Tapestry of Time (Chapter Excerpt)
In celebration of the release of my new book, Harvest Moon: Tapestry of Time, the 2nd installment in the Harvest Moon series, I figured I would share an excerpt from a chapter of the book. The entire book is available in paperback and can be purchased from the Barnes&Nobles website. Thank you and I hope you have fun reading it as much as I enjoyed creating the story!
Here There Be Dragons
Jeff sat on the stone floor near the center of the tapestry room, his gaze transfixed on the pulsating ball of light between the stone columns before him. He had been studying the phenomenon for a few hours since Avalon had left to help gather resources for everyone. But time felt still in the cavern: A possible side effect from being in its presence? Jeff thought to himself and waved his hand through the orb. A tingling sensation washed over his skin with each passing move through the sphere; the threads of light within it rippled and distorted around his hand, but weaved themselves back into their original shape after it passed through. A multitude of colors would surround his fingertips, and like a magnet placed over the screen of an old-fashioned television set, they followed his touch as he dragged his fingers across the surface of ethereal light. If only I could figure this thing out, it might provide some answers to everything that has happened up until now. Jeff began to pace around the room for a bit and then closely scrutinized the walls around him. Finally, he pressed the palm of his hand against it.
“Cold,” he muttered aloud. “Much colder than most of the surfaces in these caverns, and these shiny flecks of mineral deposits embedded in it must be some metallic ore…Iron, maybe? No. With the surrounding moisture as a catalyst for oxidation, these rocks should be brown if it was some ferrous compound. Instead, this has more of an onyx hue to it. An undiscovered element, maybe? Could be.” An idea suddenly struck him, and he rushed out of the room and returned a few minutes later with a length of copper wire in hand. As he entered the chamber, he felt the fleeting nip of static electricity from the wire before it was ripped from his grip and adhered to the wall next to him. “I knew it! The combination of low temperatures and metals has turned this part of the cave into a superconductor. It must be what keeps the tapestry of time flowing, and fixed in this position of space, perhaps even creating it in the first place?”
Jeff approached the floating ball of light once more. It reacts to my thoughts, huh? The young man began to mull over Avalon’s words in his head. Then it might be sensitive to varying fields of electromagnetic forces, since neural activity in the brain can produce slight electromagnetic fields through synaptic firing…But then that would mean the electromagnetic field emitted from these surrounding walls must be homeostatic. With hardly any natural fluctuations in its sphere of influence, the tapestry remains stable until an external energy source is introduced. Intrigued by the idea, he concentrated and eyed the phenomenon intently. After a few seconds, the young man smiled when the image of a green apple materialized within the orb. So far, so good. Now, I wonder what will happen if I do this…Jeff closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the surface world of Hallow Bay filled the confines of radial light. It had been a long time since he breached the surface from the depths of his subterranean abode. He had become comfortable in his new settings with Avalon, who typically joined the various expeditions into the outside world more often than he did. So, the town depicted inside the tapestry appeared much different than the one he had remembered. Everything had changed, and it barely resembled the quaint fishing township he grew up in. Instead, it now looked like a bustling city, a lively metropolis, with billboards and multistory complexes littered throughout the landscape.
“Damn!” Jeff sat there, awestruck by the display, while it scrolled through the scenery of the world above. “I barely recognize the place anymore. So, they removed the snack shop with the best fries and shakes in town? Well, that sucks donkey tits…But it looks like Mrs. Fairgate has not changed at all.” He grinned when the town’s oldest bakery materialized into view. Mrs. Fairgate was in the middle of a conversation with a younger woman outside the doorway to her shop. At first, Jeff could not recognize her, but after she had finished her chat with the baker and turned around to continue her trek down the sidewalk, he saw it was Carol.
“Wait! How real-time is this?” Jeff took a staggered step backward from the orb of light, astonished to see his old friend back in town. “Avalon said she had left the bay a few years ago. This thing is a veritable time window, a rip in reality itself. Holy shit, Jeff! This is one hell of a discovery to have stumbled over, and a once-in-a-never chance at that too.”
