Fairalon

By TJ Roberts

Iris is an eleven year old girl with an embarrassing problem and a huge secret. She lost her mother at six and it changed her, it scared her to her core. Now she repeats almost everything she does, to make sure she gets it right, to make sure nothing that bad ever happens again. Only three people know her secret, her father, her grandmother and her doctor. Only one of them believes her.

With her grandmother’s passing, Iris inherits her grandmother’s house in the woods and all of its contents, including five ornately carved heavy wooden boxes. She loved her grandmother and knew there was something different about her, and something strange and wonderful about that house.

Moving day comes and along the road to her new home she sees something so bizarre it scares her. She tells her dad and the police, but nobody believes her. She sets out to prove she’s not crazy, and then things get really, really weird.

Fairalon is a middle grade / YA fantasy fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TJ Roberts
• Release date: Nov 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9780997007121

TJ Roberts

T.J. Roberts is an author and illustrator who holds a master’s degree in Counseling from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He has years of experience as a child & family therapist and crisis intervention specialist.If you download the book, I would love to hear what you thought of it. Thank you!

Book preview

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Fairalon

T. J. Roberts

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Fairalon books

Copyright © 2015 by T.J. Roberts

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Fairalon is dedicated to my incredible wife, Elizabeth, the finest and most honorable person I have ever met.

Acknowledgments

First, I'd like to thank my three daughters for teaching me what it's like to grow up as a girl. Who knew that borrowing a brush was a hanging offense.

I'd like to thank my parents for working so hard to get me here.

Thanks also goes to Renderosity, Runtime DNA, Smith Micro, Daz 3d and all the wonderful artists who create 3d content.

Contents

1. A Curious Phenomenon

2. A Trick of the Light

3. The Wink

4. Gram’s House

5. Five Little Boxes

6. Welcome to Airalon

7. Tiny Eyes

8. The Playroom

9. Splash Landing

10. Ninety-Nine Swings and I’m Gone

11. Ninja Fairy

12. Not So Crazy

13. Brothers

14. Bebb

15. The Mushroom Forest

16. The Mysterious Koan

17. Sacrifice

18. Rescue Mission

19. The Test

20. Free to Go

21. The Bargain

22. Beautiful Filthian

23. Lily Wakes

24. Heading Home

25. Grounded Troops

26. Reinforcements

27. Lost

28. Safe at Home

29. Busted

Epilogue

About the Author

Afterword

Chapter one

A Curious Phenomenon

O h no, not again, Iris thought, staring at the dreaded fine hairs standing straight up on both arms.

Lying down on the backseat of her father’s old car, she sat up quickly, her arms tingling.

I took my darn pills, you stupid hairs. Stay down.

Glancing at her father in the driver’s seat, to make sure he wasn’t looking in the rear-view mirror, she pushed the hair down on each arm, three times on the left, three times on the right, hoping he wouldn’t see. She had learned to hide some of the strange things she did, not wanting to alarm him, or have him think she was getting sick again.

Her father called them her behaviors, trying to be delicate and not insult her or make her feel worse about her problem. He never could separate her repetitive rituals from the strange things that she talked about or did, so he called everything her behaviors.

Go down, darn you, Iris mouthed to herself, pushing down harder on her arm hair, still standing at rapt attention.

No matter how she pushed and held or wiped with spit and held, it sprang back up immediately, only now wet, shiny and straight up.

Ugh. I’m disgusting, she thought, glaring at her glistening arm hair.

Iris scrunched down low in her seat, craning her neck up over the car door just enough to stare out the window. At only eighty-five pounds and nearly five feet tall, she filled the entire length of the backseat lying down. She was practically all legs and arms with a shock of red hair on top.

Her appearance did not go unnoticed at school where she had been nicknamed The Carrot by the other kids teasing her. She quickly learned how mean they could be and avoided them as much as possible. Their relentless teasing drove her indoors, into solitude, but she didn’t worry about them. She had other worries, bigger worries, like the hair-raising phenomenon that occurred just before something really weird happened. And a lot of weird things happened to Iris.

The first incident happened as she was riding her bike to town when suddenly the hair on her arms stood straight up. Stopping at the intersection, Iris watched the traffic go back and forth, waiting for a safe time to cross. Across the street, a little girl, possibly five years old, was walking toward the intersection. She seemed oblivious to the whizzing cars screaming by and was about to step off the curb into their path.

Iris screamed, Look out! then dropped her bike and ran across the street, dodging cars to stop the little girl. Horns blared as she got to the other side. She heard the sound of a crash and a loud crunch of metal behind her and turned to see what it was.

A garbage truck had jumped the curb, smashed into the corner light pole and landed on top of Iris’s bicycle in the exact spot she had been waiting to cross. Her bike lay crumpled beneath its enormous wheels. Had she been on it, she would have been crushed as well.

Iris turned back to scold the little girl to be more careful, but there was no little girl to be found. She looked everywhere, all around her. The girl was gone. People rushed to Iris exclaiming how lucky she was to have run across the street when she did. They asked how she knew to get out of the way, claiming it was a miracle she wasn’t killed. Iris glanced across the street, near the downed light pole and the hair on her arms stood up again. There was the little girl standing safely on the other side. She waved at Iris, smiled, and then disappeared like a puff of smoke in the wind. The hair on Iris’s arms lay down flat, as if nothing had happened.

