as an extended introduction, for all of us.”

Jaden smiled, happy to be sitting between Gwen and Percival and forced himself to look around the table. Synjin reclined in his leather chair, putting his hands behind his head when a bright red stone caught the light, drawing Jaden’s attention to a tan colored, leather gauntlet on Synjin’s left wrist.

Two large clangs rang out throughout the room causing Jaden to jump. Synjin stifled a laugh and Jaden turned to see a dark shadow near a shiny bell hurry three other people out of one of the connecting tunnels.

“I guess Merrick wanted everyone here a little faster, huh?” Synjin said.

“Seems that way,” Nolan said.

An icy eyed man with short black hair suddenly stood behind Synjin’s reclining chair with his arms folded. How long had he been there?

“Hey, now,” Synjin said, “Fitzroy, you’ve got to stop doing that stuff. You’re going to scare one of us half-to-death one of these days, just sneaking up and spooking us all the time.”

The steely-eyed Fitzroy took his seat on the other side of Synjin, watching Jaden. Fitzroy was probably a few inches taller and broader than Jaden and carried himself as though he could do serious damage to you if he wanted to, but it was the large scar across the side of the his head, running from his temple to his jawline, that unnerved Jaden the most.

“Well if you kept your guard up at all times, like you should, that wouldn’t be an issue now would it?” Fitzroy said.

He must just be a bundle of fun.

Gwen shot Jaden a look and Fitzroy’s jaw clenched but Merrick suddenly appeared at the other end of the table before Jaden could figure out why Gwen would glare at him like that.

Merrick cleared his throat while Fitzroy’s icy glare was fixated on Jaden.

“All right, we’re just about all here,” Merrick said, eyeing the very same tunnel he had just made the hurrying motion to. Within a few moments two young women walked into the light of the chandelier fixture and sat beside Rufus. The first one was very short and a little heavyset with fiery red hair; her vivid green eyes were somewhat magnified behind thick glasses. She gave a quick wave to everyone and took her seat, her chin down and eyes on the table.

The second woman had very light blue eyes, almost colorless, and richly brown hair. She had well defined muscles and a lean athletic build. She sat next to the redhead and drank out of a bottle of water, catching her breath in between gulps.

“Sorry, I was just finishing up some boxing when I heard the call,” said the light eyed woman with an unexpected British accent. “Alexa and Fitz designed a new training regimen for me that’s absolutely brilliant. Isn’t that right, Alexa?”

The red head smiled and nodded, looking up at Jaden, mouthing a ‘hi.’ She had a beautiful violet orb and petite white gauntlet on her left wrist.

He mouthed a hello back.

“Good,” Merrick said, “Alexa and Aurelie round out everyone who could be here, Raeburn and Juliana being out on assignment to safeguard Jaden’s mother.”

Jaden wanted to ask about his mom but kept quiet. He looked for what color stone the light eyed, athletic Aurelie had in her gauntlet but the water bottle kept blocking her wrist from his view. Her forehead did seem to be glistening quite a bit from the sweat she probably worked up exercising and her ponytail looked a bit ragged.

She must be the tomboy of the group.

Excuse me?

He looked over to see Aurelie glaring at him, a British accent still echoing inside his mind.

Oh, no.

He turned to Gwen who was shaking her head in disbelief. Surely Aurelie wasn’t one of the ones who could read his thoughts. But even so, it’s not like he thought that Aurelie was gross or that tomboys weren’t attractive. Aurelie was very attractive.

“What?” Aurelie said.

“Shoot,” he said, “You heard that, too? Awesome. Well, I didn’t mean to imply that a tomboy can’t be attractive. I’d love to date a tomboy. I mean, you’re really pretty right now, even though you obviously didn’t try to clean up or look good so—”

Why was he still talking?

“Wow, it’s like a train wreck,” Synjin said, a look of astonished glee on his face.

Aurelie glared at Jaden.

“I, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jaden said, “You’d be pretty with or without makeup, even if you are a tomboy. I mean, I just assumed—”

Merrick loudly cleared his throat.

Jaden shut-up.

Did he actually just tell Aurelie she was pretty—and he wanted to date tomboys?

What a disaster.

Aurelie didn’t look at Jaden for the rest of the meeting, at least that’s what Jaden assumed since he was unable to even glance in her direction. He was certain that he could not have made a worse first impression.

With the embarrassment still fresh, he decided to hold every thought of his captive from then on out, deliberately closing-off his ideas and mind to anyone else. He visualized his head as an iron safe, which he shut. And then locked.

Twice.

No one was getting inside his head again.

Merrick stood at the other end of the table. Everyone looked away from Jaden, eventually, and many moments later everyone’s focus shifted back onto Merrick.

“Now then,” Merrick said, his scruff beard seeming a bit thicker and scragglier, “as you all already know, this is Jaden Scott.”

Jaden felt like he was on display as all eyes turned to him.

“Jaden, you’ve met Percival,” Merrick said, “and you’re familiar with Gwen and myself, so let’s just get the formalities out of the way as fast as we can. Starting from your left and moving around the table is Nolan Norwood, Synjin Slade and Fitzroy Fletcher.”

Merrick paused, the left corner of his mouth rising up when he pointed to Aurelie.

“This is Aurelie Windsor.”

Jaden mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ but refused to look up to see if Aurelie had seen it.

“Beside her is Alexa Mallory and then Rufus Rowan. As I said earlier, those two empty chairs represent Raeburn and Juliana, who’ll be returning soon from their safeguard assignment at your mother’s house.”

“So my mom’s okay?”

“According to their latest update, there has been no activity around your mother’s house at all,” Merrick said. “But Raeburn and Juliana will spend some more time there before the situation is considered an all-clear.” Merrick sat down, shifting for a few moments in his chair before continuing. “Before we discuss anything else I need to let each of you know that Jaden’s escape was very difficult, due in large part because of the sheer number of the Legion that had been sent to kill him.”

Kill him. Merrick’s brutal words seemed to repeat inside Jaden’s head. Somehow hearing someone else say it made everything much more real and terrifying.

No one around the table said anything for a few seconds.

“You mean that an abnormal portion of the Legion were there?” Fitzroy said. “Not just the Killing Squad?”

“That’s right, Fitz,” Merrick said, “I wanted to wait to share all of this with you until now so that Jaden could be here with us because, due to the nature of his extraction, we were unable to tell him anything.”

Wide, stunned eyes looked from Merrick back to Jaden.

“He doesn’t know anything?” Nolan said, “do you really think then that—”

“I really do, Nolan,” Merrick said.

“And you’re positive that he is one of us?” Aurelie said. “I know how closely he’s been monitored but what if it’s there’s been a mistake?”

Jaden shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what she meant when she said that he had been closely monitored but Jaden was done being in the dark. It was time for him to say something.

But before he could say anything Merrick spoke first.

“Gwen and I aren’t entirely sure of what happened back there,” Merrick said, “but I am certain, beyond any doubt, that the moment Kendrick and the Legion sensed Jaden’s physical ability, they went above and beyond their normal behavior to kill him. They clearly didn’t want Jaden to escape their grasp and that leads me to believe something that so many of us have been wondering about for the last fifteen years.”

A collective drawing in of breath followed Merrick’s words, each person around the table leaning forward in anticipation. Jaden most of all.

“What Sarah Scott told us is true. What we’ve all heard about that night, about what happened fifteen years ago, really did happen. The behavior of Kendrick and the Legion, the almost panicked attempts to capture Jaden in a very public and open place, risking being seen or photographed. This is not the type of behavior we’ve ever seen from the Legion. And that’s why I believe that all of it, from what Jaden could do back there without any formal training to their flustered attempts to kill him, it all points to what we’ve all hoped was true: I believe Jaden did stop Lamont Kendrick fifteen years ago.”

Merrick’s amber eyes seemed to glow like a flame.

“I think he stopped the unstoppable.”

The Goldilocks Conundrum

2010-07-21T13:13:00.000-05:00

Continuing our spirited discussion about reader preferences and how a reader's already preconceived likes and dislikes can alter the way they approach and interact with a story, I think chapter length is a fascinating example of something that really is quite ambiguous, having no real right or wrong value in and of itself, and yet there is typically a visceral divide between readers who prefer short chapters and those who love long chapters.

Both lengths have their advantages when it comes to pace and storytelling and the fans of each make excellent points as to why they prefer one to the other.

A shorter chapter, typically 3,500 words or less, will almost always move at a quick, crisp pace and really propel the reader (if it's written well) through a chapter that leaves the reader with that a sense of moving through the book at a good pace and thereby making good progress. In other words, they feel as though they are accomplishing something and the book "reads fast."

A longer chapter, usually somewhere between 4,000 - 7,000 words, has the benefit of really diving into that specific scene or event that takes place within that individual chapter, giving more weight and an almost "you can catch your breath and sink your teeth into this" feel where the reader can truly dig their toes into the sand and feel swallowed up in the world of the novel and experience a sublime suspension of disbelief that takes place in an excellent work of fiction.

Yet just like each length has its advantages, they also have disadvantages and like so many things in life the strengths of the chapter durations can also be their biggest weaknesses. A short chapter can feel too brief, incomplete and rushed if not handled delicately. And a long chapter can feel like a droning, directionless dump of description, aimless exposition and, for lack of a better word, drivel.

Those distinctly unique strengths and weaknesses are why I typically don't prefer either length as a blanket preference. To me, like most things involving writing and artistic construction, it is not the forms themselves that are right or wrong, good or bad, but how and where they are used. Ten back-to-back chapters that are less than 3,000 words each can seem a bit truncated and lacking depth no matter how much info is actually in them, just as ten back-to-back chapters over 6,000 words could seem monotonous and long-winded no matter how quick the story moves or how diverse the scenes are.

But why?

Well, take a glance over any good page in a book and I can promise you that you won't see everything fit uniformly together. Action is typically truncated, reading faster and choppier like the subject it is describing. Dialogue reads differently, shorter and to the fact at hand. Description is rich and more lengthy, flowing down a page. You get the idea.

We naturally want things we read or see to have an ebb and flow, a rising and falling action just like a great story does. This is why we have those wonderful things called paragraphs. We need, just as much as a narrative does, the separation of thoughts, of events, of dialogues, of description so that instead of it being a giant block of words that we must wade through on a page of text, the ink and paper feels like a flowing, meandering tapestry of movement through words and meaning.

That's why, even though I do enjoy shorter chapters more often than not, since they're a little more difficult to mess up, I believe that the scene and the arc of whatever story is being told in that chapter is what determines its length, not some preconceived method of chapter duration.

As it should be then, it is the story that organically determines the form. Not the other way around.

Into the middle, intentionally

2010-07-19T08:40:00.004-05:00

A reader left an incredibly valuable piece of feedback on the Chapter Three comments' page to the point that I felt it merited a post all its own instead of a mere response in the comments section. The critique went as follows:

Anonymous said...

Just one opinion, but I don't know enough about these character's back stories and motivation yet to care much about them or the action. Do you feel the back stories and motivation have to be withheld as much as they have been? Do you feel you have given "enough" so far?

Now that's a fairly loaded piece of feedback so I'm going to address my explanation in two parts but to start us off I'll just respond by saying, yes, I do believe the backstory of the protagonist and the major characters is withheld to the proper amount for the first three chapters of this story (or any novel, really). Were we at chapter fifteen or twenty and you still had very little clue as to what has precipitated the major conflict in the story and how Jaden and company fit, then I'd say we have a serious problem.

However, since we are quite literally only a few thousand words into the narrative, the relative mystery surrounding Jaden and the overall history of the characters is not only intentionally done but is in keeping with the classic story arc of epics for the last two thousand years. More specifically though, there are two reasons why the story is constructed this way...

First, the concept of in media res must be understood for this first explanation to have any weight. In terms of the greatest epic stories of all time (not that I'm comparing this manuscript to those in anyway; they are, however, the goal to which every storyteller should strive for), every single one of them begins not at the very beginning of the events that lead up to an action or conflict, but originate "into the middle of the affairs" or in the very middle of the conflict and rising action of the primary narrative's story's arc.

After all, there is a reason it is called backstory. The narrative of primary interest to the reader is the story and action that takes place in the actual novel, whereas the narrative of the characters' backstory is more of a history that provides depth and a sense of verisimilitude to the reader from a previous, secondary narrative that more so underlies the situation when the primary narrative begins than directly influences it.

In other words, you start in the middle of your story to ramp up the tension and action and conflict to draw readers into a gripping narrative because it is the elements and events currently taking place in the pages of that rising action which are the primary focus of that narrative and the reader. This is typically why the backstory of the characters and the events that have brought the major players to the place where the story begins is dealt with later on throughout the book, typically through flashback or reminiscent dialogue. You don't typically want to unload huge chunks of backstory at the beginning of an epic narrative because, unless you're Tolkien, you're going to bore your reader to death with the details. And since you won't have any action or conflict, the person won't have any reason to keep reading since, quite literally, nothing is happening.

And even though in media res would be enough of a reason (you know, since it worked for Paradise Lost, the Odyssey, the Iliad, Dante's Inferno, and even Star Wars), I did have a second reason to start the story without diving into the past of the protagonist with full force.

Reader/Hero Identification.

As you will see in the story, being in the dark about your true past and the new reality/world to which you find yourself thrust into is a classic trait that every epic hero possesses and must go through on their riveting journey. From Luke Skywalker to Neo to Harry Potter, even modern epic heroes have this quality that the classic heroes had. And since the goal of the author is to foster a connection between the reader and the hero of the story, I wanted to really intertwine the experiences of Jaden with the reader right from the start, which is why Jaden may be even more in the dark about his true past and the events surrounding him than maybe other heroes have been (though not by much).

I wanted the reader to feel exactly how Jaden feels, to experience the precise emotions and revelations that he does when the answers to who he really is and what his role is in the entire story come to light. It is my utmost hope that the bond the reader has with Jaden blossoms not through a mere history lesson of his background, but because of a commonality built on sharing his entire journey from the person he thought he was to the person he truly is and the hero he must become.