In his delight and shock over this new epiphany, Jeff eased himself to the ground and took a moment to catch his breath. But then, something else caught his eye. From where he sat, he began to notice how oddly smooth in texture the spherical nature of the chamber walls had appeared. Almost as if something had cut the chamber into existence, but from the inside out. Did some singularity occur here, in the middle of these rocks? Jeff surmised to himself. And the size of this room is the measure of its event horizon? So that means this ‘tapestry’ could be one end of the remnants of a Heisenberg-Rosenbridge. A wormhole, perhaps? But that doesn’t take into consideration the possibility of multiverse string theory. In that case, this thing could technically be a rip within the fabric of reality itself! Either is a possible explanation for how Avalon’s people got here. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind, the image in the tapestry morphed into a veritable nightmare - a picture filled with sharks circling a capsized dinghy that sat on the seafloor.
What is this? Jeff squinted his eyes to understand better the scene that had materialized before him. He scanned everything within the frame of the tapestry’s purview, until his gaze rested upon an object outside the protection of the vessel’s overturned hull. Is that a carrier sack? The young man leaned in closer to the light and studied the distinctive design of the bag fashioned from kelp, which all the Avalonians of the tribe took with them on a hunt to store their catch. Someone might be in trouble…Then he recognized the pattern of oddly colored seashells embedded into the woven fibers of the subaquatic rucksack. “Avalon!”
***
Without the ability to sprout the necessary attributes to keep up with the rest of them, Jeff lacked the agility and speed of the native Avalonians, who glided through the ocean currents with relative ease ahead of him. However, some of them lagged behind with him, while the others scouted ahead with the merman who had discovered Avalon. The surge of emotions he felt with each passing thought of her prone and bleeding on the ground was a minor crescendo, in scale to the helplessness he bore in preventing it from happening in the first place. The internal conflict within Jeff raged with each kick that propelled him against the currents, as they all pressed forward along the seabed. Only the sound of his rebreather focused his mind and tempered his resolve into one clear objective, vengeance! He could picture Avalon pleading with him to stay, but his heart refused to listen. Not while the malicious disposition of his species intruded into the peace he sought. They must have seen an infinite number of dollar signs when they caught sight of her in their nets. Jeff’s eyes narrowed against the slight veil of condensation building up inside his facemask, as he peered through the curtain of bubbles released from his mouthpiece.
After swimming a couple of miles from the cliffs, the mermen ahead of him finally stopped and pointed towards a capsized dinghy nearby - now free from the frenzy of ravenous sharks Jeff had previously viewed through the tapestry’s sight. He swam to investigate and found Avalon’s ripped pouch half-submerged in the sandy bottom. The young man picked it up and tucked the tattered bag away in the waistband of his wetsuit, before he surveyed the area more carefully. A wave of despair washed over him when his gaze fell upon the fresh signs of damage peppered along the hull of the capsized rowboat, created by the class of various Chondrichthyes’ zeal to get at the wounded prey they had gleaned inside. But his despair found a strong foothold in anger, once again, after he glimpsed a length of galvanized chain stretching from the ocean’s floor into the water’s surface above them. One end was fastened to an anchor on the ground fifty feet away from them, while the other was secured to the hull of a large vessel that strained against the water currents above its anchor point. That must be them. Jeff swam over to the chunk of metal secured to the seafloor. Are they sticking around, holding out hope that fate will land another piece of fortune in their laps? Not this time, you bastards! Jeff signaled the Avalonians around him with a few hand gestures. They scattered in different directions beneath the boat before he made his way up the chain to breach the calm surface of the bay’s waters, beneath The Odyssey.
***
Captain Ishmael took a long and hard look at his crew while they all milled about the Odyssey’s galley in silence. He was a thickly built wayfarer in his early sixties. His skin cracked and tanned from his years spent under the salty sun, with a wrinkled face that further expressed scrutiny anytime it turned your way. The skipper of the fishing trawler found it challenging to make sense of the tale they had finished relaying to him.
