Deadsweep

  Deadsweep

  Beca Lewis

  Copyright © 2019 Beca Lewis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Published by:

  Perception Publishing

  https://perceptionpublishing.com

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictional. However, as a writer, I have, of course, made some of the book’s characters composites of people I have met or known.

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Author’s Note

  One

  For the last two weeks, I have walked through the meadow to the top of the hill and waited. I’ve watched the sun rise and fall, the clouds sweep through the blue sky, and the trees bend with the wind. I have watched the first spring flowers poking up from the ground with their promise that winter is almost over.

  Every day I have searched the horizon for signs of their return. At the end of the day, I have walked back down to my father’s home with even more unhappiness in my heart.

  Four months have gone by since I returned to Erda. Four months since everything I ever knew turned upside down.

  When I stepped through the portal from Earth to Erda, I had been stupid, untrained, ignorant, full of myself, and yet I was happy. Four months later I am a little less foolish and ignorant, a little more trained, and maybe still full of myself, but now I am unhappy.

  There is no excuse for it, and yet I keep making excuses, which brings me back to thinking that I am full of myself. Or is it as Professor Link had said to me when we were in the Castle? That I thought I was superior? Do I still? Perhaps. Maybe it would be easier if I did.

  Perhaps then I could embrace my future with open arms. I would claim my inheritance as future Queen of Erda, and be comfortable now as Princess Kara Beth. I would let go of my past life as Hannah from Earth. I would rejoice in our victory over the Shrieks and Shatterskin.

  Instead, all I could think was that after all that had happened, I was alone. Yes, we had saved Erda from the Shrieks and Shatterskin. Both of those monsters made by Abbadon were vanquished. But we knew that Erda’s safety was temporary. Abbadon would be back. Abbadon would not give up trying to destroy magic, Erda, and every living thing but himself. We knew he was preparing another onslaught.

  And yet, every day I walked to the top of that hill and waited. And when no one came and nothing changed, I returned to the city and my father, Darius, the King of Erda.

  Today was no different. No one came. Even the Priscillas had deserted me. Pris, Cil, and La had become my constant companions, living in my pocket, pulling my hair. Laughing and pranking like the fairies that they are, I had come to rely on them. We had been friends since my childhood in Erda, and yet they had gone with the rest of them. Somewhere.

  The only remaining member of our team that was still around was Lady, the pileated woodpecker that had come with me through the portal from Earth and then revealed herself as the woman I knew as Suzanne, and a dragon in Erda. So if Lady was with me, so was Suzanne. Except that she wasn’t, because Lady had not transformed herself once since the rest of the team had gone on their fact-finding mission.

  I had begged her. Literally. On my knees. Gone out into the woods and called Lady and asked her please talk to me. Tell me what was going on. Please, shapeshift back to Suzanne so we can talk. Or stay as Lady and speak to me. But she remained silent, so I had no one to answer my questions.

  Why didn’t they take me? I didn’t understand. I had been with them for months, fighting beside them, relearning magic. But one morning I woke up and they had all gone, every single one of them. All they left was a note that they would be back.

  Even Zeid was gone. And that was the worst of all. We only had a few days together after I remembered who he was. My betrothed. Betrothed, an old word, still used in Erda. No wonder my heart had thudded the first time I saw him. I didn’t remember him, but my heart had.

  Before he left, we had spent time walking in the gardens of the city of Eiddwen. He told me how hard it had been for him since I had gone away. He said that he had been broken-hearted when I was sent to Earth to keep me safe from Abbadon. He told me his heart broke again when I returned to Erda and didn’t remember him.

  Now it is my heart that has broken. But I have duties to attend to. My father is not well, and with everyone gone, it is up to me to take care of him. If I was going to be honest with myself, I knew that was why I was left behind. I was the only one that had a chance to save King Darius. I had hoped that my return to Erda would bring him enough happiness to recover and rule his Kingdom again.

  When Shatterskin destroyed Ruta’s village, my mother, Rowena, was one of the people that died there. When my father found out that his wife had died, he too started dying. The once proud man began to wilt. He had given up. He didn’t want to live without his wife. I wanted him to live for his Kingdom and me. I wanted to believe that we would be enough for him.

