Nine 9

By J.D. Wabe

Bound by curiosity and driven by strange dreams he had, a 12-year-old boy travels to another world believing the answers to his queries lie outside his regimented society. On the first day of his quest, he has an unexpected encounter with a wolf. Although he has never seen a real animal before, he discovers an unusual bond with the beast, and the wolf becomes his guide and companion through the uncharted planet.

It’s here in the unknown system that he learns, through a series of life-changing experiences, that his dreams are premonitions intertwined with his past and present. Considering that the gateway back to his people is closing down, he ought to return soon or else he’ll be trapped in this place forever.

As clues about his visions continue to unravel, he finds himself at a crossroads between running out of time and resolving his unanswered questions; queries that could uncover the true meaning of his existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638294597

J.D. Wabe

J.D. Wabe was born and raised in Costa Rica and is the great-grandson of Palestinian emigrants. He spent some years in the U.S.A. attending school and later on, moved to South Korea, where he has been living for the past 18 years pursuing a career as an English teacher, freelance photographer and a contributor writer for different publications in English.

Book preview

Nine 9

J.D. Wabe

Austin Macauley Publishers

Nine 9

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: The Revelation

Chapter 2: Water Flow

Chapter 3: Stranger in a Cave

Chapter 4: Love and Eternity

Chapter 5: Balance of Nature

Chapter 6: Voice of the Wind

Chapter 7: Stranger Without Words

Chapter 8: Togetherness

Chapter 9: Guardian of the Night

Chapter 10: Hopes and Dreams

Chapter 11: Masterful Cry

Chapter 12: The Wise Tree

Chapter 13: Last Day, New Day

Chapter 14: Universal Energy

About the Author

J.D. Wabe was born and raised in Costa Rica and is the great-grandson of Palestinian emigrants. He spent some years in the U.S.A. attending school and later on, moved to South Korea, where he has been living for the past 18 years pursuing a career as an English teacher, freelance photographer and a contributor writer for different publications in English.

Dedication

To all the beautiful people in my life

Copyright Information ©

J.D. Wabe 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Wabe, J.D.

Nine 9

ISBN 9781638294580 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781638294597 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913698

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street. 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Austin Macauley Publishers for opening this window into a new world. To my lovely editors, Nikki Boccelli-Saltsman and Paisley Rose Prophet, for their dedication and professionalism. To my best friends, Lorryn Smit, and Suzana Radema and their endless words of encouragement. To my beloved family and their unconditional love; Mom, Raquel, Ivan, Fabian, Emiliano, Lolly, Claire, and, my precious daughter, Mina. To my aunts, Ana Vazquez and Ligia Harris, for their guidance throughout my growing process and finally to my dear publishing manager, Jane, for all the support and devotion for me and my work.

Chapter 1

The Revelation

The young mother had never experienced this extent of grief in all her seventeen years of existence. Both the pain of childbearing she withstood just three days ago and the distress and grief she encountered the day the father of her child left her, paled compared to the profound sorrow she was going through at this very moment. She was no stranger to suffering and sadness, but this heartache was beyond anything she’d faced before.

She was trying to draft a terse letter to leave her newborn son. She had just signed his adoption agreement documents, giving up her right to motherhood, and handed the boy over for permanent care at the newborns’ facility. The sorrow she endured rooted so deeply in her heart that her hands now lacked the strength to write or even hold the pen. She couldn’t seem to figure out how to start or what to address; her sadness left her feeling heavy and unable to see straight. When she finally put some words together, she scribbled a brief note:

My dear boy, today I feel as if my life has ended, and I’m leaving you here because yours has just started—you deserve a brighter future than what I can offer. I know I’ve failed you as a mother, and this is torture I will bear forever. I want the best for you, my dear one, and apart from all this pain I’m suffering now, I find a little window of comfort seeing at least we are leaving you with three gifts: the gift of life, a better future, and a beautiful name. I hope, one day, you can find that bright star you are destined to meet. No matter how far apart in we are, we will always be together. Please forgive me.

She had written in the plural, ‘we,’ because, somehow, she believed she and the universe were under this plan. Still, with each word she wrote, she felt as though pieces of her heart were shattering into millions, disappearing into eternity. She wanted to write more, but the unbearable pain of what she was doing would not allow her to continue any further.

She took a last look at her child sleeping peacefully, kissed him goodbye, tucked the note under his pillow, and walked away as fast and as far as she could, without a plan on what to do or where to go next. She knew she had to escape from this nightmare as quickly as possible.

This hadn’t been a sudden decision. She made up her mind long before he was born…she’d had a dream in which she saw a young boy climbing up a stairway into a big and bright star. That had been her revelation that she would have a boy who was predestinated to greatness.

She recognized that she couldn’t have raised him alone. A teenage mom, an adventurer who dropped out of her studies and had no plans for a future. Giving him up for adoption was the only alternative she’d been able to sum out to help fulfill her vision.

She was now conscious of all the bad choices she’d made in her brief life and understood her only redemption from all the failures was to grant her child a better fate than the life she had. The world was once again falling apart for her, and though she couldn’t bear the heartache of giving her offspring away, she sensed in the depths of her soul that the universe had further plans for him, and this comforted her with a small glimmer of hope.

