Oracle--Sunken Earth Read online

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  Website – www.trisefbook.com

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  Oracle – Sunken Earth

  C.W. Trisef

  Other titles by C.W. Trisef

  Oracle – Fire Island (Book 2 in the Oracle Series)

  Oracle – River of Ore (Book 3 in the Oracle Series)

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

  Written by – C.W. Trisef

  Cover designed by – Giuseppe Lipari

  Copyright © 2011 Trisef Book LLC

  Book 1 – Edition 1

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781618422637

  CHAPTER 0

  TEN MONTHS EARLIER

  “It’s too dangerous, Captain,” warned Jaret’s Coast Guard crew as he leapt from the safety of the cutter. “You’ll never make it!”

  “Not with that attitude, I won’t,” he replied bravely, shoving off in his inflatable raft. “If the hurricane gets too close and I haven’t returned, promise you’ll turn back without me.” Despite their protests, he knew his loyal crew would obey.

  Leaving the cutter on the edge of safety, Jaret plowed into the boiling sea. The several square miles of Atlantic waters before him were bubbling violently, displacing the oxygen in the air with their gaseous contents, making it hard to breathe. The approaching hurricane was transforming the waves into towering swells and the wind into mighty gales. With considerable difficulty, Jaret navigated his tiny raft among circumstances that he had never encountered in all his many years at sea.

  At length, he arrived at his destination: a burning ship, ablaze and sinking fast. With no distress signal or solicitation for assistance, Jaret didn’t know what to expect as he moored his raft to the ship and climbed aboard. Walls of smoke combined with rain of ash to render sight useless. He groped his way over broken beams and severed cords, then stopped when he heard voices.

  “Give me the Oracle, boy!”

  “Never!”

  Jaret turned to face the fighting. When the smoke had cleared momentarily, he could see an old man, with a long beard and white staff, contending against a young man whose complexion was fair and radiant. Each of them had one hand on a small sphere, which they were desperately clinging to and striving to pull away from the other.

  “It’s useless to resist!” shouted the white-haired senior.

  “That’s what you think,” the young boy countered, maintaining his firm grasp on the sphere.

  “Then you leave me no choice,” said the elder.

  “Only you would say such a thing, Lye,” but the boy’s words ended abruptly when he was struck by the old man’s staff. Amid a flash of brilliant light, the young man fell backwards lifelessly, his head smacking the deck and the sphere falling from his possession.

  Another curtain of thick, black smoke fell on the scene, preventing Jaret from observing what happened next. Still, he could hear something rolling across the main deck towards him, like an oversized marble. In shock, he watched as the sphere, which had been the dueling duo’s envy, came to a stop at his feet. Bending over to pick it up, he had scarcely touched the sphere when the bottom of a white staff appeared next to it.

  “Who are you?” the old man growled.

  “Captain Jaret Cooper, sir, of the U.S. Coast Guard,” came the reply. “I’ve come to rescue you and your crew.”

  “We don’t need your rescue,” Lye barked condescendingly.

  “But, sir, your ship is on fire and sinking fast,” Jaret informed him, “not to mention the approaching—”

  “Everything is exactly the way I want it,” Lye asserted, though Jaret wondered how anyone could desire such dire circumstances. “Now give me that ball and leave!” he insisted, lunging for the sphere.

  “Okay,” Jaret obliged, “but I’m taking the boy with me.” He pointed to the boy, still lying lifelessly on the floor. “He needs medical attention immediately.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort!” Lye snarled defensively. “He stays with me, as does that ball. Now hand it over and be gone!”

  “I’m not leaving without the—”

  Lye wielded his staff, striking Jaret, who fell to the deck but quickly rose to his feet to defend himself.

  “Leave, you weak human!” Lye demanded. “You have no idea what you’re meddling in.”

  Jaret picked up a fallen beam and engaged his opponent in combat. They fought for several moments, Lye’s staff clashing frequently with Jaret’s wooden sword, shooting a mix of sparks and splinters into the air. Lye moved with impressive and unanticipated swiftness and agility for an old-timer, but when his staff became lodged in Jaret’s beam, Jaret swung the opposite end into Lye’s abdomen, sending him rolling across the ship.

