Chapter 1- "Look Up" (excerpt 3)
the final excerpt of Chapter 1 of my WIP: Book of Truth
(continued from excerpt 2. Stay tuned for behind-the-scenes at the end)
I think I must’ve been awake for some portion of the trip from the hangar to our Ground home. I have memories of a car. A big car. The heat…I’m so thirsty. Where am I?
My eyes are finally able to open without my head throbbing and I realize the room I’m in is oddly green. The space is cool, dim – not dark. An entire wall to the left of my bed is see-through, paned with sun-tempered glass I assume, andI I watch as light filters through artificial shade trees in the courtyard beyond.
Wait…my eyes bug as I pad the tiled floor to the windows for a closer look. The dappled illumination streaming through shifts across my socks as a breeze wafts through the boughs about seventy or eighty feet above me. I’ve never been in a room this big. When I get to the window, I see what can only be described as a backyard stretching before me. Grasses and wildflowers probably knee-high stream, a riotous meadow that ends in the tree line of these massive, mighty, majestic red trunks. From my bed I could only see the trunks, but from here, if I crane my neck back, I can see the leaves.
It’s not until I taste the salt on my tongue that I realize I’m crying.
I can see the leaves.
Shadows lengthen across the meadow before I notice that my knees and ankles don’t hurt. The floor seems to be some kind of natural corking material, laid out in tiles joined together with no seams. The darker ones all run one way, the lighter ones all go another, creating a subtle spiral pattern across the floor. Ground is much more pliant than AIR. I don’t remember the last time I’ve stood still in one place for longer than three minutes before my joints began to protest. Intrigued, I set off to find Chalyb and Zaleesha.
“Mom! Moooom!” my voice echoes off the high ceilings in the corridor. My room lets out to a hallway with more cork floors, solid walls and a glass ceiling -one continuous skylight not unlike those in some of the newer AIR Segments. Designed to let in light and a view. From here I can see blue sky uninterrupted by clouds.
I go left which seems to lead to the rest of the house. I am rewarded by Mom and Chalyb sitting in a large square room with peach walls and a gabled glass roof. They lounge in front of the telescreen, this morning’s edition of Good Morning Apollo replaying on the evening news, as if this is just a regular ole night at home in Sector 58.
“Hi honey,” Zaleesha smiles at me. She looks…relaxed.
“Why do I feel like I walked into an alternate dimension?” I smoosh Chalyb over so I can settle on the stretched sofa between him and our mom.
“Chill, man!” He tosses a circular navy blue pillow at me but I can tell he doesn’t mean it. It hits me faster and with more force than I was expecting, probably an effect of the gravity on Ground. The pillow knocks against my face with a poof of lavender and some other floral smell I can’t place. Before I can figure it out I notice a buzzing in my fingers, my hands twitching. I’m no stranger to my body doing weird things, I’ve been having seizures, blackouts, these divine episodes as my mother calls them, since childhood. But this buzzing, almost warm sugar flowing through my veins, this is new. As soon as it’s there it’s gone. My hands feel normal again.
“We made it back to the land, Noaa.” Mom puts a warm hand on my head, pulling my forehead to touch hers. When she lets me go, her hand remains in my hair, coiling one of my curls around her finger. Under the wig, my tight coily curls grow a bright turquoise color. “A sign of the gods” my mother always says, “but one we must keep quiet at all costs.” Hence the wig.
“Where-?”
“I left it over there,” Mom gestures to the kitchen on the other side of this massive room. A bar with floating stools is stationed on the left side. The stupid ugly wig I’ve been wearing for the last six months (a replacement for the one I …uh, accidentally lost down a garbage chute) sits on top of the counter.
“I thought you might want to burn it,” she says, her eyes back on the telescreen. The corner of her mouth twitches.
“Shhh, look, our part is on.” Chalyb leans forward. He’s tall, almost a foot taller than me despite the fact that we’re twins. All that height should be a disadvantage on something like AIR, where space is conserved at every turn, but Apollo being 7 feet tall himself insisted on building a floating Ring for tall people.
