Awakening: Book 1 The Last Anakim Trilogy Read online

  AWAKENING

  Book 1

  The Last Anakim Trilogy

  JANET V FORSTER

  www.janetvforster.com

  First published in 2015 by One Dog Pubs

  Copyright © Janet V Forster 2015

  All rights reserved.

  Janet V Forster asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters in this book are fictitious.

  A CiP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  ISBN: 978-0-9944088-0-8

  Cover image by: © |Dreamstime.com

  www.janetvforster.com

  For my husband, Rick,

  whose support and encouragement knows no bounds.

  And for my children, Tash and Callum, whose imaginative ways have opened my heart and mind to dreams of a world beyond this one … and to endless possibilities.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  EPILOGUE

  A TASTE OF: ODYSSEY

  WHAT’S NEXT?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  The meadow was enchanted. Spring flowers in pinks and purples softened the gently sloping ground, their spice and citrus fragrances intermingled with pollen which drifted in sticky clouds on sunbeam-rivers, over the wild grass, through the trees and onto the young boy who bounced through the whispering tendrils.

  I forced a smile, but it was small and quickly frozen. Like too-dry clay it threatened to crack and display the truth, the rancid bitter mud which simmered beneath, oozing and gurgling as it spluttered and crawled and so slowly suffocated.

  A flick of raven hair and a flash of soft, unblemished skin. He darted from his hiding place behind an ancient tree, the limbs quivering and beckoning as the souls which hid within it cried out their disappointment. Their lives had been lived. Now they were no more than recordings in the blistered bark, their voices indecipherable pleas trapped in the groans and creaks of the trunk and limbs.

  His chuckle made my face collapse and my throat ache, but he didn’t notice. He was moving again. His legs first and then his body followed, like a kite lifting off the ground, arms slightly out to the side as though half boy, half bird. A little wobble could not stop his unrestrained momentum, and the ground rose to bite his cheek. His wail summoned me.

  I swallowed hard and then scooped him up and swung him high and ran with him. And for a moment we were completely in the present. He was a bird and I was the wind. His mouth fell open and then widened and so did his eyes and for that instant we were free together.

  Afterward we rested, although even then he was not still. When I could wait no longer I stood up and held out my large hand to his tiny one. It was warm and slightly sweaty. His tiny fingers curled around mine, claiming me. He looked up, his emerald eyes wide and doting, dimples in his cherub cheeks. Around us the wings of the darkest angels clamoured and the shadows lengthened, but he was still too young to truly see and for that, at least, I was thankful.

  ‘Come,’ I said. ‘Come with Mama.’

  We walked and we walked, trying to escape the darkness which clawed out at him. Out of the meadow and through the rough bush, burrs catching on our legs as we stumbled across the uneven land. Boulders threw themselves across our path, but we clambered over them, tucking our heads to our chests as branches whipped our faces on the other side.

  He became tired but did not complain, only slowing a little and dragging sorry feet. I picked him up and carried him, barely noticing his weight. And then, too soon, we were there. Miraculously the scrub disappeared and over a sandy rise, heaven waited. A sloping white beach lay in front of thundering cerulean water, which sparkled with millions of tiny silver stars under the low-burning sun. The waves hurled clouds of salty mist towards us and we were instantly damp.

  He looked up at me, his miniature hand thrusting towards the waves and my throat constricted. I tasted bile.

  ‘Big water, Mama.’

  ‘Yes Erik.’

  He wriggled to get down, his fatigue forgotten. I released my grip and he slipped to the ground. His small feet mashed the damp sand as he leapt around in childish delight. The imprints would remain, slowly filling with water until the next tide rose to take them away.

  Overhead the sky was slowly transforming itself. Toward the hills, the place from where we had come, the air was writhing like a snake in the beak of an eagle. Twisted layers of purple and black consumed the light, smothering the brightness and colour and slowly, inevitably, sucking us in. Change was coming, borne of the darkness, fallen spirits who would stop at nothing to take my son and consume him completely.

  There was so little time.

  Stooping down I gathered him up into my arms again, crushing him tightly to me. And finally he was still.

  The boom and roar of the waves was now only a few metres away. I would not let them have him ... I would not let them snuff out the light that I could still see burning inside him. It was dimmer today, but it was still there.

  Somehow I stumbled forward. Frigid water rushed over my feet like an angry army and the sand gave way. Surely my legs would not support me.

  I tried to swallow, but choked. My breathing came in ragged gasps.

  ‘Mama?’ A little voice. A long way away.

  Such heaviness in my arms.

  ‘Mama?’ In the distance, the horizon was brilliant. That was where he belonged. In the light. For all eternity. My little angel. Let him live in the light.

