The Never Story

By S. Johnson

Life is miserable for motherless, nineteen-year-old Never, her only joy found in the small pockets of time she spends with her hawk Avec, trying to learn how to use her mysterious wings. The same wings that only get her far enough from the ground to make it hurt when she crashes. Alone in the village of her birth that's never felt like home, Nev suffers her father's abuses in silence, save for Avec's support and comfort in all-too-fleeting tea times with the quirky but grandmotherly Nina, her only human friend. But when forced to take a stand against her father's greed, Nev is joined by Avec and Nina on a journey that changes the fabric of her reality.
Learning along the way that her wings only hint at the potent blood coursing through her veins, Nev finds herself and the humans she lives among swept up in the momentum of a brewing war between her bloodlines that has nothing, and everything to do with her. Somewhere in the balance, Nev must find her place, seeing for the first time that good and evil aren't as clear as they seem and family isn't always something one is born with.
Note: The Never Story contains some violence and topics inappropriate for younger readers. Recommended for mature teens and adults.

The Never Story contains some violence and topics recommended for mature teens and adults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. Johnson
• Release date: Jul 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465812575

S. Johnson

S. Johnson is an award winning journalist and columnist living under the endless skies of the southwest.A mother of two and an animal lover, Johnson has ventured into the world of fiction with The Never Story, the first in a series of fantasy novels.

Book preview

A fantasy novel by

S. Johnson

Cover art by

Gavin T. Gardner

Cover design and page layout by

S. Johnson

The Never Story

by S. Johnson

Copyright © 2011 by S. Johnson

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Cover art Never copyright © 2011 by Gavin T. Gardner, all rights reserved

Cover design for The Never Story copyright © 2011 by S. Johnson, all rights reserved

Acknowledgments

The Never Story was born on a bitterly cold day as an experiment to see if a girl with wings, that just wouldn't work, could find her way to the sky.

Her story remained a secret for weeks, with the exception of a few close friends and family who watched me descend into what must have seemed like madness. They could never have guessed it would get worse when the writing was done, but it did, and they loved me anyway.

The long coffees and phone calls, encouragement, idea-bouncing, editing and critiques are gifts I will always cherish.

Never is presented, finally and with much agony, only because of the support and love of my children, the reason for it all and who remind me daily that life is always worse for teens; my parents, who have been remarkably open-minded and loving; my brother, an amazing artist and friend; and my dearest friends and colleagues who give me far more than I could ever give them. Also, I would be remiss if I forgot my horses, dogs, cats and wild things, all of whom remind me daily of what a truly beautiful world it is.

Without those who surround me, neither Never or I would be trying to fly at all.

And most of all, thank you for taking the time to get to know Never.

I hope that you enjoy The Never Story as much as I have and I look forward to us sharing Never's future as we continue to journey through the challenges she faces together.

S. Johnson

"Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.

And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom."

– Kahlil Gibran, On Freedom

Prologue

Call it, he said toward the deepest shadow.

He received no response.

Dwindling light made its way through the small windows up above; occasionally a stronger ray glimmering off the oily surface of his scalp.

His anger was contained, but it gave a rigid edge to his pose where he leaned against the cold stone wall peering into the darkness with his lips pursed. Held that way, his lips made him appear birdlike, his dark eyes seeming frozen where they stabbed into the shadows before him.

Sneering, he pulled away from the wall and turned his shoulder against the dark, but only for a second, his head snapping back to stare again while his index finger traced the mating line of the smooth blocks he had just abandoned.

He snatched his hand back with a scowl and leaned again, this time folding his arms across his chest – not because he wished to withdraw into himself, but rather as a measure of control.

His anger was beneath the surface, yet vibrating through the tissue it found there. The air nearly snapped around him.

You will call it and bring it here, he said, his voice measured and so sickly sweet it threatened to violate masculinity.

Still there was no answer from the darkness.

You are a traitor, and yet I protect you and give you this chance to redeem yourself and you refuse?

Swinging his fist down to his side, it met the wall with a powerful sound that cut, then reverberated through the room. The aftershock was a match to his rising voice.

Even in his anger, he still kept his distance, not that his bellowing fury didn't crawl across the stone tiles of the floor and into the darkness of its own accord.

It was the explosion he had needed to blow out the fire and his demeanor once again found cold composure.

Pivoting, this time he turned his back on the dark and kept it there, making his way to the door with soundless steps of purpose.

Pausing, he pressed his hand to the door, then pushed it open.

"Call it and it has a chance – refuse and, you have my word, we will hunt it, we will find it and we will kill it! ... And then, there will be no need for you."

