The Wisdom (The Wisdom, #2): The Wisdom, #2

By Vrinda Pendred

Ever since that day he found his daughter hiding in her wardrobe, Stephen Loveguard has been slowly losing his mind. Convinced that someone has implanted false memories in his head, he's desperate to find the Wisdom and cure the genetic disorder that threatens to destroy him.

Meanwhile, children all over the world have developed inexplicable powers – including his son, Oz, and a boy who has travelled across the country to follow his dreams…literally.

But his daughter Itzy is the most powerful of all – and Stephen's not the only one who's worked this out….

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vrinda Pendred
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370504329

Vrinda Pendred

VRINDA PENDRED originally grew up in Arizona, but moved to England in 1999, where she now lives with her husband and their two sons. Her first novel was The Ladder, a story about two friends learning to grow through their difficult childhoods and find the light that lies inside themselves. She followed this with the YA sci-fi / fantasy series The Wisdom. Vrinda also runs a publishing house for writers with neurological conditions, called Conditional Publications. Their first book, Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry and Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD, was released in 2010 (Kindle and paperback), with future books in the pipeline. In addition to her writing, Vrinda also does freelance proofreading and editing, and spent 9 years tutoring GCSE / A-Level English. She holds a BA Hons in English with Creative Writing, a proofreading qualification with the Publishing Training Centre, and has completed work experience with Random House. On the side, she sometimes writes and performs her own music and runs a herbal tea review blog with a friend. Favourite Book Genres: YA / NA, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror Favourite Fiction Authors: Stephen King, Michael Grant, Graham Joyce, Cassandra Clare, Brigid Kemmerer, Holly Black, James Dashner, Margaret Atwood, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Itzel Loveguard had always loved stories – always. The picture books her parents read to her in her infancy sank into her rapidly growing brain, the illustrations mixing with her images of the ‘real world’ until they were interchangeable. By the time she was two, she could recognise all the letters of the alphabet and was on her way to being able to read herself – which she fully accomplished when she was five.

In so many ways, Itzy was no ordinary child.

At three, she regularly drifted into fantasy land as she played on her own, tucked away upstairs in her bedroom with the door shut to block out the tension that floated through the hallways of her family home in Ealing.

She started making up her own stories to escape into, acting them out herself or with her dolls, inspired by just about anything. For instance, once when she was changing Barbie’s dress from work chic to evening diva, she noticed the words Made in Malaysia stamped into her backside. Not knowing what Malaysia was, it became the planet Barbie came from. She was definitely an alien. That was why her legs couldn’t bend.

‘Barbie’s not an alien,’ her best friend Devon told her when they were older and Itzy had someone else to play with.

‘Mm-hm, and so is Ken. They’re both from the planet Malaysia.’

‘I’ve never heard of that planet.’

Itzy gave her a patient smile. ‘It’s not in our solar system. It’s not even in our galaxy. It’s in Andromeda.’

‘...Andromeda?’ Devon wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve never heard of that.’

‘Then you can’t say it’s not true.’

Something Itzy didn’t share with anyone for many years, not even Devon, was that in some of the stories that played out in her head, she was a character. And not just her, but her parents, too.

Especially her father.

In those stories, she transformed into a sort of hyper-real version of herself, and everything that had ever scared her was explained away until the fear ebbed. Writing was cathartic, a coping method for all the emotions bubbling up inside that were too strong to understand at such a tender age.

And sometimes when those stories danced in her head, her vision grew dark and she felt herself lift right out of her body. She watched herself from outside as if she were someone else, taking in a show. A dark halo appeared around her, an aura.

When that Outside Itzy’s span of vision widened, there were strange black lines streaking the air all around her.

Perhaps black wasn’t the right word for them, because it suggested something was there to be that colour. But there didn’t seem to be anything in that darkness. They were more like cracks in the folds of existence.

Fissures.

And the more stories she told herself to stave off the loneliness and anxiety filling her heart, the wider those fissures grew, until one day she found herself wondering if perhaps she could step through them.

People always say reading opens doors. For Itzy, those doors were literal.

* * *

Itzy was vaguely aware something wasn’t right between her parents, though she was too young to put her finger on the problem. And she was too young to have any frame of reference for what might be the right sort of relationship for her parents to have. All she knew was sometimes they would be cuddling the way she loved, and then in a heartbeat the atmosphere in the room would turn to ice. Itzy was sensitive and she felt the chill.

Perhaps any child would have felt it.

