The Reluctant Traveler: The Travelers' Chronicles, #1

By Corinne Aarsen

Meredith's beloved brother has died, and his troubled, teenage daughter Kimberly blames herself for his death. Meredith tries to comfort her niece but instead witnesses Kimberly disappearing into thin air. Leaping after her, the pair find themselves in an unknown, medieval-like land. Was this the home of Meredith's three exotic childhood friends she'd met all those years ago? The ten-year old Meredith had believed their tales, but the adult Meredith, who'd chosen a practical career over pursuing her art, had dismissed silly fantasies years ago.

Feeling stranded and powerless, they begin searching for Meredith's old friends but instead find danger. Fleeing, they become separated. Meredith eventually reunites with Lox—a man even more charismatic and intriguing than the boy she remembered—but the pleasure of their reunion soon evaporates in a cloud of confusion and betrayal.

There is trouble in this land—trouble Meredith seems to hold a key to solving. But who can she trust? And where is Kimberly? Will she ever find her niece and get them back to their own world? Even if she succeeds, Meredith knows her life will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: corinneaarsen
• Release date: Aug 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999381066

Book preview

Prologue

Ionce believed the confrontation between my sixteen-year-old niece Kimberly and my sister Marilyn on the day of our brother’s funeral was the sole catalyst for launching Kimberly and I into a world of intrigue and betrayal for which we were woefully unprepared. If Marilyn hadn’t said what she had, if Kimberly hadn’t stormed out of the house when she did, or if I had not followed my niece into the woods, then maybe what followed wouldn’t have happened.

Now, looking back, I realize the bizarre circumstances that unfolded that day had little to do with my actions or those of my niece and sister; rather, the true catalyst was a meeting twenty-two years before when three captivating children appeared unexpectedly in my life—and vanished just as abruptly.

And now I write, not because anyone will read these words—they are solely for my eyes—but because doing so breathes life into my memories; breathes life into Kimberly. Indeed, the ink is not even dry; yet, my words are lifting off the page and fashioning themselves into the moving images of those astonishing events that irrevocably changed our lives. As I scratch ink onto the page, I feel as if Kimberly is peering over my shoulder just as I once hovered over hers on that long-ago day when the Diviner’s vision gave ease to my troubled heart. Her irrepressible vitality is stirring the air around me. And her nearness, shadowy and ethereal though it may be, allows me to fuel the hope that she is indeed alive, and that one day—one day soon, I pray to the gods—we will reunite.

Part I

ARRIVAL

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SEPTEMBER 30, 1997

Chapter One

You would think in the hours following my brother’s funeral that I would be plagued by memories of Curtis; instead, three exotic childhood playmates were knocking at the door of my mind demanding my attention.

I was in the kitchen washing a stack of dishes and turned to regard my older sister, who was re-filling a sandwich platter to serve to the mourners. Do you remember those children who came with us to Sandpiper Lake that last summer before Dad left? When I saw the look in Marilyn’s eyes, I wished I hadn’t spoken.

Meredee! she admonished in her signature teacher-knows-best tone that always grated on my nerves. How can you be thinking about happy childhood memories at a time like this?

But that’s just it, Marilyn. With Curtis’s passing, it makes me wish things had turned out different. Turned out different for Curtis. Turned out different for his troubled daughter.

Marilyn seemed to read my mind. We both focused on Curtis’s daughter, our sixteen-year-old niece Kimberly, where she stood at the kitchen counter fiddling with the china I’d just washed.

The white Royal Doulton teacup she held clashed with her black, chipped nail polish. Her long, dyed-black hair with its choppy blunt cut framed a face that was—for the first time in months—uncharacteristically free of skull-themed jewelry and heavy, dark cosmetics. You would think that on the day of her father’s funeral Kimberly would also have set aside her black T-shirt, jeans, and chunky Doc Martens and worn something more appropriate. But no amount of cajoling from her tearful mother, my overbearing sister, or me had influenced the headstrong teen.

I’d once believed my niece and I shared an unbreakable bond. But since moving from her rural community to the city after her father got his new job—one to which he’d now never return—she’d taken up with a group of delinquent teens. I blamed them for her newly perfected stony silences and guillotine-sharp looks of loathing. I especially blamed them when she’d stopped singing, a passion she once shared with her musically gifted father.

As I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with my sister in her pristine kitchen, Kimberly suddenly looked up and caught us staring at her. Despite her radioactive glare, her unadulterated face still reminded me of the delightful girl she’d once been.

Marilyn addressed her in a patronizing tone that, I knew, was meant to be helpful. Kimberly, why don’t you—

Kim! My name is Kim! God!

