The Hematite Horses

By Kiera Polzin

If there is a defining moment where it feels like you are forced to grow up overnight, for Kate Williston it was the day her best friend, Jason, leads her through a Postern door to another world. Kate, who loves to sneak out of the house to see Jason in the middle of the night, gets more than she bargains for when Jason makes the decision to bring her through the door. She is forced to confront the disconnect she feels from her family in a real way when they return and what was just a day for them, turns out to be fourteen months back on Earth. In the end, Kate must convince Jason that what was broken is not in her power to put right, and he should let her go with him again, this time maybe for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387174584

Book preview

The Hematite Horses

THE HEMATITE HORSES

KIERA L. POLZIN

Text copyright © 2009 by Kiera L. Polzin

For Jake

Book One: The Hematite Horses — Table of Contents

Contents

THE HEMATITE HORSES

Book One: The Hematite Horses — Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Summer Holidays

Chapter 2 –The Decision

Chapter 3 – The Shack

Chapter 4 – The Door

Chapter 5 – Mrs. Dunkerley

Chapter 6 – Posterns and the Hematite Horses

Chapter 7 – Time

Chapter 8 – Reinforcements

Chapter 9 – A New Door

Chapter 10 – Return

Chapter 11 – Missing

Chapter 12 – Separation

Chapter 13 – The Journey Home

Chapter 14 – Therapy

Chapter 15 – Confessions

Chapter 16 – Revelations

Chapter 17 – Runaway

Chapter 18 – Reunion

Chapter 19 – No Turning Back

Chapter 20 – The Mountain

Chapter 1 – Summer Holidays

Kate paused, one leg out the window, the other leg still on her bed.  She listened carefully to the sounds of the house.  She was used to its familiar noises, and strained to hear anything out of the ordinary.  It was still.  Stretching her right leg down farther, she felt her tennis shoe touch the rock wall of the flowerbed that ran under her bedroom window.   In a smooth, practiced movement, she pivoted on the ball of her foot to line her body up with the window, and pulled her other leg through.  She reached her hand back in and slowly turned the hand lever, closing the window firmly on her arm, but with just enough room to manipulate the lever to re-open the window later.  She crouched for a moment on the cemented rock, surveying the street.

Kate looked towards the left, where the next street lamp illuminated the Henderson’s front lawn, two houses over, and saw nothing but sleeping landscape in the muted glow.  Here, too, there were noises she was used to.  The trees across the street always made some kind of sound; branches of the hemlock rustling with the wind that only they could feel.  The stand of trees was so tall nearly all the underbrush had died, leaving only a needle strewn carpet of moss between the rough, heavy trunks.  The occasional car could be heard at the end of the street where Eby Road connected the residents of Dairy Street with the rest of the bench.  The ‘bench’ was a raised area of land to the north of the city centre of Misty River, the little town she lived in.  The sign at the beginning of the road warned vehicular traffic that Dairy was a dead end.  So with local traffic only, and all the residents of Dairy safely tucked in for the night, Kate knew she could easily make it the four houses down to Jason’s without being seen by someone driving by.

She ran along the front of the house to where the porch steps wrapped around the side.  Her heart beat fast, as it always did as soon as she was clear of her bedroom window.  It was the point of no return; the point where even if she turned around and went back, had her mother gotten up unexpectedly to check on her, she would be caught.  But sneaking out of the house was an art she had learned well.  She arranged spare pillows lengthwise to look like a sleeping body.  She had taken the screen off the window and slid it under her bed.  She waited until everyone was asleep.  And she wasn’t really that afraid of being caught.  Fear of being caught usually stopped you from sneaking out in the first place.  For Kate, the excitement and freedom of roaming her street in the dark was just too irresistible.

On this night, there was another reason her heart was beating fast.  Her best friend was home from his trip and she was dying to talk to him.  They had been best friends for as long as Kate could remember, much to her mother’s growing consternation.  Her mother thought it was an unlikely friendship for some reason, but their friendship had survived kindergarten and seven grades of school so far.  And it had survived bike races, competitive tree climbing and growth spurts, even though Kate was now five foot five inches tall, which put her one inch taller than Jason, and he didn’t like it.  In the same way Kate’s mom couldn’t explain why she thought their friendship was ‘unlikely,’ despite the obvious facts like they weren’t in the same grade and she was a girl and he was a boy, Kate couldn’t explain why their friendship was, well, what it was.  They weren’t boyfriend or girlfriend, or anything like that.  They were just -  necessary.

Since they finished school for the summer, Jason had been camping with his parents and she hadn’t had a single text or email from him the whole time he was gone.  Mr. Stewart loved the idea of taking his family ‘away from it all,’ but he appeared to be the only one, judging from the stories Jason had to tell once they returned from each of these semi-annual trips.  The Stewarts had a monster motor-home, with slide-outs, a generator, and a self tracking satellite dish.  Not exactly roughing it, but Mr. Stewart deliberately made sure whatever state park they decided to camp at wouldn’t have Wi-Fi.

