Frost: An Otherworld Tale (The Otherworld Tales Book 1) Read online

  I nodded, yawned, and took a sip of the peppermint cocoa he'd made me. “Thanks, Brian. The cocoa is fantastic.”

  “You’re welcome. Goodnight, my sweet girls.” Mom and I watched him trudge back out of the kitchen and turn the corner to head up the stairs. The look of pure adoration on her face made me wonder why she’d ever married Dad. He and Brian were polar opposites.

  “I’m so glad you found a good, solid man like Brian, Mom. You’re lucky to have each other.”

  “I know.” She caressed her simple silver wedding band and sipped her hot tea.

  “I don’t know how this happened. Grandpa Alex was sure Michelle would get impatient and run off before Dad took the time to marry her. I wish he’d been right.”

  “I know, love. Drink your cocoa, take a hot shower, and get some sleep. We’ll reevaluate the situation later.”

  I couldn’t help chuckling. “You’re letting your history professor husband rub off on you, Mom. You totally just used the exact tone you use when you’re giving him your perspective on his analysis of historical battles.”

  “I can’t help it,” she laughed. “Besides, you love history as much as Brian and I do, and I’d say you know even more about ancient weapons than he does. You’re addicted to all those History Channel TV shows about ancient weapons, battles, and the like. You have no room to be judgmental about me letting my history-professor-loving side show.”

  I stood and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, darling. We'll talk more tomorrow.”

  I finished off my cocoa slowly, savoring each sip as I thought about the possibility of moving in with Granny Betty. It was an appealing solution on a number of levels. I decided to take mom's suggestion and sleep on it, slipped up the stairs to shower, and gratefully curled up under the down-filled duvet on my bed. I claimed the room with the rounded corner tower, witch’s hat turret, and ample window seats as mine the first time I visited Mom and Brian after they bought the house. I loved it then because it reminded me of a castle and made me feel like a princess. I may have been seventeen years old, but the feeling still applied.

  3

  Meeting the "Messengers"

  Mom and Brian were both at work by the time I woke, mom in her backyard art studio and Brian ensconced in the garage office from which he taught online military history courses. It was late afternoon, and I felt just as frustrated as I had when I showed up on their doorstep.

  I didn’t get out of my lavender painted four-poster for a good fifteen minutes. Instead, I lay on my stomach and reached up with my right hand to let my fingers automatically trace the hand-painted swallows on the headboard. Mom painted them not long after she and Brian were married, along with every other piece of dark wood in the house. Mom has hated the dark wood look for as long as I can remember. I considered walking out to mom's studio to observe her beginner art class, but I couldn’t work up the energy to do anything except eat a bowl of cereal.

  After about an hour of zombie-like wandering, I decided to text and check in with Audrey. As I was trudging back up the Victorian's steep stairs to my turret bedroom, my cell phone started ringing. I rushed up the last few steps and snatched my phone off the nightstand. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know it was my Granny Betty. My stomach squirmed as I tapped the answer option.

  “Hello?” I couldn’t help the quiver in my voice; I knew this conversation was likely not going to start well.

  “You could have let me know you decided to go to your mother's a couple days early, you know. I just came over to your father's to make you a surprise breakfast, and your car is here, but you are not. I called Audrey to see if you spent the night with her, and she has the courtesy to tell me where you went.” She was using her best disappointed and disapproving English teacher voice.

  “I'm sorry, Granny," I groaned, internally kicking myself for being as inconsiderate as Dad. "I should have called you to let you know what I was doing.” I chewed on my bottom lip, tugging at a bit of dry skin with my teeth in a nervous habit she often scolded me about.

  “That statement is both obvious and moot, at this point. What made you decide to move your flight up by two days instead of just waiting and going when you were supposed to?”

  I let out a weary sigh and sank down on the edge of my bed. “I just couldn’t deal with the fact that Dad is eloping with Michelle, especially when he knows how I feel about her!”

  “Please tell me you're kidding, Lauren. Are you sure?” Granny's voice was tired and weighted with cynicism regarding my dad's romantic choices since mom.

  "Unfortunately, I'm positive. He told me that was their plan right before they left yesterday afternoon."

  “What on earth is my fool son thinking? Marriage didn't work for him with a woman like your mother. How does he expect it to work with that little idiotic tart?"

  "I don't expect it to last, to be honest.” I shrugged, even though I knew she couldn't see the gesture.

  “I just hope he doesn't knock her up. I can just about guarantee you that's part of her plan.”

  I considered throwing my phone out a window. "How did everyone but me come to that conclusion?" The thought that Michelle might try to get pregnant just so she could have a child to manipulate my father with soured my stomach.