My niece had recently announced she’d shortened her name. In her usual well-intentioned but overbearing way, Marilyn had dismissed this as nonsense. But aside from lifting a manicured hand to pat her permed hair, something Marilyn only did when she was agitated, Marilyn ignored Kimberly’s outburst and instead nodded her head at the closed kitchen door. Why don’t you go out there and thank your father’s friends for coming. They—

Thank them! Kimberly interrupted again. "For what? For not saying what everyone wants to say, but no one, including you, has the goddamn balls? Enough already. God almighty!"

In her haste to get away from us, Kimberly set down the teacup too quickly, knocking a stack of Marilyn’s prized china off the counter and onto the unforgiving tiled floor.

In the silence that followed the tinkling crash, Kimberly spoke, and her anguished tone nearly broke my heart.

Why doesn’t anybody have the guts to say that it’s my fault he’s dead?

There was no arguing that the reason Curtis had been on that dark country road where he’d died was because his only child had phoned him. Her loser boyfriend had abandoned her at a party gone wild. We’d since learned her boyfriend’s old, decrepit car had only one working headlight. Had my brother realized in the split second before the crash that the approaching vehicle wasn’t a motorcycle? We’d never know. Curtis hadn’t survived the wreck, but that undeserving boy had.

Before either Marilyn or I could respond, Kimberly’s mother Val burst into the kitchen. She stopped abruptly when she saw the shattered porcelain at her daughter’s feet.

In that electrified moment, Kimberly grabbed her ugly, oversize plaid shirt from the back of a kitchen chair and launched herself across the room toward the outside door. The shattered china crunching under her boots sounded harsh to my ears, as if she’d thrown shards of her own broken heart onto the floor and stomped on them. Seconds later she was gone, leaving the screen door vibrating on its hinges.

With a bewildered glare at us, Val hurried across the kitchen and thrust open the door with only a little less force than her daughter had. Kim, she called. Sweetheart, come back!

Val made to step out onto the stoop in pursuit of her only child, but Marilyn bustled over and laid a gentle but firm hand on her arm. Val, you need to stay here with our guests. I’ll go after Kimberly.

Marilyn’s tone toward my widowed sister-in-law was soft and sympathetic. But when she turned to address me, it was as if I was still the ten-year-old girl she’d had to care for when our mother no longer could.

Meredee, get the broom, she instructed, untying her apron strings.

"No Marilyn. I’ll go talk to her." I didn’t generally defy my sister, mostly because it was a waste of energy, but someone had to protect Kimberly from Marilyn’s good intentions.

I was still wearing my knee-high boots under my olive-green midi, a practice I’d only gotten away with in my sister’s immaculate house because the funeral guests had done the same. I didn’t give Marilyn time to argue. Instead, I scooped up my lightweight navy trench from off the back of a chair, squeezed past Val, and stepped out into the crisp autumn afternoon.

Outside, I lifted my hand to shield my face from the afternoon sun as I scanned the expansive property. On my right were more than three dozen cars belonging to the mourners parked in crooked rows in front of the old red barn with its sagging, sway-backed roof. On my left, I spotted Kimberly’s orange and black plaid shirt as she disappeared into the golden-hued line of trees that separated Marilyn and Jim’s small acreage from the local golf course. I didn’t immediately pursue her, but instead lingered on the stoop of my childhood home as I gathered my thoughts, or perhaps my courage . What should I say to her? What could I say? Regardless, if I didn’t go after her, I knew Marilyn would.

I reluctantly stepped down into the yard. In my mind’s eye I caught a fleeting glimpse of myself as a spirited but solitary child, fleeing toward the very same stand of trees to escape my father’s unpredictable temper, the unwelcome teasing of my three older brothers, and the melancholy moods of my anxious mother. As I skirted the vegetable garden on my left, its rows of onions and tall sunflowers looking forlorn in the otherwise harvested garden, I pictured the intriguing children I’d mentioned to Marilyn.

On three separate occasions, Rikka and Jaybex had filled my life with the enchantment of adventure and valued friendship. The first time we met, I’d regarded them with deep suspicion. But when the twins helped me take long overdue revenge on my brothers for mutilating my Barbies, they earned my undying loyalty—so much so that when they informed me they hailed from a world that was not my own, it didn’t occur to my ten-year-old self to doubt them. But my most memorable experience with them was during their third and final visit when their intriguing older cousin, a boy named Loxley, accompanied them. In a few short hours Lox became the devoted object of my first and strongest crush.

A month or two after I last saw them, the innocence of my childhood had shattered like a glass roof in a hailstorm when my father deserted us and my mother suffered a mental breakdown that ultimately led to an early death. For years after that summer, I anticipated the return of those children, filling sketchbook after sketchbook with portraits of the boy Lox, often falling asleep at night with an image of his face branded on my brain. But they never returned.