Anyway, I want to thank whoever posted that piece of feedback as that is just absolutely a textbook representation of constructive criticism, which is the driving heartbeat of literary discussion and narrative appreciation.

Thanks!

Sneak Peek: Chapter Four

2010-07-14T09:06:00.004-05:00

So after some comments requesting another chapter and numerous emails doing the same thing, I've decided to keep the Sneak Peek feature ongoing so here is a look at the fourth chapter of The Gift of the Greenstone. I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to your feedback.

Chapter Four

Walls of Stone

Jaden’s feet pounded the soggy ground as his blood burned within his veins, his muscles searing with each successive stride as he raced through the forest, avoiding thick tree trunks the best he could in the blinding downpour.

He couldn’t let anything slow him down.

It was chasing him.

He was back here again, in this dense and dark forest with some horrible thing bearing down upon him without mercy, gaining on him. With his limbs aching and his chest heaving, Jaden spotted the distant cabin he knew would be there just a few hundred feet ahead.

After scrambling up the faded and peeling painted steps, Jaden reached the cabin’s door and fumbled to turn the doorknob.

Locked.

No matter how furiously he tried to turn the knob the metal would not budge. And then something warm, something alive, breathed onto Jaden’s neck.

It was behind him.

It always caught him in the end. He could never escape it; never find shelter from the storm or the monster while the warm glow of the cabin’s fireplace could be seen through a window inches in front of his face. So it was time then, yet again, to turn around, like he had every other time he found himself in the midst of this reoccurring nightmare, and see what was standing behind him.

Tired of running, tired of being scared of whatever was hunting him in his dreams for as far back as he could remember, Jaden wheeled around to look at whatever had been chasing him face to face, screaming “Get away!” when—

“Jaden?

Ugh.

He felt dizzy. Disoriented. Sounds drifted in and out of his mind like an ebbing tide of sensory confusion. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or still dreaming—or somewhere in between.

“Jaden,” said a soft voice, “wake up.”

Why couldn’t he ever see who was chasing him?

“Get…away,” he mumbled, his head woozy and aching with the rhythm of his heartbeat.

And then suddenly, inexplicably, a pair of vivid green eyes glared out at Jaden from the distant darkness. Eyes that were new to the nightmare—but eyes he was somehow certain that he had seen before. Something was different.

“No, get away…”

“Its okay, Jaden. We’re okay now,” said a soft, distinctly female voice beside him through the mist of his mind. But the eyes grew closer, more menacing as they seemed to move not for Jaden, but someone to his left.

“No! Leave her alone!”

“Jaden,” said a low growling voice like a beacon of clarity through the haze, “you’re safe. Open your eyes.”

It was dark.

There was a low lull of tires traveling across a bumpy bridge and the distant sound of harmonious music flowing in and out. Cool sweat trickled down Jaden’s forehead and onto his temples. He squinted to try and make sense of the obscure figure leaning over him. He tried to rise up off of some carpeted surface but a piercing pain at the back of his head demanded he remain put.

“Jaden, can you hear me?”

The soft voice reminded Jaden of, of—his head pounded with each pulsating beat, making it hard for him to remember that the voice sounded like someone very pretty—and blonde.

“Ugh, Gwen? Where am I? Is Merrick, is he—”

“I’m still in one piece, kid.” Merrick’s gritty voice seemed to come from all directions. Jaden eyes rolled when he tried to look around the interior of the vehicle. Exhaustion engulfed him, sleep beckoned.

The sweet encapsulating release of slipping away into—

“Jaden,” Gwen said, “can you open your eyes for me?”

His eyelids felt like they were lacquered with liquid steel and sealed shut. A sudden click of what could only have been an overhead light sent a white sting glaring down, multiplying the pain at the back of his head.

“It’s bright—hurts,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but I need you to open your eyes,” she said. “Jaden, I have to wake you up every few hours because you probably have a concussion. I’m sorry but it’s necessary.”

“My pupils disagree.”

Merrick chuckled and Jaden could almost feel Gwen’s wonderfully soothing smile stretch across her face. The familiar, inviting scent of lavender let him know she was close.

Maybe the concussion was worth it.

“Well, we know your conscious and sarcastic, at least,” she said, “so open your eyes and then you can go back to sleep for a few hours, all right?”

He groaned, prying his eyes open in what required a surprising amount of effort. A blinding sea of light and haze saturated everything. His eyes tried to adjust to the bright light from the overhead bulb but he could just vaguely make out two chairs or front seats, yes, front seats, and a faint blue-green glow from what appeared to be a dashboard. A fuzzy Merrick drove and Gwen knelt beside Jaden, peering over him.

She blocked the light as she leaned in to check his forehead. He couldn’t thank her enough for blocking the light.

The interior of the car was charcoal black and—

Gwen’s chilly fingers squeezed his chin and she moved out from underneath the light. Everything went white again.

“Hey now,” he said.

“Jaden, can you follow my hands?”

He squinted, waiting for his eyes to adjust. She had a tiny scar on the bottom of her right index finger.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Um, not really.”

“Well, do you remember the lamp post?”

The sudden metallic slam and subsequent white flash into darkness came screaming back. “Absolutely,” he said.

He felt her chilly palms on both sides of his face, tilting his head to each side. She hesitated. Very gently, she lifted his head off of what felt like a balled-up cotton sweater. She looked worried, craning to look at the very top of his head.

“Oh, good, I don’t see any more blood,” she said.

“Blood?”

“Nevermind that,” Gwen said, her cool fingertips brushing the hair off his forehead, placing the back of her palm against his skin.

“Gwen?”

“Yes?”

“That light’s still really bright.”

“Oh, sorry.” She turned and flicked the light off. “Better?”

He nodded, finally able to look around without squinting. The glowing headlights extending out of the front of the vehicle revealed dark trees on both sides of the large automobile, some kind of bluish evergreens, casting a faint light back into the cab of what appeared to be a sport utility vehicle.

Despite being able to see again, the absence of the bright light made Jaden feel tired again, the wooziness growing until he could no longer fight against the unstoppable pull of sleep. He managed to get one question out before his eyes closed.

“So what happened?”

“We’re not exactly sure, kid,” Merrick said, as Jaden’s eyes felt heavier, “but you did well.”

Jaden smiled, trying to stay awake to ask more questions.

“Get some rest,” Gwen said, “I’ll wake you up in three hours to check on you, all right?”

“Mmmm.”

The soft feel of down and comfy cotton sheets enveloped him.

He was in his bedroom, but not the one in his mother’s new house. He was lying in an old bedroom; one he couldn’t quite place. But it was definitely his. He recognized the superhero sheets and matching comforter. Before Jaden could look around and get a good grip on where he was the bedroom door creaked open and a sliver of light cascaded onto his face. A large shadow stood in the doorway.

He couldn’t believe it.

“Dad?” said Jaden’s voice only much higher pitched, like he would have sounded if he were a very young child. The shadow crept over to Jaden’s bedside, making no noise.

“Shh,” said his father, “I’m just checking on you.”

Jaden stirred in his bed and looked up into his father’s face, still shadowed by the hall light.

“I want you to know how much I love you, Jaden,” his father said, “and how special you are. Will you promise me to always remember that, Jaden? Can you do that for daddy?”

Jaden nodded, wondering why his dad was talking so weird in the middle of the night while also trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Was this a dream? Or something else?

“Be strong, son.”

Jaden felt his father’s hand rustle his hair and remain on Jaden’s head, like some warm pillow of reassurance until he fell back asleep. Dream, memory, fantasy, whatever it was felt like it was the last time Jaden ever saw his father alive.

The crunch of compressed gravel and the rumble of tires struggling over potholes jostled Jaden out of his sleep.

“How did they get there so fast, Merrick?” Gwen said.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “none of this makes any sense. They’re normally stationed far apart throughout the regions. It was as if—no, surely not.”

“And,” Gwen continued, “and that was a lot more than just the Killing Squad. I’ve never seen so many of them assembled like that before.” Jaden’s eyes fluttered, catching Gwen looking down at him before his eyelids shut.

“I haven’t either, at least not in a few years,” Merrick said. “I don’t like it. It makes me wonder what they know that we don’t.”

A long pause of silence filled the cab of the car.

“I should wake him back up. It’s been almost three hours. Jaden…Jaden, I’m sorry but it’s time to wakeup for a bit.”

Jaden opened his eyes a little easier this time and found that he had not moved at all. And neither had Gwen; she still knelt right beside him.

“Why aren’t you buckled?” he said, his strength and clarity returning despite still feeling sleepy.

“You sound like Merrick,” she said with a smile. “I wasn’t going to leave you back here to roll around or hit your head.” She turned towards Merrick, “Isn’t that right?”

“Don’t push it,” Merrick said, his tone paternal but amused.

Jaden’s eyelids felt heavy again despite the dawn creeping faintly up over the horizon, brightening the night sky. Maybe just one more little nap.

“Well, thanks,” he said, “but you…” his words faded along with his wakefulness.

“Whoa, wait,” she said, “stay awake for just a little bit longer, okay? What’s your eye color?”

“What? Why?”

“Just answer, all right?”

“Gray,” he said, “but most people just say light blue. But I usually don’t correct them so whichever—”

“And where were you born?”

“Huh? Excelsior Springs, Missouri.”

“Good,” she said, “Do you feel any better?”

“No. I’m still tired. And my head still hurts.”

“I bet it does,” Merrick said, looking over his shoulder at Jaden. “You took a good hit.”

Jaden half-smiled and Merrick turned his attention back to the road.

“Hey, Merrick?” Jaden said.

“Yeah?”

“Who were those people?”

Gwen peered out of the window and Merrick hesitated.

“Now’s still not the time, kid. But don’t worry, the answers are coming.”

“Go back to sleep,” Gwen said, “You need to get your rest.”

“We’re safe, though, right?”

“As safe as anyone can be right now,” she said.

Just before Jaden slipped away again he felt obligated to get one last thing out.

“Gwen, buckle up.”

When he awoke everything was quiet. The air was damp and still and the low lull tires crunching gravel was gone. Jaden couldn’t hear anything—or anyone.

A close clicking noise broke the stillness and he opened his eyes, seeing a very large arched ceiling overhead except something was odd about it. Jaden moved his eyes across the top of the enclosure, examining the room and he could find no seams or vents or fans. All he saw was cold hard rock.

This wasn’t a ceiling at all.

“Where am I?” he wondered aloud, his throat dry and scratchy.

“Agh,” said a high-pitched male voice, dropping something metallic with a clatter.

Jaden turned to see a very thin and bespectacled middle-aged man bend down to pick up his pen and clipboard off of the stone floor, clutching his chest.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack, Jaden,” the bespectacled man said, situating his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose.

“Oh, sorry. Do I know you?”

“Well clearly not if you’re asking me that,” the man said, chuckling to himself. Jaden could only muster a polite smile as he couldn’t tell which was hurting him worse, his splitting headache or such a corny joke.

“Right then,” the man said, “now concerning your first question, you are at our hidden stronghold inside Shoshone National Forest along the Wind River Mountain Range in Wyoming. Well to be even more precise, you are in the Wind River Range.”

“Uh-huh.” Jaden had no idea where Shoshone National Forest was. “And, who are you, again, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Ah, right,” replied the thin man, “my name is Percival Thane. I’m a member of the Assembly, which is to say I’m a friend of Merrick and Gwen’s. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

At the sound of Merrick and Gwen’s names Jaden suddenly remembered the uncanny ability they seemed to have at hearing his thoughts, which naturally caused Jaden to wonder if Percival could hear his thoughts or somehow sense his uneasiness. After all, if he really was a friend of theirs then surely he could do something amazing and miraculous as well. He waited for a moment, half-expecting Percival to say, ‘Of course I can hear your thoughts.’

But Percival said nothing.

Jaden leaned back in the uncomfortable bed, relieved. “Hi, Percival,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

Percival grinned and clicked his pen three times.

“Um, Percival,” Jaden said, rubbing his throat, “can I have some water?”

“Absolutely,” Percival said, making some checkmarks before setting the clipboard down on a polished metallic counter and walking over to a miniature black refrigerator on the other side of the cozy room, returning to Jaden with a bottle of water in hand.

Jaden tried to unfurl his fingers to take the water, forgetting about his bruised knuckles and scraped hands, when a fresh stab of pain at trying to spread his fingers forced a sharp cry out of him.

Percival was clearly startled and clutched his chest again. “I’ll just set it at your side,” Percival said.

“Thanks.”

Jaden slowly unfurled his hand and then gingerly balled his fingers into a loose fist, testing the damage his hands had incurred and the amount of pain the action would elicit, which was a slow and swollen ache Jaden had never experienced.

Percival sat down on a small stool topped with black leather beside the metallic counter. He picked the clipboard back up and scribbled some more notes. Jaden’s eyes drifted away from the small stool to the large stone walls.

Where was he? This didn’t look like a normal hospital.

The entire room was arched stone, like a cozy rounded cave. Directly across from him was a massive wall of cut lumber, closing off the front of the room. A nice wooden door with a small glass window shaped like a diamond was situated in the middle.

The room reminded him of a rustic cabin instead of a medical center. Various metallic objects and medical instruments populated the stone cove. A white board that Jaden knew was used for reading x-ray stills was to his right and he noticed an IV apparatus pushed up against the wall on the other side. He must have been in some kind of makeshift medical ward at some ranger’s office.

Percival stood up and shuffled towards Jaden.

“Other than my hands and some slight stiffness in my back I really do feel all right,” Jaden said. “A little woozy and I’ve got one monster of a headache but all in all I think I’m okay.”

At trying to sit up more in his bed to prove this the muscles in Jaden’s shoulders and thighs felt somehow waterlogged with soreness and his joints rigid, like he had just run a marathon with zero preparation.

