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“Be patient,” Antsel insisted.

  “I won’t leave you,” Clover whimpered.

  “You will leave me,” Antsel commanded.

  “I will leave you,” he answered.

  “Now run!” Antsel shouted, setting the furry creature down. “Run!”

  Clover looked at Antsel. “You will be proud of me?”

  “Of course. Now run.”

  Clover spat and smiled. He jumped, shivered violently, and ran off on two feet, bucking oddly as he leapt, and was lost almost instantly in the dark. Antsel gazed after him. He knew the risk he took in putting so much trust in such a mischievous creature, but he had no choice. He turned and ran the opposite direction.

  Lightning flashed.

  Antsel slowed his pace, feeling his age and marveling over the fact that his heart had not yet given out. He reached into his robe and withdrew an object more important than any soul within a million miles could comprehend. Sweat poured from his neck and wrists, and he could feel his heart beginning to crumble. Antsel held the tiny seed up to the light of the surrounding fires and glanced at it one last time.

  Lightning flashed again.

  He placed the seed back in his robe and kneeled. He pressed his face to the ground and used his ability to see everything beneath the soil. Every insect, every particle. This was the perfect spot. He lifted his head and brushed the sweat from his eyes. He then began to dig. His old hands bled and trembled as he plunged them deeper into the dark, rich earth. Lightning struck continuously as fire after fire ignited. The atmosphere began to relax, drawing in more oxygen to feed the flames.

  Antsel paid no attention.

  He had something to finish. He pulled the seed out again and pressed it down into the earth, then worked madly to fill the hole with the soil he had scraped out.

  Lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and the howling of the wind increased.

  He looked over his shoulder and shuddered. They were here, he could feel it in the wind. Antsel glanced at the ground, knowing that the fate of a thousand generations rested beneath only a foot of soil.

  “Grow, Geth,” he whispered. “Grow.” Antsel patted the ground and dusted his palms. His job was done, and he stood with purpose.

  Lightning flashed again, while simultaneously a sickened soul in another realm breathed a small dark army of shadows out over Tin Culvert. Sabine sat impatiently in Foo, breathing heavily and yet with control, letting his shadows twist down through the dark dreams of men and into reality. His castoffs were darker than the night, black. Like a perverted wind they swirled and billowed as they rushed across the fiery earth, laughing and screeching. Their white eyes and shrill voices gave their two-dimensional forms an eerie depth. Invisible to mankind, they swept the fiery landscape. They were not here to sightsee, however; they were here for a purpose.

  Antsel knew the shadows had arrived. He couldn’t let them find the spot. Running deeper into the night and far away from what he had planted, he wiped at his forehead with his heavy cloak and clutched his chest in agony. He would not last the night. He accepted this; after all, his mission was accomplished. The only thing he could do now was to run as far as possible away from the ground he had just touched. He pushed himself, darting to the right and turning a sharp left. His legs screamed in pain, and he could feel his heart pulsing up inside him like some sort of red-hot inflammation.

  The moans of the shadows roared as they circled the burning town. Like a cyclone they twisted in tighter and mightier, their hollow eyes searching the firelight for the withered form of the old man they had been sent to find. The wind shifted and all together they lifted their heads and looked to the east. Nothing but flames and beyond that, darkness.

  The winds shifted again.

  Light from the fires reflected off a small hint of silver in the distance. The reflection vanished for a second only to spark up again even farther away. The shadows took notice. Something was running from them. Their restless forms turned toward the dark and flew.

  Antsel ran. He could feel them coming toward him now and in a brief moment they were hovering over him, hissing and screeching. His old heart was making his stride short and almost pointless. Sabine’s shadows swooped down and wrapped themselves around him, smothering his progress and slowing his gait even further. He pushed with his arms, waving the night away and struggling to go on.

  It was no use: they had him surrounded and were pressing their hideous forms against him, moaning and gnashing their teeth. They circled him like a ring of plague. Antsel’s purple eyes could faintly make out their inky outlines as they whispered wickedly.