Not long ago when I was moving house, I found my old diaries. Reading them left me feeling disheartened. The adult I’d become was barely more than a shadow of the vibrant child I’d once been. Now, as I walked toward the patch of woods that had so often served as my childhood sanctuary, I indulged in the fantasy that, if I could wave a magic wand right here and now and be anyone in the world, I would choose to be that blissfully self-assured girl. Sadly, that child’s confidence and limitless potential was as distant from me now as my dead brother.

I entered the trees with a heavy heart, my square-heeled boots slipping a little in a soggy layer of wet leaves. Kimberly’s self-imposed burden of guilt deeply worried me. I wanted to make her feel better but didn’t know how to reach her. If only these woods were enchanted, I thought.

I spotted Kimberly sitting with her back to me on a fallen tree near the clearing where I’d often facilitated romantic picnics for Ken and Barbie.

Leave me alone.

Kimberly spoke in the scathing tone she’d recently perfected—one that, until a few months ago, I would never have imagined she’d direct at me. These last few months I’d been a helpless bystander to her emotional withdrawal. As I made my way toward her, I found myself hoping that our shared grief over her father’s untimely death would spark warmth into the relationship I valued above all others.

Kimberly huffed in annoyance when I sat beside her on the log. Before I could think of something comforting to say that wasn’t as tediously inane as everything that had already been said, we were startled by the unfamiliar sound of a man’s voice. It faded abruptly then blared again as if someone was twisting the volume knob of a radio dial. I turned my head, trying to place the direction of the voice, but I encountered only Kimberly’s glare of suspicion.

A split second later I was so startled by the shadowy appearance of a man directly in front of us that I shrieked and fell backwards off the log.

Kimberly leapt to her feet. She’d been bristling before, but now she resembled a hissing alley cat.

What the hell? she demanded.

The transparent image remained, but the man’s voice switched off. His muted figure made me think of the news anchor who’d been relaying a diamond scam story four days ago when I’d muted my television to answer my phone. I’d watched that man’s silent, moving mouth in numb shock as my sister delivered the news of my brother’s death.

I was in shock now, too, but I was more worried for Kimberly. Don’t touch it! I shrieked as I struggled to stand. Although I had no time to consider a reasonable explanation for the stranger’s baffling appearance, I did know it was not a solid, living, breathing person, and I felt certain that it—whatever it was—would be as harmful as a high-voltage electric fence.

I finally scrambled to my feet behind the log. Kim, step back.

Kimberly glared at the image but addressed me.

"For god’s sake, tell everyone to stop with the stupid tricks. They won’t make me feel better you know. I don’t deserve to feel better."

Kimberly stepped forward, shoving an arm against the apparition as if it were a branch blocking her path. I fully expected to hear a snap of electricity and a cry of pain as she made contact with it. Instead, she vanished.

Chapter Two

There was no flash, no sound, and no proverbial puff of smoke. My niece had literally disappeared into thin air.

I struggled over the log, shrieking her name. I somehow knew I must do as she’d done and touch the almost transparent image to follow her. Wherever she was—however she disappeared—I knew beyond any doubt the same thing also had to happen to me. Even as my mind rebelled against what I’d just witnessed, there was no question that I would pursue her. But before I could touch it, the image flickered out. With heart-stopping suddenness, my only link to Kimberly disappeared.

In the next second the apparition reappeared, faintly, like gossamer sheers in a window. With uncharacteristic boldness, I leapt into it. For a brief moment, I felt like I was hurtling down from a great height. This sensation stopped abruptly when I landed on my hands and knees on an unforgiving carpet of small stones. My stomach immediately revolted at the disturbing sensation and I retched.

Aunty Mere?

I barely recognized Kimberly’s timid voice, but a surge of relief coursed through me when I heard it. I’d followed her successfully. Thank god.

I looked over my shoulder and saw her sitting about three feet away slumped against a very large boulder that sat like a lone sentry in the middle of a tiny, pebbled clearing. I vaguely noted towering trees and a lake, but my eyes remained on my niece. Her thin arms hugged her knees against her chest in a protective fetal position. She looked unsure and frightened; a little girl again.

As the heaving in my stomach subsided, my brain scrambled to compute what had just happened.

Moving my head cautiously, I surveyed our unfamiliar surroundings. The small, stony beach was on the shore of what appeared to be a massive lake. The sky was lightly overcast, yet the air was far warmer and more humid than the dry crisp air we’d been breathing ten seconds ago. Here and there, autumn-hued leaves of deciduous trees peeked out amidst the tall evergreens that dominated the surrounding forest. Lush ferns and twisting vines fought for space amongst thick trunks of moss-clad trees. These verdant shades were a distinct contrast to the browns and burgeoning yellows that had surrounded us mere moments ago, as was the scent of the air, which reminded me of a well-planted greenhouse. I could hear birds chirping and rustling in the forest, even the scolding chatter of a squirrel. None of these sights, sounds, and smells were at odds with our wilderness surroundings; yet, the wrongness of being here just after we’d been there jarred my senses.