But she’d never heard her parents shout at each other before. So that fateful day when they crossed the line where they no longer kept their arguments within the confines of their room, but raised their voices such that their child became part of whatever was happening between them...it felt like the house was shrinking around her – like there wasn’t enough space to breathe.

All she wanted was to escape. But she couldn’t, because she was three. So she did the next best thing.

She hid.

The only place in her room to hide was the tall pine wardrobe, painted white to disguise its cheapness. Inside, there was just enough room for her to squeeze in under her dresses and tops hanging from the metal pole.

It was hard to shut the door because the doorknob was on the outside. So she closed it as much as possible, then sat listening to the rage that flew across the house. She pressed her hands to her ears in an effort to block out the sound, but it slipped between her fingers and found its way into her hearing. Hateful words slipped through the wood, burrowing their way through her body and sinking into her mind, into her memory. Each syllable changed her, shaped her.

If only the wardrobe were a TARDIS, bigger on the inside and capable of taking her far, far away – beyond the room, beyond the town, even beyond the sky. Maybe to the planet Malaysia.

Already she’d lapsed into a story in her head. And in this story, none of what was happening in the house was real. And there were aliens.

There were often aliens in her stories – because she loved space. For her next birthday, she would ask for a spaceship, so she could travel from star to star and discover what else lay out there in the Beyond. In this way, she took after her father, whose idea of a bedtime story was ancient Sumerian tales of the mythical planet Nibiru. She had a poster of the solar system Blu-Tacked to her wall. It glowed in the dark at night, offering her the promise of better worlds out there, somewhere. This couldn’t be all there was.

The difference this time was that Itzy decided maybe she was part alien, too.

Yes, of course. That explained why she felt so strange, like she didn’t belong where she was. It wasn’t her world, was it? And maybe her father was also an alien. That was why he was so odd at times, swinging from mood to mood. He couldn’t help it – because he was part alien, part human. His two sides kept arguing with each other, the way he now argued with her mother.

The good news was her true people would come back for her one day. They would take her away from everything that was happening and show her another world, somewhere even further than Andromeda. It might even be in another universe.

In that universe, she wouldn’t be little Itzel Loveguard. She would be something special, someone people cherished, someone who didn’t need to hide in wardrobes, in the dark – someone who didn’t feel like the house was collapsing on her or her skin was too tight – someone who wasn’t suffocating inside from the fear overtaking her as the voices in the building rose higher and higher, louder and louder.

And she would get her wish. She would travel through space.

Entranced by her own imagination, she hardly noticed the way the letters flew through her vision. They leapt into the air, grabbing each other and grouping themselves into words – words like Planet X and gold and eagle, things she’d heard her father mention or she’d subconsciously taken in while colouring in the sitting room as he watched a documentary on the television.

On those sorts of programmes, the aliens were always grey with oversized eyes. They looked kind of cute. But Itzy’s aliens would wear robes, because that was what the heroes always wore in things like Batman, which she sometimes saw on telly, even though her mother didn’t think she was old enough to watch it.

And they would fly, because – well, that would be great, wouldn’t it? To soar so high above everything, up in the clouds where there was only the sound of the air?

In fact, maybe they were birds.

No, no...they just looked like them.

And they had powers. They had to have powers.

But what kind?

Something made her drop back into her body. Outside and Inside Itzy reformed as one, and her spine vibrated with the unnerving sensation that someone was watching her – which was ridiculous, because she was hiding away in a wardrobe.

A thrill of fear shot through her small frame. Perhaps her childish worries were justified and there were monsters in her room after dark.

She dared not look. She didn’t want to see whatever waited for her.

But she didn’t want to leave the wardrobe either. The angry tempest swirling around the house might somehow hurricane her way.

Paralysed, she remained in the wardrobe, trying to force the good thoughts to return.

Where had she left off? Oh yes. Powers, powers....

But no, it wouldn’t do. Inspiration wouldn’t be lassoed in like stray cattle. That stare on the back of her neck was a tangible thing, and no amount of logic could convince her she was imagining it.

She slowly turned her head to see what watched her.

It was a fissure – and it had grown.

The clothing hanging above Itzy’s head had vanished and in its place was darkness. Cut into that endless night was a tall rectangle framed in sizzling golden light.

Her father had once read her a watered-down version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – one more story to embed itself in her mind. Could Narnia lie on the other side of the darkness that faced her now?

She was struck with the strangest sense of déjà vu, like she’d done this before but forgotten. Without meaning to, she moved towards the darkness, reaching out her hand, touching the air. Her fingers slipped through it, disappearing into blackness. The light framing the doorway crackled and sparked.

