Like Wind Through Hollow Bones: A Fantasy in 12 Articulations (Hollow Bones Trilogy) Read online

  Like Wind Through Hollow Bones

  A Fantasy in 12 Articulations

  Book One of the Hollow

  Bones Trilogy

  Michael Phillips Mann

  Wandering in the Words Press

  Copyright © 2013 Michael Phillips Mann

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, blog or journal.

  Requests for permission should be sent to Wandering in the Words Press: 2131 Burns St, Nashville, Tennessee, 37216 www.wanderinginthewordspress.com

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  PUBLISHED BY WANDERING IN THE WORDS PRESS

  ISBN-10: 0-9891539-5-9

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9891539-5-9

  First Edition

  For my two Greatest Inspirations

  Dylan and Holland

  Thank you for Being who you Are

  Thank you for Shining your Light in the World

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Cary Walker – a Reluctant Hero

  Taylor Walker – Cary’s Son

  Ally Profett – a Namayan Warrior

  Simon Boon – a Fugitive Reporter

  Freddy Blake – a professor of ancient languages

  Ksama – Anucara of Sh’ele

  Syrgala – First Speaker of the Parisad

  Sidra – an Assassin

  DevaSurya – a Grace, The Queen of Light

  Raj Satya – a Grace, Scion of The Queen of Light

  Nelson Profett – First Member of the Namayan Council

  Tristan Warner – Second Member of the Namayan Council

  Teo Kirten – Third member of the Namayan Council

  Emma Profett – a Healer, a Matriarch, an Angel

  Sam Berns – a short Short Order Cook

  Harvey Whitt – a Professor of Archeology

  Renee DiRosa – a Cafe Entrepreneur

  Madeg Shope – a Wildman Scribbler

  Druid Cuervo – a Crazy Neighbor

  David Johnson – a Cherokee Community Leader

  Billy – a Cherokee Elder, a Hollow Bone

  Arthur Walker – Cary’s Father

  Clovis Plowright – a Retired Tobacco Farmer

  Murtaugh – a Scary Catacomb Dweller

  Apavarita Varsah – Protector of Earth

  Rahni Sisyah – her Acolyte and Assistant

  Elias Carver aka Memsalemn – a Sumerian

  Miranda Carver – Elias’ Wife

  Gareth Stokes – Carver’s Chief of Operations

  Cyrus Layton aka Nanoshe – a Sumerian

  Ian Cord – Layton’s Chief of Operations

  Leon Hess – a Tech-Mercenary

  Various Men of Hench

  Ras Graal – Lord of the Grastar

  Ripu Dasi – A Grastar General

  Panii Visam – A Grastar Assassin

  A Vast Horde of Grastar Warriors

  FIRST ARTICULATION

  a bow and a warrior

  an angel and a demon

  bad guys

  an escape

  a reporter

  demigods and a crystal

  a very old story

  Present Day

  The scream was coming. Cary Walker had glimpsed the evidence of its rising for the past five years, and the knowledge terrified him. But on this late mid-March afternoon in the Black Mountains, the scream still lived only in his shadows.

  At 42 years old, Cary stood 5-foot-9 and was soft, round and pasty. He placed a newly purchased bow, along with three arrows and a leather case, in the back of his dust-caked Lexus RX300. The bow’s black lacquered limbs and gilt handle gleamed like an invitation on the SUV’s gray carpet. A relatively safe instrument of death for Cary to own. Far safer than a gun.

  When he slammed the rear door, his love handles shook over the waistband of his olive chinos. A saggy, black sweater covered the telltale jiggle. Cary’s hazel eyes had once been piercing and inquisitive; now his gray-brown hair swung across them like a curtain. From behind that curtain, he’d watched as his life spiraled further and further into the unknown.

  But the scream was coming.

  He stepped out from the shadow of a small billboard that announced the Appalachian Storytelling Festival. The sun’s low rays struck him blind. When he opened his eyes, a girl stood between his Lexus and a mud-encrusted International Scout as if she had materialized from a ray of light. That was the first time he saw Ally Profett.

  Ambient sounds in Cary’s head kicked up a few notches in volume. These constant tones—ranging from a high-pitched squeal to a low, humming throb—had developed near the end of the summer, five years ago, when Cary had still worked at Lilly in Atlanta. Tinnitus, Doctor Stano had called it—a nice, simple diagnosis. Cary had not told her about the voices that murmured and argued constantly in the shadow of these sounds. Sometimes he believed he could almost make out their words, could almost imagine what they were arguing about. He twisted his index finger in his right ear and shook his head, trying to release the noises the way a swimmer releases trapped water. Or at least make them quieter. But the sounds remained, and so did the girl.

  Not a hallucination, then.

  She was just over 5 feet tall, even in her calf-high combat boots. An olive drab spandex suit compressed her curves into a tight hourglass. The sun transformed her auburn hair into a halo of fire. She was probably only 19 or 20, but she had ancient eyes as green as ground moss. Those eyes transformed Cary into glass. She could stare straight through him or shatter him into a million shards, depending entirely upon what she wished. Cary could only stand and wait, silent and stupefied.