“As far as I can tell,” Percival said, looking over the chart, “it looks like you had a minor concussion and severe blunt trauma to your hands. Which is quite incredible considering what Merrick and Gwen told me about what happened.”

“Are they here?” Jaden said, craning his neck towards the small window at the door as fast as his aching neck muscles would allow.

“Of course,” Percival said. “I sent Gwen away about two hours ago to get some sleep. She sat in that chair by the corner all morning and nearly all afternoon before I had to force her to get some rest and stop looking over my shoulder.”

Jaden smiled. That sounded like her.

“And Merrick,” Percival said, “well he’s not real big on checking in on people but he did stop by after bringing you here, even after I told him that you would be fine.”

“Well, can I go then?” Jaden said, trying to appear as if he could move normally and wasn’t desperate to plunge himself into a warm Jacuzzi tub.

“Nearly. I would like to ask you a few quick questions about what happened, is that all right?”

A flittering knock came from the other side of the wooden door and deep blue eyes beamed from behind the small diamond of glass. “Can I come in? You’re decent, right?” Gwen said, her voice muffled through the window.

He looked down to check if he was in a gown or not and was relieved to see that he was still wearing the faded jeans and t-shirt he had spent twenty minutes selecting for the dinner at his mom’s house with Gwen.

The dinner.

That felt like a lifetime ago.

“You can come in, Gwen,” Percival said, “but you’re going to end up in here yourself if you don’t go and get some rest, especially with all of the excitement and your asthma attack.”

Asthma. That’s why Gwen was struggling so much to breathe while they were running.

She entered, looking sheepishly at Percival before bounding over to Jaden’s bed, giving him a firm hug. “You’re okay?” she said, still squeezing him.

“I’m fine,” he said, wondering when she’d give up the death grip on his aching sides, “and you should have told me that you were asthmatic before we started sprinting down sidewalks.”

Gwen seemed to continue her lengthy embrace until she felt absolutely certain Jaden was okay. He didn’t mind. Once the first few seconds passed the pain seemed a small price to pay. After letting go of him she walked over to a cushy maroon and mahogany chair in the corner, scooting the chair across the stone floor over to Jaden’s bed.

“How’s my mom?” Jaden said.

“Merrick sent two sentries to watch over the house and they’ve reported no activity whatsoever,” Gwen said. “I think we got out before the Legion could trace the ripple back to the house.”

He didn’t understand what Gwen meant by a ripple, or anything else she said, but he really didn’t like the idea of not knowing who the people were that were sent to protect—

“Merrick sent Raeburn and Juliana, two very capable women in their twenties and in top shape to guard her. And your mom won’t even know they are there,” Gwen said. “You have nothing to worry about.”

And just like that he had to watch what thoughts he let enter his mind again. Wait, had she heard about the pain being worth it?

Wait, could she hear him now?

“So,” he said, trying to clear his head as fast as he could, “when can I go back and see her?”

Gwen and Percival eyed each other for a moment without saying anything.

“I can go see her, right?”

Gwen shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, for you and your mother.”

“But,” Percival said, in an obvious attempt to switch Jaden’s attention, “like I was saying, I only have a few more questions for you to answer and then we can all get on our way. After all, we’ve all got a very big day ahead of us tomorrow, don’t we?”

“I guess?” Jaden said, looking over to Gwen who seemed enamored by his bruised and battered knuckles. “What do you want to know?”

“Is your headache intensifying?”

“No.”

“Are you having difficulty focusing on anything?”

“Not really,” Jaden said, “I mean, my head definitely hurts but it’s not getting worse. And I can see just fine.”

“Excellent,” Percival said, scribbling more notes down, “and what about muscle soreness or fatigue?”

“Um, a little.”

Jade tried to move his limbs again as if it wasn’t an excruciating struggle.

Gwen glared at him.

“Okay, a lot. Like a mountain of soreness covered in a hurricane of aching. Is that better?”

She smiled and Percival waved his hand in a dismissive manner.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Percival said, thumbing through some papers in the clipboard, “that’s perfectly normal. Happens all the time”

“How so?” Jaden said. “I’ve never felt like this no matter what kind of exercising I’ve done. It feels like someone’s injected liquid concrete into my thighs and shoulders. How can this kind of soreness be normal?”

Percival looked up from the clipboard. “Your body is just struggling to recover and adapt, Jaden.”

“Recover and adapt to what?”

Percival hesitated, clearly surprised that Jaden had no clue about what he was talking about. “To what it shouldn’t be able to do.”

Percival returned to the clipboard and the imploring look for clarification that Jaden sent Gwen went unanswered.

“Now then, this is the last one, I promise” Percival continued, “are you experiencing any memory loss?”

Jaden paused, going through the peculiar events of the previous night in his head. The reoccurring nightmare of being chased in the forest. But then it changed to the green-eyed monster. That was something new. And unlike the thing hunting him through the forest, the green eyes didn’t want him but were going after some woman. And then his dad in the hallway. What if they were both memories and not dreams? Well either way he wasn’t forgetting things but rather remembering fresh new ones.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I remember bits and pieces from last night: The woman in my mind and the cold, choking darkness I felt. I remember the running and those people with swords. I mean, how could I forget that? Who carries swords in this day and age? And then Gwen passed out and Merrick was in trouble. Then I, I got knocked out and—”

Jaden suddenly remembered what the very skinny man with the blade and all the other dark figures had said about not letting him escape.

“Gwen, why are all these people after me?”

Sneak Peek: Chapter Three

2010-07-02T10:00:00.007-05:00

Here's what I intend to be the last Sneak Peek but hey, nothing's set in stone so if I get enough responses for more or if the soon-to-be-posted poll comes back with a cry for another chapter or two, we'll just have to see what happens next.

In the meantime, he's the third chapter of The Gift of the Greenstone.

Chapter Three

The Fight to Escape

The pavement was wet and unforgiving. Everything looked fuzzy and Jaden’s palms burned. He tried to push himself up off of the sidewalk but couldn’t, the venomous sting of scraped skin stopping him.

“Gwen,” Merrick said, “Get him out of here!”

Gwen crawled over to Jaden amidst the dust and debris of collapsed brick. “Are you hurt?” she said, the entranceway exterior crumbling around them.

“I’m all right,” Jaden said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Merrick made sure—”

“You two. Up. Now,” Merrick said.

Jaden turned and could only stare at the sight before him. Merrick’s bear-like arms quivered, holding a cherry-red truck in the air, the headlights shining onto his chest. The impact of the truck had sent him sliding through the concrete sidewalk and into the ceiling-high windows and brown brickwork of the coffee shop’s front entrance.

“It’s not possible,” Jaden said, muttering those same words to himself a few more times, his mind incapable of rationalizing what he was seeing only teen feet in front of him.

“Go!” Merrick said, “Gwen, now!”

Innocent bystanders fled away from the entrance, hysterical and screaming. The unmistakable echo of scurrying shoes across asphalt interrupted the high-pitched pings and billowing metallic creaks of the half-ton behemoth still held aloft in Merrick’s hands.

With the entrance caved in and the individuals in the coffee shop gone, Merrick peered over the edge of the front right tire and looked across the street. Eight darkened figures stood in a line, their faces and bodies hidden in shadow.

“It’s Merrick!” one of them shrieked in a distinctly female gasp. A few of the dark figures stopped walking. Some even backed up. “What are we going to—”

“That is irrelevant,” said a booming voice on the right side of the line. “We’re not here for him. Kill the stray.” The largest shadowy figure pointed at Jaden and in a booming voice said, “Velda, do it.”

One of the thin smaller shadows swayed forward a few steps, her sultry silhouette sashaying to the forefront of Jaden’s attention, his eyes unable to look away from her. There was something about the way she moved, almost gliding into his consciousness with each alluring stride. He must not take his eyes off of her. She—

A sudden and overwhelming chill seemed to stifle the very air around Jaden and a paralyzing fear crawled into his mind. His knees buckled. His lungs felt like they were filling with icy water and he started gasping for air.

Panic set in.

“Resist it, Jaden,” Gwen said, her hand gripping his upper arm, “fight it.”

“What? Fight what? What’s—happening to me?” he said between strained gulps for air.

The crippling sensation coursed through every vein in his body, smothering him with fright. He didn’t understand what was happening. He tried to look at Gwen but a haze of tumultuous images, shifting lights and scattered shadows stained his vision.

“Gwen, I’m going to be sick. I can’t move, I can’t—”

His stomach lurched. He gagged back vomit.

“Gwen—”

He dry-heaved again.

“Help—”

Everything was spinning, spinning. His throat tightened and a fuzzy darkness closed in around him. He tried to struggle against his panicked fear but the strain was too much.

“Jaden, I’m right here, next to you.”

He could hear Gwen’s voice but couldn’t pinpoint where she was—or even where he was anymore.

“Gwen, it’s—”

“Listen to me,” she said, “you can resist her. I know you can.”

Resist her?

The air felt denser, almost too thick to inhale. He couldn’t breathe, his head swirled.

“Feel for her influence over you,” Gwen said, “feel for that outside influence and struggle against it.”

But he had gone numb to everything but the horrible fright enveloping him. All of his senses felt poisoned, their responsiveness tainted. Each of Jaden’s worst fears ripped their way into his consciousness, swallowing his mind in a sea of terror.

He felt like he was falling from a terrible height with the ground rapidly approaching, growing closer, closer, closer until—suddenly he had been plunged in a vast and deep ocean. He couldn’t see the surface and he was running out of air.

“I only feel cold—and dark,” he said in between gasps, his voice growing weaker.

“Jaden, you can do this.”

“It’s—too cold, Gwen.”

“No! You’re stronger than this,” she said. He felt her fingernails sink into his shoulders for a second, shaking him, but even the pain of Gwen’s nails dissipated into nothingness.

“Jaden!”

Something about her shriek and the fading sensation of water, that awful feeling of coldness and a terrible fear enveloping him from head to toe triggered something new. The vast ocean was gone, replaced with a pitch black room that Jaden now stood in the middle of. After a few seconds the darkness lifted and he could see his mother kneeling over…something.

This was different. This wasn’t just some materialization of an abstract fear. He had been here before. He remembered seeing this but he could not place the event. And in an instant flashes of memory, images somehow familiar yet ones he could not recall seeing before began playing in his mind. He saw himself as a grown man lying dead on the ground, a bloody wound on his back and his mother screaming and sobbing over him. Except he was seeing this from a few feet away, like he had been removed and made smaller than everyone else, like he had been forced to watch himself die and witness his mother’s agonizing screams over him. And she looked so young.

But how could he have seen this if he was the one who had died?

And in a horrifying moment of recollection, Jaden knew beyond any shadow of doubt that this was a genuine memory. A pair of green eyes shone out of the darkness of the room and moved out of the shadows and into the light, moving towards his mother with an unnerving smile stretched sadistically across his face. Jaden’s heart pounded furiously against his sternum, breaths heaving in and out as the grinning man reached for his mother.

“No!” Jaden’s scream seemed to part the haze in his mind, but only for an instant. The memory dematerialized into a swirl of sand, sinking sand.

“Jaden! Focus on what you want to do,” Gwen said, “focus on your desire to get up and then you’ll hear it, you’ll hear her.”

Her? He didn’t hear anything. He did want to get up but the nauseating darkness made him want to rest, his entire body felt heavy and sinking like stone. The quicksand enveloped his entire body, pulling him down to where only his chin was not covered. He needed to close his eyes and—

“Jaden!”

—rest. He needed to sleep

“Don’t give in!”

Muscles constricting. Too tired. The sand was too much. He had to—

Wait.

There was something there. He could feel something, some other influence, different than his own. Like a seductive suggestion, a whispered proposition guiding him to relinquish control and stop resisting. He felt someone moving against him, an oppressive and strong sensation affecting what he wanted to do, like his own conscience only foreign and convincing. This manipulating influence was not audible and appealing like Gwen’s voice had been but overwhelming and immobilizing. It seemed to be directed against his limbs and muscles and not just his mind, crippling not just his physical body, but his entire being, playing on his worst fears, nightmares and the paralysis of panic.

“Gwen…”

“Fight,” she said, her voice resolute and demanding. “Focus on nothing but your deepest desire to break free. Cling to that desire and fight back.”

The reassuring sound of Gwen’s confident voice and belief filled him with strength, like a lone headlight through a thick and drifting fog. He slowed his breathing, rasping aloud, “I want—to get up.”

“Think one clear thought,” she said.

“I want—”

The crowding darkness receded and his vision improved but the sick sensation to vomit and slip into unconsciousness intensified.

You will give in! The thought hissed within his mind.

“I want—to get”

“Merrick, help!” Gwen said, “Jaden, hang on.”

But his eyes felt too heavy, he couldn’t strain anymore.

“Merrick!”

Better to rest, to give in.

“No! Leave him alone!” shrieked Gwen.

Those words. A profound pain gnawed inside him. Gwen’s blood-curdling scream snapped Jaden’s senses out of the mist with an excruciating sting Jaden had never experienced before. Something resonated within him when he heard those words, when he heard the shriek of “No! Leave him alone!” There was something familiar about that sickening sound that shocked him back into consciousness and filled him with a terrible and potent ache to fight back.

He didn’t want to hear that again, hear someone he cared about shriek in fear and agony because of him again but—he didn’t understand. Nothing like that had ever happened to him as far as he could remember.

“No!” Jaden said, pawing against the air, “I want—to get up.”

The choking feeling lessened.

You can’t resist me!

“I am going—to get up.”

Despite the hissing thoughts bombarding him with doubt and vicious threats Jaden’s terror lifted; he could stand. The disorienting, shifting images slowed and the colors and shapes around him starting taking the form of a champagne convertible to his left and a worn pine bench to his right. A hazy halo beamed around the light of a streetlamp illuminating a golden haired woman with blue eyes beside him. He could feel Gwen’s grasp on his arm again. He looked across the empty street, past the black and glowing yellow of road toward the intimidating line of darkened figures, each fuzzy outline becoming crisper.