But that was only the first time it happened and it wasn’t even close to the strangest thing she had seen. Once, while excused early from class for her weekly therapy appointment, the hair on her arms stood straight up. She was walking down the empty school hallway when she heard a loud slam of metal. At first, she thought it was just a draft from an open doorway, slamming a door closed. Then she saw it; an olive-green blur scurrying down the hall kicking lockers and forming huge dents in the metal doors. She could see the blur, hear a loud bang and then see a dent form. Some locker doors popped silently open and the green blur took great delight in dumping the locker contents to the floor. It went from locker to locker kicking, and if the locker door opened, it squealed with glee.

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Iris stopped cold in her tracks staring. At one point, the blur also stopped and came into focus. It appeared to be a small olive-green man with pointy ears and a pointy chin. He turned, as if he knew he was being watched and stared directly at her. He smiled a wicked proud I-dare-you smile and dumped the locker contents cackling. Then he disappeared into a blur, moving down the hall again kicking the remaining untouched lockers. Iris went on to her doctor’s appointment and made the mistake of telling the doctor what had occurred. When the doctor heard she was seeing little green men, he looked very concerned and doubled her medication.

Her father’s old car, a Bel Air, nicknamed Betsy, jerked hard left, hitting yet another crater in the road. Iris grabbed the front seat to steady herself.

Please don’t let me see anything too weird, she thought. I don’t want to go back to the doctor again.

Their car slowed to a crawl, her father driving more cautiously to avoid the pits in the road. Rather than helping, the low speed exaggerated the dips and sways every time they hit a new hole. Iris braced herself, holding her arms between the car door and the backseat. She could hear the car springs squeak and the old rusty undercarriage scrape as they bounced from hole to hole.

Hang on, Honey! Her father called from the driver’s seat. It gets worse before it gets better.

Squinting out the side window, her head jerked left and right, occasionally banging against the door. Iris did her best to avoid bumping her head, but the holes were deep and the car swayed violently. She was only able to see a lurching jerky view outside in brief glimpses as it bounced by her window. She watched and waited, staring at the disappearing and reappearing weeds and tall grasses lining both sides of the road. She wondered what would happen, when it would happen. What would it be this time?

Tapping her leg three times on the left, three times on the right, she hoped to calm herself. It wasn’t helping. The tall grasses funneled them forward with no way to stop, turn off, or escape the old road.

For a brief moment, they hit a smooth spot and on the side of the road an enormous solitary tree blocked the sun, temporarily flashing sunlight through its branches in bright blinding bursts. Iris squinted three times, then three times more.

Hanging from a large bough was a long wooden rope swing with a young boy riding back and forth, high and fast. He appeared to be talking out loud, or possibly singing. Iris could see his lips moving but couldn’t hear anything except the clunks and rattles of the bouncing car. As Betsy rolled and bumped closer to the huge tree, the hair on Iris’s arms shot up even straighter and higher. Her arms tingled.

Weird, weird, weird. she thought to herself. Nothing bad will happen, nothing bad will happen, nothing bad will happen.

She watched the little boy sway back and forth on the swing, rolled up the car window, and slunk down in her seat even lower. She didn’t want to be seen, but she craned her neck just high enough to peek out the window. She stared up at the swing and watched the boy blurring by. Spotting the car, he looked down on his backward swing. Their eyes met for one brief instant, and he smiled. Then on his forward swing, that’s when it happened.

Chapter two

A Trick of the Light

W ait, stop the car! Iris screamed.

Her father jammed on the brakes thinking he must have run over something. The car slid in the soft dirt, stopping at the edge of the road.

What? What’s wrong?

That boy!

Oh my God! her father shouted, What boy? Did I hit him?

Her father flew out of the car, circling bent over, frantically searching around the tires and fenders, looking for an injured boy. Iris flung open her door and ran toward the old tree swing, pointing at the empty seat still swaying.

What boy? her father repeated, Where?

There. There was a boy. There. Swinging…on that swing.

Her father’s mouth fell open in disbelief.

What! You made me stop for that?

But he wasn’t just swinging.

So? So what? he said, catching himself shouting.

He took a deep breath and sighed, relieved but still angry.

Iris, you scared the crap outta me.

No, but he, he just disappeared… in a flash of light. I saw it.

Her father let out another deep breath and wiped back his hair with his hand. He sighed once more; grateful he had not hurt anyone.

Iris, he said, with less irritation in his voice, he couldn’t have just disappeared. He probably… he probably just jumped off.

No. There was like a flash or something, and then he was gone… but the swing kept going. I saw it.

Honey, people don’t just disappear. It must have been a trick of the light through the trees, an optical illusion or something. Did you, he hesitated slightly, not wanting to ask, umm… did you um, you know, for today?

Iris looked away. She bit her bottom lip hard and took a deep breath to hold back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes.

Yes, I took my pills already, Daaad. Thanks for believing me, she replied, her voice cracking. It’s not that. I know what I saw.