Chapter 2

Water Flow

I wandered all morning without a map or a solid idea of where my sixth sense was taking me. I followed only the feeling in my bones and the voice of the water I could perceive coming deep into the grove but hadn’t yet seen. As I went deeper into the woodland, the noise sometimes grew louder and closer, but every so often, it faded or altogether died out, leaving me puzzled. No matter how disorienting the expedition turned, I never felt adrift because one thought kept injecting me with profound assurance: I knew I was walking in the right direction.

After an hour or two, or perhaps four—time seemed irrelevant—I finally arrived at the location my imagination had been looking for; the place I saw in dreams. I’d at last reached the water flow, or ‘river,’ a term that some history books used to refer to natural H2O streams, but a definition we weren’t allowed to use in the Faculty.

This watercourse was beautiful; my heart felt overwhelmed. There were compilations of trees standing along the shore and rocks of all sizes resting on the edges and bottom of the stream. The sound emerging from the spring was sweet, calm, and melodious, and it reminded me of a childhood sound I could not really place. Was it the gentle whooshing I’d heard inside my mom’s womb? Hard to say—how could I remember? Was it the sound of my mom bathing me? Perhaps. Answers will come later, I whispered to myself and refrained from wondering.

Although the water flow and all the surroundings were close to how I dreamed and pictured them in my mind, there was one very important factor that was missing. In my dream, I saw a man sitting by the edge. He was an elderly man wearing a straw hat, old clothes, and no shoes. I’d imagined him being there, but he wasn’t. In my thought, I remembered speaking to him, and although I couldn’t remember the content of our conversation, I recalled feeling warm and impressed, the same reaction I would get upon meeting a good master teacher in the Faculty. However, he wasn’t there.

Has he gone for a break? Will he come back? For all I knew, he might’ve been hungry and went to find something to eat or break bread with his family, if he had one. I read that their kind usually ate over three times a day; I was convinced he wasn’t far and would soon return.

I waited in the same spot where I’d imagined him to be. He would make an appearance, I was certain.

I waited on this big, flat, cobblestone-like rock by the edge of the watercourse, which conveyed the impression that it had been designed solely for the purpose of resting. I marveled at it—what a magnificent natural creation by a brilliant maker, built with precision. The distance to the spring enabled anyone to sit not too close and yet not too far from the surface, the perfect range; the shape looked to be crafted perfectly to fit someone’s bottom, and the smooth rounded edges allowed for a set of knees to rest comfortably. These factors synchronized with all the surrounding elements.

I sank my feet in the clean, calm, and cool stream. Although at first it felt like a gentle electric shock, a feeling of relaxation and peace swept over me in the moments that followed, leaving me at ease and serene. I felt a deep connection with this natural world, and this awareness somehow produced in me a sense of power and belonging—a power not like the controlling type, but a sense of unity. I’m with nature now!

I’d never seen natural H2O flowing like this before; we had special devices that could generate this liquid. We’d learned in the Faculty that H2O was created by combining two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen particle, and it was not a simple process to recreate artificially because if these atoms were not combined properly, an explosion might occur. Looking at the stream flowing like this and listening to the magnificent sound of it making its way through the small pebbles, plants, and bedrock was mind-boggling.

As I sat contemplating this beautiful scene, I wondered why there weren’t any fish. I’d read that surges like this were a habitat to fish, but all I could see were pebbles, cobblestones, and green plants that resembled little dancing creatures swaying and dancing to the music of the water as it made its way down the stream. Suddenly, an idea came to mind.

I was going to sing.

I’d seen fish before, in books and marine exhibitions, but never in their natural environment. Maybe if I chanted the Song of Nature, which was a hymn most kids learned in the Faculty, the fish might hear it and show up. Fish didn’t have ears, but they possessed other perception organs that allowed them to understand sounds, making it possible to recognize music. In our Nature class, our master had taught us this song written by the Spirit of the Forest. The Spirit of the Forest wasn’t someone or just one entity but a combination of all that existed in nature. This song was not an ordinary melody but a mythical, enchanted composition. According to our counselor, humans weren’t able to understand the lyrics or the melody; only creatures living in the wild could.

I remembered when we were introduced to this song in class; it had felt like a melody I’d heard before. The unusual musical notes and strange sounds were things I had grasped easily—I had almost felt I knew the meaning and purpose, and it wasn’t as intangible as the schoolmaster had made it out to be. I’d wanted to explain that I could recognize the meaning and melody patterns, but we were taught not to contradict our masters and our teachings, so I had refrained from expressing what I’d felt. I knew that if I pointed out this special connection with the song, I might’ve gotten in trouble, so I concluded that the feeling of acquaintance with the song was something I had to keep to myself. I followed the class lead, learned it, and chanted along like the rest of the pupils.

It was time to test the theory that fish could understand music and the song was a link to the natural world. Would it work? I sang and sang until my lungs ran out of air and my stomach ached. Sadly, not a single fish appeared. I thought perhaps we must perform it at a certain time and place, or maybe my voice was not attractive enough. Regardless, still I felt disappointed. Probably the song was just a myth