I wander to the kitchen looking for something to drink as the familiar jingle of the news plays from invisible speakers. Whatever secret past my mom has with Apollo has really paid off- it looks like he’s put us up in some presidential ambassador pad down here on Ground. Everything is extra shiny, somehow rustic and state-of-the-art, clearly borrowing from the ancient architecture of Ground-dwelling societies.
I find drinking vessels stacked neatly next to a metal sink, some shiny alloy that’s probably too heavy for AIR but works just fine on the Planet’s surface. On the lefthand side of the shelf, both tall and short glasses. Simple glass constructions made more for function than form. On the right hand side, smaller almost bowl-like vessels carved entirely out of wood.
Wood is incredibly hard to come by in The Ring, but here are six similar wooden cups stacked neatly next to the glasses. I marvel over it, fingers brushing the surprisingly smooth rings seemingly etched in whirls and swirls along the cup. Another buzzing through my fingers, static electricity perhaps? The cup is just small enough to fit in my hand and looks like it’s been carved out of a single piece of wood. I can’t wait to get outside, I think, finally soothing my parched throat with water from the tap.
Mom and Chalyb are still glued to the replay of our arrival at Luke Apollo’s TubePad. I settle back into my seat, priceless wooden cup still rolling between my fingers, as the news personality avatar on the screen fades to footage from inside Sun Chariot. They’ve divided the screen into quadrants, one for each of the four cameras mounted in the upper hull of the TubeCraft. I stare at me from the bottom left screen, eyes rolling ever so slightly before responding to Luke Apollo’s question. The top left screen shows a close up of Luke’s magnanimous, toothy smile, only slightly green around the edges.
“Apollo looks like he’s about to chuck rations,” Chalyb smirks on the sofa. My mom swats him on the shoulder, though she’s smiling too.
I try to ignore the knowledge that everyone on the AIR Ring is watching this same footage right now during mandatory news hour. I’ve never liked being front and center like this, that’s much more my brother’s thing.
Screen-me screws his eyes shut suddenly, my shoulders twitching and fingers clenching. Is that really what I look like during an episode…? All that chaos inside my brain and my body looks only a little tense? In a few seconds I will relax, open my eyes and the moment will have passed- suddenly the footage of Luke shorts out, the top right screen that showed my mom also blinks out, there’s just me and Chalyb in two panels at the bottom, both of us eyes closed tight as the alarm sensors on Apollo’s Sun Chariot began to blink and flash.
The third camera, trained on Chalyb’s face cuts out and it’s just me, fists balled tighter than ever, a low light beginning to simmer out from under my closed eyelids, or just a trick of the light from the sunrise outside the TubeCraft. In the footage, My head rocks back as my back arcs and cracks against the aluminum wall so hard that I slumped forward in the harness. My hair – my wig hangs precariously, long hair cutting across my face in a cascade.
“Noaa!” My moms voice cuts in among the blaring and flashing red lights one time – a flash of brown as her arm reaches into my camera’s view. She puts her hand on my head, pushes the hair behind my ear, and the footage of the last camera in Sun Chariot cuts out.
“Um, I don’t remember any of this?” I say out loud in the living room of our new domicile.
“You passed out, bro,” Chalyb shrugs. “And you’ve been out for days, so I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Before I can respond a new image appears- the actual landing of Sun Chariot in the TubePad. Hydraulics squeal as the Tube slows to a stoppable speed in the massive tube linking Apollo’s Landing Hangar to AIR. A team of four people in skin-tight hazmat suits rush to the tube, rolling what can only be described as a gurney between them. As soon as the doors open, they scoop me out of the TubeCraft and strap me into the stretcher. My mom, ever the picture of grace, leaps out of the Tube to follow all of us into a small black van hovering about sixty feet away.
