The Way Home

By Carol Holland March

An anthology of visionary stories about finding your true home. The second edition of The Way Home contains the title novella and eight short stories about people seeking what is lost, following clues from just beyond the veil. A metaphysical treat for those who like their stories off the beaten path, their fantasy balanced on the edge of reality.

Two lovers cling to each other in the ruins of their world. Only The Call of the Benu can save them, but will she come in time?

In Desert Song, a young woman embarks reluctantly on a road trip where she is chased by a ghostly skeleton and faces buried memories so she can open to herself to love for the first time.

A thoroughly urban poet searches for home in the desert she has always feared and follows a wolf to meet her destiny in The Conversation.

In the title novella, a volcano threatens the Valley of the Caheya and a priestess sets out to recover the stolen crystal that can save her people. But facing the demon and the venomous black sea that guard the crystal is just the beginning. Mata must confront her ancient past and her desire for revenge if she is to save the Caheya from extinction. The Way Home is a journey into the past to save the future as Mata seeks redemption from an unlikely source.

“To enter Carol Holland March's imagination is both thrilling and rewarding. Her writing opens up worlds of possibilities.”

Lisa Lenard-Cook
Author of Dissonance and Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

“The Way Home by Carol Holland March includes a novella and eight additional stories in which she writes about relationships in a way that takes us into a special world of energetically charged incidents and seemingly impossible feats. It's the best type of story-fest: in which fantasy crosses into reality and back again. I highly recommend you explore the offerings in The Way Home.”

Mary Ellen Merrigan, The Merrigan Group

“Carol Holland March, in The Way Home, a collection of eight short stories and a novella, harnesses her narrative skill to evoke worlds both familiar and fantastic. Her strong command of language lets her move freely from Chevy trucks bouncing down rutted roads to the immanent realms of legend in which spirit longs to realize itself.”

Michael Gray
Author of Asleep at the Wheel of Time, The Flying Caterpillar, and Falling on the Bright Side

“The Way Home is an intriguing fantasy collection. Carol Holland March’s writing is crisp and elegant, weaving her own magic into each captivating story. From the real world, where there is more than we imagined, to fantasy realms that seem real, Holland March brings a unique perspective sure to delight.”
Maer Wilson, Author of the Modern Magics series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carol Holland March
• Release date: Aug 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310779817

Carol Holland March

Carol Holland March lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she writes about the intersection of dreams, reality, and time. She sets her speculative fiction in locations where the veil is thinnest. She teaches classes on writing and creativity at the University of New Mexico and blogs at CarolHollandMarch.com.Her newest release is a nonfiction book, When Spirit Whispers, the first in a planned series on Healing from Trauma.

