If you missed the Prelude, click the button below to link to it!
This is Chapter 1 of my new serial novel, Ancient Light. This story is the sequel to my earlier book Enchantress of Turquoise Sky. You can read and enjoy this new story whether or not you have read the previous book, but if you would like additional backstory on the characters and the world of Turquoise Sky, please check out Enchantress of Turquoise Sky via the link above. Thank you for joining me on this creative journey and I look forward to your comments about Ancient Light!
Tarany began her workday long before the dawn and at least five hours before her bakery opened to customers. She first collected bins of flour, sugar and leavening agents from the pantry, pulled a tray of eggs, as well as containers of milk and butter from the refrigerator. She started up the bank of ovens to preheat.
As she reached for the hook holding her apron, a shockwave knocked Tarany backwards. She thought, “An earthquake here, in Erevale?” As though the entire building moved several feet in an instant, she fell to the floor, watching the flour and sugar bins topple, raising a ghostly white cloud billowing toward her.
And the lighted ovens.
Tarany scrambled to her feet in time to be thrown down again as the ovens explosively ignited the dispersed flour dust. The bright yellow fireball burst forth, consuming itself instantly before the kitchen submerged into darkness as the electricity went out. Tarany reacted more in anger than fear.
"So far, this day sucks!"
Her eyes needed to adjust after the brilliant flour flash. Tarany began to make out the glowing of the burners beneath her ovens. The ground still quivered, so she crawled toward the ovens, thinking it prudent to shut them off.
Then all was pitch black for a minute until Tarany glimpsed the silvery light from the window next to the back door. A waning gibbous moon shone high enough in the sky to provide sufficient illumination to navigate. She cracked the door to the outside, and the cool morning air rush in against her face. It carried an odd odor on it, similar to the petrichor of first rain, but earthier. Deep rumbling continued, punctuated by various sounds of falling objects around downtown Erevale. The shaking was not confined to her building.
The tremors subsided in another minute, and it grew quiet as the earth calmed. Though rattled, Tarany suffered no significant injuries beyond a bruise and a scrape or two. She slowly stepped into the moonlight to survey the area around her.
The buildings in the vicinity appeared to have little damage apart from some cracking of stucco. Toppled potted plants and trash bins littered the street and walkways, but she didn’t see any broken glass in the storefronts. Tarany rounded the corner of her store to inspect the condition of the front of her bakery. The plate glass window was intact, but the multilayer cakes displayed in it were strewn in crumbled piles and frosting smeared the glass.
Lamenting the hours she'd spend cleaning up and replacing the elaborately decorated cakes, Tarany was distracted by a high-pitched squeal from down Center Street. The shrill noise became louder as it grew closer. In the dimness, it appeared to be coming from a person running in her direction, screaming in sheer panic.
From less than a block away, she saw a young child racing toward her. Tarany stooped to catch the little one in her arms.
“Oof!” Tarany responded to the impact of the fast-moving child.
The little girl, barefoot, and still in her nightclothes, kept wailing and crying, though not so loud as before being embraced by Tarany. The girl took a tight hold of Tarany, shivering as she let out intermittent fearful shrieks. Tarany picked her up off the ground, quickly checking the child had not cut her feet as she ran through the debris in the street.
“It’s okay, little one,” Tarany whispered to her. “I’ll help you. I know, I’m scared, too. But we can help each other now.”
Tarany’s reassuring tone reduced the girl’s crying down to a whimper. She tried to have a good look at the little girl’s face, in spite of her features being contorted in terror, to try to place her.
The marketplace district around Tarany’s bakery was still deserted because of the early hour, and the residential area of Erevale was several blocks away. Considering the short time elapsed since the calamity, the girl could not have run too far. Tarany guessed the girl to be about four or five years old. She hoped once the child settled down, Tarany could talk with her and find out how to return her home.
“I’m Tarany,” she said to the girl. “Would you like to tell me your name?”
The child still panted hard and did not speak yet, but at least the question got her to turn her face up at Tarany. The girl’s eyes reflected fright, but with some relief she was not alone.
“Take your time, dear,” Tarany said, rocking to soothe the child as the two gazed at each other. The girl’s face wasn’t familiar to her. But with a friendly smile, Tarany got the girl calmed.
“Minki,” the young girl said at last. Then, hesitating, she added, “My house….” The girl pointed up the street from where she had run.
“Yes, let me take you back home, Minki. I’m sure your family is looking for you.”
“I’m…I’m…!”
“Of course, you’re scared. That was so scary. But you’re safe now and I’m taking you home.” Tarany kept carrying Minki as she started walking. “You can show me where you live.”
