Aldebaran

By Madeline Walz

Thousands of years ago, my ancestors guarded a stolen artifact. At least, that's what our family legend says.
I was so excited when my parents decided to host an exchange student for the summer: Aran Pleione, a guy from Jordan who's just as much of a history nerd as I am. But there's a problem. He's obsessed with our family legend, which claims we once protected a stolen artifact. He wants to know what it is, where it is, anything we can tell him. It's pretty clear he's hiding something. I don't know why he's so interested in this legend, but I do know one thing.

Aran Pleione is not who he claims to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madeline Walz
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215270707

Madeline Walz

Madeline Walz attends the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she studies user experience design. Originally from Waukesha, Wisconsin, she now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her family of six people, a dog, and a parakeet. She loves reading seven books at a time, doing math puzzles, and browsing for typefaces.  You can visit her website at madelinewalz.com or find her on Facebook @MadelineWalzAuthorDesigner.

Book preview

ALDEBARAN

Also By Madeline Walz

Otherworld

Book 1: Beneath Which Sky

Book 2: When Comes the Stroke of Midnight

Book 3: Chosen

Book 4: Gateway

Assorted Flash and Short Fiction

•

Locksley: A Flash Fiction Trilogy

Eternal: A Flash Fiction Story

The Journey: The Prequel to Aldebaran

Nova: A Flash Fiction Story

NaNoWriMo 2020: 30 Days of Flash Fiction

Adore: A Poetry Collection

Abide: A Poetry Collection

ALDEBARAN

Madeline Walz

Text Copyright © 2023 by Madeline Walz.

Images Copyright © 2023 by Madeline Walz.

All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by Madeline Walz

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

Madeline Walz

Visit my website at www.MadelineWalz.com

For the explorers

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

—Daniel Webster

Contents

I Arrival

II A Strange Person

III Shabbat

IV Secrets

V A Growing Mystery

VI An Unexpected Chase

VII Shock

VIII Truth At Last

IX Family History

X Into the Jungle

XI Threats and Tests

XII Uncovering a Legend

XIII The Journey Continues

Locksley: Part 3

Glossary and Pronunciation

Acknowledgements

About the Author

I

Arrival

June 3, 2066

New Berlin, Wisconsin, USA

I couldn’t believe I still couldn’t find anything about this guy. I searched every social media platform I could think of with the thoroughness of an archaeologist on a dig—nothing. Now, I may not have had the internet-searching skills of, say, a hacker, but I should have been able to find some mention of the summer exchange student we were picking up this afternoon.

All I knew about Aran was the student profile we got from the exchange program. Aran Pleione, age eighteen, from Jordan. Top interests: archaeology, history, swimming. That I liked—not the swimming, but the history and archaeology. I was a shameless history nerd. Ask which historical figure I’d like to meet, and you’d get a three-way debate between Hiram Bingham, Howard Carter, and Haris King. Chances were, Hiram Bingham would win—after all, I preferred South American history over Egyptology, and of those three, Hiram Bingham was the only one who explored South America.

Anyway, Aran’s student profile. His basic demographics weren’t interesting. Spoke Arabic and English—as I expected. Not religious—hopefully he’d be okay going with us to synagogue on the weekends. Allergies: certain metals and chlorine.

Okay, so maybe the basic stats weren’t all uninteresting. Who was allergic to metal and chlorine? What if he was allergic to the plane? Or the car?

Man, I was distracted. Maybe it was because I barely knew anything about this guy. Back to the student profile.

Aran was good with pets—not like that mattered, since we didn’t have any—and he was an only child. I hoped he was okay with kids, because my little sister was a hyperactive motormouth. Aran’s dad was a fisherman, and his mom was a naval architect. They must have lived in Aqaba or something—that was the only part of Jordan that had a significant coastline. Unless you counted the Dead Sea, and I doubted there was much of a market there for naval architecture.

