Beyond the Western Sun Read online



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  Beyond the Western Sun

  Copyright © 2010 by Kristina Circelli

  All Rights Reserved

  EBook formatting by JTFormatting

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Epilogue

  Legends, Myths, & Lore

  About the Author

  For my father, who would go to the ends of the earth for the ones he loves

  Prologue

  Deep in the clouded mountains, cloaked in the light of a full moon, an old man dressed in decorated tanned robes bent gingerly over a fire-pit of glowing embers, reading the wisps of smoke that circled up towards the opening of his hut. The messages of the Dead formed ghastly images behind his eyes, forebodings of what was soon to come.

  Orange firelight flickered around the curved walls of the deerskin hut, casting a glow around the white-haired Elder as he communicated with the future. Quiet dominated the night. Not a single sound echoed around the mountains, the animals silenced by fear and sadness, the howling wind stilled. Not even the breathing of the old man could be heard, and in his trance-like state he seemed close to death himself.

  Sitting in the shadows, a young woman watched the ceremony with haunted black eyes, waiting. The Dead revealed themselves in many ways, and to the old man they appeared in the smoke that drifted up from the burning hearth. They spoke to him, trusted him, came to him in times of need. They asked him to speak to their family members, to relay their love and final words of good-bye, to pray for safe journey into the Spirit World, to protect their souls in death. In return, they helped him in his own spiritual quests. The Dead acted as his spies, his partners in the spiritual realms, gathering whatever information they could find to answer his questions.

  Tonight, his questions concerned the young woman, his apprentice. Something was stirring for her, something big; he could feel it deep in his bones. The girl was special, born into a world she was destined to change. She had been marked by death, promised to a fate beyond his capacity to control. One day her gifts, her strengths, would surpass his own, and she would take her rightful place at the head of the fire.

  But he feared for her, feared what the Dead would reveal. Not even the Elder could predict the end to this journey. All he could sense was a recent change in the air, a rippling of the water in a still breeze. The birds stopped singing when she passed. The deer fled into the woods. Something, someone, was searching, and they were afraid.

  And then, as his old brown eyes nearly hidden behind deep folds of wrinkles read the last of the Deads’ words, the smoke dissipated into the air and the bright red embers turned to coal. The hut fell into darkness, only a single beam of white moonlight streaming in through the opening of the roof.

  “The time has come,” the Elder said softly, peering through the black night at the woman who sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, face registering no emotion. “The Land of the Dead awaits you.”

  Chapter 1

  In the early morning light, Ian Daivya sat hunched over his drafting table, planning out designs for a new landscape installation. When he finished and was paid, the cost of labor alone would top his yearly quota, promising a nice paycheck. It wasn’t every day that a brand new five-star hotel was constructed in his flourishing town of Jennsboro, North Carolina, and he secured the commission, beating out a dozen other landscaping companies for the million-dollar job.

  He’d been confident from the beginning that he would win the bidding war. After all, Ian had owned his business for twenty years, working his way up from down-in-the-dirt gardener to corner-office landscape architect, and had the perfect eye for design. His perfect eye, along with the will and drive to work sixty-plus hour weeks, had brought him a considerable amount of success the past decade, and he had the big house and fancy car to prove it.

  Right now, that fancy car was parked just outside his home office, and he took a moment to sit back in his plush leather chair and admire the sleek black design glimmering in the beautifully sunny day. The well-manicured lawn, once tended to lovingly by Ian’s own hand, was now in the competent hands of one of his very first employees, who was currently on his knees hand-pulling weeds from a bed of blooming annuals in the shade of a sprawling oak tree.

  Glancing over a list of suggestions provided by the hotel owner, Ian sharpened a pencil and traced a few lines, planning a rounded flowerbed that would surround the main fountain. He was thinking red and blue flowers to match the color scheme of the hotel, with some small specks of white to spruce up the entrance. Pentas maybe, or impatiens. He liked their colorful petals, even if they weren’t the most durable of plants. But he wasn’t worried about their durability. After all, the shorter they lasted, the more work he was guaranteed to secure. It was a gamble, assuming he would be hired to care for the entire property, but it was a gamble he was willing to take.

