Esoterica: with new 2024 Author Afterword

By Cristina Salat

What to do when Life throws a curve?

If you can't change the past, can you at least fix the present and the future?

 

It's becoming apparent to most folks that certain societal systems in America have gone totally awry, including ones put in place to protect women and children. This book is fiction based on fact, brought to you from the author of LIVING IN SECRET, THE SKIN OF WATER: DEFENDING THE DREAMCATCHERS, and HOW TO BE FREE (WHEN THE WORLD FEELS ANYTHING BUT!): 2023 UPDATE.

 

There's a New Earth being born...are you part of it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Flame Omnimedia
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224944217

Cristina Salat

As a woman of the wind, I have enjoyed years navigating the urban jungles and deep blue seas I call home.Website: https://cristinasalat.wixsite.com/website Eclectic e-store: https://livefromthevolcano.ecrater.com/

Book preview

~ ESOTERICA ~

with

new 2024 Author Afterword

Cristina Salat

Green Flame Omnimedia

All characters and locations are inventions of the author's imagination. While ideas and business settings are based upon historical/societal fact, any similarity to real people, places, things living or dead should be considered coincidental.

Summary: What to do when Life throws a curve? If you can't change the past, can you at least fix the present and the future? It's becoming apparent to most folks that certain societal systems have gone awry, including ones put in place to protect women and children. In this fiction that could-easily-be-fact, Amelia once ran from a father who had court-ordered custody, in order to begin a new life in San Francisco with her mom...but was found and brought back to a home environment where things soon went downhill. On the run again, this time our heroine is determined to create a permanent place for herself with chosen family once and for all.

1. Custody  2. Parental Rights  3. Child Abuse  4. America

5. San Francisco (California)  6. Street Teens/Survival of The Unhoused

7. Relocation  8. Dumpster Diving  9. Step-Parents

10. Friendship 11. Girl Power  12. Motherhood

13. Divorce  14. Times of Transition

This book's prequel, sequel, + related novels/novellas from the Gathering The Dreamcatchers companion series available in single, combo, trilogy, + 4-book omnibus formats:

Living In Secret/Esoterica

Living In Secret/The Skin of Water/Esoterica

Living In Secret/Esoterica/Paradise Found

Living In Secret/The Skin of Water/Esoterica/Paradise Found

Action: The Future is Here

Living In Light

Contact the author: http://cristinasalat.wixsite.com/website/contact

Esoterica copyright Cristina Salat, third edition with new 2024 Author Afterword

2019 second edition, 2016 first edition

United States of America

All Rights Reserved

Your support is appreciated. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher, except for brief excerpts quoted in book reviews and articles .

Green Flame Omnimedia

Postal Suite 783

Volcano, HI 96785

BOOKS BY CRISTINA SALAT

Gathering The Dreamcatchers

Companion Novels/Novellas:

* Living In Secret:

Special Edition with Author-Cast Dialog Bonus Feature

* The Skin of Water:

Defending The Dreamcatchers, third edition

* Esoterica:

third edition with new 2024 Author Afterword

* Paradise Found

* Action: The Future Is Here

* Living in Light

Pipsqueak: What Would The Waltons Do? (forthcoming)

Literary & Screen Novels:

* Robin, Romeo, & Juliette The Novel:

Not Your Typical Love Story

* Alias Diamond Jones

* Eleven-Eleven/Huck Finn: Girl Pirates Extraordinaire

* Swimming Lessons

* W.A.R.P.

* Irresistibly Yours

Illustrated Children's Books:

* Step-Whales

* Peanut's Emergency

*The Blue House

* Witzel's Wish

* Frogdemona: Precious Pest

Compilations:

* Hawaii Triptych

* Slice of Life

* Undine Intelligence: A Truer Tale of Ancient Elemental Water

Beings AKA Mermaid Love Spells

* The Big Picture

* Beloved Ex-Friends & Ex-Lovers: Sticking Together

Through Thick & Thin -vs- Letting Go

* Ordinary-Extraordinary

* Living In Hawaii: A Five Act Adventure (so far!) 2022 Update

* Together Alone: When The Going Gets Tough, Aliveness Keeps

Growing, Expanded Second Edition

* 2017: A Collection of Stories & Life Snippets

* Musical Musings of a Magnificent Ex-Malcontent: AKA Lessons Learned

from Andy Gibb & John Denver

* Creative Living:

From Starving Artist to Self-Employed Bliss, 2nd Edition

* Maze Magic

* How to Be Free (When the World Seems Anything But): 2023 Update

* Doing Intentional Community: Expanded 2023 Edition

Plus numerous Green Flame Omnimedia Slims!

Want a free Cristina Salat e-slim?