“Have you all been hitting the booze again without inviting me to the party? Or did all of you simply lose your collective fucking minds without my permission?”
“I’m telling you, Cap’n!” The first mate insisted from his seat at the galley’s table; Skip rubbed at the bandaged wound on his forearm before continuing. “It had to be a mermaid! The thing had scales all over her body, finned arms and legs, and gills on her neck to boot!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a manatee you stupidly reeled in by mistake?”
“As naked as the sun is bright, she was no manatee.” A young deckhand, leaning against the counter by the stove a few feet away from the table, confirmed. “I was almost tempted to ask it out on a date.”
“See?!” The first mate was grateful for the corroboration but snuck the crewman a dubious glance. “We know what we saw, Captain. She was there as much as we are in front of you now!”
Ishmael shook his head as he got up and made his way over to the stove. “And you tried to capture her?” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the cast iron kettle sitting atop a burner and studied Skip momentarily.
“We could have had her if some idiot didn’t take a shot at her.”
“Hey! She lashed out at you with that knife of hers first!” Another sailor spoke out in defense. “And anyway, why are we debating whether any of this happened or not? Didn’t somebody get a picture of the creature on their phone or something?”
“Oh, shit! I completely forgot that I took a picture!” The young man who had backed up Skip's claims earlier reached into his side pocket and pulled out his smartphone. After swiping through a couple of images in the gallery app, he handed the phone to the Captain. Ishmael looked over the crisp photo of a naked woman lying on the deck, her murky green olive complexion offset by the scaley texture of her skin and the gill-like segmentations around the nape of her neck. Instinctually, however, the captain swiped to another picture on the deckhand’s phone and found himself staring at a provocative image of some character in popular culture. But before the Captain could wrap his mind around what he was seeing, the young sailor quickly snatched the phone from his hand and shoved it back into his pocket. “Never mind that, sir!” He cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Okay, then, say I believe you?” The captain acquiesced and sighed. He took a sip of coffee from his mug and addressed the previous photograph he had seen on the man’s phone. “There is nothing we can do about it now; the creature escaped, and we only have a photo to tell the tale. And a picture these days will get us nothing but claims of hoaxes, altered images, or delusional sailors out at sea for too long.” There were murmurs of protestation and discord among the men until Ishmael continued. “You boys seem to have forgotten this little night fishing expedition of ours is a bit out of season, so we need not invite any trouble our way with these fanciful claims of mermaids.” A momentary hush fell over the room before the silence was unexpectedly broken. A sudden yell of ‘Fire!’, followed by the sound of gunfire, brought all the men in the galley to their feet.
Without further hesitation, they all rushed up the stairs and were met with chaos on the deck. Their gear near the fuel tanks was up in flames as a few men joined the ship’s lookout to extinguish the blaze. From where they stood, on the other side of the stairwell from the lower decks, Ishmael and the rest of his crew heard more shots fired from the foredeck – followed by frenzied cries of ‘help.’ Some sailors, led by the first mate, hurried over to the commotion. But before the captain could join them, he felt an arm snake across his chest and something cold but sharp press against his throat. “Don’t move a muscle, or you will be breathing through a new orifice before sunrise!” Jeff whispered harshly into Ishmael’s ear, after he had snuck up behind the man in the commotion and held a stone dagger to his neck. “Which of you bastards shot Avalon?”
“What?!” Ishmael demanded, confused, but inhaled sharply and remained still. He felt the blade of the knife press even harder into the cartilaginous layer of his larynx. “Who are you talking about? Who the hell are you?” By this time, his first mate, Skip, had returned after he discovered the captain had not joined them to investigate the disturbance at the front of the ship.
“Captain, we have a serious problem on our hands! We are being attacked by creatures like the one we told you about earli- Hey! What is going on here? Let the Captain go, now!” Skip quickly pulled out his sidearm when he noticed Jeff holding the Odyssey’s commander hostage, but hesitated in pulling the trigger, when the captain signaled for him to stand down.