Long after he was gone, his words remained trapped in the room, only fading when the darkness split, one shadow moving away to hang its head in the silence.

Chapter One

The still air was only broken momentarily as he glided by, the gentle motion of his wings sending a quick breeze to tickle her cheek.

Nev stretched her feet in front of her in the silky grass, smiling and leaning back on her hands as she watched the hawk dip, then climb like a perfectly orchestrated crescendo, feeling the familiar tug of excitement.

Warm morning sun soaked through her skin, tingling as it moved through her body and closing her eyes, she let her head fall back, still tracking his movements.

Her stomach fluttered, sharing in the sensation of the air's pressure against his chest.

Ah... There it was!

The current rushed through her body, bringing every nerve to life as she arched her back, and her own wings began to unfold behind her.

Eyes still closed, she slowly sat forward and wrapped her arms around her folded knees, hugging them to her as the wings began to stretch, muscles contracting then pushing against their own resistance.

Tightly coiled, her bare back shivered involuntarily as the translucent sections lightly grazed her skin and shifted her hair in their effort to extend.

The hawk felt it too, his excitement rushing through her as she planted her palms on the grass in front of her and pushed to her feet.

There was no need to open her eyes.

Avec pulled at her, showing her the way, and Nev felt his eagerness and encouragement.

She flexed them once, twice, then began to sweep them in unison – curling them as they drew in, extending and opening them as they moved out.

The wind they created was growing as he coaxed her with his mind.

It worked – the weight of her feet gave way to the top of the grass blades, tickling her soles.

Faster and faster she moved her wings, bringing her body level with the ground as it fell away.

Nev knew better than to open her eyes, reaching her arms out to the sides with her fingers spread wide for balance.

She didn't need to see to know he flew close, for it was enough that she felt him stir the air beneath her, sending a brief flash of coolness along her belly as she rose even higher.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, unable to resist a peek. Oh she was high this time, probably the highest yet.

But as she focused in on the ground below, it began rapidly rising up to meet her and her flapping turned futile against the speedy descent.

Overpowered by the opposing pressure, her wings folded backward and Avec faded to a glimmer in the back of her mind, snuffing out like a candle flame as she slammed to the earth.

Her knees did little to break her fall as her face met with the grass and the smell of dirt was quickly followed by the hard reality of it.

Tears gathered in her eyes in response to the stinging sensations spreading out from the bridge of her nose, punctuating the failure. Her will to move lost, she lay there, eyes closed against the once silky grass that now felt like a million needles on her skin. A sob coincided with the retraction of her wings, melding into the skin of her back as if they had never been there at all.

Feathered legs reaching out, Avec landed on her right shoulder, talons gently gripping her skin and he burrowed his head through her tangled, black hair in search of her cheek.

"Next time. It will happen next time," he told her silently, Stroking her bruised flesh with his cool beak.

Avec stood sentinel as she lay there for what seemed like hours before she finally gathered herself to her knees. Avec took to the air, moving a short distance away.

His watchful eyes upon her, she pushed to her feet, pausing for a moment to look down at them with disdain.

Curling her toes in the grass, she shot a sideways glance at him.

It won't happen and you know it, she muttered.

Now perched on a nearby rock, he tilted his russet streaked, gray head and looked at her with piercing, loving gray eyes.

"Yes, yes it will.

You did better this time."

Turning her back to him, she ran her fingers through her hair, angrily tugging past a snarl.

When it was smooth again, she carelessly braided it, then leaned down where she had discarded her tunic to grab the beaded leather hair tie her mother had made her all those years ago.

Pausing to admire the simple design as if she were seeing it for the first time, she sighed and reached up to wrap it around the braid, tying it securely with care.

It was the only piece of her mother she had left. That and a few fleeting and intangible snippets of memory.

He felt her sadness but said nothing while she slipped the tunic over her head, maintaining his silence when she reached down to knock dirt clumps from her breeches.

His pity reached her, though, causing her to reel around and glare at him for a moment before she turned her back and started angrily walking the other direction, toward the grassy rise that blocked her view of home.

Avec's chuckle had the effect of a finger poking against her.

What could possibly be funny? she spat over her shoulder, refusing to look at him as she trudged forward.

Gliding to a position near her shoulder, Avec kept pace and curled his head to make eye contact with her when she stubbornly turned her head away.

Chuckling again, he darted around her head to catch her eyes.

"That hot head of yours won't let you quit. That is why I know you'll get it next time. "

Before she could get the growl from her throat, he was above her head and carving a path through the air in front of her, his straight line interrupted by a brief, playful roll as he wiggled his white tail feathers at her, then cut left into a patch of trees.