  My parents had lived as husband and wife for thousands of years happily ruling over Erda with kindness and compassion. The people loved them, and my parents returned that love ten-fold.

  Thousands of years are not that long on Erda. People on Erda don’t age past the age they chose to remain. I remember people in Earth saying that they would remain thirty-nine forever. It was a joke in the Earth Realm, in Erda it was true. Pick your age and stay there, slowly changing over a long, long time. The only way people died in Erda was by accident, someone killed them, or they decided to move on. That’s what my father was doing, moving on. If he managed to accomplish it, I would be the ruler of Erda.

  I didn’t want to rule Erda. Not now. Not ever. I wanted my father to recover. My father’s heart was broken not just because my mother had died, but it was because of his brother, Abb
adon. Abbadon, the destroyer, the Evil One.

  When the two brothers were first brought to Erda, they had agreed to rule their separate kingdoms and stay out of each other’s way.

  However, Abbadon didn’t like sharing anything with his brother Darius even though there was plenty of room for both of them. Peace had reigned for centuries in my father and mother’s Kingdom.

  But as time passed, Abbadon became more and more invested in the dark side of greed and power, he had become dissatisfied at having only half of the planet. He wanted it all. And he was coming to get it.

  The hill I climbed every day was behind the city to the East. I loved that hill. It was where we all had landed in the Sound Bubble after defeating the Shrieks and Shatterskin.

  We had stood there together as a community. My friends. My teachers. We had looked at the sun glancing off the rooftops and celebrated our victory. We could see the people of Eiddwen waiting in the streets for us to celebrate with them.

  For two days it was glorious.

  And then it was over. Everyone was gone. I had no idea when my friends would return, and Abbadon was advancing. I could do nothing alone. I needed them.

  Two

  The sky had turned gray to match my mood as I walked through the streets of Eiddwen back to our home where my father was now residing. Where he was supposed to be living was back at the Castle, as King. The same Castle where I had lived after coming through the portal from the Earth dimension. But my father hadn’t been there to greet me. As soon as my mother died, he had moved back to his family home to Eiddwen where he could pretend that he wasn’t the King of Erda.

  I could understand my father’s grief, but still, the selfish part of me wondered why he didn’t realize how much his support would have meant to me if he had waited for me at the Castle. I had lost someone too. Now, with my father lying half dead in bed because of his choices, it felt as if I had lost both of them.

  At least some things were clearer to me now. I understood why the people who were waiting for me outside the Castle that first day didn’t seem happy to see me.

  I had known so little then. I hadn’t known I was a Princess, so I didn’t understand why they reluctantly bowed to me. I found out much later that the people of Erda didn’t know that I had been sent away to the Earth dimension by my parents. They thought I had deserted my parents and the Kingdom. They hadn’t known that when I first returned I had no memory of who I was and no access to any of my powers.

  How could they have known? No one had told them. My father had deserted them by running away to his home in Eiddwen.

  When I was sent to live in the Earth Realm, only a small group of people other than my parents, had known. Even though my parents were not at the Castle to greet me, one being dead and the other running away, the others were there. Suzanne, Beru, Ruta, Niko, Aki, Professor Link, and of course Zeid, were waiting for me. They were the ones who had started my training to return to myself.

  Now that the people of my father’s Kingdom knew my role in destroying the Shrieks and Shatterskin, they no longer greeted me with scowls, but with smiles and waves. I guess I had earned their respect. I wondered how easily I could lose it.

  In spite of my mood of sorrow, I loved walking the streets of Eiddwen. Eiddwen was like most of the villages in the Kingdom of Zerenity. It was large enough to be called a city, although a tiny city in my opinion. The streets were lined with charming small homes. Every home had gardens filled with flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Trees were everywhere, and a deep old growth forest lay on the other side of the meadow. All the power was supplied through the energy of the earth, so there was no need for wires or light fixtures. The people of Erda had learned long ago how to live as a partner within the graces of nature.

