The Space Between Worlds (Copper & Cobalt, #2)

By J. Conrad

Book Two of the Copper & Cobalt Trilogy - A story of friendship, time travel, and haunting adventure in ancient Wales.

Not all prisons are escapable...

Thousands of miles from ancient Celtic Britain, Bridget awakens as a Sumerian girl standing outside the Great Ziggurat of Ur. She can't understand where Celena is or what any of this has to do with her and their history in Wales. Her pendant has disappeared and she has no way back.

Feeling trapped in this arid land so far removed from Wales or the US, Bridget's problems extend beyond locating her friend or finding an exit door. Her parents are forcing her to prepare for an arranged marriage, and if she doesn't follow through, the consequences will be severe. She can't see how to stop the tidal wave that's threatening to engulf her life. There are many kinds of prisons, and not all of them are escapable. But when Bridget meets Relan, all of that changes.

In the blazing heat of Sumerian summer, a beautiful, pale stranger explores the marketplace of Ur, asking peculiar questions of the merchants and speaking in a strange accent. Wearing a woolen cloak over his animal skin tunic, this "barbarian" is from elsewhere and has unusual ideas. Bridget's curiosity leads her down an alluring and dangerous path. She is afraid to find out the answers she longs for, until Relan shows her something unbelievable, wonderful, and frightening. Just as Bridget thinks she has a solution to her problems, she is faced with a disturbing choice that may cause a shift in her destiny which can't be undone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Conrad
• Release date: Apr 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301134953

J. Conrad

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, I now live in the southern US with my husband, John Michael. I've loved writing ever since I was a child and enjoy creating imaginative stories with realistic characters that readers can relate to.

Book preview

THE SPACE BETWEEN WORLDS

J. CONRAD

BOOK TWO

of the

COPPER & COBALT

TRILOGY

Second Edition

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 J. Conrad.

Second Edition Copyright © 2013.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. While references might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This book has a glossary. Foreign terms, names of locations and some common words which may be misunderstood can be found in the glossary, unless they are otherwise defined in the text.

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Find out more here: J. Conrad Fantasy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTE

CHAPTER ONE: Iltani and Raia

CHAPTER TWO: The World is Round

CHAPTER THREE: The Confluence

CHAPTER FOUR: A New Animal

CHAPTER FIVE: The Choice

CHAPTER SIX: The Enemy

CHAPTER SEVEN: Meuric

CHAPTER EIGHT: Trap Door

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER ONE: ILTANI AND RAIA

Bridget looked around and tried to get a grip on who she was, where she was and when she was. Directly in front of her were the high, sand-colored, mud brick walls of a great city. She was struck at once by its immenseness, the simple yet clever architecture and the vastness in either direction. It made the hill fort of Kassrikmagon seem like an animal paddock. The buildings were the color of sand and seemed to be interlocked with one another. Occasional small windows dotted the smooth surface. She scanned the wall tops for any sign of banners or insignia and found flags above the gate. They were deep purple, bearing a thin, upside down crescent with a six-pointed star above it. Behind the star was a six-pointed cross. All three symbols were dyed bright golden-yellow, a sharp contrast against the royal purple background.

Palm trees were planted at regular intervals in front of the wall, and as Bridget looked above and beyond it, she could see a great temple with three levels of terraces. She recognized the ziggurat. That felt familiar, and at first, she didn’t know how, until she realized she had seen it recently in her history book. It looked almost identical to the artist’s rendition, except that now it was there in three dimensions, massive and utterly real!

She blinked and started to slowly get her bearings. She looked at the temple with its smooth sides, scanned all along the wall and noted the position of the sun. The ziggurat was oriented true north, so if she was viewing it from the front that meant she was facing south.

To the west, she saw rows of crops a little distance away, behind which stretched a vast desert. There were mountains at the horizon to the north and east. Turning to the right again, and toward the southwest, Bridget saw more cultivated tracts fed by irrigation channels and could just make out people in light-colored clothing tending them. A light breeze gently swayed the branches of fig trees. Another field seemed to be planted with wheat, still months away from harvest by the greenness of it.

Bridget inhaled deeply to find that the air was stifling and hot. The sweat was starting to drip off her brow and she wiped it. It must be upwards of one hundred degrees; in fact, she couldn’t remember a time when she had ever felt such a temperature, not even on the hottest day of August in St. Louis. She was about to dry her hand on her clothing when she noticed the color of her skin—warm olive brown! Not expecting this, she jumped and blinked, holding out her arm for a better look. The hand was decorated by a golden ring with an indigo stone and there was a blue and purple beaded bracelet at the wrist.

