Found: A N'arth Chronicle

By Val Clark

Shannon failed to save the earth colony of N’arth.

Back on earth her life is a disaster. Her twin, Raylene, has alienated all her friends. Nan has disappeared. The police suspect Shannon of murder.

Shannon makes two new friends, Zharu and Mungo, but one will betray her.

Enhanced night vision, superhuman hearing, hardly sleeping and a strange marker on her DNA—What is Shannon morphing into?

Whatever it is, she’s terrified of being captured, interrogated, and dissected.

Her only solution? Return to the pre-industrial world of N’arth. But how? And when she does return, what awaits her there?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781923065130

Val Clark

Val Clark is an award-winning story teller and visual artist. She’s addicted to reading, particularly YA, and writes across genres and ages. She loves teaching creative writing, chatting with fellow writers, and helping them achieve their dreams. She holds teaching qualifications in Fine Arts, a Masters in Creative writing, and is a self-confessed writing workshop junkie. She lives in rural NSW and, next to writing, travel bring her alive.

Book preview

IN PRAISE OF LOST

In Lost, Clark has created a cast of wonderful and rich characters that the reader can't help but ride with on an enticing tale of adventure and growing intrigue. And if that wasn't enough, seeing a fantasy medieval society through the eyes of a 21st century teenage girl from Australia is worth the price of admission alone.

Richard L. Lagarto

First fiction I’ve read in a long time and you held me! Have you a draft of Found?

Angela Karen

This is a page turner with interesting, well developed characters. It has an intriguing story line which is not the standard fantasy fare. I look forward to reading the sequel.

Clakkas

A unique and entertaining story. I must rate this a first class book. It should blow your mind.

Adam Clark

Clark weaves a tale worth reading. Unlike many YA novels, the threads of meaning run deep through this story. Clark doesn’t rely on cheap tricks to move along the plot, instead she depends on her skill and strong characterisation to keep you spellbound.

Lisa Griffiths

This is a great read. It’s got a bit of a different twist.

Wilf Lahring

Couldn’t put it down, just loved it. Fantastic. Amazing. What a talent. Can’t wait for your next book. Thank you. Just great.

Averil Sanders

I am a Jane Austen/Barbara Cartland style of reader but your book got me in straight off, love the mood you have created, know I am going to enjoy it.

Anita Cullen

I got totally immersed in the story to the extent that time in the real world just seemed to stand still. I read a good portion of this book while waiting for an appointment with someone who was over two hours late. The delay didn’t bother me one bit nor did I realise the time because I was enjoying the story so much. I later went home and finished the book, not doing anything else—including cooking dinner and going to bed at a reasonable hour—because I enjoyed the story so much. That’s the sign of a good book. I am very much looking forward to the next book in the series.

Suzanne Margaret

I’ve just started reading your book (uni semester holidays) and if it’s as good as the first few chapters, I’m loving it.

Billie Greatbatch

Loving the book so far! Nearly finished it in the first day!

Georgie Harris

I have only one criticism, where’s the next book!

Marjorie Green

Congratulations on a wonderfully told story. I have put together a series of workshops using your book as examples of metaphors, similes and foreshadowing. Looking forward to the next instalment.

Wendy Haynes

Wonderful read with novel twists. Five stars.

Norene Lahring

I am thoroughly enjoying the read.

Mark Selke

I am not generally a fan of fantasy, however, the characters in Lost by Val Clark really drew me in. Shannon in particular displayed amazing character, determination and perseverance and I was at times ‘lost’ in the story. The author writes very descriptively which definitely helped me to visualise events in the story. Whether intentionally or not, there are also some very good life lessons in the story. Although written for young adults, I recommend the book for all ages.

Chris Sears

Dedicated to these lovelies who continue to cheer me on:

Martin, Ryan, Adam, Kath, Telli, Chels,

Bryan, Peter, Ingrid, Kerrie and my

early morning writing companion, Stig.

FOUND

A N’ARTH CHRONICLE

Val Clark

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2023 © Val Clark

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

This story is entirely a work of fiction.

No character in this story is taken from real life. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional.

The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

No part of this book, including the cover, has been generated with the help of AI.

Come with pierced shield to save us

sword bared bright its crystal shine.

First born finds the womb eternal

stone, sword, shield, and light combine.

Three shall save us.