  It was one reason that Abbadon wanted to destroy it. He did not believe in collaboration or community. Instead, he destroyed nature and then harvested the power and energy that he needed from the creatures of Erda that his monsters captured. He used them and then discarded them. The horror of that discovery would never leave me. What terrified me was that there were probably many more manufacturing plants in existence, other than the one we had destroyed.

  I tabled that thought and arranged my face to be happy and pleased as I entered our home. This house wasn’t any different than any other home in Eiddwen. There was no sign that the King of Erda lived here. That is, if you could call it living. My father had taken to staying in his bedroom all day staring at the ceiling, willing himself to leave.

  Since my return, he had stabilized but was not getting better. It was as if he was living in two places. I had to convince him to come back to Erda and help me save the Kingdom.

  Once the people who took care of my father learned that I had not deserted them, but had been sent away, they stopped pretending that I was invisible, and I became the person they were most happy to see. That happiness had much to do with their desire that their King recover and the knowledge that I might help with that process. In the absence of my friends, I had come to rely on their friendly faces.

  Today, my father’s head of the house, Berta, met me at the front door and asked if she could speak to me in private before I went in to see my father.

  I followed her to her office, a little room to the right of the front door. From there, Berta had a view of the street in front of the house, the front door, and all the hallways that led to the rest of the house. She also had a view of the kitchen because she had installed a window that looked into that room. Berta had her finger on the pulse of everything going on in that house.

  Like every dwelling in Erda, the room’s light changed as we entered her office to match what was needed. The trees handle all the lighting in my father’s Kingdom through their roots. This was unlike the homes of the beings that lived underground where the tree roots are visible as they hold up the dirt walls. Homes in the towns do not have visible roots in the walls, but I know that they are there anyway. Now that I had begun to understand the trees of Erda, it never fails to feel comforting to go into a room and feel their presence inside as much as outside.

  Berta gestured to the chair in front of her desk made of a large slab of wood polished to perfection. Only one piece of paper was on it. If she needed anything, I knew Berta would wave her hand and it would be there. Berta was a master of practical magic. As I watched her sit behind the desk, I realized that even though Professor Link was not there to teach me more about magic, Berta was. I was embarrassed to realize how much time I had wasted by not taking advantage of what was around me.

  I curled my feet up under me and waited. I could feel my heart race faster and faster as Berta merely sat and looked at me. It was the silence that was killing me. Back in the days when I was training at the Castle, almost all my teachers used the tool of silence on me, waiting for me to discover what I needed to find out, or make a fool of myself, and here Berta was using it on me now.

  “I’m sorry, Berta,” I said.

  “What are you sorry for, Kara Beth?” Berta asked, not that unkindly. Berta reminded me of my friend Grace from the Earth dimension, and I wondered if they were related. That thought took me down another path. I remembered what Suzanne had told me about the same people being in different dimensions. What if Berta was the Grace of Erda?

  I tabled that thought for the moment and answered, “For moping around wishing for what isn’t instead of enjoying what is.”

  Berta stood and walked to my chair and gestured for me to stand up. Confused, I stood, afraid of what was going to happen next. Instead, Berta reached out and pulled me into a hug just like the ones that Grace used to give me.

  I burst into tears and sobbed just like a little girl. Berta held me and patted me on my back saying, “There, there, let it out, little one.”

  Hearing her say, little one, made me cry even harder. I had been trying to be so grown
up, and yet in my heart, I yearned to just be loved because I was me, and not because I was supposed to save the Kingdom. It was a relief to be only Hannah from the Earth Realm, or even just Kara Beth, instead of a princess.

  When I was all cried out, Berta produced a cool cloth, which she simply plucked from the air, and dabbed it all over my face. I hadn’t felt so good in ages.

  “Okay, now we can go see your father. It’s time for both of you to stop pining away and start living again.”

  When I started to say thank you, she shook her head, and said, “Not necessary, my dear.”

  She held my hand, and we walked down the hall to my father’s room together. Berta was right. It was time to start living in Erda. I was ready.

  Three

  Berta and I found Darius in bed with all the drapes closed and a washcloth across his eyes. It was precisely how I expected him to be because that was what he looked like every day. The man I remembered, whose presence was so huge that it filled rooms when he walked in, was no longer there. He had been replaced with a shriveled version of a man.