  1

  KATE

  ‘Some things are best forgotten,’ Mum said, her body and face becoming a mass of hard lines when I tried to ask about her family. I’d never met them. Photos, if there were any, were well hidden. I’d never seen one. It was like she’d been spat out by a tornado which had taken everything material with it, leaving only memories, which she frantically threw back.

  ‘You are loved and wanted, Kit. You will never know what it feels like to be forgotten.’

  ‘I know, Mum.’ I stepped back slightly. She sighed and her body slumped. I tried not to ask because the impact of my questions was obvious. But every now and again curiosity overcame me. This was her way of dealing with the past; her advice to me was the same. What came before does not matter. Only she was wrong. It did. You cannot forget what cannot be forgotten and what continues to eat away at the present.

  I grew to hate the faceless individuals who had stolen so much from her. I saw it every day, how she hurt, doubling over and weeping for no reason, the self-loathing
as she struggled to cope, clinging to Dad and I in sheer desperation, terrified that we might one day turn on her, or leave her.

  Dad had also been slapped around by life and was mostly silent about his childhood. Outside of his mother, who I called ‘Nanny’ (a hangover from toddler years), who shared more than he would have liked with me about his background, we saw no-one from his family. He remained, in so many ways, the injured child, thanks to life with a violent, alcoholic father. Although he let me visit my grandmother and accepted my close relationship with her, he chose to remain distanced, unable to forgive her for his past, long after his father had died. I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t been there.

  I loved piano-teacher ‘Nanny’ in the simple compartmentalised way of a child. When I stayed at her quaint sea-side cottage she taught me; encouraging and inspiring me to persevere when I might otherwise have given up. We played duets and sang songs from musicals together. Her home was old-fashioned, but immaculate. The silver always sparkled and even the highest shelves were dust-free.

  When rain fell on the green tin roof of her house it sounded like buffalo stampeding. The floor of the large, red painted veranda was always cool underfoot, no matter how hot the day. Fragrant jasmine creepers crawled prettily across the burnt-orange bricks and framed windows were misty with humidity and salt. A winding path, leading up from the squeaky wooden gate to the front door was lined with brightly coloured kangaroo paw and daisies. That close to the sea everything rusted.

  I could see the water from her front veranda, a patch of deep blue over the tops of the other houses and trees. In the afternoons small waves leapt like white rabbits across the cobalt as the wind picked up. At night as we lay in bed I was lulled by the gentle, hypnotic sound of the waves in the distance.

  Nanny was a proud woman who did things the ‘proper way’. But underlying her quiet determination was sadness. Deep inside festered a wound that would never heal. Her childhood dreams had not been fulfilled. Instead, violence had found her and those she loved, and now guilt gnawed at her, constantly reminding her of her failures.

  I loved her so much. Memories of times alone with her were among my most cherished.

  ‘Okay if I go down to the beach, Nanny?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll drop you, Kit.’ Her answer was always immediate. She’d drive me down at ten under the speed limit and drop me in the parking lot with a list of cautions, but in truth they were all for show. She was more relaxed than my parents ever were.

  ‘Fish for lunch?’ She would ask when she collected me. I’d run into Fins on the way home with sandy feet, clammy and sun-burnt with goose-bump prickles from the sea breeze. The battery smell of frying fish and chips would make my mouth water.

  ‘Want one?’ I’d ask, popping sloppy vinegary chips in my mouth and the odd one in Nanny’s as we drove back.

  ‘Look in the back, Kit darling.’ Nanny’s eyes sparkled like diamonds in the sunshine.

  ‘Nanny!’

  ‘I dashed in to get them while you were getting the fish, they’re still hot.’ Jam donuts for after lunch. Hot and sweet and sticky, filled with molten ecstasy and a sand-paper sugar coating.

  ‘We’re going to be rolling down to the beach tomorrow. I’ll have to wear a sheet instead of my bikini!’ I half-joked.

  ‘It’s for the hours of practising we’re going to do later. You’ll need the energy.’

  And we would spend hours at the piano, flicking on lamps when the daylight dimmed and we could no longer see the music. The brandy and water Nanny sipped swayed in a small crystal glass on top of the old, but perfectly tuned, upright piano and cast meandering trails of dappled honey-gold onto the wall. I remember learning Für Elise and the smell of lavender as she reached across me to turn the pages. I remember the softness of her skin.

  One day at boarding school I was called away from class and into the Principal’s office. An unsettling premonition gnawed at me as I wondered why. It was the first time I’d set foot in there.

  ‘A call from your Mum, Katherine.’ Mrs Halifax’s smile wavered.

  I became suddenly sluggish, each step an eternity as an alarm shrilled in my mind. Don’t go forward; go back … back into the safety of the past. What would happen if I said, no thank you, if I made it hard for her? Instead I reached out, my hand trembling just a little and took the handset from her.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘I’m sorry Kit-Kat. It’s your Nanny.’