  He moved to the east but was stopped by the billowing of a shadow. He moved to the north and received a blow to the side.

  Antsel was trapped.

  “Where is it?” the shadows hissed. “Give us the seed.”

  His heart struggling to keep beating, Antsel wiped his eyes, put his palms to his knees, and tried to draw in breath. He straightened and lit an amber stick and lifted the fire-brand to just below his eyes. The light from the stick glowed in a sphere around the gathering.

  Antsel could see nothing but dripping darkness and thousands of shadows wildly circling him. They moaned, their white eyes even dimmer in the light of the amber stick. Nowhere in the sea of muted eyes could Antsel detect even a hint of mercy. He knew that somewhere in Foo, Sabine looked on with pleasure—his former friend no longer having any thought or feeling for anyone but himself.

  Antsel’s breathing was shallow and his heartbeat weak. The insistence of the surrounding shadows and the roaring of the fire in the distance seemed fitting to what he knew would be his end.

  “Give us the seed,” they hissed. “The seed.”

  “It is in Foo,” Antsel gasped at them.

  “You lie,” they whispered back. “You lie.”

  “I—”

  The shadows had no patience. Screaming, they leapt onto the old man. They clawed at him, searching for the object. Their hands ripped at his robe and body. Their mouths screamed and moaned as they tossed Antsel around like a rag doll. Antsel tried to fight back, but there were too many, and his strength and will were gone. The shadows thrust his face into the soil. Antsel could see everything. He watched the seed, though far from where he now lay, already begin to grow.

  The shadows spun him once more and then withdrew with nothing.

  Antsel lay on the ground moving only his lips. He murmured weakly, committing his soul to rest and waiting for fate to tell him it was over. He stared up and could see the false face of Sabine in the thousands of shadows. His soul relaxed and his life slipped away.

  The shadows began to moan. The seed had not been found. They knew too well that Sabine, the being who had cast them, would not be happy Antsel was dead. The shadows berated themselves. A few of them began to hiss, “Burn everything. Burn it!”

  Antsel might have deposited the seed on earth. Sabine knew this, and even the remotest possibility of that couldn’t be ignored. Most of the landscape was on fire, but a few pieces and parts were still void of flame.

  “Burn it all,” the shadows were now whispering fiercely. They all began to rise and laugh and dance, happy in their fury to carry out such a horrific thing. They swirled and scattered in a thousand directions to do Sabine’s bidding. Some twisting together in a massive funnel cloud, they sucked up fire and dripped it down upon everything.

  In the distance, far away from the heat and light, Clover stopped running so as to better cry. He stood to his full twelve inches and shivered. The fur over his body bristled in waves. His wet eyes viewed the flames as they devoured the entire landscape.

  “Antsel,” he whispered, his thin leathery mouth quivering. He wiped his blue eyes with the hem of his small robe, his leaf-like ears twitching to listen to the wind. He turned and continued running. Clover saw no reason to go back. Antsel was gone, and the journey had begun.

  Chapter One

  A Relative of Foo

  The Birth of Leven


  Who can say for sure what constitutes the perfect birth? Perhaps a mother, while playing cards and sipping lemonade, might simply hiccup, pat her stomach, and there in her arms would be a beautiful child, already diapered and pink-cheeked, looking up at her and emitting a soft coo. That wouldn’t be too bad.

  Or perhaps, while taking a nice ride up the coastline on a golden afternoon, a woman might tap her husband on the shoulder and say, “Look what I found.”

  Together they would peer into the backseat and there would be their lovely newborn buckled in a car seat and sleeping blissfully. A person could argue that that scenario would be perfect to a lot of people.

  Well, Leven Thumps experienced nothing of the sort. He came into the world like a delivery that no one knew what to do with and nobody wanted to sign for. His father had passed away in a tragic car accident only a week before his arrival, sending his mother spiraling down into a deep pit of grief and mourning. Her only hope was in knowing that the husband she had lost would live on in the son she was about to give birth to. Two days before the delivery her health suddenly began to deteriorate. She couldn’t stand, she couldn’t sleep, and she found it difficult to even breathe.