The news personality avatar, called Myra Venn, clicks back into focus.
“And that’s all we know, folks. Mr. Apollo himself made a statement saying the twins arrived safely, though they haven’t yet enrolled in Olympus Academy, and to please give the family privacy at this time.” She smiles overripe cherry lips. The broadcast ends.
“Mom, what?” I don’t even know what to ask. There’s a dull pressure building in the back of my neck. “Did everyone just watch me faint inside Apollo’s TubeCraft, and then meet the Earth on a stretcher?”
My mom’s look of sympathy is only a little bit marred by the hint of amusement behind her eyes.
“Oh, honey, they’ll forget all about it next week. You have been asleep for about three days, that last episode really took it out of you.”
“What if my wig had fallen off and my real hair had shone through?” I point wildly to the turquoise curls bounding out of my head. “Were you prepared for that? On Ring-wide tele? I can’t believe you agreed to this!”
Chalyb shifts on the sofa. Concern creases his usually serene expression.
“I said the same thing. Mom, why all this secrecy what is this whole thing really about? You promised to offer some explanation when Noaa finally woke up!”
Zaleesha pulls her legs into the sofa, sitting like a monk with her robe wrapped around her shoulders, her locs loose in the way she only wears at home.
“How much do you two know about how your father and I met?”
“Almost nothing,” I blurt out. “Which you know.”
“Because you tell us nothing,” Chalyb helpfully added.
Mom sat, eyes staring into the distance, one finger propped against her pursed lips as she calculated….something. For several seconds she said nothing, I nearly got up to walk away. Finally, deciding on something, she nodded her head. Looked at me, then Chalyb.
“I still can’t tell you much, I’m sorry it has to be this way. Here’s what I can say. We met, at the Institute where I got my…training.”
“Are you going to tell us what this ‘Institute’ is called finally?” His dry tone matched his expression. We’ve asked her a million questions about her mysterious past but she never tells us anything.
She quirks her lip and shakes her head. “His training was was also highly specialized. To have us together was an amazing source of power, but it was also an incredible risk. It’s not often They let graduates fall in love, let alone procreate, but somehow we had the right…well, I still don’t know why exactly They allowed it. But we were stationed together in our first home. Things started out okay, but” her voice trailed off. I held my breath- she never spoke about my father. He left when I was three, I don’t even remember his name. A breath hitched in her chest before she began again.
“but he began to change. To turn. I thought it was the stress of the work, the secrecy we had to keep. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was different. Eventually, I learned…”
Mom swipes a tear from the corner of her eye before it can even fall. I see the familiar tension steal back into her spine and shoulders. “Eventually I learned he had gone back against our Oaths. He’d…collaborated with the enemy.” She whispers the last bit. Her shoulders bowed in shame, something I’ve never seen from my very proud mother. I don’t know which has me more bewildered, her posture or this story that still has so many holes in it.
“I wanted to keep you safe from your destiny as long as possible. So one night when he was gone for a trip, when I knew he would be gone for multiple days, I packed our things and escaped.”
Chalyb’s mouth drops open. He gapes for a moment or two, like an overgrown fish, before shutting it again. A lead ball drops to the pit of my stomach. The tip of my left index finger goes numb, as if stung by an AIRmite. I shake my hand out, bite my lip…can’t stop my foot from tapping….
“This,” My mom spreads her arms indicating the ceiling and walls of the room we’re in. “This was our pad, before we moved to AIR. Ground magic has kept it pristine these many moons, and hidden from Apollo’s surveillance drones. It’s been waiting until we were able to move back, you wouldn’t believe how long.” Zaleesha bundled her locs behind her neck absently, and let them fall again, mahogany fingers lingering on the green agate bead hanging near her throat.
“Now that the stars have swung into the new age, and your shared Birth-Star has raised over the horizon, we have stayed hidden away on AIR long enough. We have returned to Ground where our power originates and eminates. We are safe here. You can be yourself here, on the Earth.” At these last words, mom rubs her hand in my hair, lets it linger on my cheek.