Subscribe to the author's every-once-in-awhile

newsy alohas from the jungles of Hawaii

(or wherever she happens to be at the moment)

& receive one!

http://cristinasalat.wixsite.com/website/newbie-gifts

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Serpent Mound

Chapter 2: Plan B

Chapter 3: No Worries

Chapter 4: Help Yourself

Chapter 5: Still Fresh

Chapter 6: Unexpected Rocks

Chapter 7: Mystery Meals

Chapter 8: Trash Security

Chapter 9: Sunshine House

Chapter 10: United Independence

Chapter 11: Mrs. Berger

Chapter 12: Neither Founded Nor Freed

Chapter 13: I'm Heather!

Chapter 14: Social Security

Chapter 15: A Good World

Chapter 16: Nag Champa

Chapter 17: Lime Jello

Chapter 18: The First Prize

Chapter 19: Even The Tiniest Puncture

Chapter 20: Dear Rosa

Chapter 21: Vanilla, Strawberry, Rocky Road

Chapter 22: Heave Ho!

Chapter 23: Sovereign Citizens

Chapter 24: Nurturing The New Country's Leaders

Chapter 25: Absolute Bliss

Chapter 26: Rainbow Toes

Chapter 27: Day & Night Dreams

Chapter 28: Stability

Chapter 29: OuttaSight

Chapter 30: America The Beautiful

Chapter 31: Gingerbread Town

Chapter 32: Gnarled Driftwood

Chapter 33: If You're The Ex-Wife

Chapter 34: The Strong One

Chapter 35: Nothing But Mustard

Chapter 36: Six Weeks To Live

Chapter 37: Love & Hugs For Now

Chapter 38: Brainwashing

Chapter 39: Everything Would Be FREE?

Chapter 40: Soaps & Sins

Chapter 41: UCCJEA

Chapter 42: Who Made Up These Rules?

Chapter 43: Dream Curves

Chapter 44: Bad Sex

Chapter 45: Since When?

Chapter 46: Your Mother Already Lost You Once

Chapter 47: Backup

Chapter 48: Pippi Longstocking

Chapter 49: Shake Things Up

Chapter 50: Your Finest Hour

Chapter 51: Promise

Chapter 52: A Friend

Chapter 53: All Kids Wish

Chapter 54: Ghosts

Chapter 55: Squid Ink Pasta

Chapter 56: Heaven

Chapter 57: Living In Trees

Chapter 58: This Is Not The End

Chapter 59: Magic

Chapter 60: Big Yellow Package

Chapter 61: Things Change

Chapter 62: Belly Of The Beast

Chapter 63: The Justice System

Chapter 64: Apple Obsessed

Author Interview

Readers Guide

Author Afterword

PART I

Chapter 1:

Serpent Mound

I had the camera the whole time, from start to finish that last time, and I took it with me when I left.

The great thing about being plugged into the way things are is: you have money.

Because I lived with my dad who had a regular job and gave me allowance, and grandparents who sent holiday gift cards with checks, and an ex-step-mom who paid me to babysit my half-sister when she was at night school, I had money.

Enough to pay a 17-year-old to drive me to California with his learner's permit and his dad's car. Enough to treat us to fast food burgers, Symphony milk chocolate bars with toffee chips, economy-sized bags of cheese puffs, and a 24-pack of Dr. Pepper along the way. Enough for gas and oil as we drove straight through from the east coast to west.

In other words, I ran away in style.

Except that I wasn't really running away.

Or maybe, it'd be more accurate to say, I wasn't only running away. I was really running to. Running to the last place I'd been happy in a healthy way. Back to San Francisco, where my mom lived with her girlfriend in a funky old Victorian I used to call the Sunshine House, back when I was a kid.

That's where I had Anthony, Jessica's brother, drop me off.

Escaping in the middle of the night, and winding up in sunny, foggy California in front of a crooked yellow house was as familiar as a reoccurring dream.

My mom and Janey weren't home when I jammed the door buzzer with my thumb, and Anthony couldn't wait. He was supposed to be camping with friends on Long Island, not 3000 miles away, and had to get his dad's car back before anyone realized different...which meant turning around and getting home in as few days as possible. Lucky for us, his father's old beater had a broken mileage counter.

The day he told me and Jessica how he sometimes drove into the city when their parents thought he was just hanging with friends a few miles away was the day my Great Escape Plan was born.

We left in the beginning of November, as soon as I took care of some things. That meant leaving before my half-sister's first birthday, and my own, but I had to. In between New York and California it snows. We had to get me here and make sure Anthony made it back before fall turned into winter.

