Beneath A Separate Sky

By Kaiya Hart

There are girls who dream of discovering they are secretly a princess. Skylar Payne is not one of them. She's a regular girl who's biggest worry is avoiding the school bully. Until she falls through a doorway into a magic world. Now she's trying to survive werewolves, witches, and accidentally turning people into penguins, all while trying to figure out who - and what - she really is. For a girl whose biggest wish was to be invisible, finding out she's at the top of everyone's most wanted list is not a dream come true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kaiya Hart
• Release date: Dec 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370296071

Kaiya Hart

Kaiya Hart was born in 1977 in Villa Grove, Illinois and raised by wolves (the nice kind). She was married in 2001 to Tim Mann (and, consequently, the Air Force). Since then she has lived in Germany, Texas, and England, where the couple currently reside with their two dogs and one cat. Most often, she is known as that crazy, quiet person lurking in corners at the parties. Kaiya's favorite books are Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King's IT, and Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin. Beagle is also her favorite author of all time. Kaiya has been writing for 15 years, mostly for her own amusement since there are stories she wants to read that just haven't been written. She focuses on fantasy and horror, but 'writes whatever happens into her head' and doesn't limit herself to any one thing.

Book preview

Beneath A Separate Sky

A Skylar Payne Novel

©2017 Hart

Smashwords Edition

All Characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to

persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United

States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the

material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the

express, written permission of Kaiya Hart.

For My Family

Chapter One

Once upon a time… oh please. What a tired opening, right? Anyway, this is no fairytale. Boy, you got to believe that. First of all, there was no prince riding to my rescue—although one did try to capture me. I am not a princess with hair long enough to climb, and no one locked me in a tower. There was magic, but nobody got turned into a frog or anything. Okay, well, one person did get turned into a penguin, but I sort of suspect he deserved it, and anyway, it was an accident.

The truth is, I’m one of those people who are so far away from ‘princess’ that I actually exist on a different planet. It isn’t like I’m one of those people who detest princesses either. Secretly I would have jumped on the first fairy godmother who offered to make me one, a proper one with, like, golden hair and glass slippers and a knock-out body. That is the one fairytale creature I didn’t manage to find, and the way things went I’m not sure I’d want to. After all, if magic can turn one person into a penguin....

That’s sort of the way things really work, too. It wasn’t just me being clumsy like I always am. Seriously, I once broke my arm tripping on thin air. It turns out magic is like electricity. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it might just fry you. Sometimes it fries you even if you do know what you’re doing.

Of course, I’m jumping way ahead of myself, another thing I do pretty regular like tripping over thin air. I’ll always think of it beginning in Principal Pratchet’s office in my high school.

I’m not a trouble maker. That was the first time I’d ever seen the inside of the principal’s office. I wasn’t a butt kisser either. I was one of those safe, invisible, non-entity kids that fill up every high school. No one, not even most of my teachers, was likely to remember my name five minutes after I left the room. I walked the middle of the road with grades just above passing, never doing a damn thing anyone was likely to remember me for. I liked it that way. Sort of. I mean, who doesn’t want to be great at something? Only I wasn’t, and I couldn’t see much hope for the future and so I determined it was just safer to keep cruising in mediocrity. And I was good at that. Then along came Tai and ruined my perfectly good plan of staying invisible until graduation. Yeah, Tai was good at ruining everyone’s plans.

It was January of my junior year. If it hadn’t been for the event that landed me in the principal’s office, the whole tale might be a whole lot different. I’m pretty sure there is a good chance I wouldn’t even be here to tell it.

There was no file for Skylar Payne in the principal’s neat little filling cabinet in the corner of the room behind his desk. The secretary had to dig out my admission form from freshman year to make sure I was even a student. I didn’t just try not to make trouble, I avoided it like a fat kid avoiding salad. I had too much bad luck without asking for more. I worked hard at being the most boring person I knew in existence and that included the candidates in the presidential debates my parents watched every four years. I actually wanted to be one of those kids people see in their year book and can’t remember ever seeing in person. It was easier that way. Safer. Until that singular lapse in judgment, I was doing a pretty good job of being a ghost. I didn’t join groups or clubs, I didn’t play sports, I didn’t even play in the band. I was utterly unknown.