Book preview

The Way Home

Carol Holland March

~~~

Smashwords Edition

The Way Home

Second Edition

Carol Holland March

Copyright © 2014 Carol Holland March

Published by Compass Rose Press

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Cover Design by Graphicz X Designs http://graphiczxdesigns.zenfolio.com

Copyedited by Margo Bouchard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without the express permission of the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing text. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be given away or re-sold. 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.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Desert Song

The Call of the Benu

Dreaming In and Out

The Conversation

They Followed Me

Insemination

La Loba

The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly

The Way Home

-Chapter 1

-Chapter 2

-Chapter 3

-Chapter 4

-Chapter 5

-Chapter 6

-Chapter 7

-Chapter 8

-Chapter 9

A Note from the Author

Acknowledgments

To enter Carol Holland March's imagination is both thrilling and rewarding. Her writing opens up worlds of possibilities.

Lisa Lenard-Cook

Author of Dissonance and Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

"The Way Home by Carol Holland March includes a novella and eight additional stories in which she writes about relationships in a way that takes us into a special world of energetically charged incidents and seemingly impossible feats. It's the best type of story-fest: in which fantasy crosses into reality and back again. I highly recommend you explore the offerings in The Way Home."

Mary Ellen Merrigan, The Merrigan Group

"Carol Holland March, in The Way Home, a collection of eight short stories and a novella, harnesses her narrative skill to evoke worlds both familiar and fantastic. Her strong command of language lets her move freely from Chevy trucks bouncing down rutted roads to the immanent realms of legend in which spirit longs to realize itself."

Michael Gray

Author of Asleep at the Wheel of Time, The Flying Caterpillar, and Falling on the Bright Side

"The Way Home is an intriguing fantasy collection. Carol Holland March’s writing is crisp and elegant, weaving her own magic into each captivating story. From the real world, where there is more than we imagined, to fantasy realms that seem real, Holland March brings a unique perspective sure to delight."

Maer Wilson, Author of the Modern Magics series

The Way Home

Carol Holland March

Desert Song

The Chevy truck looked like it had been painted by a team of monkeys on acid. Its front was bright green, the rear a muddy brown, and the camper stuck on its back sported daubs of pink and yellow in no apparent pattern.

Bought it from a hippie, Ray yelled as he passed the kitchen window. We still said things like that in 1982.

I bolted out the back door in time to see the truck struggle around the corner into what passes for our backyard but looks more like a car cemetery.

The thing looked even worse standing still. The passenger door was hanging on one hinge with a single strand of rope preventing it from peeling off entirely. The windshield was cracked from what appeared to be a bullet hole. It had no front fender and one headlight. When Ray shut off the motor, it kept running for about a minute. I thought it whimpered a couple of times too, but that might have been me. Ray said that he'd gotten it for almost nothing which seemed about right.

Ray doesn't get enough auto repairing to suit him at his job at the Ford dealer downtown, so it's not unusual for him to show up with stray vehicles that he fixes up to sell. It brought in extra money, which we needed to survive in San Francisco, even though we lived in a rundown flat in the fog belt a block from Ocean Beach, so close to the zoo we heard the lions roaring at night.

I didn’t mind him working on his vehicles on the weekends, but when I saw that truck, I thought he had gone too far. If you’d told me then that I would set out across the western plains in that heap and be chased by a skeleton to boot, I would have called you crazy.

That’s the sorriest-looking vehicle I’ve ever seen, I told him.

He gave me a hug, crushing me against his chest. I know it looks bad, Franny, but the engine’s sound. I can fix up the camper just like home. You’ll see.

I didn’t say anything.

So, are you mad?

No. But we’re having dinner with Rita and Jake. Their place. Six sharp.

Aw, Franny. Why don’t you let me barbecue up something here?

Because we promised.

Aw, Franny, he said again, but a smile was threatening to break out on his solemn face as he went into the shed to look for the right tool.

I left him to it and got going on my errands. As I pointed my Honda north on the coast road, the fog was so heavy you wouldn't have known there was an ocean right there except for the roaring sound the waves made as they broke on Ocean Beach. It was late July, and we hadn’t seen the sun for weeks, which didn't bother me like it did Ray.

He’s a desert guy from Texas. He had lived all over the southwest and happened to be working a temporary job at the BART repairing subway cars when I met him at a neighborhood bar in East Oakland. I had just hit town and was temping at a law office in Berkeley while I looked for a way to move into the city. He was pretty smitten with me, and would have agreed to just about anything, so I guess I took advantage when I convinced him we could make more money and afford a better place if we crossed the bridge.