He focused on the thin, short figure that had swayed forward. The one who Jaden’s attention still felt almost magnetically pulled to.

“Stop,” he said.

Never.

The faint queasiness intensified but he had had enough.

“No!” he said.

I will break you, Jaden.

“Out!” Jaden roared, the ferocious power of his even surprising himself.

The oppressive immobilizing force that had held him captive vanished. Jaden had no idea what had just happened or what he even did. The dizzying after-effects lingered but he saw the thin dark figure stagger and fall to her knees, trying to regain her footing like a fawn attempting to walk for the first time. She scrambled behind the largest, broadest figure.

“He’s so strong,” the woman said in between cowering gasps, “As is the girl; I could do nothing against her. But it’s true, Diederik. There’s no doubt that he is Jaden Scott!”

The other figures stirred but hesitated to act. They almost looked—scared.

“We can’t let him live,” the staggering woman said. “The Assembly can’t get their hands on him!”

At once the largest figure leapt towards Jaden, soaring through the air only a few inches off of the ground. A colossal yell blasted into Jaden’s ears as the dark figure approached. Jaden tried to hurry to his feet but he still felt weak and drained as the very large man soared closer and closer. But before this immense man’s outstretched hand reached Jaden a cherry red, half-ton truck whooshed past Jaden’s face and slammed into the cloaked figure, sending the man and the shiny red truck hurtling end over end down the street, never coming close to touching the pavement.

Jaden looked behind him to see Merrick’s wild eyes glaring across the road, staring down the other dark figures.

“Who wants to be next?” Merrick growled.

For a tension filled second, no one moved. A thick cloud of anxiety hung stifling in the air. Not even a slight breeze or distant echo dared disturb the charged, stilled silence.

And then a series of split-second, blurred movements flew in front of Jaden’s eyes so fast that he felt like he was trying to focus on bullets moving back and forth. He could not follow all of their movements but here and there he’d catch glimpses of what was happening. One of the smaller cloaked figures sped towards Jaden and Gwen faster than he had ever seen anyone move but Merrick’s reflexes were too quick and he caught the speeding shadow’s leg, spun the would be assassin, and tossed the attacker high into the air.

The hurtling attacker disappeared behind a line of trees a quarter mile away, a high pitched scream echoing the entire way.

The rallying call of one of the other shadowed figures pierced the night as the rest of them dashed after Jaden but an astoundingly quick and agile Merrick caught one of the smaller figures by the nape of his neck and threw him at another blurry figure reaching out for Jaden.

“Gwen!” Merrick’s roar ended Jaden’s stationary awe. “Get Jaden out of here. I’ll stay here and keep them busy.”

A scraped and bleeding Gwen helped Jaden to his still unsteady feet and they both raced away from the battle, Jaden’s heart throbbing and his nerves pulsating with each step. This couldn’t be happening. He had never even gotten into an elementary school fistfight.

He started to blame himself for not just believing Gwen in the first place but how could he have? She sounded crazy. Not only was she not making any sense but there was no proof.

Well, he had it now, didn’t he?

Once he had run a few blocks the dizziness and queasiness started to dissipate and he found himself oddly able to moving quicker than he could ever remember running. But he noticed that with each successive block and every quickening stride that he took that Gwen was falling further and further behind him. He had to slow down so she could keep up with him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said, her voice thin and wheezing, “I know you’re faster than this!”

“I’m doing what Merrick said.”

“No, you’re not. Don’t you dare slow down because of me. Go.”

“I’m not going to leave you, are you crazy?” he said.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, “You’re the one they’re after! There’s a chapel about two miles ahead. Merrick or I will meet you there. Go!”

“No.”

“Jaden, you—”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Gwen didn’t say anything back and the two of them raced on together, distant booms and resounding tremors intermittently filling their ears. The street ahead of them was darker than normal, lamps broken out. And the street was oddly absent of any headlights, or even any cars. There was a disturbing tranquility to it all.

After a few more blocks Gwen’s breathing became even more erratic.

“We need—to get,” her wispy words were interspersed with more wheezing, “to the—fall back point.”

Gwen started gasping, slowing to a stop. Jaden stopped running to help her when a slight tingle nestled in at the base of his neck.

Something was wrong.

Jaden looked around. He took a few steps forward, surveying the dark street but couldn’t see or hear anything. Gwen spun around, though still very out-of-breath. “I don’t need—to catch my—what are you doing?”

He didn’t know what he was doing. No matter how many times he looked around and saw nothing but empty sidewalk he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. That something wanted them to continue running.

Away from Merrick.

“Gwen, do you feel that?”

Gwen shook her head, still out of breath. “Feel what?”

The alarming sensation intensified.

“We have to go back,” he said.

“What? No. Out of—the question,” she said. “We’re getting out of here, and, why, why in the world would you even think that?”

He didn’t have an answer. But something just wasn’t right. Something was out of place. No one had even followed them. A part of Jaden urged him to leave and run as fast and frenzied as he could, that this was something he could not handle, something that would end badly for him and Gwen. But another part of him told him something different.

He mustn’t leave Merrick.

“We have to run away,” she said, her contorted face visible even in the poor light.

“Just stop,” he said, “and—”

“I can’t protect you!” Gwen screamed, streams flowing down her flushed cheeks, “I was sent to protect you. Please, just go.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“I said, go.” She pushed him away up the sidewalk but her weak shoves didn’t move him.

“Gwen, stop. Listen to me, “he said, “Can’t you feel that? Don’t you get the sense that something, something’s not right about any of this?”

“What do you mean?” she said, easing her shoves.

“It’s too easy.” He pointed behind him. “No one’s even following us.”

She looked back and then turned around, scanning the street. The wrinkles in her forehead showed Jaden that she finally understood what he was saying.

“You see what I mean,” he said. “None of this is right. It’s almost as if, as if they wanted us to run.”

She started to say something but a hollow voice crawled into Jaden’s ears.

“The boy’s quite right. We’ve been wondering what took you so long. I can see now why the Sovereign sent us here on such short notice.” A tall, cadaverous man crept out from behind a large oak tree, his long fingers violating the night air with each wave of his hand. He reached under a black cloak and pulled out a silvery steel blade that shimmered in the darkness. “Yorck, Sable, I don’t care what you do to the girl here but kill the stray at any cost. If he was really able to sense us without any training, well, there’s no wonder that he is the one who did the impossible.”

Two more figures emerged from behind another large oak tree, each gliding out from either side brandishing a similar silvery object. Try as Jaden might, he could not see any distinguishing characteristics on their faces. It was like looking through a fogged window.

The two dark figures walked closer, sparks shooting off the ground. The sound of metal dragging across concrete made Jaden shudder.

They had swords.

Who carried swords?

Jaden, get behind me.

Gwen’s distant voice faded into his head.

Leave this—to me.

The dark figures inched closer, sending sparks dancing away from the grinding metal blades. Gwen closed her eyes and the lanky man put his hand up to his temple but after a few seconds he shook off whatever was affecting him, waving his finger.

“No, no, no,” the lanky man said, “It’s cute that you’re trying to save him. A touching display, really, but unfortunately not nearly capable enough.”

The two other figures cackled, encircling Jaden and Gwen.

“You should get behind her,” said a high pitched, grating voice. The woman Jaden assumed was Sable slinked her short figure towards him, “But I’m afraid leaving everything to her won’t help you.”

They had heard Gwen’s voice inside of his head. How was that possible?

“The running,” Gwen said, still gasping for breath, “I’m tired.”

But I need you to be ready.

He looked to the dark figures. Nothing. They had not heard her that time.

Follow my lead.

Gwen took another deep, long breath but he didn’t want her to try anything. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she put herself in danger because of him, because of some stupid notion she and Merrick had about him being unique or different.

She closed her eyes.

“Gwen…” he said, the circle of blades tightening around them. “Gwen, what are you doing?”

The sword was within a foot of Jaden.

“Gwen!”

Gwen’s eyes flew open.

“You don’t want to fight us,” she said.

“What?” the lanky man said.

But Gwen was not looking at him.

“We are not your enemy,” Gwen continued.

“Gwen, what are you—”

Be quiet, Jaden.

She stared at the other two people encircling them. “You should be giving the orders, not taking them from him.”

The disturbing laugh of the lanky man rang out into the air again.

“Yorck, Sable, amusing as this may be we have a job to do. On my count dispose of both—”

But Yorck and Sable had turned their attention off of Gwen and Jaden and onto the lanky man.

Get ready, Jaden.

He nodded.

“Yorck? Sable?” the thin man said, “what are you two—”

Yorck and Sable, who had been encircling Jaden and Gwen, now glared at the lanky man, trapping him in between them with their raised swords.

“You’re always bossing me around, Victor,” Sable said.

“You never listen to my ideas,” Yorck said, his short, rotund body now moving for Victor.

The lanky Victor backed up a few paces. “You weaklings! How could you let a puny girl invade your minds? I command you to—”

Yorck took a huge swing at Victor, almost slicing his thin torso in two. This forced him to back up towards Sable, who quickly slashed and screamed, “You never listen!”

Gwen grabbed Jaden’s hand and dashed down the sidewalk back to Merrick, the booms and yells in front of them growing louder with each successive stride.

“That should keep them busy long enough for us to get back to Merrick,” she said.

She was able to keep pace with him for the first few hundred yards at his slowed speed, but the strain on her face showed that she couldn’t endure much more. Her wheezing intensified with each block they raced past, the long run back to Merrick taking its toll on both of them as they labored up to the sidewalk in front of the coffee house at last, slowing down to survey the destruction.

Jaden couldn’t help but tremble at what he saw. Overturned cars littered what appeared to be massive chunks of asphalt, all that was left of the street. The smashed cars looked like they had been catapulted up into the sky, then fell violently back to the earth in a heap of shattered glass and crumpled metal.

What had happened here?

A demolished fire hydrant sprayed water thirty feet into the air, more broken glass covered the sidewalks from windows that had been either smashed with debris or appeared to have been blown out by some terrible concussive force. Deep gashes scarred the street, the way tillers turnover soil before sowing seed.

He couldn’t think straight. He had only been gone for a few minutes.

Could people do this?

He watched as the same broad and big man that had leapt for him after that sultry figure collapsed to her knees approached a bruised and bloodied Merrick. But the broad figure sported a sizeable gash along his right cheek as well. Three other shadowy figures lay unconscious on the ground nearby them.

“Back for more, Diederik,” Merrick said, his lower lip split and dripping blood.

Diederik towered over Merrick, a good six inches at least. But Merrick smiled, as if he knew the grin would unsettle his opponent. Diederik bared his teeth, unleashing his right fist for Merrick’s face.

It landed.

Merrick’s knees buckled. Diederik raised his fist again but Merrick unloaded an uppercut of his own into Diederik’s chin. Jaden thought he felt the ground vibrate but that wasn’t possible.

Merrick quickly front kicked Diederik with his right leg, sending him crashing into the concrete base of a lamppost fifteen feet away, a loud boom resonating upon impact. Merrick then dashed towards Diederik and lowered his shoulder, knocking Diederik back a few more feet through the wet sod in between the curb and the soaked sidewalk, windows still shattering around them with shards of glass intermittently raining down. Diederik’s body went limp.

Jaden didn’t know what to do.

“Merrick,” Gwen said weakly, “it was a trap.”

Merrick turned toward Gwen and Jaden, his amber eyes going from feral to calm, “What are you—a what?”

Gwen, wheezing, tried to speak. “It, it was…” She fell into Jaden. Her breathing was erratic and her chest sporadically rose and fell. Jaden put her left arm over his right shoulder and picked her up. Her fingers curled into her palm.

“Take a slow breath,” he said.

Her wheezing increased.

“Gwen,” Jaden said, “you’re hyperventilating. You have to slow down.”

Her eyes fluttered and rolled back into her head, her chin hitting her chest. Jaden supported the majority of her weight, unsure if she would be able to keep conscious for long.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he told her, “I promise. Hey Merrick, we—”

A violent crash ripped Jaden’s attention back to the struggle between Merrick and Diederik, who had apparently been playing possum. Merrick tossed aside his shredded rain coat as Diederik nearly landed a crushing right hook, Merrick’s muscled arms huge even from far away. Merrick snapped the fractured light pole in half on his left, ripping it away from its concrete base. An eruption of sparks lit the street, raining down around Merrick for a few seconds as he waited for Diederik.

“Come on,” Merrick said. “You must have been waiting a long time for this. Our last confrontation must have left quite a sour taste in your mouth, huh, boy?”

Diederik shook at this statement and howled, charging recklessly forward. Merrick swung the metallic tube with surgical precision and a sickening crack rang out throughout the street. The onrushing Diederik soared backwards through the air, past the small grove of trees and away into the dark night. Merrick waited a few moments but nothing stirred.

“What are you two doing?” Merrick said, slightly limping over to them, “you were supposed to—”

Gwen raised her chin and tried to stand by herself, her eyelids fluttering, but could not speak.

“It was a trap,” Jaden said, turning to try and explain what had happened to Merrick. “They were waiting for us so we had to—”

His words choked inside his throat when he looked up. Diederik loomed behind Merrick, the thick light pole raised in his hands, ready to strike.

Everything stopped. Jaden didn’t have time to say anything. He pushed Gwen toward Merrick and launched himself at the murderous Diederik, whose black eyes were fixed on the back of Merrick’s skull. Jaden soared through the air, feeling no resistance from the weight of his body or the familiar tug of gravity demanding his immediate return to the ground. Diederik’s downward swing of the lamppost moved slowly, like everything else around Jaden.

With his hands clasped together, Jaden swung his locked fists upwards like a sledgehammer at Diederik’s chin, unleashing all of his might.

Contact.

And agony.

Excruciating, white-hot pain.

The steel cylinder stopped inches away from Merrick’s skull as Jaden’s hands seared with a throbbing, intensifying anguish. It was like he had punched a brick wall. An ill-tempered brick wall.