  Jaret rushed to the boy’s side. Though he had received a severe blow to the head, the faint rise and fall of the boy’s chest manifested that he was still alive. Jaret picked up the injured boy and hauled him to his raft. Since the ship continued to sink, Jaret was able to lower the unconscious body safely into his raft while he himself remained on the ship.

  Jaret had cut the moorings, started the engine, and was preparing to board the already-moving raft when he was hurled away by a forceful stream of water. Since the hurricane had long since fallen upon them, Jaret thought he had been struck by its powerful winds. But then, however, he heard Lye’s menacing voice.

  “I gave you a chance, you stubborn fool,” Lye hissed. Using his staff, Lye commanded the water all around them in air and sea to obey his every whim, pummeling Jaret relentlessly with round after round of watery weaponry. “Bet you’ve never battled anything like this as a measly coast guard!” Lye formed a giant ball of water, like a life-size rain drop, and enclosed it completely around Jaret. For several seconds, he manipulated it, sending Jaret back and forth and upside down, waiting for him to be out of breath. When Jaret began to squirm for want of air, Lye restated his terms.

  “If you want to live,” he said, holding out his hand, “give me the Oracle.”

  Blue in the face, Jaret glanced at his raft, which was already speeding crookedly away from the burning ship. For a split second, he stared at the curious sphere clutched in his hand. It meant nothing to him, but it seemed to mean the world to his sinister antagonist. And so, with what he assumed would be his final breath, Jaret threw the sphere out of Lye’s liquid cage. It hit the raft and bounced into the ferocious waves of the ocean, where it bobbed amid charred planks and windswept pieces of the impending shipwreck.

  “NO!” Lye screamed. Since Jaret no longer possessed anything of interest, Lye abandoned torturing him and instead bolted after the sphere. Without any reluctance, Lye prepared to dive into the churning sea but was thwarted when Jaret caught him by the train of his robes and yanked him back into the ring.

  “Leaving so soon?” Jaret asked before delivering a dizzying punch to Lye’s aged face.

  With the raft motoring out of sight and the opposing pair busy exchanging jabs, the approaching eye of the hurricane went unnoticed until it had blown directly over them. The wind died, the rain slackened, the ship ceased its swaying. Finding themselves in such instantly calm surroundings, Lye and Jaret paused. A moment of utter terror seized Lye’s face.

  “Not yet!” he yelled, “Not without—” But it was too late. The boy and sphere were gone. Then, as if placed in a vertical laundry chute, the water surrounding the battered boat disappeared, and what was left of the ship suddenly dropped to the bottom of the sea.

  CHAPTER 1

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  Like most homes
in island communities on early mornings in late summer, the Cooper house was ringing with silence. Every clock agreed it was that most exquisite time of day when the world appeared as still as a photograph. For the first time that day, the temperature had slackened enough to reward the air conditioning a much-needed—albeit short-lived—respite. Too dark to surf and too moonlit to sunbathe, the beach was vacant. A salty sea breeze was accompanied by its sluggish twin, a thin but misty fog, and together they rode the incessant tides into town. Indeed, the only movement stirring the silence was the crashing of the ceaseless waves—too frequent to be forgotten, too alluring to be annoying.

  Enter hairdryer.

  “Goodbye, serenity,” Ret whispered to himself, turning on his side and smothering both ears with his pillow to drown out the airy bellowing of Ana’s hairdryer. Entirely by instinct, Ret awoke each day in time to enjoy the predawn stillness. These morning vigils were so involuntary on his part that he assumed himself to share some kind of connection with nature, for he certainly felt a link to the elements around him.

  “Why is she up so early this morning?” Ret wondered, his sister’s hairdryer drowning out his voice so completely that even he could not hear his own words. The clock on Ret’s nightstand had its hour hand positioned scarcely past six o’clock, which time, he had come to learn, was far too premature for any of Ana’s summertime activities. It was even earlier than when she normally commenced prettifying for one of her normal school days. Then, at the thought of school, Ret realized a grim reality. He buried his face deeper into his pillow.