  Forgetting the measurements of the fountain, he picked up a thick green folder his secretary had prepared for him the day before that included all the information about the hotel. Opening it, he frowned when a slip of paper and picture pinned to the flap caught his eye. The photograph was of a young, trim woman with long, flowing, curly red hair and dark green eyes accented by sparkling and shadowy gray powder. She was smiling seductively at the camera with luscious lips painted dark red, wearing black lace lingerie and sitting provocatively on the edge of a bed, leaving very little to the imagination. The woman was his secretary, Rebecca Dale, and attached to the photo was
a note that read, Think of me while you’re gone, can’t wait ‘til you get back to the office.

  “Quite the ‘thinking of you’ note,” Ian murmured, now certainly thinking about Rebecca.

  She’d been working for him for eight months now, and while at first she was professional and eager to learn the business, she lately had become flirtatious, using every given opportunity to get close to her boss, to run her hands down his arms, lean in close and compliment the smell of his cologne. Many times she suggested going out for drinks or catching an early dinner before heading home. While Ian was guilty of flirting back, reveling in the sexy attention of a wonderfully-figured woman more than fifteen years his junior, he was yet to take her up on any of her offers. His refusals only encouraged her temptations, making it harder and harder to resist, and he was beginning to wonder why he was even trying. He loved his wife, loved his family, but it simply wasn’t the same anymore. And Rebecca was certainly willing to express her interest.

  Disappointed with himself for not only thinking of Rebecca, but of actually considering whether he would take her out to dinner first or just see what she had to offer right then and there in his office, Ian shook his head and shoved the picture and note into the trashcan. He struggled to focus on his designs.

  Just as he was deciding between flowers or shrubs to plant along the main walkway, Ian’s son walked into the room. Clutching a pillow and his PSP, Cole Daivya approached his father’s side. At seven years old, he was the spitting image of his father, with thick blonde hair that curled slightly at the end, charming bright blue eyes, and a lanky frame. His nose seemed slightly too big for his face, but he would grow into it, as Ian had grown into his during his teenage years.

  Cole yawned heavily. “Daddy? When are we leaving?” he asked, sleepily rubbing his eyes.

  “Soon.”

  “But when?”

  “Soon. Go help your mom get ready,” Ian ordered without bothering to look at his son.

  Cole stood looking up at his father for a moment before turning around and padding into the large, naturally-lit kitchen to find his mother. He found her at the counter, wiping up crumbs from the sandwiches she had just made. “Daddy said soon,” he told her as he settled onto a bar stool and opened a juice box.

  Stifling an irritated sigh, Julia Daivya, a thin and fit woman of thirty-seven, finished packing drinks into the cooler, biting her tongue as she left her son sitting at the counter and made her way through the big, open house. Once the house had felt cozy, with family pictures hanging on the wall, toys in every corner, souvenirs from their travels decorating the rooms. Now it all felt fake, forced.

  Julia made sure that everything they needed for the trip—suitcases, snacks, cameras—were by the door, then went to pressure her husband into getting ready to go.

  “It’s eight o’clock,” she said, standing in the doorway of Ian’s office. “We agreed on seven-thirty.”

  “Few more minutes.”

  “Ian, we need to get going. We have reservation times for check in.”

  “A few more minutes, Julia. I just need to finish the main walkway’s layout.”

  Julia stared at the back of her husband’s head, annoyed and somewhat sad. Not too long ago she would have taken the moment to approach Ian from behind, wrapping her arms around his tanned neck, playfully squeezing those well-developed biceps while hoping for a glimpse of sexy, almond-shaped blue eyes that highlighted chiseled cheekbones and a full mouth, but now all she wanted to do was get in the car and begin the long drive to the campground.

  Likewise, Ian once would have taken a break from his work to run a hand through her straight, shoulder-length brown hair, gently tease his wife about her short and petite frame, maybe steal a kiss from a mouth that had never seen a tube of lipstick, but lately he didn’t care about such things. Something had changed in their relationship in the past few years, an obsession with work and money taking over Ian’s attention and a desperate melancholy consuming Julia’s heart. She hoped this camping trip would bring them closer together, take his focus off of the hotel designs, loosen them both up enough to have fun. It was, after all, not only a camping trip but also a family reunion, and Ian loved her family like his own, if not more.

  “Ten minutes?” she asked tentatively, bracing herself for a verbal assault.

  Instead, Ian only rubbed his eyes and spared his wife a second’s glance over his shoulder. He couldn’t be bothered to notice that her wide green eyes were hopeful yet tired. “Fine. Get the car packed up and I’ll be ready.”

  An hour later, they were finally on the road.