It gave off a funny energy – not threatening. More like...well, it was familiar somehow.

If she’d been older, maybe she wouldn’t have done what she did next. If she’d been older, perhaps she wouldn’t have believed what she saw.

But she was three, so she stepped through the doorway.

Because doors were meant to be opened...weren’t they?

There was a millisecond in which she found herself hovering in some nowhere place, a kind of limbo. Again, it felt familiar.

All around her, above and below and stretching into infinity, were more doorways. They multiplied eternally, like standing between two mirrors and seeing them endlessly reflected within each other.

With wide eyes, she turned in circles in the ether, losing track of where she’d started. Instinct told her she could walk through any of these doors she liked, find out what lay beyond. It was up to her to make her choice.

But she wouldn’t be able to return to where she’d come from. She wasn’t sure where that was, anyway. She was so twisted around.

She didn’t know how to choose, so she did eeny meeny miney mo. That was all it came down to. But through it all, the idea stuck in her head.

Someone’s going to take me away from all this. Someday.

And she stepped through one of the doorways.

She emerged in the depths of the wardrobe, and the fissure behind her sealed with an electric pop!

Well, that was disappointing. Had anything changed? Had she dreamt it all?

Through the crack between the wardrobe doors, Itzy saw her father run into the room. In her own childish way, she thought he looked like he’d just been read his death sentence.

‘Itzy!’ His black eyes darted all around the room in search of her.

Then he strode towards the wardrobe, his steps shaky.

She dropped to the back in fear, bumping her shoulder against the wood and wincing in pain.

Never had she seen him look the way he did now. Come to think of it, she didn’t recognise this man as the father she’d known for the last three years.

He flung open the doors as if he meant to surprise a predator, his shoulders hunched for attack. His gaze scanned her up and down, an expression of panic of his face, as if he had no idea where he was or how he’d got there, but he also couldn’t recall where he’d been before.

And for no reason she could explain, Itzy thought, What have I done?

ONE:

Stephen

Twelve-year-old Stephen Loveguard wrapped his dressing gown tightly around him, knotting the belt so it wouldn’t fall out of place and pulling the sleeves over his hands for extra coverage. He slipped his feet into his shoes by the front door, then reached for the door handle and closed his eyes. The wind howled down their chimney, blasting cold air through the fireplace in the sitting room.

New Year’s Eve in Darlington was achingly cold. Yes, the house was an old build, but why couldn’t his parents fork out the money to build an indoor toilet? Why did he have to go outside in the middle of the night, to a little unheated room? And why did he have that tea before bed? He really should’ve known better. It was winter, for God’s sake, and now he was caught out, with no choice but to go.

He counted to three before he opened the door. It burst inward, the impact of the icy gale throwing him back against the wall. Someday, I’m going to live somewhere in the south.

Lifting himself from the wall, he shook his overgrown black hair out of his eyes.

Then he froze – not from the temperature but from what he’d just seen in his periphery.

He stared into the night that yawned outside the front door that banged back and forth against the wall that held it. But he couldn’t prevent himself from seeing the shape lurking to his side.

As if pulled on strings, he turned in the direction of the kitchen. He could already see the body. Its head was obscured by the oven, but it was clear who it was.

Or rather, who it had been.

That was no longer his father.

Run. Get out. Go far away. Forget you ever saw this.

The voice in his head was strong, but not strong enough to stop his feet from moving into the dreadful room. As his lungs filled with toxins, he was seized by a painful coughing fit, burning his chest.

Instinct took over. He switched off the gas oven and flung open the windows, shuddering against the chills that shocked their way through the room.

Then he walked back to the front door and went outside, to the toilet, just as he’d intended – only when he got there, all he did was throw up.

After, he sat in the little stone room, listening to the night scream around him – the scream Stephen couldn’t bring himself to emit himself. His whole body had gone numb.

He’d obviously imagined it. There was no way he’d woken up and found his father dead – much less that he’d killed himself. His father had been depressed, yes, but....

They’d last spoken just after dinner. His mother had made jacket potatoes and his father had complained that they weren’t crispy enough. There had been no thank you to his mother for taking the time to make them, but she hadn’t commented. Only cut into her steaming potatoes as if he wasn’t there.

In a way, he’d been a shadowy presence for a long time. Except those moments when he exploded with anger, transforming in the blink of an eye into a man unrecognisable.

Even so...suicide?

