Abode of the Gods

By Jay Greenstein

Colleen is on her way to spinsterhood. Under the thumb of her dominating mother, with the lamp of her soul all but flickering toward darkness, she must leave her mother’s house or resign herself to a death of the spirit. In spite of that, she hasn't been able to summon the necessary strength. Now though, Colleen has been presented with a magic ring, which transports her to a primitive world. There she must remake herself, face her demons, perfect the skills of the huntress, and lead a band of adventurers on a quest to free a god.

When Jonathan first saw the sprite, it was a Wednesday, and he was hung over. He should have walked on. Now Jon is lying on the wet dirt of a trail, deep in the woods, abandoned and defenseless. How do you explain something like that when you have no idea of how you got there—or where you are? How do you explain that you’re naked because you left your clothing on a different planet?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Greenstein
• Release date: Apr 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311528100

Jay Greenstein

I'm a storyteller. My skills at writing are subject to opinion, my punctuation has been called interesting, at best—but I am a storyteller. I am, of course, many other things. In seven decades of living, there are great numbers of things that have attracted my attention. I am, for example, an electrician. I can also design, build, and install a range of things from stairs and railings to flooring, and tile backsplashes. I can even giftwrap a box from the inside, so to speak, by wallpapering the house. I'm an engineer, one who has designed computers and computer systems; one of which—during the bad old days of the cold war—flew in the plane designated as the American President's Airborne Command Post: The Doomsday Jet. I've spent seven years as the chief-engineer of a company that built bar-code readers. I spent thirteen of the most enjoyable years of my life as a scoutmaster, and three, nearly as good, as a cubmaster. I joined the Air Force to learn jet engine mechanics, but ended up working in broadcast and closed circuit television, serving in such unlikely locations as the War Room of the Strategic Air Command, and a television station on the island of Okinawa. I have been involved in sports car racing, scuba diving, sailing, and anything else that sounded like fun. I can fix most things that break, sew a fairly neat seam, and have raised three pretty nice kids, all of who are smarter and prettier than I am—more talented, too, thanks to the genes my wife kindly provided. Once, while camping with a group of cubs and their families, one of the dads announced, "You guys better make up crosses to keep the Purple Bishop away." When I asked for more information, the man shrugged and said, "I don't really know much about the story. It's some kind of a local thing that was mentioned on my last camping trip." Intrigued, I wondered if I could come up with something to go with his comment about the crosses; something to provide a gentle terror-of-the-night to entertain the boys. The result was a virtual forest of crosses outside the boys' tents. That was the event that switched on something within me that, now, more than twenty-five years later, I can't seem to switch off. Stories came and came… so easily it was sometimes frightening. Stories so frightening that one boy swore he watched my eyes begin to glow with a dim red light as I told them (it was the campfire reflecting from my ...

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Jay Greenstein

Jay Greenstein

All rights reserved

Published by Continuation Services at SmashWords

Copyright 2014 Jay Greenstein

Other Titles by Jay Greenstein:

Science Fiction

As Falls an Angel

Samantha and the Bear

Foreign Embassy

Hero

Monkey Feet

An Accidental War

Starlight Dancing

Wizards

Trilogy of the Talos

(Sci-fi)

To Sing the Calu

Portal to Sygano

Ghost Girl

Sisterhood of the Ring

(Sci-fi)

Water Dance

Jennie’s Song

A Change of Heart

A Surfeit of Dreams

Kyesha

Abode Of The Gods

Living Vampire

(Sci-fi)

An Abiding Evil

Ties of Blood

Blood Lust

Modern Western

Posse

Romantic Suspense

A Chance Encounter

Kiss of Death

Intrigue/Crime

Necessity

Betrayal

Hostage

Young Adult

My Father My Friend

Romance

Zoe

Breaking the Pattern

Short Story

A Touch of Strange

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious and created by the author for entertainment purposes. Any similarities between living and non-living persons are purely coincidental.

° ° ° °

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

As Falls An Angel

° ° ° °

Jon

When Jonathan Trent first saw the sprite, it was a Wednesday, and he was hung over. He should have known better than to get drunk on a week-night, but things being as they were, with Susan gone, and no women in his life, the party seemed a good idea.

Disappointment at being the only free male among a group of happily partnered women led to more drinking than was normally his wont, and thus to this morning’s headache. That is, if the term headache could be used to describe the chaos raging inside his skull. Finished with the brown-whimpers phase that came with the dawn, he was currently in the I can walk if I don’t make any sudden changes in direction, stage, with his eyes bulging only moderately against the inside of his skull.