  His right hand reached for the pendant hanging from a rawhide thong around his neck. A spray of scrimshaw dots pocked the talisman’s surface; he rubbed his thumb over them in a familiar, calming gesture and grimaced at the sharp ache in his wrist.

  Ten minutes later, Cary floated along the curves of Highway 197 toward home. He drove without thinking and was bouncing across the wooden bridge to his driveway before he was fully aware that he had left the parking lot at Winter Star Trading Post. He hadn’t noticed the black Suburban he had passed as he turned onto 197, or the man inside who had raised a cell phone to his cheek.

  He didn’t even remember the girl backing away so that he could open his door. She had disappeared into the shadows with the same magic she had conjured to materialize from the light. One moment Cary had been standing there hypnotized by those eyes; the next, he was creeping down the mile-long ruts that hugged the banks of the Cane River.

  Maybe she was a hallucination after all.

  Inside the house, Cary reclined in a soft window seat overlooking the river. Steam rose from his forgotten cup of coffee. A gentle breeze played random melodies on wind chimes. He nodded once, twice. Yet, even as he fell into dreams, Cary struggled to awaken from the sleep of lifetimes.

  ***

  Water lapped at his cheek, rushing into the recesses of his mind, enlivening unused spaces. A pale sliver of light arced near his face, and the river rushed past his eyes, sparkling in the lingering light.

  How did I get down here?

  Two voices argued nearby. A red wave of sun rolled through the valley, and the rasp of metal sliding on metal rang out. A body flew backwards over a tall copse of
mountain laurel. The man was gigantic, at least 8 feet tall. He wore a golden breastplate, a skirt-like garment fashioned from wide leather straps, and sandals with long lashings that crisscrossed his muscular calves. His thick right hand gripped a shining gladius. And he had wings. Huge, white-feathered wings. Angel wings.

  The angel crashed into the river. Droplets of water, dirt and blood filled the air like rising snow. He rolled backwards and up to his feet as his enemy leapt over the bush.

  She was small, with dark blue skin and pointed ears. A demon. The demon wore only a gray loincloth and swung a kukri in her left hand. Her wiry body floated with lethal grace, and her unshod feet slapped into the water, sending aloft fresh droplets. The red sun transformed the particles into a bloody mist.

  The angel sliced a shining scar through the steam. The blue demon deflected the attack with a graceful parry. They stared into each other’s eyes, trembling in impasse. Cary watched from the shore at their feet.

  “You will never have him,” the angel hissed.

  “I will,” said the demon. “Eventually, he will come to me.”

  The angel stumbled back, freeing the demon’s kukri to cut an arc that would separate Cary’s head from his body. Cary raised his arm to ward off the blow. Light reflected from the blade. His soul burned with the effort of attempting to rise.

  ***

  Cary awoke in the window seat. A low slice of sunlight cast red lines across his face. He massaged his unsevered neck. An anxious vortex in his chest prodded him to remember, but he recalled only the red haze floating above the river.

  Steam still spiraled above the coffee. Beside the cup, a spandex wrist brace lay open like a dark pair of wings. Cary had left it there two days before. He reached for the brace, flexed his wrist, shook his head, and retrieved the coffee instead. With that gesture, the remnants of the nightmare melted into the air like the steam above his mug. Only his unanchored fear remained.

  The dull ache in Cary’s right wrist had begun the same summer as the noises in his head—and the nightmares. He never remembered them, only knew that they waited in his shadows like some tentacled beast. He had not revealed these dreams to Doctor Stano either. For Cary, it was enough that he could pinpoint the moment at which his mind, his will, and his life had begun to disintegrate. No reason for anyone else to know.

  Cary took the bow, the blue-feathered arrows, and the case from the rear of the Lexus and carried them down rickety wooden steps to the river’s edge. Venus and Jupiter shone pale beneath an early risen, three-quarter moon. He counted out 20 paces from the broad side of his old fishing shed and stuck the arrows into the rich silt. Directly above him, a raven watched with cocked head from the branches of an ancient yew that stood on the embankment, its roots exposed by years of erosion.

  The bow was more difficult to draw than he’d expected. Pain sliced at his wrist. His arm trembled. Slowly, like pulling a trigger in reverse, Cary released the string.

  “Ow! Shit!” The harsh string raked across his face. The arrow flew left of the shack, glanced off a boulder, and careened aloft to splash 30 yards up river.

  His thumb ached and his cheek burned. He nocked the second arrow. This time, he kept his face well away from the bowstring and released before he had reached full draw. The arrow soared over the shack and disappeared into the underbrush 50 yards away.

  “Double shit.”

  To his left, just out of reach, the first arrow floated downstream. Its taunting blue feathers flashed in the current until he lost sight of them in the river’s fading, silver surface.

  The moon and evening stars formed an axe forged from light in the darkening sky. The fishing shack loomed in defiance. Cary smirked.