Three redeem us.

Three shall drive the dark away.

Life force falters, darkness seals us,

come you chosen, hear the call.

Weakened, broken, death awaits us;

when we fall then so do all.

One must seek the truth.

Two dwells in sadness.

Three shall welcome back the day.

Rise against the dark my soldier

hold me steadfast in your hand.

Raise your voice in splend’rous harmony

ring melodious through the Land.

One must look inside.

Two has healing hands.

Three with The Lost shall play.

CHAPTER ONE

The sound of Nuselmir’s voice, ringing with frustration at my betrayal, reverberated in my head.

Floating in black space, I had no idea which way was up or down. Time stretched and contracted, further distorting Nuselmir’s ever present voice.

My only points of reference were the Hayyo’imli tooth and the HeartStone. I tightened my fist around them both, as if my life depended on them, until that moment when the dark no longer pressed on me like set jelly.

My hip jarred against something solid, the force knocking the Hayyo’imli tooth and HeartStone out of my hand. On my knees, hands brushing over polished timber floorboards, I frantically searched for them. I found the artefacts clumped together in a corner, swept them up in one hand and sat back on my heels, clutching them to my chest, pushing them into my heart in an effort to dull the pain.

‘Mum? Dad?’ My voice a harsh whisper.

I waited. Listened. The only answer was the sound of rain pummelling on a galvanised roof.

Called again, louder, but nobody came.

Where were they?

If I was home, they’d come, wouldn’t they? And where were the dogs, Pesky and Puck, two Fox Terriers who lived up to their names?

I tried to stand, but banged my head. Exploring with my hand it was some sort of overhang, smooth, like plastic.

I shuffled backwards until I was squashed in the corner of … of what?

The darkness wasn’t the darkness I’d experienced during either transfer. Maybe I was home. But if I was, where were my parents? Where were the dogs? Nothing made sense. What room in our house had a low overhang? Fearing I could be anywhere in time and space, I hunkered down in the corner and waited for the day to dawn—if I was in a place that had day and night.

With excruciating slowness and growing relief, dawn’s pale light revealed I was on the floor in a kitchen. Our kitchen. I was home. Home! With that realisation, I finally became aware of the heat and humidity. It smacked into me, like a smothering wet towel, leaving me gasping for air. I staggered to my feet, fingers fumbling at the buckle of my sword belt. I tore off the heavy, suffocating Hayyo’imli gown and underclothes, dropping them, along with the belt, to the floor and used the tablecloth as a sarong.

I blinked and focused through the window on a rain-drenched, wet season morning.

Home.

‘Mum! Dad!’

Apart from the rain, silence enveloped my home. Not even the dogs barked.

Outside, they must be outside.

The screen door slammed closed behind me.

‘Mum! Dad! Pesky! Puck!’

I slid my feet into a pair of Mum’s double plugger rubber thongs. Warm rain pelted my skin, but my search of the house yard revealed nothing. Deserted. No dogs, no chooks, no parents.

Shopping! Mum and Dad were shopping. But that didn’t account for the empty yard. What if Pesky, Puck and all the chooks were dead? No! Nobody, nothing, was supposed to die. Everything had to be exactly the same as it was before Nuselmir …

Nuselmir! His name was like sawdust in my mouth.

Back in the house, I checked Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Bed made. Dad’s double pluggers under his side of the bed. Mum’s strappy slippers under hers. Curtains drawn. Unusual, but nothing to get upset about. No handbag in the wardrobe. I forced clenched muscles to relax. Chin. Jaw. Shoulders. Normal.

But what about Pesky and Puck and the chooks? I needed to control my overactive imagination. There had to be an explanation, a simple explanation, for the absence of the animals. I just hadn’t found it yet.

Wait! Maybe Raylene was allergic to dogs and chooks and they’d been palmed out to a neighbour. Relief surged through me. Plus, the fridge was chockers. That had to be a good sign.

I poured a mango juice, added ice and rolled the cold liquid in my mouth for ages, savouring the flavour, before letting the juice slide down my throat. Next: toast slathered with butter and ginger marmalade. I wandered from room to room—every room but my room—flicking the house lights on and off.

Time to get out of the wet tablecloth, into some proper clothes.

Time to brave my room.

My room was unrecognisable.

