A disheartened girl finds renewed hope in a gifted boy and a mystic mountain. When 16-year-old Julissa Grant, broken hearted by the loss of her father and a close friend, is uprooted and moved cross-country by her distraught mother, she throws caution to
Trang 2Copyright © 2012 JOHN J BLENKUSH All rights reserved
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Trang 3DEDICATION
Trang 7ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thank-you to my wife and family, who are forever the wind beneath my wings, for their understanding when I disappear into my fictional world,
Trang 11PREFACE
Legend has it the ancient Lemurian city of ‘Telos lies beneath the ereat northern Californian volcano of Mount Shasta Lemurians live
on, so the storytellers say We’ve seen them, they say, tall, handsome,
beautiful, gentle giants with blue eyes and flowing manes of blonde
hair Small people too, miniature, darting from here to there, so fast the eye cannot follow Living in hollow earth, where light ends darkness, where walls are tinted gold, the ceilings cast in jewel, the floors copper laid Animals abound, the fish and the fowl too, living in harmony, nary a bone left to the rot And here you will find the flower, foliage, and fruit, sweet nectar, all, next to none, snatched away only to reappear, to nourish in the morrow
And what shall we say of the mountain dwellers? ‘Those who
reap the essence of the mountain, who practice the ancient art of
vampirism, transferring and manipulating life-force energy, for neither is 1t created or lost, only shifted from crucible to crucible Should we
say they are worthy? Should we say they are wicked?
Surface dwellers bite their tongues, fearful their whispers of tittle- tattle will be heard, their destinies forever lay to waste by the masters of
vampirism Only the story-tellers, old men and women, a foot set 1n
the grave, dare discharge the secrets they hold, for death is the enemy
of misery and a fond friend to those who wish to live no more
Learned men will tell you life-force knows no evil, knows no good And so too, the vessel which holds the soul, it must be chosen
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catch a tailless fish, a wingless bird, a bull without heart, or one who casts aside ‘he Law of One, for herein lays the crux
The storytellers say, foretelling 1s written in the Record of Ancient Matters The Lemurians will a day ascend, lift their
superlatives to the surface, and pledge them to wage war, not with
blunt force, but with imprint The chosen few will learn the ways of surface dwellers, liberate their hearts and minds, turn them from destruction to salvation
One, they say, will lead the coming, going forth to choose a surface equal, to unite with her as one, as is inscribed by The Laws of One, to procreate a newborn, so all will come to see the infant as, HelS For the time will come, when all things old must end, when the world will replicate the obliteration of Mu and, for those who survive, only one choice will remain; Hels
To this end, a bride, pure in heart, virtuous in body, soul of
perfect love, must be mated And on the day of her bequest, the sun
will stop, reverse, and start again Solstice will pass A new world will seek restoration through rebirth New will replace old, scraping clean what is, so what must come will be, good triumphing over evil
And so the Solstice Saga begins, a story to be told and handed
down through the ages, so all will know; a new world is yet to come,
Trang 141 BOY HUNTING
In the overall events of the world, skipping a class on history to lark around on such a grand autumn day isn’t such a big deal Or at least it shouldn’t be ‘Turns out it’s a life changer for me
My first week as a sophomore 1n a new high school and here I am ditching my last period class Why do I need to know what happened four-hundred years ago? What sixteen year old girl is going to care
who fought who in what war and for what reason? Was there ever a
good enough reason to cause harm?
IT didn’t think so
Mr Mattingly, my history teacher, said, “If you don’t like my class,
the door swings both ways Don’t let it hit you on your backside on
the way out.”