I was a complete failure as a teenager, but that didn’t really bother me. I blamed that on the universe, the lack of worthwhile gifts it granted me, and the ill luck that haunted me. I didn’t think it was an easy way to justify laziness, like my mom would sometimes say. I think it was the truth; when you’ve got nothing, there isn’t much point in trying to be something. That was my philosophy, at any rate. Mom worked hard at changing my mind and finding something I would love. She enrolled me in ballet, karate, singing lessons, and a thousand other things that I had no talent for or desire to do and all of which I found the first excuse to quit. She used to get pretty irate with me, and if you saw my mother, you would understand. She had the long, golden hair and cornflower blue eyes of fairytales. She had a lithe figure, an innate grace, and an aptitude for every single thing she ever tried. My dad used to say that everything Mom touched turned to gold and it did. I used to believe—and still do—that she could rule the world if she had the inclination. I always thought it must have been so frustrating for her to have been saddled with me as a daughter.

Most of my high school career was spent sitting in the back of the classroom and walking down the hallways staring at my feet. That last part was because I tended to trip on nothing when I took my eyes off the ground. I also tended to run into an inordinate amount of open doors. Most of the teachers had enough trouble remembering my name that, more than once, I saw them refer to their seating charts before calling on me, and they weren’t substitutes. They had been teaching there for years longer than I had been alive. It didn’t upset me; it was part of the plan I had for my whole life. To be as ordinary and invisible as humanly possible. Then, without even the courtesy of a warning, my teenage hormones decided that wasn’t good enough. One moment of stupidity later and I was sitting in the principal’s office trying hard not to cry or die of fear.

Now Skylar, why don’t we start at the beginning? Mr. Pratchet, my high school principal, was speaking in that highly reasonable voice adults use when they think you are being a stupid kid. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his midsection.

You can picture me, if you like, although I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you. I’m good at disappointing people. I was, and am, square. I’m one of those girls that are cursed with absolutely no figure whatsoever. It isn’t that I’m fat, exactly, although I might have a few soft edges. I don’t have much of a chest, as my friend Jo-Anne likes to point out—she’s so thin she makes stick insects look fat—and I don’t have a butt. Everything about me is in straight lines. I’m not big, just sort of short, and given a different figure, might be considered delicate. As it is, I just look sort of…solid. My hair is nondescript brown and my skin, while just splotchy enough to keep me from liking it, is not splotchy enough to call attention to me. Everything about me, except maybe my eyes, seems determined to be as unnoticeable as it is possible to be. I sat there in the arm chair, which was the sort that looks nice and comfy but really isn’t, sweating slightly because the room was a little too warm.

I stared at Mr. Pratchet’s heavy jowls and the cunning sparkle of his eyes and sank lower into my chair, which felt like concrete under me despite the cushion. Behind him, outside the glass window separating his office from the main office, I could see Tai sitting backwards on a hard, wooden chair. His muscular arms were crossed over the back and his chin was resting on top of them. His dark, spiked hair was gleaming and his jaw was flexing as he stared at me with his pitiless black eyes. I shivered. Had I been Catholic I would have crossed myself to ward off the devil. I already told you everything, I said.

You haven’t told me about the knife, Mr. Pratchet said in a soft, polite voice. Why don’t you tell me about that and then you can go on back to class.

I started to tell him. I’m not used to lying to adults, but my tongue froze to the top of my mouth. For one thing, no one got hurt, and, for another, I might get hurt if I went around telling tales on Tai. That was certainly what he was promising as he watched me and gritted his teeth. I don’t remember a knife, I lied, flushing even as I said it.

Brad told us all about it, Mr. Pratchet said. Now, if you will just go ahead and back up his story, we can let you get back to your teacher. Doesn’t that sound nice? He dangled it in front of me as if there was a reward in being turned into a sacrificial lamb. I knew what he wanted. He wanted a reason to kick Tai out, a good one, and it did not matter to him who he had to use to get there. He didn’t care if Tai came after me, so long as it wasn’t on school grounds and he didn’t have to deal with it. He didn’t give a damn that I would probably end up cut to ribbons in some alley somewhere, and why should he? No one besides my family and Jo-Anne were likely to notice I was even gone.