  "You're an only child, honey. Naïve and sheltered are your fortes."

  Ouch. I pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at it for a second before replying. "That was a little blunt, wasn't it?"

  "The truth is the truth, baby girl. There's no point beating around the bush about it." Her voice was dry, and the statement brooked no argument.

  I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. "Somebody's been blowing up my text messages while we've been talking, Granny. Let me let you go, and I'll call you back later."

  "All right, dear. I love you. I think I'm going to call your father and ask him why he thought it was okay to get remarried and not invite his only living parent to his wedding."

  "Love you, too." I flopped back into the softness of the down-filled, hand-embroidered duvet cover on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to keep from thinking about Michelle and Dad possibly getting pregnant. “That conversation was going nowhere but bad,” I muttered, doing my best to ignore the guilt nagging at me for basically ratting my father out twice in two days to the two most formidable women in his life. After staring blankly at the ceiling for a good five minutes, I remembered that I needed to text Audrey.

  When I checked, I had five texts from Audrey waiting for me.

  OMG, Lauren, did you seriously just take off to your mom's early without giving Granny Betty a heads-up? She called me looking for you and sounded like she was having a panic attack.

  I hope you’re okay, hon. Text me as soon as you get this.

  Seriously, I’m worried about you. You not responding for this long is totally unnatural.

  Please let me know you’re okay.

  I know you’re still upsetabout your dad and Michelle. Please talk to me.

  I felt like she was overreacting a little, but I sent her a text anyway. Hey, Drey. Just wanted to let you know I’m mostly okay. I didn’t bring my laptop with me, so all I have to reply with is my cell. The only things I brought are my purse and my carry-on. Anyway, I love you. I’ll probably call you later. I need to take a shower and go for a walk to clear my head.

  I signed back out and shuffled across the hall into the bathroom for another hot shower, hoping it would wash away the dull ache that was taking over my whole body. I stood under the spray until the hot water ran out and then went hunting in my closet for warmer clothes.

  I bundled up in a light-gray turtleneck and my favorite coat, a purple fleece peacoat, before I set out in a random direction on the sidewalk that ran in front of Mom's house. I put in my earbuds and cranked up the music on my iPhone, hoping to deter Mom and Brian's kindly neighbors from trying to talk to me while I was trying to think over my options fo
r living arrangements.

  An icy, bitter gust of wind hit me in the face and whipped at my cheeks. I ducked my head and stared down at the wet, salt-strewn concrete of the sidewalk. As much as I loved Mom and Brian, I knew that I was too spoiled by Bay Minette's mild climate to spend all winter in Chicopee. I also knew that I didn't want to start over at a new high school with only one semester of my senior year left to go.

  That knowledge left two options. I could continue to suffer at Dad and Michelle's until college dorms were a possibility, or I could hurt my father's feelings, possibly have a heck of a fight with him, and move in with Granny Betty. As I was weighing my options, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult came on, and I paused with my eyes closed to rock out to the opening strains of one of my favorite songs.

  Suddenly, a blinding pain flashed through the left side of my body, and I dully registered that it was the side of my body that had been closest to the road. The next thing that occurred to me around the pain was that I seemed to be flying through the air. I must have been hit by a car or something.

  I flew for what seemed like forever before landing in a crumpled heap in the middle of the ice-slicked road. My head bounced off the asphalt with a sickening thump, and I felt warmth bloom between me and the road. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a pool of blood growing at an alarming rate. I tried to move, but a sudden rush of darkness swallowed everything.

  I couldn’t open my eyes for what seemed like forever. As time passed, I realized that they were, in fact, already open. I was suspended in a sort of sensationless oblivion. There were no lights, nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to hear.

  Am I dreaming? What is this? I wonder if this is what out-of-body experiences feel like?

  Instantaneous sensation interrupted my thoughts; it felt like a million icy wings were beating against my skin. It made me dizzy and more than a little nauseated.

  The darkness faded, shifting into forms around me. An ageless woman with fiery red hair and silver eyes materialized and scowled down at a tangled thread on a spinning wheel. “I cannot stand what this little fool is doing to her life,” she muttered. A pair of silver shears appeared in her hand and she tried to cut the thread, shaking her head.

  Cold shot through me as the scissors touched the thread and I shuddered. “Stop!”

  The redhead didn’t seem to hear my panicked cry. When she pulled the shears away, she blinked several times like she suspected her eyes of lying to her. The shears had failed and the thread refused to separate. “Sisters!” Her voice rang out in that void between worlds, searing everything like a massive lightning strike.