  I waited and she waited and then I heard her sigh.

  ‘She’s gone. She just slipped quietly away in the night. No-one expected anything, she seemed fine. I’m so sorry. You two were so close.’ Strange thoughts travelled through my mind on their way to someplace else. I wondered what Dad was doing, what he was thinking, what he was feeling. I wondered whether he was glad that the last connection with his past was gone.

  And then I felt the ache of loss. I had never really felt it before. The ache which comes before tears, the ache which says yes it’s true, when your mind refuses to.

  Over time the sweet memories slowly returned and I held on to them, to my music which was hers as well. Sometimes she sat beside me as I played one part of a duet, pressing the keys with a slightly shaky hand as she performed her part, and as long as I didn’t look at her square-on she was there. I kept a little lavender-scented cushion under my pillow for a while and in my sleep she lived in vivid dreams which left me confused for a moment on waking, grateful, but then saddened as she slipped from me again.

  2

  KATE

  Thirteen long years of school ended in a blur as we galloped towards the finish, exhausted, but wild-eyed and desperate. Five years at boarding school did that to you. Five years of restriction and claustrophobia, of living in an artificially regulated world with incessant bells and rules and regulations. Five years of nothing sacred.

  But now, finally, it was all over. Ten weeks of scorching summer sun stretched blissfully ahead of me before the start of the university term. While Mum and Dad were at work the house was mine. The easy space and solitude after the constantly crowded environment of school was like balm to a burn.

  Our home was old, but if you didn’t mind the doors which jammed or the scary wiring, you might have found it otherwise charming and well-maintained. Ten years ago it was typical of the neighbourhood, quaint red-brick, bigger inside than it seemed on the outside with rooms branching off a long high-ceilinged passage with bell arches and ornate architraves. A bright modern meals and living area had been tacked onto the back at some point in the past and upstairs my parents had added a new bedroom extension in recent years. It was a patchwork house, the layers of dreams adding magic rather than robbing it of its character.

  The back yard was a good size and made private by a tall pittosporum hedge. To one side, perfectly positioned for a little afternoon shade, was a dark-blue rectangular swimming pool. In the afternoons Noodle, the Labradoodle, would lie on a sun lounge next to me, her body never quite fully extended and with one eye open lest I tempt fate and actually get wet. Any more than one big toe in the water and she would rush up and down the edge wailing like a banshee until I got out.

  Weeks of sunshine and chlorine lightened my usually auburn corkscrews and made them even more unmanageable. Along with the hair problem, freckles multiplied across my nose and cheeks rebelling against the vast quantities of sunscreen I applied.

  Noodle and I took regular walks along the leafy bay-side streets, the gate clattering shut behind us and making the picket fence wobble a little as we left. So much had changed in the years I had been away. Houses like ours were rare now. Instead, larger, more angular modern homes, with striking clean lines, dominated the landscape, erasing the many tiers of history, annulling stories of transitions, of aspirations, of love and loss. Patchwork was out. We passed a site in transition and Noodle lingered to sniff at a dusty pile of rubble which was all that remained of a story that was. She squatted, visiting on it one last indignity.

  On pleasant
days we strolled all the way down to the beach, to where the restless water carried bright-sailed yachts across the bay. Young boys ran after flapping kites which nose-dived into the sand and umbrellas did cartwheels. More confident dogs dashed into the shallows, scattering water with a shake as they returned with balls and sticks to be thrown again. Noodle kept her distance from them. Her anxiety made her seem aloof, but I knew better. If another dog ventured anywhere near us she tucked her tail so tightly between her legs that she could have chewed on the end of it if she’d chosen to.

  And so the weeks passed like the gentle rolling waves in a warm current, the rip building and then lulling and then building again, but not so badly that it swept me from complacency, until finally the monotony of what had been so good the day before, brought about a new season and I began to yearn for something more. I began to think about things I usually tried to avoid thinking about. Maybe there was a trigger. A dead fish on the sea shore; neighbours moving on after so long, who knows, but the illusion of time standing still was broken. Fractured, just like that. In one moment I was drifting through never-ending space and in the next I was consumed by a search for self-awareness, identity and meaning and my vigorous morning walks became longer and longer as I considered biology.

  What would it be like to meet my biological parents? What if they didn’t want to meet me? What if they were completely awful? What if my dad was Daniel Craig? Oooh … weird thought. What if he was a famous politician? Enough said. What if they weren’t even alive? Maybe they were no longer traceable. A lot could happen in eighteen years.

  How would Mum cope? She’d been desperate to have a child, but my father was sterile after contracting bilharzia on a military trip to Africa many years before. The adoption process meant bitter years waiting and mounds of unnavigable red tape, but eventually, when they had almost given up, I had arrived with only a few days’ notice and turned their world upside down.