I stopped the words that wanted to come tumbling out, simply because I wasn’t used to saying ‘no’ to authority figures. Swallowing down my side of the story made my throat hurt and my stomach ache. I really can’t help you, Mr. Pratchet. I’m sorry.

His smile faded, but the ice pick stabbing at my heart wasn’t because of him. I knew there wasn’t anything he could do to me that was half as frightening as the retribution Tai could—and would most assuredly—deal out. Mr. Pratchet was not a bad man and I thought it was likely that, like most people, he worked hard at following the rules and not hurting other people. Tai was not that sort of person. I was watching him over Mr. Pratchet’s shoulder and slowly freezing to death in the glacial glare he was giving me. It promised he knew plenty of ways to make me sorry if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, and he wasn’t afraid to use any one of them.

Maybe we should call your parents then. Maybe you would like to tell them the truth. I’m sure they will be concerned with your lack of…cooperation. Mr. Pratchet’s hand reached for his phone, a relic of the days before everyone had a cell phone in their back pocket. It looked like it had been left on his desk just to be intimidating and it was working; its black case gleamed like the shell of a particularly nasty insect crouching there, waiting to jump at my face and bite it off.

I shrugged and tried to pretend that I wasn’t even a little scared, but my heart was already racing as I imagined how angry my mother was going to be. He picked up the phone and started dialing the number for my house. I watched his pudgy fingers pressing the buttons, praying blindly that Mom would be out shopping or having lunch with a friend. She didn’t own a cell phone; within a day or two of bringing one home, they always went nuts and died, so she stopped buying them. I was hoping for a momentary reprieve, time enough to think my way out of this situation without ending up in worse trouble. I was hoping desperately for some sort of magic solution. Knowing what I know now about magic, I’d say I’m lucky it wasn’t an option in Chicago. Magic has a funny way of taking everything literal. If you ask for someone to leave you alone, you might find yourself in a room without windows and doors where you have to be alone. Or they might turn into dust or end up in the middle of the ocean, depending on how you phrase it. The words ‘bug off’ certainly offer wonderful promise for disaster. If you pray for someone to be out, as in, out of the house, they might suddenly be outside. Guess what happens if they live on the third floor. Or the thirtieth.

There really wasn’t much chance Mom wouldn’t be in. She only went shopping on Saturdays, and she didn’t have any friends to go out to lunch with. My mother excelled at leading the charge, like she excelled at everything, and people followed her suggestions even when they didn’t know her name, but her natural perfection seemed to keep everyone at a distance. Nobody likes to go out shopping with someone that makes them feel pathetic and small. I knew the only way she wasn’t going to pick up was if something had happened to the phone in the three hours since I had left for lunch, and I never got lucky like that.

I heard the other end connect on the third ring. I bowed my head and stared at my fingers as he spoke to my mother, swallowing hard when I heard her voice rise a little, asking what I had done. I could tell she was angry. She almost never spoke above that well-bred, even voice that always made other people comment on what a lady she was. Mr. Pratchet hung up the phone and gave me a self-satisfied smile. Your mother is on her way. Why don’t we just sit here and talk while we wait for her?

He wasn’t going to get much out of me; I had decided he was a sadistic toad by then. Grown-ups always make such a big deal out of treating other people with care and trying to have empathy for others, but they never seem to be talking about themselves. So I folded my fingers together, pressed my lips into a tight line, and started staring back at Tai. Not because I wanted to communicate with him, but because I wanted to see if I could make him vanish into thin air by willing it. Looking back, I feel a little ashamed of that. He might have had the knife, but it isn’t like he asked me to go poking my nose into his business. And, yet again, I’d like to point out it was a good thing we lived in Chicago, not someplace a little more, um, enchanted.