His head found its way into his hands, his body rocking back and forth, slowly at first, and then severe motions. His eyes throbbed with tears that wouldn’t come. Each time he blinked, he saw the body again – saw his father.

He should find his mother. Get help.

But that meant telling someone – and that meant acknowledging it was real.

His arms went around his waist, now not only rocking but rocking himself, as if he were his own father trying to console the small child inside. The wind howled again, his only companion.

That – and the voices, whispering to him on the wind.

You’re next.

Because his father wasn’t the only one with these extreme mood swings. His father wasn’t the only one who sank into periods of despondency, when nothing in the world motivated him to take another step or even a bite – or flew into fits of passion that felt just as out of his control.

You’re next, Stephen.

You’re next.

You’re next.

‘No,’ Stephen spoke aloud, the cold air swallowing the syllable.

He slammed one of his hands on the door and forced it open against the weight of the wind.

As he walked back to his house, the night seemed full of banshees clawing at his skin, shrieking with hysterics. He stumbled over the end of his dressing gown and nearly fell to the ground, but he caught himself just in time.

On autopilot, he went inside and found the family telephone in the hallway. He hauled the rotary dial all the way around three times, distantly thinking it was ridiculous the emergency number was 999 when 9 took the longest to dial. The house could have caught fire and burned down by the time he finished making his call.

Then he dragged his feet up the stairs, willing himself not to look again at his father in the kitchen. Each step felt like someone had tied weights to his ankles. It was an effort to lift his legs.

When he made it to his parents’ bedroom – his mother’s bedroom – he fell against the door.

‘Mum.’ His fist landed on the door. ‘Mum.’ He began banging, over and over, until the door opened and he fell forward, landing against her legs, feeling smaller than he’d ever felt.

‘...Stephen?’ She stared down at him as he wrapped his arms around her legs, not even to hug her but to anchor himself so he didn’t sink through the floor as the room dimmed and he felt his consciousness fade.

He woke to the sound of someone talking. ‘...this boy hadn’t found him when he did, the family would’ve slept right through it while the whole house filled with poison.’

Someone swore. ‘Was he trying to take them all with him?’

Stephen’s eyes flickered open, finding two strangers looking down on him. Paramedics. Where was his mother? Or his sister?

He sat up, but hands fell on his shoulders, easing him back.

‘Whoa, there. Take it slowly.’

Swallowing, he turned his head one way, then another, finding his mother across the room, cradling Gwen tightly in her arms. Gwen, just ten years old, was crying. Their mother was white with shock, her eyes staring, seeing nothing, one hand stroking Gwen’s hair as if on autopilot.

‘M-my father....’ Stephen refocused on the paramedics.

They exchanged a look. ‘He...didn’t make it,’ one of them said. His voice was soft, as if this would make the news any less painful to hear.

There was a sound like gunfire, making everyone in the room jump. Stephen’s heart leapt, his breath short – until he recognised the sound.

Fireworks.

It was past midnight now. A new year had begun.

Somehow, no one was in the mood to pull crackers.

* * *

Stephen jolted up in bed. His hair – still overgrown – stuck to the sides of his face. He was flushed and sweating all over. His eyes darted around, trying to place where he was. The room didn’t make sense. This...this wasn’t his mother’s bedroom, or even his own. Where was he?

The dark of the night bit into him with its sharp jaws, and panic filled his heart. A sob flew from his throat and he put out his hands, groping for something to hold onto. All he met was air.

A light flickered in his periphery – an alarm clock on the bedside table. Its digital numbers glowed red.

Digital.

The light opened his vision, wider and wider, until he saw the whole of the bedroom and remembered –

He wasn’t a little boy anymore, and he was no longer in Darlington. He was thirty-nine years old, and he was at Evelyn’s house in Ashford.

‘Thank God, thank God, thank God,’ he murmured into the darkness. No matter how many times he had that dream, it never felt less real. It was always like he was right back there again. When would it leave him? When would he get away?

Exhaling heavily, he dragged his hands down his face.

Not in Darlington...in Evelyn’s house...Evelyn’s house....

Even after seven years of living here, he still had a bad habit of thinking of the place that way – Evelyn’s house. Because she’d bought it without him, before he lived with her and when he was still with Myra. And because the circumstances of his reunion with his current wife had always felt like a dream – yet another he couldn’t seem to wake from.

He glanced at Evelyn, sleeping soundly in their king-size bed. The duvet was gathered up in her loose fists, tucked under her chin. In the moonlight that drifted through the thin curtains, her brown hair looked grey and her skin took on a silvery sheen. There was something ghostly about the image that made his spine tingle.