  “Time to get up, Ret,” Ana sang from the powder room, switching the hairdryer into low gear to accommodate brief conversation. “We don’t want to be late for our first day of high school!” The blowing recommenced in full force immediately after Ana’s final word, probably to prevent Ret from expressing his displeasure. Ret rolled out of bed, staggering into the bathroom amid a billowing cloud of hairspray.

  “Finished with the hairdryer already?” he asked, nearly choking on the plume’s fumes.

  “I think it blew a fuse,” she explained, moving on to her hair straightener. “It’s so hard to find a good hairdryer.” Ana spent more and more time in front of the mirror these days but seemed cautiously cognizant not to hide her natural good looks, a respect for beauty taught by her mother. She carefully flattened each strand of her long, brown hair with precision. The heat from her instruments was causing her cheeks to blush slightly, adding color to her fair-skinned and lightly-freckled face. No doubt the additional warmth trapped inside the bathroom felt welcomed against her slim frame.

  “You’re getting started kind of early today, aren’t you?” Ret wondered, squinting into the intrusive mirrors, which reflected the overhead searchlights so well that he felt like a captive insect under a menacing child’s magnifying glass. “I mean, school doesn’t start for another two hours, right?”

  “One hour and fifty-two minutes, to be exact,” Ana said, “and you can never look too well-groomed on the first day back to school, you know. This day is always chock-full of first impressions, Ret, and you can never change a first impression. What happens today could set the course for the rest of the year, so you’ll want to look your best, act your best, and hope for the best.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” he said, somewhat sarcastically. She had been feeding it to him in regular spoonfuls throughout the last several months.

  “I’m just trying to help,” was Ana’s genuine reply. “It’s going to be quite a big transition for me to adjust to high school—new school, new teachers, new friends, new everything! But I can’t imagine what a shock it’ll be for you. I mean, you haven’t been to school in who knows how long. We found you what, like ten months ago? And you still can’t remember anything before that, can you?”

  “No, but it’s not the new environment that I’m worried about,” Ret confessed.

  “Then what is it, Ret?” Ana’s sincere interest in Ret’s answer was demonstrated by the abrupt pause that she took during her eyelash-curling routine.

  “Just look at me,” he said, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His now-adjusted eyes afforded him a clear examination of his unique appearance. The abnormality that always clouded his mind first was his pale skin, so white and pure that it seemed to glow like a light bulb. It did not take him long to deduce the difference between his skin and that of his peers. Ana reassured him that his skin would tan over time, but even she had been surprised by the absence of color change. Once, Ret exposed his skin to the sun’s rays for an entire summer’s day—from sunrise to sunset—expecting at least some kind of pigment variation by day’s end. But his skin’s stubbornness persisted. Not only was there not the slightest trace of sunburn, but his body’s outermost layer now seemed to shine even brighter, as if his body behaved exactly contrary to the scarring mechanisms of normal-skinned people.

  “At least you’ll never have to wear sunscreen,” Ana had told him, trying to look on the bright side.

  The only characteristic to rival his skin in luster was his eyes, a pair of azure gems that radiated as brilliantly as two transparent sapphires against a backdrop of driven snow. They were so bright, in fact, that they had given Ana’s mother quite a scare once: it was Ret’s first night with the Coopers since they found him, and when Pauline tiptoed into the spare room where he was sleeping to see how he was faring, she was frightened half to death when she could see Ret’s eyes through their closed lids.

  And then his hair—its unusualness masked only by his other, more striking features. Ana once informed Ret jokingly that she had found his portrait in the dictionary, next to the word blond. They laughed, but it was true that his hair was unusually fair and, like his skin, practically glowing.

  “Just look at me,” Ret repeated, still staring at his mimic in the mirror. “I’m a freak! My skin, my eyes, my hair, my hands—”

  “—So you look different—big deal,” Ana sympathized, refocusing her attention on her eyelashes. “There’re tons of weird-looking people in high school; you’ll fit right in.”