I wasn’t born in Chicago, but I lived my whole life there with my family. Which was just me, my mom, my dad, and my brother, Tommy. Excepting a particularly impressive miracle, I must have had grandparents at one point, but Mom and Dad always refused to talk about them. They refused to talk about the possibility of aunts, uncles, cousins, or even a distant friend of a friend of a friend to a parakeet one of my grandparents might have owned. Both our parents were adamant that anything to do with our relations was off limits. Mom said the four of us were family enough and then she would go off to clean something like she always does when she is upset. Dad tried to tell us that there is nothing really wrong and just not to bother her, but I couldn’t help but wonder what they were hiding and why. I mean, they wouldn’t even promise to tell me later. They just flat refused any sort of discussion on the whole topic.

I used to get tired of all the secrets and wish that they would just tell me the truth. I noticed by the time I was eight that there were a lot of things Mom and Dad wouldn’t talk about or would just give vague answers for. Like where they were from originally. Mom would flap her hands southward and say ‘away’. Then she would go clean something else. Tommy liked to tell me that Mom and Dad were heirs to some throne who had defected over a political skirmish, but my brother had a way of trying to make us all fit into one of the fantasy stories he was always reading, so I never listened much to him. I decided at one point or another that Mom and Dad were secret agents that had met on a mission, fallen in love, and given up their life of international intrigue to raise a family. Lame, I know, but I was about nine or ten when I came up with it. Based on all the movies and books I’d ever read, it seemed logical at the time. As I grew older, I let go of the fantasy…mostly. I tried to accept that, as far as my parents were concerned, life started in Chicago. It wasn’t like it was a terrible thing.

It made us a close family. I mean, we went out to movies and hung out at dinner. Sometimes, like when Tommy was in a play, we all got dressed up and went to see him. My parents weren’t the sort that left us home while they went and had fun; where they went, we went, and we all had fun together. I had few friends, and except for Jo-Anne, they were the sort of friends you have because the high school cliques had taken all the other tables in the lunch room and you were the odd ones out, so my parents and brother were my real friends.

I knew I was supposed to avoid my parents on principle alone, but I never wanted to. Jo-Anne always said it was unnatural and used a whole lot of big words to explain why teenagers are supposed to hate their parents, but I just didn’t. I still don’t. They weren’t buddy-buddy with us, like some kids’ parents try to be, but they were there and they would listen quietly to anything we wanted to tell them. They grounded us when they had to, but they tried very hard to be fair. Tommy persisted that all kings and queens knew how to be fair and would go on to outline his theory of abdicated rulers from a strange land, but that’s my little brother for you. He isn’t obnoxious or mean the way some boys are, but he is always lost in some sort of fantasy world. And he was determined to take everyone else along for the ride. The funny part was that I used to wish he was right. Of course, our parents would have done us a huge favor if they hadn’t actually looked the part. They were both beautiful and far more gracious and well-spoken than anyone else we knew, and, well, it was easy to imagine them sitting on thrones and being all regal and whatnot because the whole world was wrapped around their little fingers anyway.

The only person in the world, fair or not, who scared me worse than Tai ever could was my Mom. She didn’t hit or yell or insult or anything that anyone would call abuse. She was, as so many people pointed out, a true, honest to goodness, lady. Good breeding is what they call it in old movies. There was this sophistication that oozed out of her even when she was standing still and not saying a word. I had never, even during our fights about my lack of interest in anything, heard her raise her voice. She didn’t need to. She was really, really good at making me feel like I might be on the verge of a heart attack every time she got mad at me.

Sometimes there are people in high school who grow up and go away and become gorgeous. Those who knew them swear they can’t believe it and go on and on about how they never would have guessed. If you are looking for it, you can always spot those people. You can just tell by looking at them that someday they will look completely different, that it’s the whole ugly duckling thing. The shape of their face is hidden under extra weight or bad skin, but it is still there and it is still beautiful, it just isn’t blatant and most people don’t bother to look after their first impression. I am not one of those beautiful people waiting for age to reveal how gorgeous I am. I’m just me. When I look in the mirror, the girl looking back at me is the one I’m going to be for the rest of my life. It isn’t always bad; the less you have going for you in the looks department, the less people expect out of you as a general rule.