The sprite was peering out from under the steps of a tenement apartment building, in the well that led to the basement apartment’s window, her hair a flick of captured sunshine against the age-darkened stone. Tiny, no more than nine inches tall and difficult to make out in the deep shadow cast by the steps, an exquisitely beautiful little lady, as translucent as a rainbow, smiled up at him. In response to his widening eyes, she cocked her head quizzically, then gave a friendly wave.

What the hell?

He blinked to clear his vision, while attempting to stop. Unfortunately, he added in a turn of his head for a better look, and that was too much for his brain to handle all at once during this phase of his hangover. So much activity, when registered against his temporary disability, brought on the additional requirement to close his eyes and wait for the drumming inside his head to subside, all the while teetering on his toes in an attempt to keep balanced and remain upright. When things finally settled down and he opened his eyes she was gone.

"Now, what the hell was that?" For a long moment, he could only stare at the spot where she’d been, wondering. A look around showed nothing, so he gave thought to going to the stairwell to take a peek under the stairs. But what he’d seen was obviously a trick reflection of the morning’s light, an animal—or more likely, a fantasy brought on by the hangover.

Must have been a cat, he decided, as he forced himself to stumble on to his appointment with the day. Had to be something like that...had to be. Still, he frowned as he walked on. There’d been a definite impression of four tiny wings, much like those of a dragonfly, with a perfectly proportioned woman’s body attached to them—a nude woman’s body, with proudly erect breasts and a tiny dab of tawny gold at the junction of leg and body.

As he made his way to the subway, Jon’s partially functioning brain tried, several times, to interest him in the images it had stored, but he wasn’t ready for anything more complicated than finding a seat on the train as yet.

During the rest of the day, as his brain slowly began to resume functioning, he’d occasionally stop and look at nothing for a moment, then shake his head, as though trying to dislodge a fly. Once, taking a break from chewing away at a particularly difficult problem, he found that he’d doodled a woman’s face on his desk pad. With a start, he realized that it was hers.

° ° ° °

Chapter 2 - Colleen

Colleen? Colleen, are you awake?

Colleen Trevor flinched at the call, burrowing under the quilt and covering her ears with the pillow. That whiny voice attacked like fingernails raking the blackboards of hell, as it summoned her to another despised awakening.

Colleen, where are you? Momma needs you.

With a sigh of resignation for a thousand too many such wakings, she threw back the covers. Sitting on the edge of the bed, yawning, her toes sought out her slippers. Sliding them on, she scowled and looked down in annoyance. As usual, they’d ended up on the wrong feet.

Again, came that querulous voice, laced with just enough quaver to set her teeth on edge and force her out of bed.

Colleen, honey, I need you. Get up.

Coming, Momma.

Staggering into the bathroom she splashed a handful of cold water on her face, then hiked up her nightgown before gingerly making contact with the toilet seat. Mama would waste no heat on the house at night when a warm nightgown and comforter could suffice. Of course, with an electric heater in her bathroom, Mama never had to face a cold seat in the morning. Colleen’s frigid cubicle, added after the house was built, had no heater. Mama justified her own comfort as being necessary, due to her frailty, Colleen’s Spartan discomfort a necessity, to build character. And, of course, mama’s bathroom was off-limits. Unsanitary to share a bathroom, she claimed.

Colleen!

Enough, you old bitch! Why the hell can’t you get your own robe? You just want to make me jump through hoops, that’s all. I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve never had a life of my own, because of you. I’ve never had a boyfriend—never even been outside the damn city. Enough is enough, so get your own stinking robe because I won’t do it!

God...if only I had the nerve to say that. Aloud, she called, Just a minute, Mama, I’m finishing up now.

Honey, what took you so long? her mother asked, as Colleen emerged from her closet with a warm, no-nonsense robe.

Here, Momma. She held the robe out. I was in the bathroom, she said as she helped the old lady slip into the robe. You wouldn’t want me leaving a wet trail down the hall, would you?

Watch your mouth, young lady. I will not have that kind of talk in my house.

She suppressed an urge to throttle the woman.

God! I wish I was a man. Then, I’d have the guts to strangle you and end this, you old bitch.

She bit off the Yes, Momma, that came to her lips, an unnoticed act of defiance.