  A willowy brunette with golden eyes appeared, her opalescent brow furrowed with confusion. Half a moment later, a bronze-eyed, petite blonde joined them. Each woman held the essence of something far greater than her deceptive human form.

  “What is it, Aithne,” the two asked in unison, one voice cold, detached, and Vulcan-like, the other warm, soothing, and kind.

  She gestured at the thread with disgust. “This silly little Telluvian girl is mucking up her life so badly that I decided it might be best if I cut this knotted mess of a thread. Look, Alyssa, and tell me if my eyes deceive me.”

  The brunette glided past her wrathful, hot-tempered sister and stared down at the thread. “This thread is not so much as frayed, Aithne. Is there something wrong with your shears?”

  “Perhaps her thread cannot be severed because the plan for her life is too strong to be severed by your shears?” The blonde clasped her hands and looked down as if she expected a rebuke from her elder siblings.

  Aithne arched a brow at her, but Alyssa held up a hand to quell whatever remark the redhead had been ready to make. “Karita may be right. We should watch over her until we know more.”

  “Excuse me! Who are you? What the hell are you talking about?” I was screaming at the top of my lungs, but my voice sounded small and frail, even to me.

  It was Alyssa who answered. “We have many forms and have been called by many names. I will try to make this easy for you to understand. We are Messengers, in a way. I am Alyssa, and these are my sisters, Karita and Aithne.”

  “Why am I here? Are you angels? What message do you have for me?”

  “You are here because you refuse to accept yourself and your life's purpose! You are so busy trying to please everyone else in your life that you are destroying yourself. I’ve got a mind to have another go at cutting your thread now in hopes of sparing us any further frustration over you,” Aithne snapped.

  Karita’s voice was calm and soothing as she whispered. “You needn’t be so hard on the girl, Aithne. Remember the new covenant. We all failed to foresee that her thread would become so tangled. We must expect instances like this where free will is involved.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at them, my eyes darting from woman to woman at a dizzying pace. “This has to be some kind of weird dream. I don’t understand what you’re talking about! I didn’t even know I had a so-called thread. You never answered me when I asked when you were angels. What are you? Are you God? Are you Fates? I don't understand any of this!” I was panic-stricken, and trying to come up with any kind of explanation I could for what was happening.

  Karita sighed and shook her head. “We are God, but you see us the way you percieve God. You see God as three separate beings, one wrathful, one just, and one loving. Only you can change the way you see me—the way you see us—if that is your wish. You are in a dire situation, my dear, and souls that have not yet realized their true purpose cannot rest in peace until the Day of Judgment. When we wove your thread, the potential for courage, wisdom and compassion was written on your soul. However, in the life you’ve led thus far, you have not even scratched the surface of the woman that you were supposed to become. The choices you’ve made have tied your life up in knots, and you are not moving forward as you should.”

  "Wait a second. God is a woman? All the pronouns in the Bible that refer to God are masculine."

  "All is as Karita said," Alyssa interrupted in a professorial tone. "You percieve God through your own lens. You see three women and not a unified trinity for a reason. You see us separately because you have yet to comprehend us as one and the same being. You see women because the women in your life have been much more powerful and influential forces than the men. You see what you believe we are, and only you can change your vision, if you feel it necessary. Now, can we return to the issue at hand?"

  Aithne scowled down at me, her expression fulfilling my vision of the wrathfulness of the God of the Old Testament. “I thought to end the nonsense by cutting your thread and being done with it. However, I could not break through so much as a strand of it.”

  “That is because it is not yet her time to die.” Alyssa fixed her older sister with a stern gaze. “You were somewhat unjust. You have seen that her thread stretches far beyond these knots she has created. Do not be so eager to end her because her mistakes have caused her life to take an unexpected turn. Humans have free will.”

  “That is their greatest downfall.” Aithne's voice was bitterly sad, and brought to mind visions of Eden and the Great Flood that sent a chill of abject awe and fear down my spine.

  “No.” Karita laid a hand on her sister’s shoulder and I saw something like a mixture of pity and adoration in her bronze eyes. “It is their greatest strength.”

  I pressed my fingers against my temples and squeezed my eyes shut, sick with the new dread that gripped me. “Wait just a minute, okay? Am I dead?”

  “Not yet.” Karita shot her sisters a cryptic smile. “You were struck by a car that lost control on the ice. You are in a coma and your life on Tellus, the planet you know as Earth, has been suspended. We believe that your life has more in store for you. We certainly intended more for your life. Therefore, we are offering you a choice.”

  Aithne stepped forward, her hot silver eyes burning my soul. “You have not lived up to our expectations for you. You may accept this and be
laid to rest until Judgment Day, if you choose.”