Sure I wanted to be pretty. I never really expected it to happen, though. It never did, either. If you thought this was one of those stories about some girl turning into Claudia Schiffer overnight, forget it. I am now what I was then. A square little rock in a world full of diamonds. I just like myself a little bit more.

I went along, happily unexceptional, expecting nothing.

Then, BOOM! One day I look up and see Brad Evans smiling at me and I get my first real crush, late and unwelcome. I would find myself daydreaming about him all the time and it was horrifying. Brad Evans was the quarterback, who wouldn’t have looked at me even if I streaked the school cafeteria naked. The one smile he shot my way was an accident; the real recipient had been the head cheerleader, Debbie Miller, standing behind me. I wasn’t just invisible to him. I had never even been born on his planet. I used to daydream that he fell in love with my personality and didn’t care about how I looked. I also used to daydream that I was curvy and beautiful and popular like Debbie, but it was the sort of daydreaming you do when you want something completely impossible, like to be the skateboard champion of the world. You know you aren’t going to ever have it, so you might as well dream about it anyway.

I know it sounds like I’m whining, that I’m being a drama queen and focusing on the negative. I’m just being completely honest. I was nothing special. I was so flat and featureless that there are blank pieces of paper that are more interesting. Mom used to say that I was just going through an awkward stage and that everyone is good at something. I immediately dismissed that as one of those fairytales parents tell their children to keep them from realizing they really aren’t just like the girl on the afterschool specials, or the Disney cartoons, or just about any other story that ever starts out with people who aren’t very pretty or talented. I wasn’t very good at much of anything.

Forget sports. I was uncoordinated and weak. I couldn’t hit a volleyball unless it was with my face. Although I did manage to hit the P.E. coach often enough that he started standing behind the bleachers when I was near anything round. I still managed to hit him a couple times after that. I couldn’t get off the floor when we were supposed to climb the rope, and the few times I did manage it, my fear of heights caught me like a fly in a spider’s web before I got more than five feet off the ground. I couldn’t even make it to first base at a hard run when we played softball in school…and that was when I’d been walked. The only one more relieved than I was when I got my class schedule for my junior year and gym wasn’t on it was the gym teacher.

I couldn’t draw more than a stick figure. I couldn’t remember long speeches or play the flute or sing. I was just, well, talentless. Eventually, the teachers started ignoring me. I suppose two years trying to motivate me to try just a little harder was less than rewarding. I’m the kid that can break a good teacher. I’m not the troublemaker or the suck-up. I’m the one sitting in the corner not even trying. I knew I couldn’t do the things other kids could, and I didn’t see the point in getting involved when I knew I was just going to fail.

My mother used to insist that I didn’t know what I could do because I wouldn’t try. She also said that I was beautiful to her and that someday I would see what she saw. A lot of parents in movies say that and then their little girl, who was only unattractive because she was wearing glasses and hadn’t brushed her hair in a year, would go off and find a mirror and a clothing shop and she would come out looking like a fashion model. My mom said that and I just went right on being square and clumsy and uncomfortable in my own skin. Dad didn’t get involved in those fights; he was much too smart to take sides on such a touchy subject, which, of course, got him in a lot of trouble with both me and Mom. Poor guy couldn’t win.

I didn’t think my appearance was anything that could be changed. I still don’t. It is like my crooked bottom tooth or the way my face turns fish-belly white with red splotches when I’m mad. It is a fact of life without a solution because it is as permanent as the moon and the stars. I might have changed my mind about being talentless, though. Obviously someone out there was afraid of what I could do because someone out there stuck me with a curse. Who curses someone who isn’t worth anything? But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

I used to be jealous of my brother because he got all of Mom and Dad’s good looks; Mom’s brilliant blue eyes, Dad’s sandy brown hair which always fell just right over his forehead, Dad’s athletic build and square jaw, and Mom’s smile—which could literally knock a person over if she used it just right. No joke. I’ve seen it happen. I also thought it was fitting that Tommy was so handsome. My brother was always the one obsessed with heroes and princes and good, old fashioned chivalry—he was the only thirteen year-old on the planet that would actually lay his coat over a puddle for an old woman—and he looked like a fairytale prince. I’m pretty sure no princess would complain if he was the one who kissed them awake. The girls in his class fell over themselves in messy little heaps every time he got near them. Hell, when he started his freshman year, I swear there were senior cheerleaders that started stalking the hallway where he had his locker.