I kept one can of Dr. Pepper to sit on the front stoop with when we landed; everything else, including the NoDoze I'd bought for both of us for the drive, Anthony took back with him...along with $500 of my cash stash, which he'd get to keep...as long as he didn't wind up getting stopped and handed a ticket for driving without someone over 21 in the car.

It was less than a plane ticket would have cost. I'd checked. Not that I could have flown anyway, unless I'd managed to get hold of my father's credit card.

But do they even let kids on planes without having a parent around to give permission?

Probably not.

And anything that tied the Great Escape to my father would have let him know where to find me, which was exactly not the point.

As it was, Mom, Janey and I would probably have to move soon, because even though I didn't think my father would look for me here right away, eventually when I didn't turn up at any of my friend's houses, California would occur to him since that is where he found me last time.

The cold cement steps in front of the Sunshine House bit into my legs through my favorite overalls as I sat down to wait, but I wasn't sad to see Anthony drive away. We had hardly stopped on the way...and he didn't actually try anything, but I'd kept myself pressed to the passenger side door with bags of food between us the whole time, thinking he might. Because he's 17. And a boy. And I don't really know him. And because I seem to have that effect on guys.

Maybe it's the boobs. Most of my friends hardly have them, so nobody notices them.

Me, just walking down the street, guys stare. Young guys. Old guys. One reason I like big baggy T-shirts and old-fashioned farmer's overalls these days.

And it might be more than the boobs...

It's like in the last year, something about me became different, and every dog within ten miles began sniffing the air. But the most annoying thing Jessica's brother did was rap going back to Cali, going back to Cali, going back to Cali, I really think so...for like a million miles.

I knew what he meant, but every time he busted into the refrain, it made me think of my little half-sister Callie, who I was leaving behind.

Other then that, Anthony was a perfect gentleman. He had only one request: that we stop at Serpent Mound in Southwest Ohio along the way.

I'd never heard of it, but apparently there are pyramids and unusual mounds in different shapes all over America made by prehistoric people even before places like Stonehenge in Europe were built. Maybe they are burial mounds. Maybe ancient people made them for astrological reasons or sacred ritual. Nobody really knows.

Serpent Mound in Adams County was on State Route 73, a few hours drive from Cincinnati, and surrounded by gentle hills and farmland. We got out of the car, walked over some green grass and found what turned out to be a lonnnnnng mound, its back curved against the contours of the land, its snake-like head aiming for a cliff above a stream.

It was hard to see the whole thing standing next to it even though Anthony and I walked the entire length, but there were postcards and greeting cards where you could see images from above that somebody took from a plane or helicopter. The mound had seven serpent curls winding back and forth for like eight hundred feet, ending in a triple-coiled tail on one end, with a big open mouth on the other end that looked like it was about to devour something round.

Some people thought the round thing was supposed to be an egg. Other people thought the serpent was swallowing a sun or moon, like an eclipse. There were lots of theories. What I noticed was, standing next to Serpent Mound, walking along it on that bright Fall day and reaching down to touch the grass that grew on it, petting its curve...somehow just made me feel better about the world and my place in it.

It was as if everybody milling around was in the presence of something that had been here long before all these people and their theories...and something that would still be here long after everybody was done checking it out. Like maybe it — and everything else in the world — had some kind of purpose on a scale us little humans scuttling around like ants on the ground couldn't comprehend.

Even looking at the postcards made me feel peaceful. So I bought a few to show Mom and Janey, and some greeting cards too.

According to the back of one, radiocarbon experts had just revised the date they thought Serpent Mound had been constructed; now they were thinking maybe 321 BCE, one year after Aristotle died in Greece.

When we finally reached San Francisco, I kissed my friend Jessica's brother on his cheek and waved as he drove away, glad to be alone with a warm can of soda in my hand and my brown leather bag by my feet. In it was everything I cared about, and everything I needed. Then I turned to the house that'd been living in my mind for like a year and a half.

It looked almost exactly the same: a big crooked gingerbread house, yellow with faded mauve, red, beige trim, and bright pink bushes — larger than I remembered — next to the front door's metal security gate...which looked smaller and less sturdy than the one that I recalled.

Psst, Sammy... I leaned towards the door, calling my cat.

I pictured his ear with its black spot quirking in whatever room he was hanging out in. Could almost see him stretching his orange body — probably longer and leaner now that he wasn't a kitten anymore — and practically felt him bounding towards me as I listened for his meow on the other side of the door. I had fuzzy mouse ball toys with me in my bag which had come all the way from Greenport, Long Island.

Anthony had sworn he would not tell even his sister where I'd gone, so I was pretty sure things would be okay now. At least until Mom and I figured out what to do next.

It never occurred to me that my mother might not live here anymore.