It took me a while to figure out he wasn’t just being ornery about the fog that hangs over the Outer Sunset much of the year. I thought he would get used to it, that in time the sea would work itself into his soul, and be would be happy living on the edge of the world. Instead, he got quieter. Worked longer hours. Gave me a hard time about things I couldn’t help, like mildew in the closets. He shriveled up like an old fig in the sea spray that rusts our cars and makes me feel invincible. It was one of the things we could not reconcile.

Ray worked on the truck the rest of the summer. By Labor Day, it looked better. That weekend he asked me to marry him again, this time trying his luck after we had made love.

We'll take a trip for our honeymoon, he said, curling himself around my back.

In that truck? No way. I can't sleep over the cab with the ceiling a couple of inches above my head.

We don't have to use the cab. The dinette folds out into a bed.

Sleep in the kitchen?

Then we'll fly to Paris. How would that be?

I'm afraid to fly.

So it'll have to be the truck. He kissed the back of my neck. Neither of us mentioned that I hadn't answered his question.

I hated thinking about what we would do with ourselves in the desert for three weeks, but since I wouldn't marry him, have kids, or move to a warmer climate, I was pretty much out of excuses for a road trip. So the day after he finished painting it, in late September, we took off. I was grouchy and tense as we cruised down the interstate toward Los Angeles in the camper now painted turquoise and metallic purple to please me.

It took most of the day to get through the Central Valley—green fields, an occasional barn, flat as Kansas. Ray got lost in the driving, looking as happy as I'd ever seen him, and handsome too in a new plaid shirt, bright green, his sandy brown hair slicked back. His strong hands gripped the steering wheel, and he hummed along with the radio no matter what tune was playing. Every once in a while, he turned to me and curled up the corners of his mouth, like he wanted to tell me something but wasn't sure how to start. I smiled back, determined to say nothing to spoil his mood, and kept on reading the Tony Hillerman novel I'd brought along to get me in the mood for my return to the desert.

As we crossed the Tehachapi Mountains and headed through the Los Padres forest, a full moon rose between two jagged mountain peaks. In Los Angeles, we picked up I-10 going east and soon were doing seventy-five through the suburbs.

That thick, yellow moon was shining its pale light right at me. I asked Ray to pull over so I could look at it from a stationary perspective, but he just looked at me sideways. There were cars all around—four, maybe five lanes—and metal guardrails on the right side instead of a shoulder, so I took his point that stopping to look at the scenery wasn't the best idea I ever had.

Franny. His fingers closed over my knee. It’s going to be fine. We’ll sleep outside tonight if you want.

The tears that had been blocking my throat since we pulled out of the driveway rolled down my face. I was relieved to taste the salt.

Maybe nothing has changed, I said.

Is that what has you spooked?

His blue eyes searched for me in the dark cab.

You’re a grown-up woman now, Franny. What happened back then is long gone. Besides, I’m here now.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He knows why I hate the LA desert, land of my birth, where my mother raised me to go along with whatever came along.

On the night I ran away, fourteen years ago, Ada's face had been pale and angular with orange lips and blue eye shadow. She sat at a metal table in the kitchen of an apartment stinking of fried food and spilled beer. I cowered in a narrow bed, trying not to hear the grunts coming from the next room.

Two days before, the guy I was living with had gotten so high he tried to run me down with his car. The leering yellow lights bore down fast, but I rolled away at the last minute. I ran down the street and straight into a man in a uniform. I collapsed into his arms, sobbing with relief. But the cop knew a crazy woman when he saw one and marched me off to the station. It wasn't until the next evening that Ada got around to coming for me.

She took me to her apartment in west LA where I sat shivering in the tiny bedroom until she and her boyfriend went into the kitchen to eat. Later I went out, thinking he had gone, but he was hunched over the table drinking whiskey out of a dirty glass. He looked at me with dull black eyes and pulled his lips back over big yellow teeth. Knowing that look, I tried to leave, but it was too late.

She made some protest, I remember that, but he was too strong. Did he hit her too? That I don’t remember. Only the blows across my head and back until I was quiet for fear his mindlessness would kill me. Afterward he left, slamming the door so hard the walls rattled.

I heard her crying in the other room, drunken sobs that had little to do with me. I cleaned myself up, took the suitcase I hadn't gotten around to unpacking, and got in my car. Drove all the way to Tucson. That was the last time I saw her.

She’s in Albuquerque, I said to Ray, shivering in the warm night air at how clear memories can be. A few letters reached me over the years. Once or twice I wrote back, with