I took him up on his offer
I look across at Cherrie who has her left leg tucked up under her on the driver’s seat of her grandfather’s Lincoln Continental I suppose Ï can blame her for my infraction After all, she’s two years older than me She started school a year late—something about Attention Disorder—and managed to flunk a class in grade school But I know she’s not dumb As far as I can tell, she’s the smartest student at
Shasta High School (SHS), clever enough to find a shortcut around six hours of classes a day
It’s a no brainer If you are a student at Jefferson High, SHS’s
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As we drive out of Shasta City, California, and enter I-5 heading south, I can’t help but feel like Louise in one of my mom’s favorite movies, Thelma and Louise Only I haven’t been raped and Cherrie hasn’t killed anyone, or at least she hasn’t in the two short months I’ve known her [’m exhilarated for having escaped school, frightened at
what may take place when I return, and jacked up for the boy hunt
Thinking back over the last several months, I expected the worse when Dierdra, my mother, informed me we were moving from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, to a small town 1n northern California called Shasta City I had been to Shasta once when I was five I didn’t
remember much about the town I did remember Uncle Mickey and
his overgrown mustache and the way he liked to grab me, lie down on the floor, and while hoisting me up 1n the air, recite the [ll give you a pickle for a nickel rhyme
I also had vivid memories of Uncle Mickey’s small log cabin, mostly because of the enormous amount of snow blanketing the house, the Christmas lights, and sledding down the snow caked driveway I still
remembered Uncle Mickey showing me how to make angels in the snow and I still remembered Big Carrot, the snowman we made Fora while, those cherished memories lay within me, tarnished by the hate I felt for Uncle Mickey’s role in the death of my father, Simon Grant
Uncle Mickey and my father perished in a white out—as the newspaper headlines described it—on Mount Hood Their bodies were never found It took me a few years to accept the fact father died
doing something he loved to do and it wasn’t Uncle Mickey’s fault,
even if he was the one who enticed his brother to go mountaineering I found peace with Dad’s passing
Mom didn’t
Uncle Mickey, in his will, left his log cabin to Simon Naturally, Dierdra inherited 1t upon Simon’s death
I suppose it was because of me it took three years before mother closed on the idea of relocating to California I just didn’t expect it to
happen after I had already completed my freshman year at White Bear
Lake High School and made new friends, not to mention being forced to give up my childhood buddies
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mood shifts, the staring out the window at nothing, weight loss, drinking to excess, that sort of thing
Moving to the town of Shasta City, which rests on the flank of the
mountain, Mount Shasta, would allow her to find closure in Simon’s
passing Or at least that was what she told me It didn’t seem to
matter to her Mount Shasta wasn’t where father had died and now laid entombed in ice He and Uncle Mickey had summuted Shasta a half dozen times, two of those from the north side This is where Simon had chosen to set his spirit free It is where, I imagined, Dierdra believed his spirit lived on How, I wondered, would she find closure
by chasing ghosts on a mountain?
And maybe I didn’t complain because I knew I could use a change
in scenery too After having lost a friend and my father to death within
a year’s time, I felt my life had forever lost its purpose At one point I found myself asking the question: What’s the point of struggling on 1f
sorrow scarifies everything worth living for? As Cherrie’s life did for
her, the cruelty of my life ate away at my soul and carved inroads into
my will to live
So why should I carer
I lost my passion I grew apathetic Joy eluded me It was time for a change Some would say a drastic change So I didn’t complain, not
too loudly anyway, when Dierdra approached me and asked if I wouldn’t mind moving to California
I met Cherrie, who lives across the street from Uncle Mickey’s cabin with her grandfather, Garl, the same day we moved in She wore blue
jeans and a flannel shirt With her short cropped hair and the ever present unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth, I—at first and from a
distance—mustook her for a boy Within days we were inseparable She seemed to need a friend More so, I understood, she needed someone to follow her on her adventures I needed a lifeline and a
bridge to my new life, so I unwittingly became her accomplice Or at
least that’s what I like to tell myself Fact 1s I know exactly what I am doing
Skipping a class from school would come at a price, but at the moment I don’t care, as long as my punishment doesn’t mean the loss of life or limb
As far as I know, Cherrie and I, unlike Thelma and Louise, aren’t planning on driving over a cliff, which seems to be my mom?’s favorite scene in the movie I give Cherrie the once over in attempt to gauge her mood She did say we were going rock climbing in the Castle Crag
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State Forest She wasn’t planning on jumping off a cliff, I could only hope With Cherrie, you never know
I heard Cherrie once punched a guy who outweighed her by two-
hundred pounds in the gut for insisting the pronunciation of her name was Cherry (emphasis on the Ch) and not Cherrie, as in Sherrie She could be unpredictable and, of course, temperamental
“What're you thinking?” Cherrie asks, as her lips clamp down on the
unlit cigarette
“Why are we going rock climbing? You know us Minnesotans have
flat feet.”
“Julis” (my name is Julissa Grant but m not about to punch
Cherrie in the gut for not pronouncing it correct) “take a look out there.” Cherrie points out past the road, her finger stretching long in a
south west direction “What do you see?”
I stare out beyond the road and the pine studded forest
Castle Crags State Park is well known throughout Northern
California for its towering crags and spires and convex slabs of granite,
one of which makes up Castle Dome “Rock,” I say
“And lots of it.”
“And we have to climb it, why?”
Cherrie smiles I think I know what she is going to say I rush to beat her to the answer
“Because, like the mountain, it’s there? Right?” “Course not, dweeb Not taking you to climb rock.” “Then what?”
“Because that’s where the boys are.”
“You've got to be kidding me! Didn’t we just leave a school full of boys? Over two-hundred by my count.”
“None like these.” “And these are?”
“Rock climbers Spidermen.”
“Cough Sputter For real? I’m risking detention at school and grounding at home to see Toby Maguire in tights?”
“You haven't seen these hunks climb the wall Pretty impressive stuff Muscle against mass Sweat against stone.”
“Only walls we have in Minnesota are mounds of snow No one
climbs them but little kids.”
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