Hot pink, purple and lime green fabrics decorated with Celtic knot-work designs hung in place of my posters. The pin-up board, with its photos, school timetable and postcards, was gone. The desk was piled high with jumbled clothes. The polished floorboards of the walk-in wardrobe were littered with multi-coloured peasant skirts and blouses. I opened the drawers and ran my fingers through the costume jewellery tangled inside.

Nothing of me remained. Nothing. I determined nothing of her would, either. It took a few minutes of slamming through the kitchen cupboards and drawers to find the bin liners. By the time the walls were bare, the wardrobe empty, the floor clear, bed stripped and the contents of every drawer and surface tipped into garbage bags, sweat dripped off me as fast as the rain fell outside.

I dragged the bags into my parents’ room and headed for the bathroom. Oh, the absolute bliss of toilet paper and that first shower—shampoo and soap that lathered and didn’t eat into my flesh. I stood under the cold spray until my skin wrinkled like a prune.

With the high humidity, seconds after a swipe of the towel, I was wet again. It wasn’t worth the effort of drying myself, but I couldn’t deny the luxury of a soft towel.

The mirror of the medicine cupboard reflected my gaunt face. I ran my fingers through frizzy hair. Maybe there was something in the cabinet that would flatten it. Deodorant would be a good idea, too. The cupboard was empty except for a bottle of Prazosin—whatever that was—with my name on it. I slid the mirror door closed and rested my head against it. So much had changed, but why an almost empty medicine cupboard and what was that Prazosin for? Why had Raylene needed it?

A search of the linen cupboard revealed my clothes, folded and stacked, colour coded in every shade of pink. But when I tried the tops and shorts on—I might have been thin before I was kidnapped and whisked away to N’arth—now, I was all sharp boney angles. The skinny strap tops made me look like a 12-year-old trying for sixteen. The hem of my shorts hung loosely around my twig-thin thighs. It didn’t help, either, that I hated the slick way ‘every shade of pink’ clung to me. At least being able to wear a bra—even though my non-existent breasts swam in it—felt oddly secure.

Hello civilised world, I’m back! But I had to wear more than a bra. The question was, what?

Mum was curvaceous. No help there. Photos of Dad in his youth showed him reed thin, like me. There might be something in the Wishful Thinking cupboard. Mum didn’t like to throw away clothes, just in case … Just in case she or Dad lost weight. Just in case the clothes came back into fashion—not that she bothered much about fashion anymore. Just in case I needed them for a theatrical performance. In the bottom plastic tub of the Wishful Thinking cupboard, I found a pair of beige cargo shorts, a brown leather belt and a black muscle shirt. A loose fit, but better than Raylene’s clothes or my pre-N’arth tops. One hundred points for fashion sense, Dad.

My posters, books and sheet music were in boxes at the bottom of the hallway junk cupboard. I retrieved the music but dumped everything else in the garage wheely bin. As I flipped the bin lid closed, goose pimples rashed my arms. What meaning did my life back here hold, if I no longer valued these things?

My uneasiness grew as the day wore on and the weather worsened. The events of the last twenty-four hours circled around my brain, like a kite, wings outstretched, playing on a thermal, only deviating to dive and pick up a mouse. Round and round, with no distractions to quiet my mind—a constant picking at N’arth and Nan and Mum and Dad.

Dieter, the kitchen boy turned soldier, the heir to the throne, the firstborn of the Song was my half-brother. Plus, I had a twin! Not a particularly nice one, though. I was born on the planet N’arth, not earth, adopted and my earth Nan was a sort of N’arth cousin. My life read like a fantasy version of a daytime soapie.

At the centre of my time on N’arth sat The Last Song, a prophecy with more to be fulfilled and that ‘more to be fulfilled’ involved me.

Nuselmir said that, as a precaution against the worst outcomes of climate change, he’d set up a colony on, and transported people to, N’arth. What if he wasn’t the only one who could move between worlds? After all, Nan did bring me to earth.

I expected Mum and Dad home by six. That was their habit when they went to Darwin for shopping or appointments. Home by six in time to prepare dinner, which was on the table by seven. Being creatures of habit was not such a bad thing. I raided the fridge and freezer, stuffing myself in no particular order, with food I hadn’t eaten in like, forever. Ice cream. Light fluffy white bread. Chocolate coated almonds. Muesli. Tidied up. That distracted me for a while.