I understood their fascination with him. I adored him more than anyone else on the planet. He was my brother, true, and we didn’t always get along, but he wasn’t an annoyance to me very often. He was my first and very best friend. There was something special about Tommy that I can’t exactly define, a sort of charm that had nothing to do with his good looks or his way of always trying to take care of everyone else. Sometimes I think it was just his sincerity. Lots of people try to impress the world with their good deeds. Tommy did what he did because he actually enjoyed it.

I inherited nothing, physically, of Mom or Dad. Not in any clear-cut way. I was a pretty muddled amalgamation of the two of them, in fact. If Tommy was a prince and our parents were actually some queen and king, I felt sorry for the country that got me as its princess because I had obviously gotten left out genetically. It wasn’t anything in particular and I wasn’t exactly ugly. I was just painfully ordinary. I had a nose that was just a little crooked, and teeth that, while not exactly in need of braces, weren’t straight either. Did I mention my splotchy skin and lack of real shape and off colored hair and the fact that clothes made for teenage girls just made me look frumpy and seemed to outline all the ways I could never, ever be anything like the other girls I saw around me? Even Jo-Anne, with her painfully skinny little body, had this inherent cuteness that all girls have in some form or another. She argues that I’m imagining things, but we both know I’m right. I just had none of that. It was like I was a lump of clay that someone had started to shape into a girl, then got distracted and forgot to finish.

Mom tried to help me, she really did. It was just that she didn’t have much to work with. Makeup wouldn’t stay on my face and made my acne worse when I wasn’t sweating it off. I had no fashion sense—in fact Mom often argued I was color blind—and there was no cut of clothing that could magically turn me into anything but square. My hair was the one thing Mom had control over and she kept iron clad rules about it. I had waist length, dirty blonde hair that seemed like an odd mix between Mom’s flaxen mane and Dad’s brown so that it was varying shades of silver, some of it gleaming so light in steely darkness that it was like veins of precious metal in dirt. Mom called it dark ash blonde. I called it uninteresting…except on those rare days when I actually liked myself, and then it wasn’t so bad. Most days it just made it that much clearer that I would never, ever be like those models in Seventeen or Cosmo. I couldn’t even wear it up like a normal girl; it had a silky texture, but it was so thick and heavy that it broke even the strongest clips and stretched ponytail holders out until they had no stretch left. If I really wanted to keep it out of the way, I had to tie it up in a bun on top of my head with string, which always made me look like some sort of old fashioned school teacher or put it in a braid that, without fail, got caught on anything it could, including seatbelts and closing doors.

I suggested cutting it all off to my mom once or twice, but her reaction was less than favorable. She wouldn’t even let me trim it to the bottom of my shoulders. She actually threatened, at one point, to ground me for life if I cut it without her permission. I thought, at the time, that she wanted me to look at least a little like her; her hair fell all the way down to her hips in very bright, very loose curls. When she shook it in the sunlight, it would actually glint like silken wheat. She never tried to bleach my hair, probably because she was always trying to convince me that I should be happy with myself, but I did think she would like it better if it were the same milky gold and silver of her own. I would gladly have taken a pair of scissors to it, had I not been afraid that Mom would make good on her threats. The weight made my neck ache, and I got headaches that I sometimes thought were directly related to the length of my hair, but I left it alone.

There was only one thing about myself that I ever really liked. I have a pair of dark blue eyes that do not match either Mom’s brighter blue or Dad’s brown ones. They turn darker when I am upset or angry, shifting from deep, gray blue to midnight and back again. Anyone who got close enough would remark on how odd and beautiful they were.

The reality was, my parents were a magazine couple when they were together, and Tommy looked like their little magazine son and I looked like the hairdresser that had accidentally gotten in the picture. They were so damn perfect that it was hard to look at them and believe they