Distracted by the sound of trickling water on my right, I turned and saw a brook an arm’s length away from me. I crab-walked to its edge and splashed water onto my face fully expecting to feel nothing, which would confirm I was experiencing a very lucid but ludicrous dream. Instead, the cold water on my skin and in my mouth felt shockingly real.

I sat back on my heels and met Kimberly’s stunned gaze.

Whaaat the… She spoke in an undertone, drawing out the words as she moved her head slowly, her wide-eyed gaze taking in our surroundings before once again meeting my wide-eyed gaze. …fuuuuck? she finished in a long exhale.

I had no capacity to speak. I barely had the capacity to think, although I did have the fleeting thought that Marilyn wouldn’t be pleased with Kimberly’s language.

I’m so glad you…appeared.

Appeared? Is that what I’d done?

Kimberly crawled to my side then, reaching for me. It had been months since she’d voluntarily shown me any physical affection. I gladly lifted my arm and pulled her against my side.

It’s okay, I finally croaked. My words, abrasive against my raw throat, did little to convince either of us. We’ll be okay, I repeated, as if repetition would make it so.

Where are we? Kimberly’s tone held both bold accusation and childlike trepidation.

I took in the strangeness of our surroundings, expecting to be jolted awake. I don’t know, I finally said.

A horrifying thought occurred to me then as my brain stumbled upon a rational explanation for this implausible situation. If I wasn’t dreaming—and I was certain I wasn’t—then this episode could mean only one thing: Like my mother, I was being plagued by an intense schizophrenic episode. This strange, vivid un-reality was evidence that I’d inherited her malady despite never once exhibiting symptoms of the disabling disease. Had something bad happened in my brain to now send me images that didn’t reflect my true surroundings? Even though the water I’d touched and drank felt real and even though the air felt and smelled lush and humid—so very different from the dry Alberta air—it would not serve me to trust my senses. This dream-like setting was not real. It could not be real.

An image of my unusual childhood friends—the ones I’d mentioned to Marilyn—reappeared in my mind, but I chased it away. Marilyn was right. Now was not the time to indulge in nostalgia. What I had to do was figure out how to snap out of this unwelcome and oh-so vivid paranoia. If I didn’t, I would be of no help to my emotionally fragile niece.

I rose on shaky legs—their trembling felt real—pulling Kimberly up with me and holding her with the desperation of a drowning man clutching a lifeline. She felt real. Were we clinging to each other in the woods behind Marilyn’s house?

We stood motionless for a moment and then, as one, tentatively moved forward a few steps, stopping when we reached the lake’s edge. I slowly took in the convincingly distinct details of our impossible surroundings. The water lapping gently against the shoreline sounded real. The birds in the forest and fluttering above the body of water that stretched at least a couple of miles across and far more than that in length looked real. No man-made dwelling was in sight, only steep, tree-covered slopes boasting hints of autumn jutting up from the lake’s edge. Nothing about this landscape was familiar. How was it possible for me to be envisioning with pristine clarity a wilderness lakeshore I’d never before seen?

Kimberly shifted out of my embrace, crossing her arms against her chest but keeping her shoulder brushed up against mine. When she spoke, her tone was only slightly surly.

"I don’t understand what just happened. This isn’t Bellecourt anymore, is it? And don’t call me Dorothy!"

Because Kimberly had always been clever and witty, far more so than me, I felt an immense wave of relief. My own mind would never invent a wisecrack about the Wizard of Oz, a movie I’d never even seen in its entirety. Which could only mean I wasn’t on the brink of a terrifying mental illness after all. My relief was temporary, though. If I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t hallucinating, then what was this?

I turned in a slow circle. Part of my brain insisted that what was happening was impossible. But another part of my brain was receiving sensory information—sights, smells, and sounds—that indicated this experience was inarguably real. You’re right. This isn’t Bellecourt. I knew my response was inadequate, but what else could I say?

Where are we, then? What is this place? And what was that…that hologram thing? Kimberly’s tone changed from demanding to uncertain as she continued. I thought at first it was the uncles trying to get me to…I don’t know. But this? This isn’t anything to do with my…with…with what’s happened.

It made my heart sore to hear my niece struggle to find a way to refer to her father without having to utter the one word that was clearly too painful for her to say: Dad. But a part of me was also pleased. Aside from her outburst in Marilyn’s kitchen, this