When the rain and wind eased, I struggled to get my rubber boots on over bare feet, checked out the property and, out of an old familiar habit, fixed the cyclone shutters to the windows, feeling the loss of Pesky and Puck frisking along beside me.

Nan’s herb gardens were mostly inactive in the Wet Season. I pulled out the Carpentaria seedlings and composted them. Carpentaria palms were banned from our property but the seed-ladened bat spew—bats flew over at sunrise and sunset—resulting in a constant battle for Nan.

Poor Nan. She’d looked exhausted and defeated when she turned up in the Hayyo’imli cavern with Raylene. If Raylene’s performance in the cave had been anything to go by, Nan’s year had been tough. But at least Raylene had Nan. Sure, Nuselmir had been helpful, but there’d been so much he’d left out in those short weeks at the Keep and, once he’d become comatose, or whatever, I’d been on my own.

Back in Dad’s office, I booted up the laptop and went online. Getting a computer had been a battle. I’d pulled out the it’s essential for my studies argument and, after a long fight, provided I kept off social media, he’d given in.

Hey! We had broadband. Dad was finally moving into the 21st century. I sure hoped he got to enjoy it. Maybe I could appeal to global leaders to lay down their arms for the future of the world. How did a person, a kid, go about saving the world?

The weather wasn’t helping. An internet search told me a category 3 cyclone threatened. My instinct to put up the cyclone shutters had been right. But the threat had been vague then, now it was real. I made it to the toilet seconds before throwing up. I tried to hold the panic back by filling my time with tasks. I got as far as stuffing the scabbard, whistle pouch, belt and Hayyo’imli clothes at the back of the top shelf of my wardrobe before my legs got too wobbly and my breath just wouldn’t get down into my lungs.

For a long time, I sat slumped at the kitchen table fingering the Hayyo’imli tooth and the HeartStone, each breath a painful effort. Should I hide them or somehow strap them to my body? I’d only been home a few hours, but what if Nuselmir worked out a way to pull me back? If I kept these two artefacts on me, and he succeeded, I’d have the tools to come home. I knew he’d keep trying. One day I’d have to go back to N’arth, but this time it would be on my terms, not his.

N’arth! I risked the internet again, Googling Tetralyon: nothing. N’arth. Hayyo’im. Hayyo’imli. Nuselmir. Nothing. I stopped when a clap of thunder close enough to make the house shake reminded me, I needed to shut down, turn off, and unplug the system.

The storm raged on and on.

Where were they? Where were my mum and dad? Why didn’t they come home?

Sobs wrenched at my throat.

The wind smashed into the verandah furniture. Hammered on the roof. Howled in the branches of the gum trees. Every sound echoed my anger and grief.

Time crept by.

7 pm by the backwards clock in Dad’s office. 7.05 by the analogue clock in the kitchen. Wherever I turned, there were clocks. I’d become so used to not having a clock, this constant reminder of the time made me even more anxious. I wanted to throw them all out.

Distractions. The shelves in Dad’s study were crammed with my books. Not anymore. All of my fantasy novels were gone! Instead, the shelves held untidy stacks of thin paperbacks. I pulled one out. Passions Rise as St Peter’s Hospital. RAYLENE was written in blocky Gothic letters on the inside cover. You have got to be joking! It wasn’t a hard decision to dump them all in garbage bags and tip them in the garage wheely bins.

8 pm.

Back in Dad’s office, I checked the power cord to the desktop was disconnected. The battery read 100%. I opened a word document. Time to compose an email:

Dear …

Problem number 1. Who did I address it to? A quick glance at the calendar showed me I’d been away for just over a year. Were the world leaders still the same? Lightning sheeted outside. Too dangerous to go online and check.

What I’m about to write sounds crazy. Please, please keep reading because the FUTURE OF THE WORLD is at stake.

That sounded so melodramatic, but how else could I say it? The future of the world is at stake.

About a year ago I found myself on another world—long story. A place called N’arth, which used to be New Earth. A powerful wizard.

No, wizard was the wrong word. Delete that. Scientist …

A genius scientist called Nuselmir took me there. He lives on N’arth and saved lots of humans from earth when it was …

Delete.

When it was what? I didn’t really know. I only had Nuselmir’s word for what happened.

What was the date in the book I’d found in his library?

2041.

It would be