Jaden looked away from his bloody knuckles to see Diederik flying backwards off of his feet, his eyes closed and his limbs hanging loosely at his sides.

Merrick was safe, untouched.

But the metallic pole fell from Diederik’s hands and swung away from Merrick towards—

A white flash of blinding light.

Then darkness.

But what's my motivation?

2010-06-30T15:39:00.001-05:00

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of starting the story of The Gift of the Greenstone for me was constructing a backstory for the main characters (specifically the protagonist, Jaden Scott) that would have enough heart and driving force to carry an entire narrative from the first page to the last. As a character, Jaden was pretty fully fleshed out from the beginning in terms of where he was in life when the story started. Yay!

...right?

Not quite. It took countless revisions for me to feel like I had given Jaden's past enough emotional weight and believable depth to not only propel the motivations of the main character for the entire story so that who he was and what he did felt real for the reader in a very powerful way, but to craft a character with so much heart and raw humanity that each and every conflict in the narrative not only felt genuine and potent, but life-changing. And as you can imagine, each alteration to Jaden and any other characters' backstories resulted in me rewriting their personalities and actions throughout the novel since they were no longer the same character they used to be. It was a vicious, vicious cycle, I tell you!

I think this is one of the most difficult and discouraging tasks a writer faces because coming up with a plot is relatively straightforward: character experiences something that forces them to reassess or abandon their life or world as they knew it, conflict arises because of this revelation, character must respond/confront the problem (which can be internal, external, usually both in good fiction), character overcomes the obstacle and we find satisfaction in the conclusion.

Yes, I pretty much summed up every single plot that has ever been written in some way. But that's precisely the point. That's a plot; not a story.

Now a story on the other hand, well, that's what draws us in, engages and enthralls us because we invest emotionally in not only the characters and the events that take place throughout the narrative, but we invest in what those events mean to the character and how they affect the entire story.

In essence, we stay motivated as a reader because of the motivation and moving action taking place in the characters' hearts and within the very soul of the story.

And in my opinion, that is something you can't just create out of thin air or stumble into because you have a couple good ideas for a good sequence of events. You can outline a plot and brainstorm a character and the events he or she will experience throughout the narrative. But you have to craft a story.

At least I did. Again and again and again. Until a chronological sequence of events became Jaden Scott's story. A story I absolutely had to tell.

Sneak Peek: Chapter Two

2010-06-29T08:13:00.005-05:00

After the responses from chapter one I figured it would be almost cruel not to give a few more sneak peeks as your enthusiastic reactions to the prologue and first chapter have certainly given even me a burst of excitement. There will be a post later today talking about the process that these first few chapters entailed and the specific issues that I experienced when it came to starting a story so tune back in if that stuff interests you.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the second chapter.

Chapter Two
A Familiar Stranger

Jaden stared across a scarred wooden table in the corner of the dark campus coffee-house. The smell of chocolate and roasting cocoa beans should have painted an atmosphere of calm but he shifted in his uncomfortable chair, looking across the circular table at Gwen. Her pale skin seemed luminescent, ethereal in the low glow of the intimate shop.

His chest felt tight and heavy. Here he was, finally sitting across from Gwen in a cozy, intimate place. Just the two of them.

But this was not how he had imagined it.

“Jaden, I need to tell you something,” she said.

“You think?”

She eyed the front door.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she said, her blue eyes piercing his, “but neither are you. So you need to trust me because we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Um, okay,” he said shifting in his seat, not quite sure if he wanted her to explain after all, “so this is where you tell me what on earth is going on?”

They sat at a small table in the very back corner of the small shop, away from the front door and ceiling-high windows. He was trying to stay patient, anticipating her forthcoming explanation but she hadn’t said anything on the entire trip from his mother’s house to the across campus shop, which had only made him wonder what was going on even more.

She leaned forward, scanning the room every five or six seconds as her breathing picked up pace, drumming the wood tabletop with her fingertips.

“Gwen,” he said, “Why did we have to leave my mother’s house? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Where is he?” she said under her breath, checking the door again, “He was supposed to be here by now.”

“Gwen, this isn’t funny. And this isn’t like you to—”

“Look,” she said, “no matter what I say or however ridiculous you may think it sounds I need you to let me finish, all right?”

Jaden nodded, a conditioned response. Why was she acting like this?

“All right,” she said with a heavy sigh, still eyeing the thick mahogany door every few seconds. “All right…”

Her voice grew hushed and Jaden had to lean forward to hear her. She placed her blonde hair behind her right ear, like she always did when she was nervous. It made her look cute. At least he thought so twenty minutes ago.

“I don’t know where to start or even how to say this,” she said, “of course that was never my responsibility. But sometimes circumstances call for protocol to be breached and we can’t wait on him any longer.”

“Gwen, who are you? I’m starting to get a little freaked out.”

“Oh, well here,” she said, grabbing his wrist and placing her hands on top of his. The moment her hands made contact with his skin he felt calmer, like a warm ray of sunlight had just broken through a dark and overcast sky of rolling clouds.

Yes, everything would be all right.

“Do you feel better?” she said, pulling her hands away.

The clinking of stirring spoons inside clay mugs resonated throughout the coffee house and the music did sound soothing and harmonious.

“Yes,” he said. And he did. He felt much, much better. But he couldn’t explain why. “So, what were we talking about?”

She took a deep breath, “Well, I think it’s time that you—”

“Sorry bout that, it’s been kind of crazy in here tonight,” said a short brunette with spiky hair and highlights, “but I guess you two probably enjoyed your alone time with one another, huh? Am I right? I saw those roving hands! And I totally couldn’t help but notice the way you two were gawking all over each other.” The waitress made a tractor beam noise and widened her eyes at Jaden. A loud snort and cackle followed. “So, do you two want to share an espresso or maybe ginger cappuccino or wait, I can—”

The waitress stopped mid-sentence and Jaden noticed that Gwen was not looking at him anymore but staring at the waitress, whose pupils seemed somehow larger. A few seconds passed with Gwen not breaking eye contact with the waitress.

“I—yes, I do need to check on the other tables and not worry about coming back to this one,” the waitress said, looking disoriented. “Excuse me.”

The waitress turned and walked away, never bothering them again.

“Man, what a weird waitress, huh?” he said.

“Um, yeah,” Gwen said, her slight smile fading, “Now where was I? Oh, right. Well, Jaden, it’s just, I’m not really, well, but neither is, I really don’t know how to tell you this. You see—”

A loud smash pierced the confused silence and Gwen shrieked. Two mocha-colored mugs crashed to the tile floor, staining the ground with coffee and clay a few feet away. A flustered waiter that now held an empty tray scurried to find paper towels to clean up the mess.

Gwen regained her uneasy demeanor, checking the door again. The feeling of calm inside Jaden dissipated like he had just been plunged into an ice bath. What was going on?

“I’m not just some random girl you met in one of your classes and just happened to form a friendship with the last six months,” Gwen said in a rushed, hushed voice now, “you didn’t meet me by chance. I was sent here because of you.”

He scooted his chair back a little. “What?”

“I’ve been observing you for six months now,” she said, “watching you closely. I know how that sounds but we had to, Jaden. It’s time. We’ve stayed back for so long, just watching over you but recently, there’s just no denying it. So I’ve been waiting on you to show us—something. And you have, you displayed enough characteristics that necessitated some closer contact, more intensive evaluation.”

He tugged at his collar. Something about the word intensive didn’t sit well with him.

“And on the sixth day of our thermodynamics class, the really snowy one, I knew we were right. I knew you were different,” she said.

“Different? How might I be different?” he said, his throat constricting. He didn’t want to be here, with this person he only thought he knew. He wanted to be back home, helping his mother clean up their devastated kitchen. Had Gwen just been acting that she liked being around him this whole time?

“You caught the book that fell off your desk midway through class, don’t you remember that Jaden?”

“So?”

“You were turned the other direction. You caught it without seeing it drop,” she said, “without knowing where it fell, without thinking at all, as if you just knew where your hand had to be. Like how you usually know which elevator is coming before it arrives when you walk me to Biology.”

“There are only two elevators in that building,” he said, “it’s fifty-fifty.”

“But nine times in a row? You don’t find that just the least bit odd?”

“No. It’s just dumb luck.” He now found himself eyeing the door, eager to escape from this conversation. “And I still don’t see what this has to do with my me or—”

“Well after that day,” she said, ““I mean, you displayed the signs. You could have even had the other talents so I had to see if it could be true, that you might possess more abilities. I had to see if he was right.”

“What abilities? If who was right?”

She hesitated.

“Your father.”

His mouth was dry and he couldn’t find his voice.

“There’s no way you could have known my father. He died when I was four, Gwen. This isn’t funny. It’s sick.”

She reached across for his hands but he pulled them away.

“You’re right,” she said, “I didn’t. But others did. And he, your father, thought that you may be someone worth watching over long before—I mean, he knew that someone needed to keep an eye on you before he—”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his frustration and anger growing at the notion that Gwen could somehow know more about his father than he did. This wasn’t happening.

“We, I, knew I had to evaluate you on a more intimate level,” she said. “To be certain. And so I introduced myself in our next class, telling you that I needed help with my research essay. From then on, I’ve watched your every move. Made sure I was always around you whenever I could be without raising suspicion, all the while wondering, waiting on you to show your true colors.”

Tap-tap-tap. Her fingertips fluttered faster on the smooth wood grain of the tabletop.

“Gwen, why would you have been watching me? Has this whole thing, our friendship, our—relationship, it’s all been a lie?”

“I had to,” she said, her cheeks pink with color, “And I did. I started caring about you, started to hope that we were wrong. That they’d never come for you. That you could just go on living a normal life and never raise their suspicions but, that can’t happen. I wanted to protect you, didn’t want to be right about you but there’s no doubt now, Jaden. It’s true.” Her voice faltered and she rubbed her trembling hands together.

“Gwen, you’re not making any sense. Who knows what?”

Despite her ramblings, despite the overwhelming urge to panic and run away he could see that she was genuinely upset. And his mother had told him to trust her. But what if his best friend was nothing more than an over-protective, delusional stalker? Albeit a pretty one.

“I let my feelings interfere with my task,” she said, “but the more time I spent with you the more and more I realized that there could be no other explanation. And then after tonight, after what you did to that piano, moving across the room in the blink of an eye and catching your mother like that, I knew I had to get you away from there as soon as possible.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, trying to stay level-headed and keep his voice down despite not understanding yet another enigmatic explanation. “I told you, both of you, that it was on wheels and an antique. And that I was clearly on an adrenaline rush because I was scared she was going to get hurt. What does any of that have to do with why we had to race out of the house? Look, I’ve got to—”

“Because they’re coming for you,” she yelled, grabbing Jaden’s shirt across the table, tears filling her eyes. “You’re in trouble and I can’t stop them. What you did in that house, they will know what you are. Who you are. And where you are.”

The sight of Gwen in tears elicited the most peculiar response from Jaden.

He believed her.

“I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this but I can’t protect you here any longer. I can’t keep delaying what has to happen just so you can live a normal life.”

She looked terrified—but not for herself.

“Because you’re not, Jaden. You’re not normal.”

“Tell me,” he said in a quiet voice, desperate to give her the benefit of the doubt like his mother had, “just tell me what you’re trying to say. How am I not normal?”

Gwen let out a long exhale, her shoulders still tensed.

“Haven’t you ever been a little surprised at some of the things that you’ve done recently?” she said. “That you are able to do?” Her words seemed to amplify throughout the small coffee shop. “I know you like to rationalize everything but some things simply defy logic. There are some things that exceed explanation.”

“Give me a for instance,” he said.

“How about being so intuitive that it’s almost as if you can sense another person’s emotions and thoughts? Do you even know how many times you’ve asked me something that no person could ever know? Like if I was worried about the anatomy portion of my biology test on Friday or told me that you didn’t think my hair looked frizzy despite the humidity? Normal people can’t know the exact same thing at the exact same moment that someone else is thinking or feeling.”

The bronze-colored walls of the shop seemed to close in around him. Each example Gwen listed Jaden remembered, the memories forming an odd mental collage of things he had never given a second thought to—until now.

“So we think alike? So what? Isn’t that what friends do?”

“And last time I checked,” she said, “the average man can’t send a baby-grand piano shooting across a floor with such force that he caves in the front of it on sheer impact.”

“It was old,” he said, “unexplainable accidents like that happen all the time.” But Jaden wasn’t even sure if he really believed what he had just said. Gwen had a point, no matter how much he wanted to disregard it and the more examples Gwen gave him the more he started to doubt if he could be the one who was wrong.

“You shattered a piano, Jaden. And destroyed a kitchen island that was fifteen feet away, while somehow simultaneously catching your falling mother in the blink of an eye.”

The image of the splintered piano and the crushed kitchen island flashed before his eyes, ivory keys and chunks of cracked wood begging him to reconsider her position.

“I’m not even sure I saw you leave the couch,” she said, “I’m not even sure I ever saw you move at all. You were sitting there and then your mom tripped and fell through the banister and then the next thing I know you’re holding her in your arms. I never saw you hit the piano or—I don’t think I ever saw anything.”

“So, what?” he said, feeling very self-conscious and exposed in the open coffee shop filled with fellow students and potential classmates, “You were probably watching my mom fall and lost track of me. That doesn’t mean—”

“No,” she said. “I know what happened. I know what you are.”

His temper rose and his face flushed with a warm frustration of fear.

“Then what am I, Gwen?”

She leaned across the table as if she was going to whisper something to him, her blue eyes looking straight through him as the scent of lavender in her hair saturated his senses. But Gwen’s lips never moved.

One of us.

Silence.

He couldn’t move, like some frozen hand had clasped his heart, the thuds in his chest growing louder and faster. He shut his eyes.

Couldn’t be.

Jaden, look at me.

Not possible.

Jaden…

He opened his eyes. Gwen’s lips were still pursed and her stare steady. He must have imagined it. There’s no way he had just heard her voice echoing in his head. He couldn’t reign in his weighted breaths and heaving sternum. This was too much.