Warming now to a pet peeve, her mother proceeded to talk her way down the hall. Your father had a foul mouth, on occasion, and I never could abide it. A person who cannot control their mouth cannot control their life.

Colleen automatically shut out the flow of words, nodding at the appropriate places and wishing she were on the way to work. Momma had a great deal to say on a variety of subjects, delighting in finding fault in almost everyone and everything.

Her mother also had strong opinions on every person she worked with, disliking them all—suspicious of everything they did and said, providing incessant advice on how to respond to imagined offenses—advice ignored, but which nonetheless colored her actions, she suspected, and made her what she was.

As they descended the stairs, she pushed her mother to her death, cheering as she tumbled her way to the bottom, breaking her scrawny neck. As she poured her mother’s orange juice, she cheerfully added poison, spoonful after spoonful of the slow and infinitely painful kind. As she sliced the morning’s bread, she closed her eyes, and it was her mother’s throat parting under her knife, bright arterial blood leaping from table to floor in joyful cascade.

In the car, as she pulled from the driveway, she knew with certainty that this would be the day she left forever—would keep driving until her money ran out. As she pulled into the parking lot at the studio, she promised herself that she’d not go home at day’s end—a promise made every morning. But today, at last, it was finally true. To spend another night in her mother’s house, without taking action to save herself would be the death of her spirit. If she did go home, she’d let the hatred slip—would say something unguarded and foolish. There would be words, and then hate would take control as Momma died in more than fantasy.

Without surprise, she learned the latest affront to good sense, this time from Sue Hoffsteader, of accounting. It was only a rumor, but Sue was a reliable source, and claimed to have seen the memo that would soon be circulated.

Her mood was worse, if possible, as she flounced into the office and dropped her purse on the desk.

Good morning, Colleen.

If you say so, she grumped. Kyesha Dalton was one of the last people she wanted to meet. She always seemed to be in a good mood, especially now that her baby was due. The woman was, obviously, a stranger to bad luck.

But if it wasn’t for bad luck, I would have no luck at all.

Keysha was not only an immensely talented mimic, supplying the voices of most of the characters in the animated film they were making, she was married to a hugely successful and talented writer. The woman was everything she could never be, and it rankled that Kyesha should dine on happiness, while not even scraps were on her menu.

What is it today? Kyesha asked, shaking her head. Sometimes, Colleen, I think you’re at your happiest when you can bring unhappiness to others.

That rated a disgusted twist of the mouth, and, Well this unhappiness is real. Those morons in the front office have come up with yet another twist to do us out of our money.

And?

And raises can now only begin on the first full pay period of the month. The word through the grapevine is that they will announce it within the week.

And that means? Kyesha sounded puzzled. The woman was so out of touch with the day-to-day struggle to make a living that she didn’t catch the significance of the change. But she, after all, was a star, her salary negotiated by an agent. She seldom had to soil her hands by touching real money. For her, coffee was brought. For her, lunch was a signature on a chit, the bill paid by someone who worked for her—someone she’d probably never meet.

And that means that if your raise date is due in a pay period that overlaps a month, or is in the second two weeks in the month, your raise will not only be delayed. You’ll have to wait as much as thirty stinking days! Those bastards are always thinking up new ways to chisel us poor peons out of a buck.

I’d wait until you hear it as a fact before I’d worry, Kyesha said, mildly. An idea like that could well be shot down by management before it becomes policy.

Not in my lifetime, it won’t.

With a shake of the head, Kyesha turned away and began to walk toward the recording studio, taking only a few steps before she stopped, as though she’d remembered something important. She stood that way for a moment, head cocked and seeming lost in thought.

Then, before she could ask if there was a problem, Kyesha nodded, seeming to reach a decision. She turned and stalked back to the desk, extending her hand and saying, Give me your hand, Colleen. Her voice was hard, and brooked no disagreement or objection.

Mystified, she extended a hand. The action was unexpected, especially from someone normally as mild-mannered as Kyesha.

Taking the hand firmly in hers, Kyesha slipped a ring—taken from her own hand as she returned to the desk—onto her finger. Still holding her hand, and in the same no-nonsense voice she’d used in demanding it, Kyesha said, "You will wear this ring until it places you in a better mood. Okay? Then, and only then, will you pass it to another woman who needs its help. She held up a finger to stop any response, saying, No arguments. For now, just listen."