I couldn’t say why, but tears well up in my own eyes. That cold sinking feeling in my belly is now flashing hot white.
“Are you saying our father didn’t leave? You left?” I push her hand away, my own fingers trembling.
“Noaa, there are forces you cannot possibly understand at work here-“
“No, mom don’t give me more of your birth star horizon bullshit, nobody reads the stars anymore! That’s not how people make decisions, moving around every three full moons just to grow more powerful plants or whatever it is you’re always doing! You can’t just keep uprooting our lives on your ridiculous whims and expecting us to go along with everything at the drop of a hat!”
I’ve somehow moved across the room, my words exploding so fiercely out of my chest I have to hold my elbows to keep myself from pulling apart at the seams. My fingers are shaking again, no not shaking, buzzing, and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand any of this.
My mom wipes a weary hand down her face.
Chalyb is quiet, but his own eyes are red. His nose dripping. His fist is clenched in his other hand.
“Mom,” he says with a voice like sandpaper. “Tell me you have more information to share than this?”
“It is not easy-“ mom’s words come out stilted “to work like this. To live with this much…caution. I would not ask it of you if it weren’t entirely necessary.”
“Psh!” I roll my eyes.
“But our dad-?” Chalyb sits up. “Our dad is still alive?”
His words still me. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Is there a chance-?
My mom just shakes her head. “I have no way of knowing.”
Silence falls in the wake of her statement. My anger fizzles out, leaving me drained. So much has happened in such a short time. A new thought occurs to me.
“I’ve been asleep for three days…Did we miss the first day of school?”
“I thought you would want to avoid the cameras and fanfare of Matriculation Day at Olympus Academy,” Zaleesha responds.
“I---thanks.” I force myself to take another calming breath. My mom keeps her secrets for reasons that I’ve honestly stopped questioning, but she really does care for us. Another Ring-wide televised event after fainting in a TubeCraft would kill me, and she knows it.
“Chalyb leaves tomorrow because of Basketball, but you can stay here until classes start on Monday. I’ve arranged it with The Zeus.”
“Who?”
“The Zeus. The head of Olympus Academy.” Zaleesha snorts air through her nose. “Luke Apollo loves a theme, that much I can say for him.”
“Oh okay.” I feel dazed. “I’m going back to bed.” I’m across the long hallway and nearly to the courtyard before I realize I’m still holding the little wooden cup. When I get to my new room, I set it on the little table by my bed. The luxurious mattress barely creases as I lie down, though it cradles my body like it was made custom.
It doesn’t make sense that my parents would have a pad this big, a pad somehow disconnected from Luke Apollo’s Ground Alliance protection, apparently. The enormity of what we’ve descended into starts to press on me. There is quite a lot I don’t know about my past- way more than I even realized. And before I’ll have the chance to start looking for answers I have to start new-age finishing school at an Apollo-Accredited institution. One of only two on the North American continent.
There was supposedly two on the African continent, two on the Eurasian continent and one Apollo-Accredited Institution on each of the four spheres of AIR. These were the only true schools left, and all pre-school education was designed to choose the students who would get to attend one of Apollo’s institutions. Olympus Academy was the first and oldest and thus has the most coveted attendance. Lucky me.
Mom said I’d been asleep for three days meaning today was only Woeden’s day. Theuren’s day at the latest. That gave me at least a few days to…to what? My mind throws up obstacles before it can even start racing good. My mom won’t tell me anything, she said as much herself. I need clues, or information, or something. If this is really our family’s dwelling, surely they saved some artifacts from their past?
On AIR, we saved all family documents, photos, videos to a little terabyte chip that mom slotted into one of the beads on her bracelet. I’ve never seen her take it off. I wonder if I could find something similar, a “before” file. Before what? Before he left on a top secret mission? Before mom dipped out? “Brrrrr” my teeth chattered as my body shuddered without my permission.