Okay, okay. Sorry. Whatever you saw, he’s not here now, so let’s get back in the car. Okay, Hon? We have a lot to do. I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is. Probably having a good laugh on us from the bushes with his pals.

Iris got back in the car ranting under her breath.

Fine, don’t believe me, she growled, gesturing wildly with her arms, mumbling loud enough to be heard. "Nobody ever believes me. Crazy Iris just saw a boy disappear on a swing, but nooo, she must have forgotten to take her stupid pills, except-she-didn’t forget."

Her father could see how upset she was.

Iris, honey, it’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just…it’s just that there’s nobody there. Okay?

I know, Iris thought, but dared not say. He freaking disappeared. It’s crazy, I know, but it happened. I saw it.

Iris slammed the car door closed and continued to mumble in the backseat. She hammered the door lock down with her fist, pulled it up, hammered it, then up once more and down for the third time, finally satisfied. As they drove away, she turned to look out the back window. She stared at the tree swing as it grew smaller and smaller, still swaying back and forth in the distance.

It’s not every day you see somebody disappear in a flash of light, she muttered, still loud enough to be heard.

Her father kept driving pretending not to hear.

I know what I saw, she thought. But where did he go?

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Chapter three

The Wink

It was only a few weeks earlier that everything had changed, and their strange new journey had begun. Iris’s grandmother had passed away and her funeral was open casket. Iris had never been to an open casket funeral and it was bizarre.

There was Gram; laid out for everyone to see. It was as if she was sleeping on a stage, waiting to be awakened. Iris walked up to pay her last respects and that’s when she saw it, or thought she saw it. The hair on both of Iris’s arms was standing straight up.

Did Gram just wink at me? she said, too low for anyone to hear.

Iris stared at Gram’s face, unable to turn away but afraid to look.

Not again, she said to herself. I’m supposed to be better.

The color ran from her cheeks as she scanned the room to see if anyone else noticed, someone who could confirm what she saw.

Did I just see that? she wondered. Did that just happen?

Iris grabbed the polished aluminum prayer rail to keep from falling backwards and played back the last few minutes in her mind. She saw herself walking into the funeral parlor, staring into the puffy-eyed, sad, pitying faces. She remembered total strangers coming up to her and patting her on the head like a dog, each giving their version of condolences.

Poor child, they said patting, to lose your mother and your grandmother. So sad. Tragic really.

She remembered staring at all the strange looking people in the room, wondering who they all were. There was the unusually tall stalk of a woman wearing a lime green flowered-hat with live growing flowers in it and matching lime green shoes.

Is that even a style? Iris wondered. Live flowers in a hat? And those shoes? Gag me.

She remembered the flower-lady looking right at her, smiling, and then mouthing, It is, as if to answer her question right after she thought it. Iris quickly looked away and avoided any further eye contact with the woman. She reset her gaze on Gram who looked perfectly healthy laying there in her coffin, like she was napping.

How creepy, Iris mumbled to herself, Gram would have hated this. She would never wear so much makeup. She always said it made her look like a doll.

D-Dad, did you see that? she called to her father standing nearby, Dad?

Her father was distracted; consoling a short white-bearded man wearing what seemed to be a poorly fitted rental suit and a brown bowler hat. The tiny man stood out because he was the only man wearing a hat, and he looked like a bearded child wearing grownup clothes.

His pants hung over his shoes and his jacket seemed two sizes too big. Only his hat seemed to fit properly and sat snug on his head, pulled low. He was sobbing hysterically, frequently wiping tears from his round wire rim glasses with his multicolored flower embroidered handkerchief.

Beside himself with grief, he kept shouting, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry! over and over again.

Reviews for Fairalon

[DiDonovan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Eleven-year-old Iris already has strikes against her: she's the new kid in town, and her quirky behaviors involve repetitive rituals and actions that have, in the past, been labeled an illness.

Now she knows they're something more: they are instinctive reactions to her strange and evolving abilities, and they hold the power to alert her of future disasters. That's why she was able to save a young girl from a peculiar car accident, and why she sees things others don't.

The first thing to note about this captivating fantasy is that it's liberally peppered with full-color (and well-done) illustrations that enhance its story line. From autos in the woods to strange mischievous beings, Fairalon is packed with visual interludes that enhance the story without taking it over completely. Middle-grade readers will thus appreciate the enhancements which create visual interest in Iris's adventures.

The second notable feature of Fairalon is an attention to supplementing a fantasy adventure feel with the realistic saga of a young girl's evolving perceptions of her powers, her world, and whom she can trust. Fueled by strong psychological insights and solid character development, it's a story young readers will empathize with as they read about Iris's unusual challenges.

Fairalon excels in a steady plot that offers several twists and turns and much insight on not just the origins of inherited traits, but choices in how power is wielded.

Middle school fantasy fans will be enthralled as Iris' world expands in unanticipated directions. It should be mentioned that its conclusion paves the way for more books, yet completes her story in a manner that is satisfying and exact, making for a fine introduction to what might become a series. An exciting blend of adventure, psychological insight, and beautiful illustrations make Fairalon a prime pick in its genre.