TODAY, WE ARE THRILLED TO WELCOME OUR GUEST AUTHOR, ERIC SMITH, WHO IS SHARING AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE OF HIS NOVEL, 'THE OUTSIDER LORD' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

Dylan opened the front door of his shared apartment to find a strange woman sitting on the couch, her back to him. Her long black hair, with random strands of gray mixed in, cascaded over her back, and even sitting down, he could tell she was uncommonly tall.

“Um, hi,” he said, uncertain, as he closed the door behind him. “Are you a friend of Roger’s? I think he’s at . . .” The woman stood and turned around, and all Dylan’s words drained out of his mind, leaving behind a trail of incoherent sputtering.

“Dylan,” the woman said, crossing her arms while eyeing him up and down. “You’re looking well. That’s good.” Dylan didn’t respond, and she narrowed her eyes. “You do know who I am?”

Dylan slumped back against the door, relying on it to hold him on his feet as his heart threatened to pound its way up his chest and out his mouth even as he fought to take in air. He couldn’t speak. Yes, I know who you are. The passage of twenty-two years had taken its toll on the woman standing in front of him, her cheeks showing a few lines, her figure no longer quite as slender, her eyes harder. But the face was the same, and that accent – musical, trilling – was how he had imagined it from his father’s descriptions. Dylan could never have mistaken her, not even if a century had passed.

“Mom,” he whispered, which was all he could manage. She nodded with a small smile.

“Your father kept that photograph,” she said. “Good. I let him take it so you would know me had I the chance to return for you, though I held out little hope for that then.” She took a step forward, and her forehead creased. “Can you speak?”

“How . . . how did you get in here? What are you doing here?” He had to fight for every word at first, but then it was as though the most immediate questions had loosened his tongue and opened a floodgate. “That picture. You wanted me to recognize you in case you returned? You know what would have been better? Not to run off in the first place!” He was out of breath again but standing on his own. He advanced, sticking his finger in her face, and she batted it away.

“Do not presume to lecture me,” she replied. “I had reasons, reasons which you cannot yet understand. In time, you will come to see--”

“See? Understand?” Dylan said. “All I understand is that you vanished while they were checking me out of the maternity ward. Do you have any idea what that did to Dad? He never got over you! And now, what? You want to appear out of the blue and pick up where you left off? Well, screw you!” Dylan reached back and yanked the front door open. “Get out! We don’t need you, Cynthia. Just . . . get out.” Dylan stood holding the door, shaking, having run out of steam with his last demand. His mother studied him for a moment and, rather than either replying or obeying, looked at the door and uttered a single word.

“Close.”

The door tore itself from Dylan’s grip and slammed itself shut. His shell-shocked brain had no time to register what had happened before Cynthia turned back to him.

“You’re angry,” she said. “I’m not going to say I’m surprised. I won’t even deny you have some cause to be, though less than you think. I will explain everything in time. But not now. We need to leave.” Her voice hardened. “And, despite what you think of me, I am your mother. I will be addressed as such.” But Dylan was no longer listening, rather reaching out to touch the door in disbelief.

“What the hell was that?” he said, looking back and forth between the door and his mother. He wanted to believe that a breeze had blown it shut and the timing of his mother’s command was a coincidence. But Dylan knew he had not felt so much as a gentle wisp of air. Cynthia smiled.

“Do you want to know what I did?” she asked. “I can show you. That and so much more. We can start once we’re on our way.” For the first time, there was warmth in her voice, and she reached out to awkwardly touch Dylan’s shoulder. The contact broke the spell that had descended upon him, and he jerked back.

“No,” he said, pulling away. The initial flush of anger was beginning to fade, and Dylan felt drained. He walked past his mother and sat down on the couch, head in hands. “Please go.”

“I’m not leaving without you, Dylan. There’s too much at stake.” He heard her footsteps approach and saw her shoes step onto the floor in front of him. Fortunately, she didn’t sit down next to him; Dylan wasn’t sure what he would have done if she had. “You want to know why I left, where I’ve been? Come with me, and I’ll answer every question you have. There’s a great deal you need to know about me. About yourself. There is no one else who can tell you.”

Dylan was tempted. The possibility of answers was compelling. He looked up at his mother standing there, arms crossed once more, and the sight drove all temptation out of his mind. He stood up and found, standing toe to toe, that as tall as she was, he stood over her by at least an inch. The realization strengthened his resolve.

“It doesn’t matter what the answers are,” he said. “No rationale could justify what you did. I don’t care what your excuses are. I don’t care what you want to tell me or where you want to take me. I don’t even care how you pulled off that trick with the door. I care that you left us and broke something when you did. And you can’t fly in here more than twenty years later and fix it. I’ll say it one more time. Get out.” Dylan extended his arm toward the door while his eyes never left his mother’s face. He thought he saw something flicker there. Guilt? Uncertainty? Fear? Whatever it was, it was soon gone.

“So this is what you’ve become,” she replied, not moving towards the exit. Her voice was thick with disgust. “So small. So obsessed with your minuscule concerns. Incapable of looking beyond your hurt feelings. A perfect anskáya. But you are my son, too. You’re made for better things than this. You have a heritage and a destiny far greater than anything you could imagine. All you need do is come with me and claim it.” Dylan barked a sharp, brittle laugh.