The part of the student profile that should have been the most informative was the letter Aran wrote. However, that was somehow less helpful than the basic stats. Maybe he was just in a rush to get it done. After all, he joined the exchange program so last-minute that they weren’t sure they’d be able to place him with a host family in time. Luckily, my family decided last-minute that we wanted to host someone, which was how we ended up with Aran. He would be with us for a month this summer, then I would be going to Jordan to stay with his family for a month. It wasn’t South America, but at least it was a country on my bucket list. My family was originally from Jordan. True, that was a few thousand years ago—thank you, overly detailed genetic test results—and we were in Peru for a long time after that, but we still had some Jordanian heritage left.

Okay, we just had the last name—Levy—and a weird legend about guarding a stolen artifact, but it was something.

Zac?

I spun my desk chair around to find my sister, Kimber, standing in my bedroom doorway. She was still wearing her backpack from her second-to-last day of first grade. That was surprising, considering how upset she was that my school started summer break a week before her last day. I would have thought she’d drop her backpack the first chance she got.

Yeah? I asked.

Do you have the picture of Aran? Kimber asked.

I think so. Why?

I want to draw a picture for him.

Okay, let me find it. I turned back to my desk and dug through the mess of papers from my summer history assignment. We were supposed to collect information about where our family was from to prepare for a semester-long senior history project.

I was just about to tell Kimber I couldn’t find the photo when I saw a corner of shiny paper sticking out from under The Mystery of Egyptian Architecture by Haris King. That wasn’t part of the summer assignment—I just started rereading it to give myself a break from Peruvian and Jordanian culture.

I moved the book aside and gave Kimber the photo of Aran that was hidden underneath. He looked normal, except for his apparent lack of social media and weird allergies. Here you go. Be careful with this. Mom wants to keep it.

Okay. Thank you! Kimber snatched the photo and ran for her room, backpack bouncing.

I shook my head at her exuberance, then turned back to my internet sleuthing. Aran had to be online somewhere. No one was a digital ghost these days.

•

Later that afternoon, I spent the drive to the airport continuing my search for Aran’s social media accounts and trying to ignore Kimber’s nonstop chatter. Twenty minutes later, we were pulling into the parking structure at the airport, and I slipped my phone back into my pocket.

Any luck? Dad asked from the front passenger seat.

Nope. You’d think with such a unique name, he’d be easy to find.

Some people just aren’t into that kind of thing.

We piled out of the car and got on the shuttle to the international arrivals terminal.

Come on, Dad, I said. He’s a teenager. We love tech.

There’s an exception to everything, Mom said, cutting off whatever Kimber had been telling her about.

After a few minutes, the shuttle stopped in front of the terminal. It was crowded—several flights must have just landed.

Kimber, hold your brother’s hand, please, Mom said, scanning the crowd. I don’t want you getting separated from us.

Kimber took my hand. For once, she was quiet—too busy looking for Aran to talk. Then she squealed. Is that him? Zac, is that him? She tugged at my hand. In her free hand, she held her present: a drawing of her, me, our parents, and Aran. We hadn’t even met him yet, and Kimber was already acting like he was a new big brother.

I scanned the crowd. No, it’s not. Kimber slumped. I searched the crowd again. Wait, there he is.

I waved to get Aran’s attention, but Kimber was already jumping and shouting his name, pigtails flying as she waved her picture in the air. I winced as most of the crowd looked at us. What a first impression.

Aran turned at the sound of Kimber’s yelling. He grinned and pushed through the crowd towards us. As he came closer, I realized he was taller than both me and Dad. I wasn’t that tall—just five-nine—but Dad was six-foot and Aran was two, three inches taller than that. Looked like I’d be looking up to him for the next two months.

Are you the Levys? Aran asked. His English was great, with only a faint accent, including rolled R’s and softer L’s.

Yes, Mom said. You’re Aran?

I am. He held out his hand, which Mom shook.

I’m Debra, she said. This is my husband Victor, and of course, Zaccur and Kimber.

Call me Zac, I said. I tugged my right hand out of Kimber’s left and shook hands with Aran.

Kimber had stopped