  On October fifteenth, at 2:30 in the morning, Maria Thumps knew she was not long for this world. She called her neighbor, who came immediately and quickly drove Maria to the hospital. Maria had been inside the hospital for only five minutes when her son was born. The child had a head of thick dark hair and wise open eyes.

  The doctor placed the baby in her hands, and for the first time in a while Maria smiled. “Leven,” she whispered.

  Maria’s smile began to fade. Her face paled to a new shade of white. She clenched her eyes shut and began to struggle for breath. Her hands twitched and Leven rolled from her arms and into her lap. Every machine in the room with a voice immediately began to wail and frantically beep, and the lights suddenly dimmed. Doctors and nurses huddled over Maria, trying desperately to work a miracle. It was no use. A tall doctor picked up Leven and handed him to one of the attending nurses. She stepped quickly out of the room with the child, saving him from the scene and pulling him away from the last person on earth who would love him for some time. Two minutes later Maria Thumps closed her eyes, ceased her labored breathing, and passed away.

  Leven lay alone in the hospital nursery for days. Every morning at 10:00 and each afternoon at 3:15, a different nurse would come in, pick him up, and hold him for exactly four and a half minutes. Other than that he was touched only when being fed or changed. The hospital staff whispered about what to do with him, waiting for the state to decide, but the wheels of compassion were slow to get moving. Everyone was holding out hope that a kindly relative or family member might be found and the little orphan would be taken away and off their hands. The hospital was already short-staffed and money was hard to come by, thanks in part to a dozen or so recent malpractice law suits the administrators had been forced to settle.

  On the fourth day following Leven’s birth, the prayers in his behalf were answered. Well, sort of. Contact had been made with a half sister of Leven’s mom. Her name was Addy Graph, and at this very moment, she was on her way to the hospital from one state over and two states up.

  She arrived that evening, bringing with her a violent rainstorm that battered the hospital. Addy pulled up in a dull-looking black car with only one headlight and a mismatched door. The car shuddered to a stop in the spot reserved for ambulances and Addy Graph got out. Addy was not a pleasant-looking woman. She was heavy-set and had a high forehead and no lips. Her flesh was pasty white, and the veins beneath her chalky skin were not only visible, they were bulging, as if there were too much thick blood coursing through them. She had a protruding stomach and skinny legs you felt sorry for due to the big ball of weight they were called upon to support.

  She slammed the mismatched car door and held a newspaper over her frizzy hair as she cursed the weather and moved toward the entrance to the hospital.

  As she walked away from her car, a little security guard with a whistle around his neck hollered out at her. “This is for emergency personnel only,” he chirped. “You’ll have to move your car.”

  Addy glared at him. “Excuse me?” she sneered, her neck veins bulging.

  The short man cleared his throat. “No unauthorized vehicles allowed.” He made a large circle with his arm, indicating the area. “Your car must be moved.”

  “Then move it,” Addy snapped. She pushed past him and into the hospital.

  The young woman at the reception desk did her best to welcome Addy, but her pleasant greeting was met with total disgust.

  “I drive all day and then when I get here some Neanderthal with a whistle tries to tell me where to park,” Addy growled.

  “I’m sorry…” the young girl tried. “But we—”

  “Stow it. I’m here to pick up a kid,” Addy interrupted, dismissing whatever the girl was about to say. “His mother died, so I’m saddled with him.”

  “Saddled?” the girl asked, confused.

  “Stuck with him,” she snarled.

  “So you want the nursery?”

  “What I want and what I’m about to get are two different things, Sweety. I’ve already spent too much money coming to fetch this brat.”

  “I’m sure someday he’ll be grateful,” the girl said, trying to be kind.

  “I’d take that bet, if I thought you were good for it,” Addy sniffed. “Now where’s the nursery?”