Chapter 2:

Plan B

So I was floored when a stranger with cinnamon-colored skin, indigo blue curls, and a knapsack over one shoulder appeared on the street in front of me, keys to the house in her hand. She seemed just as surprised to find me sitting on her front steps.

Can I help you? she said.

I got to my feet. Um, I'm looking for... and suddenly I wasn't sure what to say.

Were Mom and Janey still using the fake names they'd rented the house with? Or did they go back to their real ones? Or maybe, now that gay people were legally getting married, maybe they'd taken some version of each other's last names?

...my mom and her girlfriend, I finished lamely.

I'm sorry, the girl with the blue hair smiled. You must have the wrong place. I'm the only person who lives here.

That's impossible, I live here! Or I did. A year and a half ago.

Um, maybe your folks moved? the girl said, shifting the bag on her shoulder. It looked heavy with books. I've been here about six months, and my parents rented the place for me from the old guy who owns it. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and took out a silver phone. Want to call your mom?

The number I had was for the landline my mother got right after Daddy came and took me back to Long Island which I used to call collect. I tried it from the girl's cell, and got a recorded message: You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again.

Which is when I realized maybe I should have tried calling to tell them I was coming.

Or sent a letter.

Or something.

The girl scratched her head as I handed back her phone and picked up my leather bag muttering, Sorry.

She didn't try to stop me as I backed away. (Why would she?) Still, I hurried down the hill to where the shops and busses were, not slowing down until I was across the street, around the corner, and out of breath. Then my legs stopped moving, understanding before my brain did, that I actually didn't have anywhere to go.

I'd come to California to move back in with my mother.

There was no Plan B.

Chapter 3:

No Worries

Luckily I had money and I had lived in this city before.

Some things about the neighborhood had changed, but a lot was the same, so I knew my way around. I popped into the Spanish fried chicken place and got a spicy chicken wing Lunch Special To Go, then walked back up the hill on the next street over to the small dog-walking park that was the hub of this area...if you pictured the neighborhood like a wheel with street-spokes radiating out from a grassy green center.

I dropped onto a park bench to munch my extra crispy wings and think.

Why would my mother have moved without letting me know?

Then again, maybe she had tried...

I hadn't been allowed to keep my post office box on Long Island without getting a parent to come in with ID to sign for it too...which of course was impossible, so I'd had to let it go.

Which meant anyone from my California life who'd wanted to write me after my father took me back had to start sending their letters directly to his house. Sometimes I got those letters, mostly I probably didn't.

My father hadn't gotten the police or lawyers involved when he came to San Francisco to get me with his private detective, on one condition: that Mom would stay the hell out of my life. So he was not very into passing on letters from her or Janey...though he did give me a few from my friend Elizabeth, after opening and reading them first.

I know I could have bought stamps and sent letters to my California family. And for awhile I did. Or I could have made them get email and connected with them on the computers at school for free.

For awhile, I did call collect from a payphone or from someone else's house...

But by then everything felt so heavy and complicated. Even back to being Amy on Long Island like I used to be — before Mom, Janey and I took on new identities and ran away to California — my life was still full of secrets.

So maybe, by the time Mom and Janey decided to move, they hadn't heard from me in so long, they didn't think it would matter if I knew.

There was a payphone in the dog-walking park with the kind of old-fashioned phonebook between hard plastic covers you hardly see anymore now that most everybody without a crazy father has a cell phone. I tried looking up my mother by her real name, then her fake one. Then I tried possible names for her girlfriend Janey.

Then I tried information.

But the operator couldn't find them either.

There were a few Dreisden's in San Francisco...but when I punched in those numbers, none of them turned out to be who I was looking for.

As afternoon fog drifted in, I pulled a fleece jacket from my bag, realizing that maybe figuring out how to find my mother wasn't as important as figuring out where I was going to be that night. So I found a Youth Hostel downtown in the phone book, called for directions, and learned what bus to take to get there.

The hostel was a short squat building with brightly lit windows located on a grimy street with a gate that locked at 10PM. I was glad to be checking in long before that — I could not wait to take a shower and put on warm leggings and fresh, clean socks! — I'd been on the road for days by then, and felt tired and I smelled sweaty and a little too musky. I'd also forgotten how chilly it gets in San Francisco, even on days that start out sunny.

But waiting on line behind a bunch of people in hiking clothes, big packs resting against their legs, I spotted a sign that said how old you are supposed to be to stay at a youth hostel...and it turns out youth doesn't mean almost 14.

When it was my turn at the counter, the hippie guy behind it handed me a form to fill out and asked for ID.

My wallet just got stolen! I cried, reaching down to get cash from my sock and pushing