Kate felt like something more was wrong, but she thought it was probably just her own insecurities.  She had a sinking feeling in her stomach for the last week that she just couldn’t shake.  Like she was on a roller coaster ride that kept surging over an edge, over and over again.  She was only a couple months older than Jason, but it meant she was a whole grade ahead of him in school.  Kate was going into grade eight at the high school in September, and she was leaving Jason behind.  This was going to be the first time they wouldn't be in the same school together.  Kate and Jason had never shared the same class, but they had spent all their spare time ‘joined at the hip,’ as her mom called it.  They always rode their bikes to and from school together, but now Kate was going to be taking a bus down the hill to her new school every day.  Kate didn't even remember when she first met Jason, but he had been a part of her entire life, like a member of her family.  In her mind, they had known each other forever, and she didn't like to think of the coming September without him close by.

Kate passed each house, taking stock of each shadow, looking for anything out of the ordinary.  The dark, blind windows of the houses reflected the light from the street lamps, like mirrored sunglasses.  Most of the houses on the street had a garage attached, and the doors were usually left up.  One good thing about living up on the bench was that burglary was not a huge threat.  But the piles of half full old paint cans, rusty tools, and broken toys, were not worth locking up behind a closed door anyway.  If someone had their garage door closed, it wasn’t because they had anything worth stealing.  It was probably just that they were trying to hide the mess.  The bench consisted of various subdivisions of houses, one school crammed with kids from kindergarten to seventh grade, and a corner store that periodically went out of business until some optimistic new owners decided to try and make a go of it again.  Everything else, grocery stores, McDonalds, the shopping mall, were ‘down the hill,’ quite a long ride by bicycle standards.  It gave the residents of Dairy Street a cut off from the rest of the world feel.  Only a poultry farm separated the houses of Dairy Street from the city limits, so they hadn’t gotten around to paving the street yet.  This meant she and Jason always had to walk to the connecting road to put on their roller blades, which was a pain because there was nowhere to sit to lace them up except the ground.

Jason had his bedroom in the basement of the Stewart home.  Kate knew well it was a privilege a number of older brothers seemed to be honoured with.  Her own brother had been granted a new bedroom in their basement two years ago.  That suited Kate just fine, as that was about the time she started sneaking out of the house at night.  Simon used to have the room next to hers, but now it was her mother’s sewing room.  Kate crouched down next to Jason’s window at the front of the Stewart’s house.  Jason’s mom had planted a nice row of shrubs that hid Kate from view quite nicely.  From behind the curtains, an orange glow brightened one corner of the window, and faded to darkness in the other.  She tapped on the window.

After a moment, she tapped again, louder this time.  She thought he must still be awake, as the orange glow came from the lamp on Jason’s desk, a series of smooth surfaces and shelves that ran nearly the length of the room on that side.  The desk was more like a massive work station, where his computer, gaming systems, and television all came together in a tangled party of wires.  Jason’s bed was against the other wall, and he would have turned the lamp off if he’d gone to bed.  Kate pulled at the metal edge of the window and it slid open easily.  She pulled aside the curtain and peered in.  The room was empty.  She extended her foot into the room and put it on the window ledge.  Then, in a reverse manoeuvre of climbing out her own window, she turned her body as she pulled herself through the window, and placed her foot on the chair that looked like a spare for the desk, but in fact worked as a platform to facilitate her entry into the room.  Kate was still perched on the chair when the bedroom door opened.

Man!  You scared me. Jason closed the door behind him.  With it shut, and his parents and sisters sleeping upstairs, they could talk all night without waking anyone up.

Get over it, Kate grinned and sat down on the bed.

I said come over in the morning.

I know.  And what’s that about?

What do you mean?

I mean, when have you ever suggested that I NOT sneak over?

I don’t know.

Well I know, and the answer is never.  Besides, you unlocked the window anyway.  What’s up?

Jason flopped down on his bed, with his head on his pillow and his fingers behind his head.  He gave Kate a big sigh.

That bad? She asked.

And worse.

What, did they fight the whole time?  Jason’s parents didn’t get along the best of times, let alone cooped up in a motorhome for a week.  If the past was any indicator, Jason’s mom usually got pretty tense by day two, without her usual amenities which include an unlimited supply of water for long showers, and her PVR set to record every episode ever aired of Law and Order.  Mr. Stewart had different television programming tastes, as did Jason’s three sisters, Samantha, who was eight and a half, and Melody and Megan, twins who had yet to turn five.  Between all of them, Mrs. Stewart would probably have to resort to reading books or magazines and only showering once a day, and would be less than pleased about either.