“Did you just—”

She stared at him, a pitying look in her eyes. “I knew it,” she said aloud.

“I, I,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

He crumpled into his seat, panting, struggling for breath. She fixed her gaze on him. If you can hear me then that proves what I’ve told you. It proves what your mother feared and what we have to do. It proves that you are in danger.

Her lips never moved. No matter how much his mind rejected it, he had heard her voice inside his head as if she was speaking straight into his ears. She reached for him but he didn’t want to be touched. A small part of him did wish he could hold her hand again; he could have used the calmness. And her skin had felt so smooth back in the living room when she was still the girl he had liked for six months, holding her hand by his mom’s glowing fireplace. But she wasn’t that person anymore. His throat felt dry and scratchy each time he tried to speak.

You need to calm down.

The voice, Gwen’s sweet voice, sounded forceful. A powerful sense of pressure emanated around his sinuses, making his eyes water. The thought that it would be wise to calm down intensified.

I'm not trying to scare you.

He shivered. This wasn’t happening.

“I’m here to help,” she said aloud, “So please, calm down and listen.”

He couldn’t move. Who was she? What was she?

“How,” he said, “I don’t understand.”

She drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself.

“I know,” she said, her voice soft again, “and I'm sorry about that. But you don’t need to understand right now. You need to trust me. The answers will come. But all you need to know right now is that you are one of us. Maybe even the one we’ve been—”

A shadow moved across her face and Gwen went white, the color drained from her fair skin in an instant. A strong hand grabbed the back of Jaden’s shoulder and kept him in his chair. He stopped himself from turning around to look.

“Maybe the one,” a powerful and coarse voice said from behind him, “that we’ve been hoping to find.”

Gwen’s entire demeanor changed and after a few moments she let out a relieved sigh. Jaden felt nothing but a mortifying panic. The immense and powerful hand still gripped his shoulder, keeping him planted to his chair.

After a few moments he forced himself to look up past the scarred knuckles of the hand holding him. A rock of a man stood beside him. A strong jaw covered in black stubble and dark, fiery amber eyes met Jaden’s hesitant gaze. A thick black raincoat hung atop the man’s shoulders, almost covering him from neck to toe. Even sitting down Jaden could tell that this man was quite tall and very broad. He could feel this man’s strength in his fierce grip, which remained like a vice on Jaden’s shoulder.

But something about him, something about those dark and fiery eyes seemed oddly familiar.

“Do I know you?” Jaden said, trying to place where he had seen those eyes, seen this man before.

Yet in a flash the man was on the other side of the table, standing between Jaden and Gwen, cracking his knuckles.

“Merrick,” Gwen said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Where have you been? Is everything safe?”

“Not quite,” Merrick’s coarse and forceful voice bellowed out, studying Jaden.

Staring at this man was like looking into the face of a tiger on the hunt.

“You mean…” she said.

“Yes,” he said without taking his eyes off of Jaden. “You were smart to remove him from the house the moment the ripple was sent. Even I felt it and I was at least fifty miles away. He is in danger and it’s time for us to leave. He’s coming for you, Jaden Montgomery Scott, and we don’t have much time. We can no longer keep you safe out in the open. Follow me.”

Jaden tried to respond but his tongue felt swollen, sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“That wasn’t a request,” Merrick said.

Gwen motioned for Jaden to get up.

The front door slammed open and Gwen gasped in fear, turning her head and balling up her tiny fists. A group of boys wearing Beta fraternity shirts entered the coffee shop laughing.

“Who are you?” Jaden said to Merrick a little louder than he had intended, noticing that people were glancing over at him.

“Shut up,” Merrick said.

Jaden obeyed, blind-sided by the blunt command.

“You have every right to doubt who I am and what Gwen and I’ve told you,” Merrick said, “but the simple fact of the matter is that you are in way over your head. And time is running out. We’re leaving.”

A suffocating silence seemed to pulsate around the small table. The air in the coffee shop felt still and dense, like a mausoleum. Gwen stared at the door again after hearing Merrick’s brutal assessment of the situation. “Are they outside—”

“I don’t know,” Merrick said, “there’s no doubt that the Legion felt the ripple from Sarah’s house. I can sense they are near. Our best bet is probably out the back.”

“How do you know my mother’s name?” Jaden said, feeling oddly angry that this strange man knew so much about him and his mother. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me that.”

The wisps of rising steam from mugs of mocha and carefree chattering around them made everything seem so surreal. But Jaden would not budge, his jaw clenched and his determination resolute.

“I know your mother’s name,” Merrick said, “because I knew your father, Jude.”

That was too much. Jaden couldn’t do this anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Jaden said, avoiding Gwen’s eyes and heading for the front door of the coffee shop, “but you’ve got the wrong guy. I need to get back to my mom. I don’t have time for this. This is crazy.”

“Wait,” Gwen said, “stop! You don’t understand!”

Merrick turned towards him but Jaden ran for the mahogany door and pushed it open faster than he thought possible, breathing in the crisp nighttime air out on the sidewalk.

The moment the door creaked to a close behind him a faint and distant swishing noise resonated around the street. He looked up and spotted a large shadow speeding across the sky towards him, blocking the shining stars along the way. The front door creaked open.

“Jaden,” Gwen said, her panic audible, “it’s not safe. Merrick, please show him—No!”

The swishing noise grew louder.

“Move!” Merrick said.

Jaden felt a tremendous force impact his chest as Merrick’s bear-like hands shoved him and Gwen clear of the entrance like they were as light as paper. An enormous object slammed into Merrick, sending him back into the front of the coffee shop, the collision collapsing the concrete and brick entrance of the cozy store.

Merrick’s voice roared from the dust and haze, “They’re here!”

Sneak Peek: The First Chapter

2010-06-25T08:41:00.007-05:00

Here's the next sneak peek at my new manuscript, The Gift of the Greenstone. This is the first chapter after the prologue. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to post your thoughts!

Chapter One
One Picture Too Many

“So who is she?”

Jaden glanced over to his mother and continued setting the dinner plates. “Just a friend, mom.”

“A friend,” Jaden’s mother said, her maternal stare palpable from across the kitchen, “who just happens to be the first female friend from college that you have invited over to our house for dinner?”

“Yes, mom. Gwen is a female friend who was stranded on campus for spring break and didn’t have any plans for dinner tonight.”

“Is she pretty?”

He looked up.

“She’s attractive.”

He was lying. She was beautiful.

“And how long have you known her?”

None of these questions were unexpected or even unwelcome.

“Oh, about six months,” he said, glancing up at her with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’ve told you about her before.”

“Uh huh,” his mother said, slicing smaller slivers of carrot, “and she’s nice?”

“No, mom, she’s cruel. Vindictive, maybe even crazy. At the very least, pathologically malicious. Because that’s the kind of person I like to be close friends with, I mean, I just can’t help myself.”

“All right,” his mother said, “so she’s sweet, then?”

He rolled his eyes and smiled, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. Almost 6:15. He started moving a little faster.

“So let me just see if I understand you,” his mom said, “this sweet and attractive young woman—”

“Gwen,” he said.

“Yes, so this sweet and attractive Gwen, who you’ve become very close to these last six months to the point that you are, let’s be honest, bringing her to meet me is just a friend you’re bringing to dinner?” She smirked his way with an all too understanding wink.

He wondered if Gwen could see through him as well as his mother could. He hoped not or he might be in for a long night.

“Uh, yep, just a girl friend I wanted to have over for dinner, with you.”

Why couldn’t he lie better?

“You told her how you feel yet?” his mother said.

He opened his mouth but no witty remark came to mind. “Not exactly.”

Mercifully, the only sound that followed was the crisp crack of the kitchen knife cutting through celery. He had had other girlfriends before, inviting them over to watch movies or hang out at his house but the relationships were always short-lived, each one usually getting more serious right around the time when his mother would find a better job and so they would have to move away. The six months he had known and hung out with Gwen was the longest friendship he could remember having with someone.

“Well then,” his mother said, scooting the chopped pieces of celery off of the butcher block and into the large glass salad bowl, “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“You mean judge and scrutinize her?”

“There’s a difference?”

He couldn’t help but smile, wrapping his arms around his mother with a tight hug, until he saw the single headlight of Gwen’s moped drive up the gravel driveway.

“She’s fifteen minutes early!”

He scurried over to the butcher block countertop and grabbed the three remaining glasses of ice cubes and rushed over to the dinner table as Gwen reached the front steps. The ice cubes clinked and shifted before settling after he plopped the glasses down.

“Well? Do I look all right?” he said.

“Very handsome,” his mother said, “more and more like a man, like your father.”

“I love you, too, mom,” he said, power-walking to the front door. He took a deep breath and peered through the window on the right of the door.

Gwen’s blonde hair seemed to be more radiant than normal under the soft luster of the overhead porch light, each strand glowing gently against the dark dusk skyline. She smiled and waved at him, her blue eyes and soft skin spotlighted while she stood on the wooden patio.

“Hey, come on in,” he said, holding the door for her.

Gwen smiled and thanked him, her bright eyes canvassing around the inside of the house as he led her into the kitchen. “Whoa, so this is where you grew up?” she said, “this is really nice.”

“No, I wish. My mom moved here the summer before I started college. About a year ago.”

“Well, it’s a lovely home,” she said, “And I can’t thank you enough for inviting me over for dinner.”

“Oh, no big deal. It was my pleasure. I figured that you could use some time out of the dorms and off of campus. I know I do during a break.”

“I did, I mean, I do,” she said. “This is great.”

“Well aren’t you just a sweetheart,” his mother said, popping her head out of the kitchen into the hallway. When Gwen blushed and looked back at Jaden he saw his mother mouth the words, “Wow, she’s gorgeous” to him.

He suddenly wanted to find a mirror and check if the cowlick at the back of his head was sticking up again. Maybe he should have gone with a different shirt. His mother studied Gwen for a moment and seemed slightly on edge herself. He wasn’t sure if she was more nervous for herself or for him. But that didn’t really matter, so far so good.

“Jaden,” his mother said, smiling again, “aren’t you going to take your buddy’s coat?”

Gwen looked confused. “Buddy?”

Jaden eyed his mother, who couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

Awesome.

“And then he looked at me and said, ‘but, momma, high heels are just more fun than my tennis shoes.” His mother and Gwen cackled, each one flushed and squinting from the laughter.

Jaden sighed and wiped his forehead with his hand, a nervous habit. His mother had now told Gwen about the time she had told him to put some elbow grease on a jar of pickles that he couldn’t get open and how he had spent the next half hour searching the garage for a bottle of elbow grease, the time he had gotten chicken pox and spent half the day naked in front of an oscillating fan because it was the only thing that made the itching feel better, and, his personal favorite, the time his mother had taken him to the park and he couldn’t wait to get home before using the restroom, which is how she wound up finding Jaden wiping himself with poison ivy leaves.

“Well,” Gwen said, “he does have a point about the high heels.”

“I was three,” Jaden said, still shaking his head, “and mom, you really don’t have to bore Gwen with all of those embarrassing stories of me when I was younger. I’m sure she’s—”

“I’m not boring her at all,” his mother said, looking to Gwen across the table, “am I?”

Jaden could not have sent Gwen a more imploring plea with his eyes.

“Actually I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard, Mrs. Scott,” Gwen said, sending Jaden a mischievous wink.

“Nonsense,” his mother said, “please call me Sarah. And I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun either. You should come over more often, Gwen.”

Jaden rose to his feet. “Well, I’m just so happy that I could be such a source of entertainment for you ladies but I’m going to start cleaning up.” He grabbed his plate and reached for theirs.

“See, Gwen, he cleans, too.”

Did she really just say that?

“Mom, I really don’t think—”

“I mean, how many almost twenty year old men do you know that not only clean up after themselves but others as well?”

“Mom, seriously, you’re—”

“None,” Gwen said, getting up out of her seat to help him carry the plates to the sink, “it’s a rare sight.”

“I believe the word is catch, Gwen,” his mother said, “He’s a rare catch.”

He turned, his jaw clenched tight, in utter shock. His mother nodded and waved at him.

What a disaster.

He motioned for Gwen to hand him her plate at the sink, the running water just loud enough for him to try and whisper an explanation, “Gwen, I’m sorry about, um, that. You see my mom has this crazy idea that, well...”

“That you’re a catch?” she said, “I wouldn’t say that’s crazy, but she’s certainly coming on rather strong, huh?”

He laughed a little too loud, unsure if it was nerves or pure relief that she thought he was a catch and was taking the disaster of the evening in stride. “Thank you,” he said, “for—”

“Oh!”

They both turned to see his mother out of her chair and heading for the stairs.

“I think I have a picture of him in those high heels with my old silk skirt around his shoulders,” his mother said.

“No, mom, I really don’t think you do.”

What else could go wrong?

“I’m positive I do,” she said, “it’s in the blue album in the upstairs bedroom. You two stop doing those dishes and head into the living room. You won’t be able to see the pictures in that dim kitchen. Jaden, show Gwen the sofa next to the fireplace.”

“Mom, you really don’t need to get that photo album.” But his mother was already up the stairs and out of sight.

“So, you’re going to sit by me beside the fireplace, huh?” Gwen said.

“I, I really,” he said, searching for words, “Well, it is more comfortable and better lit. And not at all an attempt for romance.” What had just happened? “Go on ahead,” he said, “I’m just going to stand here and contemplate how embarrassed I really should be right now and how much you’re never going to want to come back here again.”

Gwen interlocked her fingers into his, pulling him into the living room.

“Come on,” she said, “Don’t you want to see how fabulous you look in stilettos?”

She held his hand the entire trip into the living room.

His mother was a genius.

On the way into the living room Gwen bumped into his mother’s antique baby-grand piano, knocking the sterling candelabra that sat atop the family heirloom to the floor. Jaden whirled around and caught it before it hit the ground.

“Nice catch,” she said. “I barely saw you move. Those are some surprising reflexes you got there.”