But I—

No buts. And no answers from me, either. You keep it in place until it’s time to pass it on. If you have any questions, wait until tomorrow. Then I’ll explain.

With that, she turned and strode away, leaving nothing to do but stare at her back as she passed through the door.

Nonplused, Returned to her desk, to sit, still shaking her head. She looked down at the ring, then at Kyesha’s back as she passed into her office, glad it was early enough that no one was watching.

Was that laughter? From Kyesha? As unlikely as that might be it seemed so—and so out of character for her. But why? Why the outburst, and why laughter? Nothing made sense, Kyesha’s behavior least of all. Frowning, she reached out a fingertip to touch the smooth stone of the ring, then shouted in absolute horror, as she found herself in mid-air, unsupported, and with the bright hard sheen of open water below.

Too frightened to even scream, she whimpered as she watched the water come up to greet her. Then there was only darkness.

° ° ° °

Chapter 3 - Jon

The weather was unusually warm for so early in April, making the idea of lounging in the local park a far better solution to a warm apartment than excavating the air-conditioner from the storage room.

A little early season sun, some study, a pleasant breeze, and maybe the chance to bump into an eligible young lady while in the park, conspired to push Jon out of the apartment and to his grassy resting place.

He held a textbook on thermodynamics, but ignored it, his attention on a nearby bench, some twenty feet away, where a pair of attractive young ladies sat in conversation, weighing icebreakers he might use the join them.

When the sprite entered his field of vision, he pressed back against the bole of the tree in an instinctive but wasted effort to escape whatever insect had selected him as its destination. As his eyes continued to feed him a flatly impossible picture, chaos ensued.

First came a general widening of his eyes, with a corresponding loosening of the muscles retaining his jaw in place.

There followed a period in which his eyebrows first drew down in suspicion and fear, then rose in wonder as the message being sent from his eyes refused to change. That series of events repeated rapidly, in succession. A little incoherent sputtering accompanied it, but was incidental—as was dropping the textbook—and not really part of the show.

Her expression said she was enjoying his reaction, but he was utterly helpless to control it. The final indignity was when she put a hand over her nose and mouth and tittered, a sound so high pitched as to be on the very edge of audibility, but which made him finally realize how stupid he must look.

Deliberately, tensing his muscles and forcing a slow deep breath, he managed to gain some measure of control. Wonder took over as she remained there, wavering in position slightly as she hovered, insisting on being quite real.

Instinctively, he held up a palm in invitation, and she settled onto it. She weighed as little as a puff of air, but still, her shifting weight in response to his slight movements attested to her reality. Shaking his head, he lowered the hand to a more comfortable position, one that brought her eyes level with his own.

No doubt at all: she was impossible, beautiful, and straight out of his deepest fantasies.

She was also very, very real.

Holding her steady so as not to startle, biting his lip in concentration, he studied her, ignoring the fact that she was studying him, too. He leaned to the side, to see her back. The engineer in him simply had to know how she flew. Catching his purpose, she turned around, looking over her shoulder to watch his expression.

Expecting to find a tiny backpack flight device, his jaw sagged anew. The wings were real. They grew—or at least originated—directly from the smooth but oddly shaped flesh of her back, which—aside from the wings—were the only non-human aspect about her. The muscles that drove those four tiny wings bulged her upper and lower back in an unfamiliar pattern. Not unbeautiful, though, just strange.

She turned to face him again, and with a tilt of the head and one raised eyebrow, spread her hands in a way that seemed to say, Here I am. What do you think?

Breathing, An alien being. A true visitor from another world, he shook his head in wonder, studying her even more closely, praying she wouldn’t fly away.

In size, she matched a Barbie doll—a bit larger than memory suggested. In appearance, she was magnificent. No other word fit. No longer translucent, her skin was a tawny golden-brown color, a perfect complement to the soft sunlight-gold of her hair. Her body was just as he remembered it, unclothed and breathtaking in its gracefully flowing lines. Adding the burden of clothing to that astounding body would have been close to sacrilege. A doll-sized body, yes, but definitely not the body of a doll, with kiss me nipples that didn’t quite match, and a figure that made him wish she were a great deal larger. With an effort, he suppressed the urge to reach out with a fingertip to stroke her side, to see if she was as delicately soft and touchable as she appeared. It was her face, though, that finally seized and held his attention. Pert and smiling, she had the kind of face to be admired from more than just a male human point of view. It was both a work of art and an example of engineering perfection.