His taunting, flippant disregard fueled her march as she made her way down the hill, weaving around the occasional rock in her path.

Try as she might to hold on to her anger, the long walk started chipping away at it.

Loosing a reluctant sigh, she allowed her mind to find him, briefly sharing an empty twinge in her gut followed by an excited flutter as a small rabbit raised its head then turned tail and darted through the underbrush.

She enjoyed the sensation as he gathered speed and dipped down, but she pulled away as the rabbit's back came within reach.

That was something she couldn't share with him, or rather, didn't want to.

She had been with him on his first hunt and had refused to watch since, enjoying the thrill of the chase with him but always severing their connection before the defining moment.

There was a violence to the death of his prey that her compassion just couldn't quite overcome no matter how hard she tried.

Of course, she herself had hunted and killed, but there was a cleanness to those deaths – mercy and regret blended with success that showed the greatest difference between them.

Well, that and the fact that he could fly.

That was an injustice she couldn't quite come to terms with.

She had been present for his first flight, the culmination of weeks of nurturing and mothering after his own parents failed to return to the nest where she found him, a days-old hatchling with no hope.

To see him now – the smooth white underside of his black-tipped, broad wings so capable and strong, stretching more than four feet in either direction as he soared through the air – it hardly seemed possible he had ever been so ruffled and awkward. .

She could still remember the day she climbed up to the highest branches of her favorite tree and pushed him off her arm, watching him panic, flutter and tumble before he steadied himself and realized what he could do.

He had outgrown the vulnerability of those early days, somehow turning the tables on her – his independence and self sufficiency redefining their connection as now she turned to him in her quest to understand the purpose of it all.

Nev's frustration came in part from her flawed perception that he didn't need her anymore, but mostly from the utter helplessness she felt as her reliance on him grew, seemingly more and more each day.

And he didn't – couldn't understand – even though he thought he did.

Regardless of some of the similarities, his experience was very different than hers, particularly in the fact it had followed a natural progression – and each stage had been accomplished exactly as it should be.

But not her.

First she had to crawl, then walk, talk and overcome awkwardness, only to have what little confidence she found in those accomplishments cut short with the discovery of those damn wings – their existence sending her right back to the cradle again.

As if at nineteen summers, life wasn't awkward enough in that she remained unmarried and lived alone with her father with no apparent movement toward a life of her own.

Though it might have seemed the wings would give her an advantage of some kind, in all reality they made her more vulnerable than ever, especially because she couldn't use them and absolutely couldn't explain them.

She'd only discovered them a few months before, though it felt like an eternity.

She had taken a break from swimming to sit on the edge of a cliff and watch Avec fly, touching his mind with hers as he soared and dove, clipping the surface of the water below.

As she closed her eyes and dipped with him, she felt two pinpoints suddenly radiate like fingers in her shoulders.

She gasped for air, her eyes snapping open as webs of energy connected the finger-like lines, and she felt the flesh on her back began to lift and stretch.

Rising up from a swoop, Avec froze and let out a shriek, sinking in the air before he righted himself and flew toward her.

She heard and saw nothing as she tried to crawl to her knees and fell, her attempted cry for help only a low broken moan as she clawed at the dirt beneath her.

It wasn't pain she felt, but a maddening surge of energy, pushing from every inch of her body to the area between her shoulders like the billions of pinpoints that burst and tingle when a sleeping limb wakes.

A shadow covered her as the wings stretched above her and she discovered the more they stretched, the more the tingling subsided.

Willing them to stretch farther, she found the sensations faded, giving way to the coolness from a light breeze as it touched damp new skin.

Shivering, she regained her breath but lay still, afraid to move.

Not knowing how to communicate what lay before him, Avec opened his mind and showed her.

She saw herself naked and shivering, her stomach flat against the ground and her eyes open in empty shock. Stretching about four feet on either side of her body were pale, bluish wings that glistened in the sun – an image forever emblazoned in her brain.

The question of what the wings meant was one she was beginning to believe she would never answer.

Morning was giving way to afternoon, the sun growing hot overhead as she made her way through the valley toward home.

Squinting against it, she could vaguely make out the hills of Roden that housed the burrows of her people, and she caught herself sighing as she tried to envision what the rest of her day would hold.

Anxiety piled on top of the already heavy feelings from her failed flight, knowing with little doubt she had a reprimand or worse coming from Delsin, for she had been gone too long already.