  For a moment, the young girl considered pointing in the wrong direction—thinking that might buy her some time to race up the stairs and rescue the poor baby that was going to be stuck with this piece of work. But she had to stay and answer the phone, so she simply pointed to the stairs and said, “The nursery’s on the fourth floor, east wing.”

  “There had better be an elevator,” Addy huffed.

  “There is, just past the stairs.”

  Addy stormed off, mumbling and criticizing everything she passed. The elevator took too long to come. The inside of it smelled funny. The person at the reception desk for the nursery was curt. The nursery was cold. The floor was dirty. The staff was unfriendly.

  By the time she finally laid eyes on the child she was completely out of sorts.

  “That’s him?” she almost laughed. “He’s so small.”

  Leven squinted at her.

  “He’s just about the right size,” the nurse on duty said.

  “For what?” Addy sniffed.

  “He’ll be old before you know it,” the nurse tried. “Babies grow so—”

  “Thank you,” Addy snipped. “I’m perfectly aware that babies grow. Do I need to sign something?”

  The nurse was dumbfounded. Sure, all of the years she had worked there had made her a bit callused and bored. Babies were born every day, and it had long since ceased to be a miracle to her. She had seen everything. She once saw a baby born with two heads. She had even seen newborns come out laughing. She had also seen a dozen or so children be born and pronounced dead only to come alive again minutes later. She had seen a lot, but this loud, vicious lady was uglier and meaner than anything she could remember.

  “I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said, biting her lip. She stepped away, leaving Addy alone with her new responsibility.

  Addy eyed Leven coldly. She sniffed again and looked away. When she looked back he was still there. She lifted up one of his legs and looked at it. She touched Leven’s head. She scowled. She put her hand on the baby’s arm and gingerly lifted it as if it might be diseased.

  She dropped the tiny arm, screaming.

  A huge, hairy, gray ball scurried out from under Leven, circled over his stomach, and rolled back under him.

  Addy screamed hysterically as she pushed back and away, knocking over an empty cart and sending diapers and baby shampoo everywhere. The shampoo bottles exploded all over the floor, causing Addy to lose her footing and fall hard onto her rear. Her rump seemed to pop as a loud rush of air escaped her sc
reaming, lipless mouth. A small team of nurses and a couple of doctors rushed through the door wondering what could possibly be going on to generate so much noise.

  Addy just sat there, screaming and pointing. The nurse, who had had the pleasure of talking with her just moments before, filled a cup with water and happily threw it in Addy’s face.

  Sputtering, Addy said, “A rat. There’s a giant rat on that child.”

  The medical staff all looked at the baby. No rat. Leven was simply lying there with his eyes wide open and a serious look on his face.

  “That’s impossible,” one of the doctors said. “There are no rats here. Besides, it wouldn’t be able to climb into the cart.”

  “Maybe it fell from the ceiling,” Addy offered.

  Everyone looked at the ceiling. It looked okay, no holes or possible way for a rat to fall from it.

  Two nurses tried to help Addy to her feet, but thanks to the soapy floor, they lost their footing and also went down. Their flailing limbs knocked the legs out from under one of the doctors, and he fell, taking two more nurses with him. Everyone scrambled across the slippery floor, reaching for something to pull themselves to their feet with. It took a number of tries, but eventually everyone was standing again.

  Once up they all carefully worked their way over to the baby. One of the nurses picked him up and inspected him.

  “I don’t see a rat,” she said.

  “It’s there,” Addy cried. “I saw it with my own two eyes. He was huge.”

  One of the doctors loosened the diaper and made sure the supposed rat had not hidden in there.

  “No rat,” he declared. “I’ve worked here for twenty years, and I have never seen a rat.”

  “Well, I’ve been here for a little over twenty minutes and already I’ve seen one,” Addy said meanly. “Give me the child so I can take him somewhere safe.”

  “There are a few papers we need you to fill out,” the doctor informed her. “And we have some questions and information for you.”

  “Fine, just hurry. I have a long drive back.”