  Can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

  The last arrow stood alone in the dirt. A last hope. He nocked it and considered the weathered shack for a long time. One minute. Two. Three. His chest quivered on the verge of exploding, or collapsing into nothingness. Cary raised the bow slowly. Past the horizontal. Sound roared in his ears. Garbled voices shouted from the frontiers of sanity. He dropped to one knee to aim higher still, until the point was vertical, aimed at the sky itself. He drew the string, held it as tight as he held the scream building in his throat. By sheer will, he forced his eyes to remain open. His fingers relaxed, and his head cranked back, mouth wide, teeth bared. He released the string, and his voice with it. The scream filled his ears and forced away the inner sounds. But this was not the scream that was coming. This scream was a choked and choking thing.

  The arrow disappeared into the blue. Cary’s oxygen ran out, and his strangled scream died. He rose on unsteady legs, closed his eyes, stretched his arms wide, and pressed his heart against the sky, offering his life to fate, or perhaps only to the high swirling winds.

  On his inner screen of thought, he imagined the tiny missile climbing higher and higher, exhausting its energy, pausing for a moment as if in contemplation, reversing trajectory in the empty expanse, and plummeting back to earth, hungry for a target. Cary clenched his eyes tighter and pulled his shoulders farther back, pressing his chest ever closer to the heavens. The arrow of his imagination fell toward his offered chest, inexorable. Closer. Faster. At the last moment, before the razor-tipped head buried itself in his flesh, a hand snapped out from the fringe of darkness and closed on the shaft, halting death. Was it his own hand, or someone else’s? Divine intervention? He could almost feel the point of the imaginary missile pressing against the skin covering his breastbone before the mystery hand arrested it.

  Seconds later he heard the small thunk of the real arrow plunging into the real earth. Only then did breath return to him; he gasped aloud, and his eyes flew open in the same moment.

  The arrow had landed very near. He pushed aside foliage, but gave up after a few moments. Cary unstrung the bow and zipped it into the leather case. There would be plenty of time to find the lost arrow later when he needed it. Perhaps it was better for the moment that he didn’t have any more arrows to play with. Deeper thoughts of what he had just done, and why, flitted away into the dark edges of consciousness.

  Dusk hovered over the mountains. He climbed the steps, settled onto the soft ground moss at the edge of the drop-off, and dangled his feet in the air. The music of the river washed over him, competing with the internal voices for his attention.

  “You’re aiming the wrong way,” the girl said.

  Cary scrambled to his feet, nearly stepping off the embankment in the process. She caught the collar of his sweater and pulled him back from the edge at the last moment.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked. He tried to catch his breath. “I didn’t hear a car.” She looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her.

  “I need you to come with me,” she said.

  She stood between him and the house, tapping her foot and glancing at the driveway. Of course. The same young woman he had seen outside of Winter Star. Bits of ground moss and twigs clung to her red hair. A gust of wind whipped a fiery strand across her eyes. She tucked it with its sisters behind her ear. Dried blood rimmed her left nostril. Mud darkened her olive knees. Wild ferns tossed to and fro at their feet while, high above their heads, the branches of poplars and hemlocks engaged in leafy sword fights. Three parallel scratches extended from the left side of her nose down to just below her ear, giving her the incongruous appearance of having stopped halfway through putting on war paint. The lowest scratch deepened to a true cut where it approached her carotid artery. Teardrops of blood trickled from the cut and ran down the side of her neck, disappearing inside her collar. Cary reached toward her cheek. She stepped back before he could touch her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you were hurt. Come inside. I’ve got a first-aid kit somewhere.”

  She traced her fingertips along the scratches and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We have to leave.” She trotted past him up the sloping lawn to the deck.

  Cary didn’t move.

&n
bsp; “Are you deaf?” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Her feet were drumbeats on the wooden porch. She disappeared into the house. Cary followed.

  “What are you talking about?” Cary said. “Are you in trouble? I’ll call the police.”

  “Police can’t help,” she said. “Get your shit. Only what you can carry.” She shoved his green canvas coat into his arms. “Here,” she said. “No time to explain. We have to go. Now.”

  “Whoa. Time out,” he said. “Get a grip.” Funny, me telling someone else to get a grip. Still, he shrugged into his coat and slapped his thigh to locate his car keys. “Look. I don’t even know you. I never even saw you before today.”

  Her boots tapped out quick, muffled thumps on the thick carpet.

  Cary’s hand sought the comfort of the pendant hanging from his neck. “Why should I believe—”

  “Okay,” she said. “Fine. My name’s Ally.” She grabbed his hand and shook it several times. “Nice to meet you. Can we please haul ass now?” She pulled him out onto the deck.

  “But I don’t—”

  “Geez! Will you listen to me? Big, ugly bad guys are coming here. And. When. They. Get. Here,” her index finger stabbed his chest with each word, “They. Will. Kill. You. Or worse.” She drew a line across her throat, crossed her eyes, stuck her tongue out and let her head sag to the left. And then, as incongruous as it seemed, she laughed at her own silliness. “And me,” she said. “Get it? They’ll kill us both.”

  Cary tried to wedge those statements into the map of the world he thought he lived in. Somewhere nearby, a truck engine growled. High beams sliced open the twilight and swept across the tree line; a black Suburban rounded the last switchback and came into view a quarter of a mile away.