“Not until you tell me which one of you shot Avalon!” Jeff shouted and glared at Skip.
“Listen here, kid.” Skip began coolly but kept his gun pointed in their direction. “I don’t know what your problem is, how you got on here, or even who this Avalon person is you keep raving on about. But you better let the captain go, now!”
Suddenly, from the top of the cabin containing the stairwell, a lone figure dropped from the roof and landed on the first mate with its massive and muscular frame. Skip’s firearm was knocked loose from his grip before he found himself pinned to the deck. However, shortly after the flames around the fuel canisters were extinguished during their altercation, the remainder of the crew was overwhelmed and surrounded by a conclave of scaley-skinned creatures. With webbed appendages and malice in their eyes, they had encroached in on them without notice. The one that dropped in on them and surprised the first mate picked up the gun Skip had dropped on the deck and handed it over to Jeff, while the rest of the marauding band of mermen disarmed and corralled the other sailors together before the vengeful youth. “What do we do know, Skip?” The young deckhand who had snapped the photograph of Avalon asked the Odyssey’s second in command, after he had helped the ship’s second in command up to his feet. “There are a lot more of them this time, and I think they want revenge for what we did to their friend earlier.”
“Shut up, Dan!” Skip hissed at him.
“So, you know what I am talking about, after all.” Jeff aimed the pistol at Skip and shoved the captain toward the group of sailors who stood before him.
“Look, son-” The first mate held up his hands as he tried to reason with the young man.
“I am not your son, and don’t call me kid either,” Jeff said flatly and cocked the revolver's hammer.
“Okay, fine.” Skip took a step back. “You’re in charge. I don’t know your deal here with these creatures, but what happened to the one on our ship earlier tonight was an accident. She, ‘Avalon,’ is what you call her, right? She got caught up in our nets, and we tried to help her, but she got spooked, cut me, and then jumped overboard. That’s it!”
“I’m sure you tried to help her, alright.” Jeff took a step forward. “Help her right into a tank, in some facility, to be studied and dissected by heartless researchers! Is that why you shot her? Did you see the biggest payday about to slip through your fingers, and figured it wouldn’t matter whether you sold her off dead or alive?”
“Look, man, I told you it was an accident!” Skip’s voice wavered. “Some idiot got a little zealous and fired a shot without thinking. We never meant to hurt her!”
“Who fired the shot!”
“Look-”
Jeff interrupted the first mate by squeezing the trigger and firing a round into the wall beside him. Skip, and the crew remained silent while the young man glanced over them all.
“Listen here, son.” Ishmael finally spoke up. Jeff trained the gun on him as he pulled the pistol’s hammer back again. “Young man, as Captain of this vessel, I take full responsibility for my crew’s actions. Unfortunately, I was not present during the incident in question, but from what I heard, I believe it was an accident and they acted rashly. So, why don’t you just put down the weapon, and we can discuss this like rational men.”
“I will not repeat myself…Who fired the shot?” Before anyone could respond, one of the sailors—a middle-aged man with a scowl on his face but visibly shaken by the ordeal—slipped from the group and pulled out his firearm. He got off a shot, which whizzed by Jeff’s head. In an instant, though, the young man returned fire, and the bullet struck the sailor in the shoulder. The man cried out in pain before crumpling to his knees while clutching his wounded arm. “I guess I have my answer.” The mermen around them advanced on the huddled group of seamen and backed them against the railings at the starboard end of the vessel; they singled out the wounded crewman while Jeff approached him and kicked his gun to the side.
“Don’t do anything you will regret, boy!” The captain called out. All the while, he kept a close eye on the creature who held him at bay with its crudely fashioned stone knife.
“Maybe he should have thought about that before he tried to kill Avalon?” Jeff held the gun to the prostrated sailor’s head: a wild and bitter gleam arose in the young man’s eye as he slowly began to squeeze the trigger.
~ If you are interested in finding out what happens next, check out the rest of the book, Harvest Moon: Tapestry of Time (Available in paperback on the Barnes&Nobles site) ~