Her other hand held the reins of an onager, and behind it was another like it, attached to the first by a long rope. This sight, along with everything else, was starting to bring to mind some things. She seemed to get some recollection of her father and brother bringing them from the steppes and taming them not that long ago. These were what her family used for transportation, these once wild donkeys that had since been domesticated.

Looking down, she saw her sandaled feet poking out from beneath a pink dress. She felt the fabric with her hands and determined it was made of linen; it was amazingly smooth, comfortable and extraordinarily woven, with a shift underneath. There was red embroidery near the slanted neckline and her right shoulder was bare. A wide, red belt encircled her waist. Something told her that a dress like this must have cost a fortune.

Bridget felt for the pendant, but she gasped—her bronze necklace was gone! In its place was some other necklace made out of a dark silver metal. A few red beads hung from its chain...

* * * * *

Bridget Holland’s journey began last year, in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri in the United States. Bridget, who was sixteen, met Celena Blake at school and they had been inseparable ever since. Experiencing déjà vu and a connection they couldn’t explain, Bridget discovered an ancient, Celtic necklace in a jewelry store by the riverfront—something that seemed too familiar to both of them to be a coincidence. This caused them to research and begin the process of tracing their faint memories back to the source. Summer found them taking a holiday in Snowdonia, a beautiful national park in north Wales in the United Kingdom. Here, by means of the mysterious pendant and a Bronze Age ring cairn—a portal—they learned of a past shared twenty-five hundred years ago in 500 BC. And, as fate would have it, they also met Paul.

At first, Bridget and Celena were intrigued by him. Paul was Welsh, attractive and had lived in rural Snowdonia all his life. He was a new friend who showed them around the lake and countryside they wanted to explore. Unfortunately, they learned that not only did he brutally murder them in another life, for reasons unknown, he wanted to do so again—now more than ever.

By mastering a few secrets of the portal system, the girls were able to bring objects from the past into the present. These were two bronze chests, pulled out of Lake Dywarchen, which they donated to the Gwynedd museum, and the greatest prize of all: a small, grey piece of slate. It was actually a key to the portal, and according to Paul, enabled one to go to any time and place. With so many unanswered questions, the only thing they knew for sure was that they must keep the key out of Paul’s hands.

After getting a news clip on BBC1 for recovering artifacts from Wales’ prehistoric days, the girls returned to the States and felt like local celebrities for a time. Then the next school year started, and life returned to normal. But they still hadn’t heard a thing about what the chests contained. So naturally, when Bridget had finally received a call from Ms. Surrey, the curator from the Gwynedd museum, she was thrilled.

Bridget wrote down everything as Ms. Surrey told her about what was found in the chests they recovered from the lake. One chest was empty; the other contained Celtic ring money, two ornate electrum daggers, a small bronze plate and gold artifacts. The gold artifacts seemed to have once been in the form of a ball which had been sliced six-wise like fruit. Ms. Surrey would email Bridget photos of their incredible find.

The museum curator told her, "There was one more thing, but hardly worth mentioning. We’re still trying to figure out why it was included—a little piece of slate, only about five centimeters long. It looked as if at one time it had been inside a little pouch. Or shall I say, we think it was a pouch, but the fabric was mostly disintegrated, so we couldn’t tell definitively. We found it remarkable that someone would want to include something so common and of no value in a chest full of treasure."

Yes, Bridget said, frowning. "That is remarkable."

That got Bridget thinking, so before they said their goodbyes, she politely asked Ms. Surrey if she could please send her the small piece of slate as a souvenir. It wasn’t valuable, after all; it was only a rock. Ms. Surrey had consented to this idea.

About fifteen minutes after getting off the phone, Bridget received the photos as Ms. Surrey had promised. The money she spoke of looked like small, verdigris rings. The forms were crude and imperfect, but nonetheless they were all roughly the same size. Bridget saw that the daggers were every bit as incredible as the curator described. Being formed of several different metals, they did look more silvery than golden. Each had a hilt that spiraled at the end, with raised circles running up and down the length of it. The daggers were complete with electrum sheaths as well, engraved with lines and dots in symmetrical patterns. It was surprising how untarnished and perfectly crafted they were.