“Oh, well thanks,” he said, putting the candelabra back into place, “this was my great grandmother’s piano and my mom insists on keeping it out here no matter how much of a gigantic hazard it is. I bump into at least three times a day since it pretty much blocks this entire half of the living room so I guess I’m just used to having to catch this thing. Those sharp spires on the top scratch me almost every time.”

Before they had even sat down on the couch his mother could be seen from the second-floor walkway that overlooked the living room, multiple photo albums in her arms almost higher than her head. “I couldn’t find the blue one but maybe it’s in one of these. If not, I can always get into the back of my closet for the big boxes of albums.”

“I’m fine,” she said, almost missing a step down the stairs.

Jaden made his way up the stair case, releasing Gwen’s hand.

“Mom…”

“Mrs. Scott, I mean, Sarah,” Gwen said, heading for the stairs herself, “he’s right, let us help you. That can’t be safe.”

Jaden took the top box of photo albums from his mother and the three of them made their way to the couch in front of the fire. Gwen took a dark green photo album that Jaden’s mother handed her and turned to a picture of Jaden and his mother in front of a canyon when he was thirteen.

“Oh, isn’t that a good picture, Jaden?” his mother said.

He nodded and turned towards the dancing flames inside the brick fireplace. Now Gwen had seen him as a shirtless, scrawny thirteen year old. It just gets better and better.

“Where is that?” Gwen said.

“That was at our old house in Arizona,” his mother said, “we moved to a few more places here and there a little while after that. We always looked for the best schools so Jaden could have a top notch education.”

A few schools. Try twelve. But he didn’t mind. He knew how hard it was for a single mother to get and keep a job. Plus, he had always felt a little out of place wherever he went.

“Wow, Jaden,” Gwen said, leaning closer to another photo, “is this a picture of your dad? You look just like him. It’s—”

He tore his eyes off of the mantelpiece, glancing again at the only picture of his father that his mother had not accidentally misplaced. He rubbed his index finger over the top right corner of the picture where a small tear could just be seen, a giveaway to how many times Jaden had taken the picture out of the album and held it in his hands, wondering what his father was like.

“Yeah. Uncanny resemblance, huh?” he said.

“Look how little you are!” Gwen said, “You couldn’t have been more than—”

“He had just turned four,” his mother said.

A pregnant pause pervaded the small living room. Jaden continued staring at the bright eyes of the man that looked so familiar, the man that he could now see almost every time he looked in the mirror. The man who died from cancer four months after his birthday.

“I,” Gwen said, “yeah, you’re right about the resemblance…but I can’t believe you were ever this small, though.”

He appreciated her forced laugh and the change of subject, desperate to sidestep seeing his mother break down again at the memory of his father’s untimely death. That’s not exactly the thing he wanted to have happen the first time they had dinner with Gwen.

“Wait a second,” his mother said, hopping off the burgundy sofa, “I think the high heeled photo is in that other box in my closet. Let me go have a look.” He watched his mother cross the walkway that overlooked the living room, the dark maple banister groaning as she hurried past it and into her bedroom.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen said, “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” he said, smiling the best he could, “you couldn’t have known. It’s all right, I promise. I don’t really remember that much, you know, that far back.”

Except that he often wished he could remember…something. Anything. Nothing could be worse than not remembering spending time with a lost parent or who your father even was.

“Right,” Gwen said, holding her gaze for a few lingering seconds and returning to the photo, staring at the family portrait.

Moments later a loud thump directed both of their attentions to two tiny hands struggling to carry a couple of boxes overflowing with pictures. Jaden’s mother swayed across the walkway that overlooked the living room, fighting to catch her balance and hidden behind the shiny photos and worn cardboard.

“Mom! What are you doing? I bet those things weigh thirty pounds each.”

His mother stumbled a bit, inching closer and closer to the maple banister.

“Well it has to be in one of these boxes,” she said, “I just need to—”

Her foot caught on the carpet and the top box lurched forward, pulling his mother along with it as she broke through the banister, falling towards the baby-grand piano. Plummeting straight for the sterling spears of the candelabra.

Everything slowed down. Photos rained down like autumn leaves in a brisk breeze. A tremendous burst propelled Jaden off of the couch and in an instant he was across the room, lowering his shoulder into the baby grand piano.

Crack.

Splintered wood panels and ivory keys catapulted into the air. Metal strings snapped and whipped around while the antique piano slid across the living room floor like the hardwood was made of ice, the candelabra careening into the hallway with it, skidding to a stop in the kitchen.

He lifted his eyes and held out his arms to catch his falling mother despite the searing pain in his right shoulder. Jaden tumbled to one knee the instant his mother rebounded safe in his trembling grasp, the force of her fall too much for his aching joint. The cardboard boxes melted into a sea of smiling faces and wrinkled edges upon impact, littering the wood floor with crumpled keepsakes.

After lowering his mother to the ground Jaden couldn’t help but rub his throbbing shoulder, the pain intensifying more and more. “Are you all right, mom?”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice faltering, but when he raised his head to get a good look at her she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring past him.

“Jaden,” Gwen said, her voice cold and short.

He turned away from his mother, only to see Gwen’s wide eyes gazing past him as well.

“What?” he said.

“We…” Gwen said.

He looked back to his mother and followed her stare over his shoulder to see what the big deal was, what they couldn’t tear their eyes off of.

“What’s going on—whoa.”

The entire front of the baby-grand piano had been caved in. Ivory keys were scattered across the living room floor and into the kitchen, like breadcrumbs leading to the center island at least fifteen feet away. The piano must have crashed into the center island, the sheer impact reducing the large wooden structure to little more than kindling and cracked tile.

“Seems like adrenaline won the battle with the baby-grand and the kitchen island, huh?” he said. “Where’s the ibuprofen at, mom?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mom, my shoulder is really hurting can you please—”

“Jaden,” Gwen said, “we, we have to leave. Now.”

“What?”

Gwen walked across the mess of photos but his mother met her halfway.

“Merrick sent you, didn’t he?”

Neither of them made any sense.

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

Gwen nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Scott. How did you know?”

His mother smiled and placed her hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “A mother always knows, Gwen. The way you’ve acted all night. You’re very protective of Jaden. That can’t be faked or hidden, at least not well enough to fool me.”

Gwen looked momentarily ashamed, like she had failed in some way that Jaden did not understand but his mother just kept smiling at her.

“I have to get Jaden out of here as soon as possible,” Gwen said.

“I understand,” his mother said, ignoring the mess around her, which only perplexed Jaden more since his mother had always been meticulous in her cleaning and care of the house.

He stumbled across the photos towards his mother, “Would someone like to tell me what’s going on?”

Gwen eyed the piano again and his mother cupped Jaden’s face in her hands.

“You’re all grown up,” she said, “It was bound to happen sooner or later. Jaden, I know I’ve made things hard on you, all the moving and keeping to ourselves but it was the only way I knew how to protect you, the only way I could make sure that you were safe. I, I always thought I’d be the one to tell you but there’s just not enough time now, sweetheart. I hope you’ll understand.”

“Mrs. Scott, we’re wasting precious time,” Gwen said, “please, we have to get out of here to ensure both of your safeties.” She eyed the door, her breathing elevated.

“What? I don’t understand, mom, ” Jaden said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about or what the big deal is. That piano was old and on wheels. And I was just hopped up on adrenaline. Why would I need to leave with Gwen?”

But no one was listening to him. Gwen had locked her stare onto his mother and Jaden watched his mother nod without anything even being said.

“Tell Merrick he was right,” his mother said, “tell him that Jaden, just tell him he was right.”

Gwen paused and looked at Jaden in a way that he did not care for, like she was studying him, her glare piercing him straight through.

“I will,” Gwen said, still eyeing him. “Jaden, it’s time to get you out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Have you two gone crazy? You’re not even making sense.”

“Jaden, please,” his mother said, her eyes misty, “none of this is going to make sense right now. There’s too much you don’t know. Too much I’ve had to protect you from but please, son, just trust me. You trust me, right?”

He didn’t know how to respond. He had never seen his mother this anxious, this unhinged before. She was always so well put together, so quick with her wit and eager to laugh that he couldn’t help but agree with her that there was a lot that he clearly did not know about, that none of this did make any sense to him. But her last question was the only thing that kept coming up in his mind.

“Of course I trust you.”

His mother smiled and hugged him like the time she had found him when he had snuck away in the grocery store when he was little, crying in the middle of the soup aisle until she picked him up and held him so tight that he had trouble catching his breath.

“Then go with her, sweetie. Gwen can explain it better than I can. She can help you more than I can now. If you trust me, then I need you to trust Gwen. Just know that everything I’ve ever told you or done was what I thought was best for you. Please, remember that. That and how much I love you.”

“Your mother’s right,” Gwen said, “every moment we linger here the more we put her life in danger as well as yours. I can’t keep both of you safe here. We have to leave immediately.”

Gwen stepped forward and grabbed his hand. “Jaden, come on.”

He didn’t budge.

“Sweetheart,” his mother said, “I’ll be fine. I promise.” A tear slid down her cheek. She brushed his forehead with her hand. “I couldn’t be more proud of you, of who you are. Go. Now.”

Gwen pulled on his hand.

“Jaden!”

“The next time I see you, you have a lot of explaining to do,” he said, hugging his mom and telling her he loved her, trying to ignore the odd sense of finality that had crept over him.

“You need to go to the safe house after we’re gone,” Gwen said to his mother, pulling Jaden while talking, “they’ll be looking for you, too.”

Without hesitation, Jaden’s mother reached for her keys while Gwen pulled Jaden out of the room, racing him out of the house and down the gravel driveway.

“Get on,” she said, hopping on her moped, “I don’t know how close they are.”

The first step

2010-06-24T12:42:00.005-05:00

Much like a baby's initial attempt at walking, the first step in writing a novel is often the one filled with the most excitement and splendor...and usually the one that results in a terrific fall flat on your face. In fact, you could argue that the first step for a writer in constructing a complete and gripping narrative is even more comparable to a child's first step in that it will take many, many attempts and countless mistakes that must be corrected before he/she feels secure and able enough to move on with that all-too-important second step (or act, for our screenwriting/playwright friends).

In addition, the beginning of any story is what hooks the reader and draws them in to a world you must establish, a character you must encourage your reader to invest a personal interest in, and a story in which the reader develops a stake in regarding what happens next. Plus, your entire story arc is built upon the foundation of that first few chapters, much like a baby's first step is the cornerstone of his or her development when it comes to walking, running, and jumping.

For me, there were at least eight "falls" that had to be revised with the beginning of my manuscript and it was certainly a painful process at times, as much discouragement and frustration as well as a daunting task that never seemed to have a resolution.

But as it is in life, so it is in storytelling and any creative endeavor worth doing; nothing worthwhile in the world comes easy. It's not about how many times you fall or get knocked down, but how fast you get back to your feet that measures your progress. Writing is as much patience and endurance as it is talent and imagination.

Sneak Peek: The Prologue

2010-06-23T08:35:00.020-05:00

Here is the first look at the prologue of my manuscript, The Gift of the Greenstone. I hope you enjoy it and, who knows, maybe another sneak peek will find its way onto the site if you all want to know the next step in the story.

Prologue

William interlocked his fidgeting fingers atop the polished cherry table while others around him tapped their feet without mercy, gulping down unsteady breaths. No one dared break the silence. William stared at the antique bronze door knob, waiting for the polished metal to turn.

He had always loved the traditional touches of the mansion, like the antique bronze door knob. From the Victorian sconces and polished bronze accents to the gold and scarlet wallpaper that lined the large hall where they all sat, the century’s old manor had always felt warm and historic to William like what a home should really be, especially in these modern times. The antique woodwork reminded him of days gone by, when times were simpler and everyone had their place.

But now the walls of his home felt like a prison.

He should have run when he first found out. Maybe they would have never caught him. He was good at masking his presence, skilled at blending in and disappearing, like he had been trained so well to do. But William knew better.

Click.

The bronze knob turned, catching flickers of light from the sinewy chandelier overhead. A tall thin man with fierce green eyes and dark black hair strode through the door. His charcoal colored suit and vivid emerald tie seemed streamlined, clean and absent of any wasted fabric. He moved to the front of the table as though movement itself was effortless, as if everything he did came easy.

William shifted in his chair; Lamont Kendrick often had that effect on him.

“Welcome, Sovereign,” said a deep, booming voice behind William, “it has been too long.”

The thin man beamed a wide toothy smile at everyone. He patted the shoulder of the very large and stocky man on his right who had welcomed him, Diederik Drake.

“My friends,” Kendrick said, continuing towards the head of the long cherry table, “the time has finally arrived. I took the red eye from Cairo this evening so I could share the good news with all of you as soon as I could, so that we could all celebrate together on this remarkable night.”

He stopped at the head of the table and his smile seemed to somehow widen, his Cheshire grin so contagious and electric that everyone could not help but smile along with him despite the charged tension in the air, the almost tangible atmosphere of apprehension that accompanied any visit from Kendrick and now pervaded the large hall.

Yet William could not smile; Kendrick now blocked his path to the door.

“My friends,” Kendrick said, a slight glint in his eye, “why does everyone seem so tense? Believe me when I tell you that tonight is a time for jubilation. The pieces are all in place, our decade and a half of preparation and planning and maneuvering have all brought us to the very pinnacle, to the moment that we have all waited so patiently to seize. The last piece was set in motion this very morning. It is now just a matter of time before the first domino falls and we can set right the many wrongs that plague this world.”

With a wave of his hand each of the halogen light bulbs adorning the walls of the vast room seemed to brighten and then grow dark, like a long line of dimming dominoes circling the large room before returning to Kendrick, his beaming smile still radiant. William couldn’t be sure if the light had actually oscillated in brightness or if his own senses had just been tampered with to make them appear to do so. He could never be sure with Kendrick.