  “I don’t care if I fit in,” Ret said. “I’m just tired of being so different—of being treated like I’m an alien from outer space or something.”

  “Well, for all we know,” Ana said, “you could be.” As usual, Ana was right: she was as clueless as Ret when it came to the facts about his own personal history. He found it remarkably frustrating to be such an intelligent person and, yet, to be so in the dark about his own past.

  “Is it worth it?” Ret asked, changing the subject.

  “Is what worth it?” Ana tried to clarify.

  “You know, all this high school stuff; is it really worth it?”

  “Well, of course it’s worth it, my ridiculous Ret!” Ana replied. “Just think of all the friends you’ll make, all the things you’ll learn, all the cute guys—well, in your case, cute girls—you’ll meet, not to mention all the sports games and themed dances and oh—” Her voice quieted as if in solemn worship. “Oh, I can’t wait to go someday: prom.” Ret was amazed how, despite her obvious ecstasy, her hand remained so steady while gripping her mascara wand.

  “I’m sure all of that stuff’s fun and useful and all,” Ret continued, “but I doubt I’ll find it very, well, fulfilling.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said matter-of-factly. “Which reminds me, we are not going to be late today, so you’d better get dressed—unless, of course, you plan to make your maiden voyage into the public school system wearing your pajamas.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Ret mumbled on his way out of the bathroom.

  “It’s all in your attitude, my boy,” Ana’s counsel resumed, though her voice faded as Ret returned to his room. He was hoping that she would have requested him to expound upon what he meant by his assumption that school would not feel very fulfilling to him, for he had been wanting to share his sentiments with at least one person. Even though he had not been enrolled in any formal schooling since being taken
in by the Coopers, his education had not been stagnating, and his mind had encountered no atrophy. Quite the opposite was true. Instead of boarding the bus and crowding to class, Ret sought out his own laboratories of learning: curious coves to study rock formations and mineral deposits; tiny tide pools to probe crawling crustaceans and thriving plant life; offshore eddies to examine the tendencies of tides and the cause of currents; the surrounding marshes to mull over the extensities of water and the expanse of the heavens; the sandy beach to admire men’s expert navigability on the sea’s surface, reflective of the shallow depth of their understanding of the mostly-untouched world beneath that surface. Yes, Ret doubted that any high school classroom could provide the kind of knowledge that he had acquired through repeated observation in a certain setting or by means of a book read in the shade of his favorite tree.

  Ret was pained by the prospect of school, as it would most certainly mean the end of his independent studies. There was no denying the connectedness—the attachment—which he felt to the natural world. Indeed, he sensed a certain duty—an acute obligation—to enlighten his mind through the environment which encompasses all mankind. And, like most things, the enlightenment came naturally to him—nearly as naturally as night chases day. Nature’s rudiments seemed to be keenly aware of him—his past, his present, and his potential. His past was not his only mystery.

  “Ret, Ana; breakfast’s ready,” a voice called from the kitchen. Ret haphazardly donned pants and a long-sleeved shirt as the outfit for his grand debut, capping his chosen garb with a wide-brimmed hat. Before leaving his room, he added sunglasses and a scarf to his getup. With skin, eyes, and hair now hidden from view, Ret had all but one of his bases covered.

  “Pauline, do you have any gloves I can borrow?” Ret asked innocently, sliding into his seat at the kitchen table while her back was turned.

  “Of course, dear,” she said, flipping the griddle’s final buttermilk flapjack atop the teetering stack on the plate in her hand. “They’re on the top shelf in that closet by the front door.” Her other hand forsook its steadying of the stack just long enough for her to point to the correct closet, her gaze never leaving her morning’s culinary masterpiece. “But you shouldn’t need to wear gloves today; the paper tells me the heat wave’s just getting started.” She abandoned her post at the stove to grace the table with her work. She had scarcely set down the dish and taken her first look at Ret when she let out a spooked gasp. “My word, Ret, what are you wearing?” Pauline asked indignantly. “You look like a—like a convict!”