Bridget looked at the photo of the plate and saw that it was also impressive. Naturally, the bronze had turned verdigris from enduring so much time, but it wasn’t the usual dullish green. It was almost blue, like the blue of a tropical sea where one could see all the way to the bottom. She zoomed in on the plate to see its designs more closely. The edge of the plate was slightly raised and lined with spirals and small circles, much like the daggers. As Bridget examined the relief portion of the artifact, she could see what Ms. Surrey had meant when she said that it didn’t resemble traditional Celtic artwork. Though she was certainly no expert in prehistoric art, the style reminded her of something from the Renaissance Period. It was just the flow and curve of the lines and the ornate detail. She thought it had a different feel to it somehow. There was the perfectly sculpted tree bearing a plentiful amount of fruit and there could be no doubt that those were apples dangling from its branches. Her eyes followed the trunk down to where the tops of its roots could be seen just above the grass and a little way below was the stream or other body of water. There were little lines and waves in it, as though it had a current, which made Bridget think that it was more likely to be a river than a lake or pond.

Lastly, Bridget looked at the photo of the little, grey piece of slate. Though not identical, it was very similar to the key that Celena kept, being about the same size and shape. It was definitely no accident that such a thing had been placed in the chest with the rest of the treasure. If it was in fact another portal key, then that would make it the most valuable treasure of all. Two weeks later, the small rock arrived via Royal Mail, in a brown box on Bridget’s front porch.

As could be expected, the girls wanted to see if it was really what they thought it was. Within a short space of time they decided to test it. Bridget and Celena clasped their hands over the key, concentrated and told it to send them back to 500 BC. It worked! But that experimental trip didn’t go well. They ran into trouble and lost their second key in ancient Wales, near one of the lakes by their old settlement. If not for Celena possessing the first one they found, they wouldn’t have been able to get back to the States. They would have emerged from the ring cairn in Snowdonia, being able to return to St. Louis only by plane or ship.

The only good thing to come of that venture was that they learned about a new property of the pendant and key. When Bridget moved the rock close to one the pendants, the slate began to pull toward the bronze disk. The little stone left her hand and was stuck fast to the metal.

She had never heard of magnetic slate, which seemed impossible, but maybe it meant something and could help them later.

With that disaster now a week behind them, the last thing Bridget remembered was attending a field trip for World History class with Celena. They were at Cahokia Mounds in Illinois, and their guide showed them, of all things, a circle of cedar boles. It didn’t take long before they inched away from the rest of the class and explored Woodhenge.

Both girls were wearing their necklaces and Celena had the key in her pocket. When they passed through the tree trunk circle, they found rushing winds all around them, beating at their skin, tugging at their clothes and whipping their hair around. There was no rolling moorland, no little stone cottages or a great hill fort. In every direction there was only a greyness and roaring wind. Bridget had looked beneath her, and it seemed that the very ground was made out of the greyness as well. She knelt and pressed her hand against it. It felt like stone—slate, to be precise, the type of stone from which the key and ring cairn were made.

Finally, after walking a little way out into the greyness, they came to the menhir they had seen before in the otherworld, in their life in ancient Wales. Bridget stopped short and stared at it. It looked identical in every way to the stone marker in prehistoric days. Among other things, she and Celena had learned that the stone had the quality of being able to exist outside its own time.

They walked away from the menhir in a straight line until they could just barely see it when they turned around, then they looked in all directions. It was all the same, just rushing wind, greyish, swirling fog and the stone floor. There was nothing. Then they went back to the menhir and walked away from another side of it and did the same thing. After doing this four times they decided they had seen all the nothingness they wanted to see.

So that’s it then, Bridget said. We have discovered ‘The Place of Nothingness’ at Cahokia Mounds.

Yeah, said Celena. Weird. It’s interesting but seems kind of useless.

It does.

Bridget placed her hand back on the standing stone and slowly and carefully recited the lines that should take them back to the real world. She wondered if they would ever come back to this place and explore it more, though she couldn’t imagine why they’d want to.

A few moments later they both stood once again in the center of the cedar bole circle at Cahokia Mounds. The cool air felt soft and comforting after the rushing winds. The grass looked unusually green and lush, and in the overcast sky Bridget noticed shades of blue and green amongst the clouds. She was amazed at the quiet of everything.

When they returned home that afternoon, she and Celena had something like a slight argument on what to do next. Both of them were ready to move forward and choose the next course of action. Before she knew what was happening or could protest, Celena took the key out of her pocket and commanded it to show them what