  Cole sat in the backseat, attention solely on his dinosaur video game by the time they pulled out of the neighborhood. He didn’t notice the tension between his parents, or the fact that they rode in silence for nearly four hours. When they reached Big Creek Campground, a state-protected stretch of natural wildlife along the edge of the Smoky Mountains, the two might as well of been strangers.

  After a few moments of contemplation, Ian figured out how to pitch the tent and set to work, eager to get away from Julia for awhile and have a few moment’s quiet from the pressure of such silence. Without the tension of marital problems, the campground was actually rather nice, peaceful and secluded, surrounded by towering oak trees. The ground was scattered with leaves, as wooded areas usually were, and the area they had rented out for the week was an oddly-shaped oval with a spigot, picnic table, and charcoal grill. The lot next to them came with an electric outlet, which would be used by Julia’s parents when they arrived. There were no other sites rented out around their’s for a good six or seven-hundred feet, so privacy was promised. With both the restrooms and creek just a quick walk away, Ian was willing to say that they had the prime location. That much he could be happy with.

  At the car, Julia pulled out her camera and convinced her son to take a walk around the park. She too needed a brief escape, a chance to clear her head and walk off the stress. Julia was a proud woman, always had been, but the threat of her marriage failing was weakening her nerves.

  Mother and son walked down the narrow dirt path surrounded on both sides by wild and tangled undergrowth colored in a dozen different shades of green. Being the end of March, the day was cool enough for Julia and Cole to be wearing jeans and close-toes shoes but warm enough so that they weren’t rushing back to the fire to warm their frozen bones. Julia loved the crisp weather, the fresh air. The world seemed at peace with itself.

  She snapped a few pictures of a group of blue-winged butterflies perched on a fallen log, amazed when they didn’t flutter away at her close approach. She turned to Cole, who was staring into the woods. “What do you think, sweetie? Aren’t they pretty?”

  Cole turned his eyes to the butterflies and shrugged. His mother loved nature and all animals, but the only bugs he liked were the ones that made squishy noises when he stomped on them. “Guess so. Can we go play by the water now?”

  “Sure.” Julia took her son by the hand and led him through a carved-out path in the woods. She enjoyed the smell of fresh blooms and crisp spring air, the sights of chipper squirrels chasing one another around winding tree branches and lively songbirds building nests for their future young. Julia loved nature, the pure innocence of it all, the beauty of a world untouched by the hands of man. It was nature, in fact, that had led her to Ian. As a struggling college junior, she had wandered into the public library one afternoon to get away from the hectic student life, turned a corner and bumped into an attractive man five years her senior pouring his attention into a stack of books on aquatic plants.

  The attraction had been instant, and for Julia, a young woman of twenty, those piercing blue eyes had been the end for her. For Ian, all it took was one smile, a smile that lit up Julia’s face in a way that he could have sworn the sun shone from her eyes. At twenty-five, he was new to his landscaping business but successful enough to need help, and had hired Julia upon discovering her need for a paycheck. And from that first meeting in
the library, nothing had ever been the same for them again.

  Julia helped Ian build his small, backyard-business to the successful company it was today, and he supported her in her own career as a freelance photographer. Their mutual love for the environment created a strong bond between them, one that Julia desperately wanted to save, and she was willing to believe that things could be the way they used to be, if they fought hard enough. She was willing to fight. So now it was up to Ian.

  Five minutes later, the winding path opened up to a river, churning with small rapids and cascading down piles of smooth rocks. Julia took a seat on a fallen tree and enjoyed the scene. She’d photographed this river for a tourist magazine three years ago and had vacationed at the campground at least four times before, but every time the scene changed. Leaves were different colors, the current moved faster or slower, animals hid in their homes or dared to venture out. It was a new adventure with every visit.

  “Stay along the shore, Cole. Don’t go past your ankles.”

  The water was bitingly icy and her son wasn’t interested much in learning how to swim, so she didn’t worry too much about him venturing into the water. She did, however, jump to her feet when he climbed on top of the biggest rock just on the edge of the river. “Be careful, Cole! Don’t go any farther than that!”

  Cole ignored his mother, curiously staring into the woods. He thought he saw something on the other side of the river, something gray and wispy that was floating through the trees. The gray and translucent thing had followed him down the path that led to the river, weaving in and out of the bushes. It looked like a little boy, but he was see-through, like a ghost. Cole couldn’t tell if he looked scared or if he wanted to play, and instead of being frightened himself, he was eager to know if ghosts were real or not.