A knock rapped at my door, also made of thick creamy wood. It sounded deeper than I would’ve expected. The door snicked open before I decided if I wanted to respond. Mom’s bare foot toed the door open before the rest of her entered-customary apron tied around her waist-carrying a tray of food.
“You need to regain your strength.” The tray she placed on my coverlet, several short slices of bread spread with various spreads- butter, preserves, something that looked like butter but smelled like nuts. A bowl of fruit, some – the spherical blueberries and vivid strawberries I knew from AIR. Others, like the sliver-thin slices of orange fruit with a greenish skin, I’d never seen before. “I keep a greenhouse in the side yard. It sort of has a mind of its own, but it thrived all the same while I was away.”
This close, it was impossible to ignore how light, how glowy she seemed. Back home, she was always tired. Always beautiful, but faint circles played perpetually under her eyes; she was often stretching and cracking her back, her joints creaking loud enough for us to hear. No signs of her usual fatigue showed. Even the wrinkles in her forehead and around her eyes had relaxed, smoothed away in the absence of the deep, serious expression that before, rarely left her face.
“I have to take care of some things out of the house tomorrow- check in with the research outpost and the like. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen. Make yourself acquainted with everything. This is your home too.” She smiled, a deep rich smile. My heart thawed a little.
“You planned to come back here.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway.
“This was always my plan. Always the goal. I know my choices seemed…erratic. I second-guessed myself every step of the way, but I always knew the destination. I had to make sure you were healthy enough for Tube travel. Had to make sure we didn’t stay in one place long enough for people to ask questions. Had to make sure your true nature never shone through.” Her fingers in my head again, tugging at my teal curls with something I can only describe as awe. “Had to make sure we survived long enough to make it back home.”
“But—”
“Eat, Noaa. Regain your strength. We’ll have time for questions later.”
I rolled my eyes. She kissed my head.
Her hair flowed behind her as she whipped around to exit the room. The unfamiliar clatter of her beads singing merrily as they clacked together caught my attention. She’d swapped her usual crystal beads out for new wooden ones, except the green agate one.
At the door, she paused.
“I am sorry I’ve had to keep you in the dark all this time. It will make sense to you one day. Sooner than you think.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I kept my mouth shut.
The door snicked shut.
I wanted to throw something at it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rush after her, ripping every drawer or cabinet open until I found some evidence of what in the wide round world was going on. I sat paralyzed in bed, unable to parse one thought from the next as emotions flooded me from all angles. I knew I was more likely to have an episode in the days right after an episode. My nerves were still raw from the TubeCraft debacle, I had to keep my cool.
Tart sweet nectar burst into my mouth when I bit into the strawberry, hoping to ground myself with a familiar sensation. It did the trick, though not because it was familiar; the contrary. I’ve eaten strawberries dozens of times in my lifetime- not daily by any means, mother’s two jobs weren’t that good, but I definitely know what strawberries taste like. These were like the saturation had been turned up 50% on the flavor. My nervous system settled even as saliva pooled in my mouth. I took another bite.
I could start my search right now, or I could stop to indulge in this maker’s basket of perfection.
I took a bite of the orange fruit and the cool fresh flavor melted on my tongue.
The house would still be there to search tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!!! Paid subscribers, stay tuned for some behind the scenes tips about how my life informs my writing process.
-**-
Some of y’all may remember that I dropped a chapter list several months ago. Maybe even a year ago. (Okay apparently it was February 2025)
Well recently I began working on my chapter outline again.
First, I had to re-outline the novel and I’m glad I did because there were some important plot holes that I needed to fix. For instance, WHY does Luke Apollo care so much about Olympus Academy?
answer: He’s been mining for apollonite, a crystal that he discovered (or did he engender the environmental conditions to make it possible? hint hint) to help him open up the inter-dimensional door to his outer-galactic home.
another one is what’s the deal with the twins dad?