Minki shook her head. “Gone.”
“What? What do you mean, Minki?”
“I ran from my bedroom. The rest is gone.”
“The rest? The rest of your house? Did the rest of your house fall down from the shaking?” Tarany now had second thoughts whether she should take Minki back.
“No, it's all…gone,” Minki insisted.
As she walked, Tarany noted little damage to the properties they went past, surprised there were no collapsed houses despite the severe shaking experienced. She thought Minki became so frightened and disoriented she just wanted to run from the tremors.
“All right, Minki, we will figure this out,” Tarany said.
“I don’t know where mommy and daddy went!” Minki began crying again.
Tarany wanted to start crying with her but resolved to remain composed for Minki’s sake. She was sure it would all work out when she got Minki back home.
“Are we getting close?” asked Tarany after they walked about four blocks.
“It's up there,” Minki said as she pointed toward a leftward curve onto Grove Avenue. The girl pressed her face into Tarany’s shoulder as though she didn’t want to look.
Neighbors gathered outside in the aftermath of the shaking, and a number were congregating in a yard where it appeared only a small part of a house stood, an entire side of a bedroom with a missing wall. Indeed, there was no collapsed structure next to the bedroom still standing. Whatever had been connected to that bedroom was…gone.
In the place where most of the house should have been contained a murky darkness, almost like an opening into the depths of nowhere. Not a hole in the ground, but one that appeared to Tarany to head in a direction she could only describe as “beyond” where she stood. It appeared so distorted, the more Tarany stared into the space, she perceived the disorientation that must have propelled Minki’s panic. Tarany held the little girl tighter against her, as much to console herself, as to comfort Minki.
Dizzying as it appeared to her, Tarany continued to approach it step after step. She edged toward the one room remaining.
“This is your bedroom, Minki?” Tarany asked the girl.
Minki lifted her head only long enough to glimpse what remained of her house before turning back to Tarany to nod with sadness and without a word.
Tarany walked closer to the partial structure and examined how cleanly severed the edges were. No dangling wires, splintered framing studs, nor drooping, crumbled plaster threatened to fall on them. No earthquake demolished this home. Whatever tore through here was unnatural. Tarany tested the floor of the room, which felt solid and she stepped upon it. She pushed aside the sheet and blanket Minki must have thrown off in her panic. Under the bedding, Tarany found a stuffed, plush toy laying on its back. Tarany crouched to pick it up.
“Oh, Minki. Is this your kitten, little one?”
Minki raised her face from Tarany’s shoulder, and for the first time, a trace of a smile curled the child’s lips. Her hand reached for the stuffed animal, and she pulled it in to hug it against her.
“Stormy,” Minki said with affection to the fluffy gray and white cat.
Stormy. The kitty’s name made Tarany smile, remembering how she used to cuddle a brown bunny named Piki to go to sleep as a little girl. She sensed a degree of comfort from Minki being reunited with her stuffed companion, but she was still holding a traumatized child.
Alighting from the detached bedroom, Tarany gazed into the vastness of the opening in front of her. It defied a physical definition, its boundaries at once vague, yet obvious, contrasted with the world around it. Tarany stepped across gravelly ground while inches in front of her feet was void space, yet appearing as firm as the earth. Looking left and right, Tarany saw the chasm opened to the same kind of emptiness, having structure, but no clear substance. Looking above, she discerned where the brightening sky ended, and the ineffable depth began.
Detecting no fear of this space within herself, Tarany pushed her shoe into the darkness before her and discovered it to be a solid surface even with the ground under her feet. She carried Minki a full two steps into the opening. Then she realized how clear, and not so dark, this space became after she entered it.
A voice called out to her from behind.
“Hey, come back out here!”
Tarany turned around to find the streets and houses of Erevale appeared much less definite from where she now stood. But she could still make out a fire service truck had pulled up and a woman in a bright green coat spoke to her.
“It’s not safe!” the captain exclaimed as other members of her truck crew began stretching out plastic tape to cordon off the area and directed the onlookers to back away. “Something could fall on you or you might fall into a hole! Come out now!”
Tarany peered again into the opening to see its walls and floor were secure around and below her. She detected light coming from a short distance down the – tunnel, she guessed. Part of her wanted to agree with the fire captain, that she was being foolish and taking unnecessary risks.
Inside, however, the space differed from its appearance outside its threshold. Maybe she was not thinking straight, rattled as she had been by the shaking and explosion of flour dust in her bakery earlier. She only thought about getting Minki back to her parents, and it was most likely her parents were somewhere down this tunnel. Tarany walked, holding Minki and her stuffed cat, toward the light ahead of her.