The fair-skinned and dark haired woman on Williams left, Melina, coughed, her trembling hand trying to smother the sound to no avail. Beads of perspiration on her forehead glinted in the low-lit room. Kendrick eyed her for a few moments too long and William feared the worst. Melina had been the one with him when he first heard that awful knock on the manor’s front door, the one who was the first to find out the horrible truth. Kendrick’s focused stare lingered on Melina despite her downcast eyes.

Would she be the one who let it out, who turned the spotlight onto William? Is that how it would start? Melina was always looking for a way to move up in Kendrick’s good graces, to slither to his side any way she could, to be his confidante—if not something more.

William’s tongue felt too large for his mouth. He felt the undeniable urge to speak, to tell. William shook his head and licked his lips to keep his tongue at bay; there was no way Kendrick could have known yet. No one in the room would have dared tell him news like that over the phone.

No, surely Kendrick was still in the dark.

Kendrick paused, filling his lungs with a deep breath before starting a slow walk around the large table, his welcoming smile still etched in place. “Three months is too long, Melina,” he said, glancing over to the pale but beautiful raven-haired woman he still eyed. Kendrick continued circling the long table and by doing so, William could now see a straight line to the door. “In fact, Melina, after such a short time away it appears as though I have missed out on something.”

So she hadn’t told him after all.

William’s eyes fixed on the door again, his feet feeling pulled to it by some feverish magnetic force. Kendrick’s last excursion to Africa had only lasted three months, far shorter than any of the others in recent years and William assumed that the short trip meant that everything had come together, which meant the timing of this unfortunate revelation could not have been worse.

An odd current of energy, almost heat, permeated the room when William tore his gaze away from the door and back over to the circling Kendrick, whose wing-tips had fallen silent as he suddenly stood between William and Melina. Kendrick’s green eyes remained on her, his stare staying fixed on her for a few more moments and William knew it was only a matter of time. In a quick shift, Kendrick’s eyes widened and turned to William, engulfing him in his gaze like a bonfire blaze grown wild, all-encompassing.

William scrambled to wipe the fear and look of guilt off of his face, prepare his mind for what he knew was next. One hundred minus forty-nine is fifty-one. Sally sells sea-shells down by the sea shore. Red, orange, yellow, green—it was too late.

“Ah,” Kendrick said, a new kind of grin covering his face, one that made William shiver despite feeling quite warm, “William, I find myself vastly disappointed; you’re terrified right now, scrambling to clear your thoughts. What could possibly force you to feel such a terrible emotion? Especially when all you would have to do is tell me what you’re hiding and why you’re so disturbed by this little secret. You’ve never been particularly skilled at masking your emotions, old friend.”

William could not keep his right leg from twitching.

“I,” he said, “I did not wish to upset you, Sovereign.”

An even more forceful heat radiated throughout the room, each light glowing brighter as Kendrick kept his gaze upon William.

“Look at me, William,” Kendrick said.

William had no choice. He had to look Kendrick in the eye. Perhaps he could keep him out. Maybe the long trip and probable jetlag had dulled Kendrick’s focus and maybe that would be enough.

He raised his gaze and met Kendrick’s piercing green eyes. For a moment William’s mind felt clear and at peace. Maybe William was wrong and all Kendrick wanted to do was look him in the eye because he was worried about one of his closest supporters, one who Kendrick had always had extra time for and one who had always been unwaveringly loyal to him.

And then the haze set in. The room somehow seemed to dim and grow cloudy, as if William’s eyes suddenly developed cataracts. He felt a horrible pull on his mind for information, an encapsulating tug to turn his focus onto the secret because he must not keep anything from Lamont Kendrick. No one can. All must yield to him because he is—

William couldn’t concentrate; every image around him shifted into obscurity. He blinked a few times and the fuzzy outlines of the people sitting next to him sharpened. But they were all looking past him. His head had cleared but he couldn’t remember...

Oh, no. It was already done.

Kendrick walked towards the back of the room triumphantly and stopped in front of a figure shadowed by one of the overhead awnings. William could only see Kendrick’s back but he knew who Kendrick was standing in front of. How fast could William move for the door with Kendrick’s back turned? Would he even reach the doorknob?

“So it’s you then, stranger,” Kendrick said to the shadowed figure, “the source of all this fuss.”

Heads turned to look at the person who Kendrick had fixed his stare upon. William inched backwards away from the table while numerous figures around him lowered their eyes in expectation of what seemed inevitable.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Kendrick said, extending his hand to the stranger, “but even being unacquainted does not mean that I can’t sense that you are carrying a heavy burden. One that I’m sure I can help you unload. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?”

The stranger nodded, chin held high and eyes resolute. Kendrick laughed an unsettling laugh, one devoid of the sounds of joy. A cackle that seemed almost feral.

“Of course it does! Only a fool would disagree with me. So why don’t you just go ahead and tell me, get it off your shoulders and let all of this unnecessary fear and tension subside? Don’t you want to do that? Will you let me help you?”

“How do you know that I’m afraid?” the stranger said.

Kendrick paused.

“You already know the answer to that or else you would have no reason to fear telling me something.” Kendrick circled the person, his back still to William.

This might be William’s chance. Ignoring the small shiver crawling at the base of his neck, he lifted his foot up off of the lush carpet and took a small step towards the door, inching undetected away from Kendrick and the stranger as everyone’s attention remained transfixed onto Kendrick.

“Well,” the stranger said, the words fading the moment they were uttered as if they were caught in a brisk wind, “well, I don’t know how to start.”

The desire to talk erupted within William’s throat. The urge to unveil what he was hiding felt like an obsessive compulsion that he must succumb to so he side-stepped faster towards the door. William cleared his throat against his will; his eyes darted from one end of the room to another. No one was looking at him, not even Kendrick. He could do it.

“Then why don’t I help you out a little,” Kendrick said to the stranger.

William’s sweaty palm closed around the bronze door knob and turned it, careful to keep the metal spring from squeaking and drawing attention. Labored breathing and the quick click of the uncoiling spring followed as his fidgeting fingers pulled the door open enough to see the scarlet fourth-story walkway that led down the maple stairs. The marble tiles of the manor’s foyer were in view. He could see the front door.

He was going to make it.

“William,” Kendrick said, “why on earth would you want to leave when we’re all about to find out what all the fuss is over? Stop.”

No one could see William's eyes with his back still to the room but if eyes could have screamed, everyone within earshot of William would have gone deaf. Like a stone puppet, William stood motionless. He could not move. And would have remained that way had Kendrick not had other plans.

“Close the door and turn around,” Kendrick said.

William, his eyes still wide and darting, shut the door, put his hands at his sides and turned around.

“William,” Kendrick said, “would you like to tell me something?”

William’s eyes darted faster and faster, his pounding heartbeat almost visible against his chest. William nodded slowly against his will. “Yes,” his hollow, monotone voice said.

“Then tell me,” Kendrick said, his green eyes piercing William.

“I made a mistake.”

It was getting harder to breathe.

“And what might that have been, old friend?”

A few heads turned away from William, casting their eyes downward at the cherry table or to the shimmering sconces lining the walls. Anywhere but at William.

“They—survived,” William said, “the Assembly survived.”

Despite the calm clarity in his voice, William’s face felt flushed and his chest heaved in huge gulps of air. Kendrick’s right eye twitched and William found that he could move again.

“I’m sorry, Sovereign,” William said, free to move and speak on his own. “The Assembly lives. But I swear I watched them drown, I was certain that Merrick and every remnant of the old Assembly were all killed fifteen years ago. But, I mean, I don’t see how but, but—”

William’s cheeks burned white hot and he stammered his way over to Kendrick, falling to his knees on the velvet carpet, begging for forgiveness and mercy. Kendrick looked unmoved, studying William for a moment before turning back to the stranger. “And this, this is why you’re here. So tell me, is this all true?”

“Yes,” the stranger said.

Kendrick glanced back to the pale skinned Melina for confirmation. “Melina?”

She nodded.

“And how,” Kendrick said, eyeing the individuals around the room, “would you know this, stranger?”

William closed his eyes, shaking his head.

“I am a member of the Assembly,” the stranger said.

William lifted his head to find Kendrick’s eyes widened and his fist clenched.

“Is that so,” Kendrick said, hands loosening at his sides again. “Then that explains your ability to resist my less forceful efforts to detect your thoughts. After all Merrick was, forgive me, is, a brilliant instructor. That was never the issue.”

One word filled William’s frantic and racing mind and he had to speak it before it was too late, before anything else came to light. “Mercy,” he said, his forehead at the ground next to Kendrick’s gleaming wing-tips, “mercy, please. Forgive me.”

Kendrick knelt down and helped raise William to his feet, patting him on the back and nodding deep in thought. “Curious news,” Kendrick repeated to himself a few times as he continued to rest his hand on William’s shoulder. “Ultimately it changes nothing, we will move forward as planned but it is indeed an important revelation and I thank you for that, William. And you as well, stranger.”

The stranger nodded, letting out a deep sigh of relief.

“Do the members of the Assembly know you’re here?” Kendrick said.

“No, Sovereign.”

“And how many of them are there?”

“Eleven, including myself.”

Pockets of snickering and arrogant laughter erupted around the room. Murmurs of “only eleven,” could be heard throughout the room but every mouth fell silent when Kendrick failed to find the humor in the stranger’s assessment.

“Merrick has added to his number then,” Kendrick said, walking back to the head of the table. “And that means he intends to—actually, could you excuse me for a moment?”

The stranger nodded despite a confused look.

“William,” Kendrick said, “forgive me for not answering you immediately, I fear I allowed my thoughts to wander for a moment. I will grant you your request for mercy despite your failure.”

William’s shoulders relaxed and the dim hall seemed to brighten. He exhaled gushes of, “Thank you, thank you,” in between bursts of spontaneous laughter.

“Yes, old friend,” Kendrick said, “mercy it is. So it will be quick.”

William’s laughter wedged itself in his throat and he struggled to swallow, his lungs unable to find air. “Quick? But, but, Sovereign—”

“Stop.”

Kendrick held up his hand to William, who fell silent and rigid, his eyes wide with panic again.

“Walk to the window, William,” Kendrick said, “open it. And wait for my word.”

On cue, William turned and put one foot in front of the other on his way to the far window of the fourth floor’s east end. He unlocked the two bronze handles on both sides of the ceiling-high panes of glass. His palms were dry and his fingers were fluid throughout his task, never the slightest hint of resistance. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you would have thought that this was his idea and that he felt quite calm about the entire process.

William flung the windows open and stepped onto the window sill. The crisp breeze brushed against his face as his shoulders remained steady and relaxed, waiting, yet his eyes darted from side to side in obvious panic.

“Now then,” Kendrick said to the stranger, without missing a beat, “I suspect that you are here because you want to join my Legion, yes?”

The stranger nodded but could not stop glancing over to William.

“Then welcome,” Kendrick said, pausing for a moment, “but I regret to tell you that you will have to prove your sincerity. So I will be sending you back to Merrick and his Assembly once Melina here has had a chance to spend some time with you and…verify your intentions. I want you to return to the Assembly and keep an eye on them, divide them from within and keep me informed as to their plans on a bi-weekly basis. You’ll be much more valuable to me there than here. This unfortunate revelation of yours may yet prove to have been a blessing in disguise."

A sick smile crept across the stranger’s face, who seemed to revel in Kendrick’s orders to return and divide.

This shared satisfaction with the plan also seemed to sit well with Kendrick when he turned his attention back to William.

Maybe this is all it would be. Maybe Kendrick just wanted to embarrass William, flaunt his power for this stranger and all of the Legion to see.

“There’s one last thing, Sovereign,” the stranger said, struggling to get the words out.

“Yes?”

“Jaden Scott is alive.”

Lamont Kendrick did not move. No one did. It was as if all of the air had been instantaneously sucked out of the room as looks of complete and utter shock littered the large hall. A brief sliver of concern, of uncertainty, flashed across Lamont Kendrick’s face and rested for a moment, before he blinked it away.

“Well then,” Kendrick said, clearing his throat and cracking his knuckles, “William?”

“Yes, Sovereign?”

“Jump.”

And without even a grunt of disapproval, William leapt out of the window and fell four stories to his death.

WELCOME TO THE SITE

2010-06-22T08:56:00.007-05:00

So if you found your way to this site I bet you're either a family member, close personal friend or one of the loyal and rabid readers at the Daily Thunder and you're probably wondering what this website is all about. Well don't worry, this post should pretty much give you all the information you'd ever need---or even want to know---about me and The Greenstone Saga.

First things first, my name is J.G. Marking and I love to write. That's probably not a big surprise to you since, you know, my writing is probably what brought you here. What you might not know is that I actually went to school to write, getting my Bachelor's in English from Oklahoma State University and my Master's degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Creative Writing.

My first book was published in 2005, A Voice Is Calling, and was based off of a Bible study I wrote for my church. The experience of that first publication taught me a lot about what it takes to actually construct a manuscript and about the rigors and inner workings of the publishing industry. If a study of spiritual disciplines is your cup of tea, you might enjoy it. My mom would recommend it to you, but she's a little biased.Daily Thunder, the #1 source for information and occasional (if we're lucky) insight for all things Oklahoma City Thunder on the web. As you might guess, I'm just a wee bit of a basketball fan...atic.

Now that you know a bit about me let's move on to what this site is all about. TheGreenstoneSaga.com is something that I have been working on for a good while now and is pretty much my way of giving you the inside look at what I'm working on, how the novel writing process goes from idea to paper, and as a thank you to everyone who likes reading my stuff, I plan on posting sneak peeks of entire chapters from the first novel that I'm working on, The Gift of the Greenstone, which will be the first installment of my five book, epic fantasy adventure series, The Greenstone Saga.

So if all of this sounds like something you'd be interested in keeping an eye on and you're intrigued to get the first look at everything I'm working on/going through to move a manuscript from the idea phase to the represented and published stage, then welcome! This should be fun.

And stay tuned, because there might be a nice surprise for you in the very near future.

I currently write for the