“I have no idea what you called me right then,” he said, throwing up his hands, “and I don’t care. Dad was right. You are crazy. Completely freaking insane.” Dylan knew he was being extreme, but he got the reaction he wanted. Cynthia’s expression hardened in anger, and Dylan pressed on. “I think I could throw you out by hand if I wanted to--” Cynthia snorted, “–but it seems pointless, since I don’t know how you got in in the first place, so I’ll be the one to leave. Stay as long as you want; I don’t care. If you’re here when Roger gets home, though, he’ll call the cops on you, so keep that in mind.” Dylan moved towards the door, feeling oddly light, as though he had achieved some cosmic balance, his leaving her to repay for her leaving him. The last thing he expected was the next words out of his mother’s mouth.

“I can take you to her.”

Dylan missed a step and stumbled. She can’t mean that. Not what I’m thinking. But he didn’t take his next step towards the door.

“Who do you mean?” he asked, keeping his tone as nondescript as possible.

“The girl you’ve been dreaming about,” she said, and Dylan’s gut flipped cartwheels. “I’m here to take you to her.”

∞∞∞

The wind coming off the bay was sharp, even in summer, slicing through clothing and skin alike to drive cold deep into the bones, but Abby had grown up in even colder climes and didn’t notice the chill. Her attention was focused on the canvas before her, the image painted on it gaining definition and life as she applied brushstroke after brushstroke. Now and then, she would stop and look around, chewing on the end of her brush, the tip held in her mouth by long, pale, delicate fingers. All the while, she hummed to herself a tune of her devising, an improvisation to fit the rise and fall of her mood.

In time, the paint on her canvas began to mirror the scene on the wharf before her, realized with the sharp, angular lines and stylized figures unique to her in the Outside world, her passport to recognition in the San Francisco art community. Abby was excited about this new piece. In the last year, she had begun to be noticed, hailed (by those few who had taken an interest in her work) as an original and alien voice – recognition that she had struggled for over three years to achieve and had hoped was the beginning of a long and rewarding career. But that longed-for future was in danger, and she was rushing to solidify her reputation in the time she had remaining before other duties could interrupt. Duties personified by the shadowy form she saw every night when she closed her eyes. That shadow was always in the back of her mind, a sweet but threatening presence, promising everything she had dreamed of as a girl and everything that would disrupt her life as an adult.

The wind picked up, whipping strands of her waist-length black hair about in all directions; to keep them out of her paint, she reached back and tied her tresses into a loose tail. Distraction dealt with, she closed her eyes and shook her head, a quick jerk to either side to clear her thoughts and refocus on the task at hand. A car screamed by on the road behind her, windows rolled down and blasting what was to Abby’s ears nothing more than discordant noise. She’d lived four years among the anskáya, but with all the ways she had adapted, she never had come to understand the music.

A wave of homesickness engulfed her. To her frustration, those had become common since she had woken up from that first vivid, unmistakable dream. The dream that had brought an end to her increasingly desperate efforts to deny what was becoming more and more undeniable, that had forced her to admit that she had unexpectedly – inconceivably – become one of the ilmai. After that, she knew her time was limited; her new goal was to make enough of an impact so that, should she refuse to return, she would not be forgotten.

Abby sighed, put down her brush, and took a few deep, stabilizing breaths. Despite her best efforts, her heart wasn’t in her work today; it would be better to put it away and work later when her mind was clear. As she packed up her materials, she watched the boaters and dock workers scurry around her. None of them seemed uncertain or torn; they appeared to know what to expect of their lives and did what they needed to do. She knew she was oversimplifying things, that the older man tying off ropes might have a sick wife at home, or the waitress collecting tips at the cozy café to her left might be facing eviction. But she did know, without doubt, that she was the sole person in this entire city – the city she had chosen for her new life – facing her exact conundrum.

Abby picked up her canvas, intending to lay it on the ground in preparation for packing away her easel and other supplies, but before she continued, she paused to take a closer look. As she had expected, there he was, the face she saw in her head, projected onto one of the passers-by in the painting. The features she had outlined were disturbing, not because they were alien, like those of the faces around her, but because they were so close to being familiar. Close, but not quite. In her homeland, that face would have stuck out as incongruous in small, disconcerting ways – the skin a little too ruddy, the shape a little too round. The overall effect wasn’t ugly, far from it – and here among the anskáya, the face would have fit in without a second look – but skirting so close to the appearance of her people while missing the mark made it unsettling. However, her difficulty may have arisen more from what that face represented than the features themselves. I can’t get away from him today, she thought. Why? She felt she could have closed her eyes, reached out her hand, and closed it on his shoulder, or failing that, run straight towards him, the Bond pulling her in his direction.

A chime disrupted her musings. Her breath skipped, and she jumped in surprise, but she recovered in time to set the canvas down and pick up her cell phone from the easel before it stopped signaling. She didn’t recognize the number offhand but flipped the phone open anyway, guessing who would be on the other end.

“Hello?” she said, proud that she kept the quiver in her voice to a minimum. The voice on the other end was familiar, confirming her suspicions.

“She’s found him,” she heard her father say. “It’s time to come home, Abigail.”

Abby lowered the phone from her ear without saying a word. She didn’t know how to respond to the voice that kept asking if she was there and if she could hear him. One dream was fulfilled, another shattered. What was she supposed to feel about that?

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Amazon link: https://a.co/d/0jl9d1jy

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Author E.A. Smith

AUTHOR BIO

E. A. Smith’s passion for science fiction and fantasy was sparked by his father at a young age. While earning degrees in physics from Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt University, he wrote an unpublished science-fiction novel, several short stories, and a fantasy novella.

After completing his studies, he taught at several universities in Atlanta before settling in Milledgeville, GA, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He continues to craft captivating tales that invite readers to explore new dimensions of reality and imagination.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61587513676371

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COMING SOON: On Sunday, 28th June, we are delighted to welcome our guest author, Delta James, who is sharing and excerpt from her novel, 'Claimed By The Wolf King'.