Tell me all about it.  Kate scooted up the bed and leaned back on the pillows beside Jason.

There’s no point.  It was just more of the same.  Jason used to tell her everything, and Kate wondered for a moment why he didn’t want to confide in her.  Sometimes, they wouldn’t even watch movies, or play video games, they would just talk about anything and everything for hours and hours.  Then she thought it was one in the morning, and after a whole week with his parents it was probably understandable that he didn’t want to talk about them right now.

Did you still get to visit your grandparents in Washington?

Yeah.  Jason didn’t elaborate.

Wanna watch something?

Nah.  Kate lay beside Jason for a while, not sure what to say.

Did you check your email already?

Did you send me one?

No, I knew you wouldn’t get it, what’s the point?

Then there’s no point in checking it.  I’ll only care about emails from you.  That made Kate feel a bit better.  Jason was still her best friend, even if he didn’t feel like giving her a blow by blow description of his holiday.

Kat? Jason called her Kat sometimes, but only when no one else was around.  I’m glad you came over.

No sweat. She leaned her head on his shoulder.  It was comfortable.  They didn’t need to talk.

Let’s just play PS3.  Jason said a while later, but made no move to get up.

Sure. Kate sat up and got the controllers off one of the many shelves that lined the wall above the desk.  Kate let Jason choose the game without argument; she thought she would cut him some slack after what she could only imagine had been a difficult week.  Luckily, he decided on Transformers, and not Call of Duty IV which she would have been hard pressed to agree to play, regardless of how bad she felt for what he’d gone through.  Kate climbed back out his window at just after three in the morning.  Even if she was so tired she was falling asleep at Jason’s, the cool night air always refreshed her.  In July, when she didn’t need to wear a jacket and it was hot during the days, the nights were still chilly.  She ran across her neighbors’ quiet front yards, her shoes not making a sound as they came in contact with the turf.  Messy garages aside, most lawns were trimmed with the same care given to golf courses.  She got to the side of her house, and gave a quick glance to the right where Simon’s basement window was.  All was dark; he hardly ever opened his curtains, even in the daytime.  She came to her window and slipped her hand through the opening to grasp the lever.  Once the window was wide open, she perched on the sill, one leg in and one leg out, and slipped off her shoes.  Even though her shoes stayed relatively clean, they picked up moisture from the dewy lawns, and she wouldn’t want a foot print on her comforter cover to give her away.  All part of the art.

Kate’s room was her sanctuary.  She exchanged her clothes for pajamas, and climbed in her bed.  At the end of her bed was her desk, a much smaller one than Jason had.  She had inherited the family’s old Pentium II computer, and even though it was painfully slow, it could still log on to internet and get email.  It was too slow to watch videos on YouTube, but Kate could sometimes get Simon to let her use the family’s main computer, located in the recreation room downstairs, if it was really important.  Unfortunately, her parents were constantly persuaded into thinking Simon should have priority access to that computer to do his homework, and he had claimed the rec room as his domain.  The truth was that Simon spent most of his time playing games on it.  He asked their mother once what Civic Mercantilism was, and she thought he was doing a project for social studies.  Kate knew the real story; he was just working his way through the Middle Ages in the game Civilization IV.  When he got as far as asking their mom what Suffrage was, leading her to believe that it was now his history homework he was working on, it was just that Civilization IV had finally brought him into the twentieth century.  Kate had to really hold herself back from exposing Simon for the liar that he was.

Her parents weren’t entirely preferential to Simon, even if he got the privacy of having his bedroom in the basement.  It was Kate that was allowed the old computer and internet access in her room, not Simon, because they trusted her.  Simon said he didn’t care anyway; he was a computer whiz who could bypass the best parental controls out there.  He didn’t need a computer in his room to get on to ‘those’ sites.  Yuck, boys like Simon were so disgusting.  Having her bedroom on the main floor was better for climbing out the window anyway.

Jason’s week long absence had been a constant knot in her stomach.  She couldn’t help imagining that was what it would feel like if they stopped being friends.  She would go to her new school, be involved in ‘after school’ things, take the late bus back up to the bench, and she might go whole days without seeing Jason.  She had text messaging, but school rules meant you had to turn all your electronics off at the door.  They had emails, but Jason didn’t have a computer in his room, and had to fight with his mom and three sisters to get time on their family computer.  No, face to face time was always the best, hanging out in his room, playing PS3, riding bikes everywhere.  Kate was afraid it was all going to slip away.

Chapter 2 –The Decision

As soon as Kate woke up the next morning, she immediately thought it was going to be an exciting day.   It had unlimited potential; all they had to do was decide what they wanted to do.  Jason had only been camping with his parents for seven days but it had seemed like it was the longest week of Kate’s life.  It was a foggy morning.  No, not actually foggy, not like the mists that cloaked the river valley in