Are you...are you from another planet? He didn’t really expect an answer. It was unlikely that she spoke English. Was she a space traveler, stranded, and needing help? That seemed as likely an explanation as any other.

Obviously, her species was the result of a long string of genetic manipulation. A tiny winged human certainly wouldn’t evolve naturally.

On reflection, perhaps she wasn’t a traveler in need of assistance, but instead, an explorer, whose lovely body contained life support and power systems to permit direct travel through space without a ship. An even more exciting idea.

He was surprised, therefore, when she shook her head in answer to his question, then took wing once more, the drone of her wings, and their movement, very like that of a dragonfly.

She moved away a few feet, before swooping toward his face, causing him to jerk backward and smack his head against the tree. For a moment she hovered—covering her laughing mouth—then moved in to take either side of his nose in her hands, the vibration of her wings transferring through her palms and tickling, generating the beginnings of a sneeze. Cross-eyed, he watched her lean in and kiss him on the nose, then back away to do a perfect double back-flip in the air, ending up hanging only a few feet from him, grinning, and blowing him a kiss.

She waved, then, and with an abrupt deepening and strengthening of the tone of her wing beats, darted upward and away, into the shelter of the trees.

After a second of stunned bemusement, he bolted to his feet, uncertain of what to do. Nothing in his life thus far could have prepared him for what just happened. There was also little doubt that should she not want him to find her, he wouldn’t.

Finally, he sagged to the ground, only to sit up again and look around, wondering if anyone had been watching—someone who would verify that he hadn’t been having a hallucination.

There was no one.

Eventually, he gave up waiting for the sprite to re-appear and returned to the apartment, trying to come up with an explanation that made sense.

Jon, you idiot. You fell asleep and dreamed the whole thing up.

He said it tentatively, trying it out for feel, but rejected it, as he did the possibility that he’d gone insane. Whatever she was, and however she got here, she was real.

Okay then, he said, thoughtfully. If she’s real, stranded here by an equipment malfunction, she’s remarkably blasé about it, so that’s probably out as a possibility. He next envisioned a species so advanced they could directly travel from world to world with no more effort than he might spend crossing the room—a species needing no technology other than what they carried in their bodies.

He shook his head. No, that doesn’t make sense, either. How would the young be fitted with the devices? Unless they don’t have young, and live forever?

There was a giggle from across the room, then, Do you always talk to yourself, Man? That brought him leaping to his feet, nervous system jangling an emergency alert. Discovering her standing by the living room window, hands-on-hips, and studying him, didn’t improve the situation.

I beg your pardon?

She cocked her head a bit and frowned—a positively gorgeous frown.

I asked if you always talked to yourself. Do you? The timbre of her voice was childlike, but the words carried the maturity of an adult, and her body most certainly wasn’t that of a child.

Even while his eyes goggled, the engineer in him noted that a high-pitched voice was probably the result of her size. A smaller voice box would vibrate at a higher pitch than his own. Small consolation, because his engineering background couldn’t begin to explain the fact that she now appeared to be about three feet tall, yet was either the same woman or a perfect reproduction. No doubt about that. You don’t forget such perfection, nor the small detail of the gauzy wings now lightly flexing backward as she brushed by his sofa.

Nor could he ignore the way she reached back to lightly hold her lower wingtips with cupped fingers as she bowed in greeting.

Hello, Man, I serve Tudo. My name is Melli.

Melli? A pitiful croak was all he could manage at this point.

She bent forward, tipping her head and studying his face intently, seeming to be seeking signs of intelligence.

Melli, she stated firmly.

Uhh...you serve...Tudo?

She blinked at him, obviously unsatisfied with his reaction to her presence, and his lack of comprehension. Finally, she drew herself up to full height, taking a deep breath—which had a profound effect on his libido—and said, I have been sent by Tudo—though in this place you would call it by another name. God, maybe? I’m not sure. She shrugged, then brightened. But whatever name it uses here, I am tasked with bringing you with me when we..." About to say something further, she stopped—blushing for no reason he could determine—and looked away, adding to his confusion.

Bring me...bring me with you? he asked, wonderingly. You were sent by God? This was a heavenly being? Rapidly reviewing his theology failed to provide enlightenment.

Finally, accepting the reality of the situation, if not its possibility, he held up a weak hand.

Please, I don’t understand. Are you an...angel? Am I dead, or am I...am I scheduled to die? He looked around the room, wondering what was going to kill him. Was the building destined