Since her youthful days, she had spent much of her time away from the village, preferring Avec's company to the cold and judgmental eyes of the others, who seemed almost relieved to have her gone and never truly challenged her leaving.

Only Delsin's disposition had never been one she could lay bets on. One day he couldn't care less. The next day he might view her absence as tantamount to murder.

She and Avec chose the other side of the rise as a good location for her to test her wings because it was secluded, and no one from the village had reason to venture that far. It meant quite a hike back home, but the walk gave her time to reflect on things, an activity she treasured.

She and her raptor went there almost every day but they knew little more about her wings than they had the first day.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. She now knew how to recognize the signs her wings would emerge and understood that it was somehow triggered when she linked to Avec and shared in his flight.

And when the link was broken, she lost control, and her wings became useless, retracting.

Unfortunately, that almost always seemed to happen when she was hovering off the ground, sending her crashing.

It seemed the more times that happened, the harder it became to maintain her link to the hawk and the quicker and more often she crashed, a vicious cycle she couldn't seem to break free of.

Concluding that the problem was one rooted in her mind and will, they quickly decided against a first flight such as Avec's, knowing that a plunge off a cliff or a jump out of a tall tree would be too dangerous and probably fatal.

So, close to the ground they stayed while she worked to strengthen the connection to Avec and improve her concentration.

Any other time she had no trouble staying linked to him. They had been sharing thoughts and experiences for years, something that had become second nature to them since she scooped him from the abandoned nest.

But when her senses overloaded, as they did when she realized she was defying gravity, her focus would split from his, and down she went.

Luckily, the same dynamic made it easy to keep her wings from being exposed around the villagers.

Usually Avec was close by, but on the rare occasion he went out on his own, she was careful not to stay linked to him long enough to share in his exhilaration, connecting to him only for brief moments to make sure he was all right.

Nev's connection with Avec was yet another of those things about herself she couldn't explain and knew better than to try.

Though she'd learned at an early age she could exchange thoughts and feelings with the creatures around her, the connection she had with him was far deeper than any other and uniquely special to her.

She still couldn't forgive herself for Slipsy, who's brutal death it had taken to teach her to hide the truth of herself from everyone around her – her first and hardest lesson in the fact she wasn't like them and they didn't understand.

The memory made her shiver, fresh as if it had just happened, though in truth it had been more than fourteen years.

She could still feel the cool silk of his length twisting through her fingers as she sat playing in the warm summer grass at the edge of the village.

They had just met that afternoon; his sleek green body slithering by when she plopped into the grass to watch after the other children had made it clear there wasn't room for her in their game of hide and seek.

"Oooh, you're pretty," she'd thought silently to herself as she laid down on her belly to watch him cut through the sea of grass.

"Thank you."

The small thin voice had rang through her mind so clearly, she'd looked around to see who spoke before realizing the snake had stopped and turned to look at her.

"Did you talk to me?" she tested the thought, leaning in to see if his mouth moved.

Slithering closer, the snake rose up, coming within inches of her face.

"Yes, I said thank you," he said, turning his head to one side so he could get a better look at her, seeming as confused as she was by their exchange.

A flood gate opened as they explored their ability to communicate, asking questions of one another in rapid succession.

Even though he had only hatched a month before, he was alone, she learned, spending his time moving across the ground in search of crickets and spiders and other things to eat.

"I live in the village with my father. He doesn't like me so I spend a lot of time with my friend Nina," she said, leaving out the part about her mother leaving. She'd learned not to talk about it because it made people look at her funny.

"How do you move like that? Can I touch your skin?" reaching out her hand, she'd waited for him to say it was all right, then scooped him up before he changed his mind.

"You're warm. I like to be warm," he said, rolling over on his back then curling back to his stomach in her hands. The cold feeling of his scales moving fast against her skin made her giggle.

Having spent his life alone, he didn't have a name and had seemed proud when she'd asked if she could call him Slipsy.

"Do you have bones Slipsy?" she'd asked.

Rabbits had bones, so did deer. She knew because she had seen them while she watched the women clean and trim the meat after the hunts. And Nina said people had bones too, but she couldn't twist and turn the way Slipsy could.

Slipsy coiled his body in the palm of her hand so he could look up at her.

"What are bones?"

"Bones are hard things inside of you that are all connected and help you move, but I don't think you have any or you couldn't wiggle like that, she said, making her voice sound as wise as possible. I know I have bones because sometimes they make popping sounds, like this..." pushing her thumb hard into the palm of her hand, she smiled proudly at the loud crack it made.

"Oh I can do that! Listen..." Slipsy straightened his body tight until he looked like