His mind flashed back to the day they first met – in that ancient mythology elective they’d both taken, back when she was studying theology at Durham University, while he had studied archaeology.

There had been passion – instant passion, quickening before he could recognise what he was feeling. Then she’d told him the news – that she was pregnant. He really had wanted to be up to the task, to be the kind of man who stood by his woman’s side and was there for her through the pregnancy, through the birth – and then be the kind of father he never had.

But when Osiris came out, mewling and squealing and pink in the face, he’d known – he just wasn’t the person he wanted to be.

Even then, he’d tried – he’d tried so hard to change. But all the demands on him....

Myra’s face came to him – just as beautiful as Evelyn, but in a different way. Softer, less angular. Bohemian and wild. He’d thought he was ready for her, ready for Itzy. But he’d failed them, too.

He threw his legs over the side of the bed and hopped out in one swift movement, wrapping himself in his dressing gown and padding out of the bedroom. In the bathroom, he splashed water over his face and stared at himself in the mirror, not recognising his own face.

He’d read this kind of thing in books. But those writers always meant it figuratively, like they’d grown and changed. He was looking at a man who literally didn’t match the man in his memories.

Probably because he wasn’t convinced his memories were real.

Yes, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the contempt and resentment in Evelyn’s eyes the day she tracked him down in London. He could still feel the way her body moved against his on that strange day when he’d secretly visited their son to deliver a birthday present, but had somehow wound up in her bed, rekindling something that should have been dead but wasn’t.

And as long as he lived, he’d never forget the look on Myra’s face when he finally told her about the affair, about his first wife, about his secret child – when he told her he was leaving.

Because that was who he was. When he felt overwhelmed by a situation, he removed himself from it. He ran.

In this way, he was a lot like his father.

But another part of him...well, that part remembered things differently. There was a clear version of events where he and Evelyn had only ever gone on a few fruitless dates before parting ways. There was no baby.

In the same way, sometimes he had dreams of hurting both Myra and Evelyn, of hitting them – or worse. It felt like a memory trying to break through his subconscious and make itself known. When Myra had made her accusations...well, he had no choice but to believe her. But another part of him felt like someone else must have done those things. There was no way it was him.

Maybe he had some sort of multiple personality disorder.

‘It’s just the splitting,’ Gwen told him when he confided in her. As if there were any just about it – about what had taken their father and what was now devouring him, just as those voices in the wind had once warned.

This was why he’d left Darlington – a town named with the same sort of irony as Greenland. Because among other claims to fame, Darlington boasted one of the highest suicide rates in England. Moving to London had been symbolic – his way of striking out, putting their messy family history behind him. Hell, he’d even married two full humans – unless one of them was keeping from him the same secret he kept from them. But he didn’t think so.

So why had he dreamt about that night now?

Letting out a long breath, he left the bathroom and headed downstairs. There was a light on, and he followed it to the kitchen, where he found Oz absorbed in a book and half-heartedly munching on toast.

Seeing him there made Stephen breathe easier. Of course there was no other reality where Oz hadn’t been born. After all, he was right here, right in front of him! A living, breathing, eating human being, right there at the table. Not a phantom of imagination.

Just like Darlington was over. Even his poor mother was dead and buried, now. The past was exactly that – past.

He poured himself a glass of water and sat down across from his son. Oz didn’t look up, didn’t give any sign that he was aware he was no longer alone in the room. Neither of them acknowledged the strangeness of them both being up in the middle of the night together. The only sound was the ticking of the clock that hung above the doorway.

Stephen had once asked his son why he didn’t go by Osiris. Was he ashamed of his name?

Oz had responded with that haughty look only teenagers can manage, somehow giving off an impression of being childish and older than his years at once – a look he’d inherited from Evelyn. ‘Dad, really. Do you want me to get beaten up?’

‘And you think Oz is somehow better?’

‘Oz is cool.’ That was the end of that. Who could argue with cool?

Oz had been thirteen, then. He was nineteen, now, and tomorrow would be moving out to play adults with his friend Seth. How time flew.

Stephen was ludicrously proud of his son. Oz would never like to admit it, but they were similar in many ways. On the surface, Oz had the same black hair, the same sand-blasted complexion, as if he’d sprung out of Peru rather than England. His eyes were like dark pools one could drown in, hiding the ideas that ticked away in his head.

They had similar ideas, too. After the summer, Oz would be working towards a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, with an emphasis on the evolution of mythology around the world. Maybe he’d end up lecturing