Shadowdancer
an e-zine series
by
Ambika
Dennis Magar - Entwined
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Series 1: Warrior Emerging
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Introduction
Dear Reader:
The story you are about to encounter
will be different than others you have read because time itself and its
constraints will not be recognized. The characters will still age and die,
but dates, birthdays, etc. will be non-existent.
Imagine a world in a parallel universe
where there is no system of time measurement, with no calendars or timepieces.
In this world, Thíä-ei’r', there is no night or seasons. There
is a blinding white light that blanches the ground, and the light itself
is created by two stars joined together, illuminating the sky in a pure
crystal-like glow. The creation myth of this space will be explained later
in the story, as our Earth heroine, Frieda Anderson, receives her training
there.
Living without time is easy for
Thíä-ei’r’s inhabitants. They go to sleep when fatigued, eat
when hungry, and do what they wish. They are divided into four classes:
I. Crumatib – the ruling
race, the intellectuals. They are short in stature with pale skin, deep
red hair, light blue eyes, pig noses with tightly drawn skin graths, and
eight long, intertwining fingers on each hand. Very proud and stubborn.
II. Aæriole’I – the
black forest dwellers, free, magical spirits. Natural but recognized as
royalty. Many sizes, they glow in iridescent colors and have long &
thin bodies. They can fly, disappear, and other feats. They are general
tricksters and are intelligent, but also tend to be flighty.
III. De’aiîo’ – the
healing class. Their bodies are both male and female at the same time,
made out of water-based gel for transformational purposes. Very sexual
to everyone, but they are unable to mate with others. They self-produce,
using the male/female sides at the same time. As healers, they perform
both surgery and the “laying of the hands” approach to help eliminate pain
for their patients. A non-monogamous race.
IV. Gaè-iit – the
working class. Very little is known about them; they tend to stick only
with their own kind. Rock dwellers, they build and fashion objects and
structures without communicating to the other classes and humans. Very
dependable, love to work hard and long. Diminutive, scaly, many rock colors,
four arms and two legs with wheels acting as feet, removable tools on their
back.
Humans have been sent to Thíä-ei’r’,
disappearing off the face of Earth, chosen for a specific purpose. At first
scientists and engineers appeared, then, during the Dark Period (the two
star separation and the death of the last original bloodline queen), when
Crumatib women started to die in childbirth or become sterile, human women
were first brought over as slaves, to mate with the Crumatib’s, forming
a half-race of unrecognized individuals to perish. Then, two women, rumored
to be a lesbian couple, were brought to Thíä-ei’r’. Their arrival
ended the Dark Period, when the two stars aligned together again, bringing
back the light. Thus, the two women, now called Shewmåite (Snake
Woman) and Trwqùi (Lovely One), govern Thia-ei’r’ in peace. Humans
were no longer slaves, but were trained for special purposes. Would-be
warriors, who would go back to Earth, unfortunately, were destroyed by
the Blue Beast before leaving Thíä-ei’r’ to fulfill their destiny.
That is, until Frieda came to Thíä-ei’r’.
Book 1 is her story…
In its first chapters on Earth,
it will be the responsibility of the reader to come up with a starting
date that he/she desires. Only Frieda’s family will be assigned ages, and
even though the terms soon, later and other references resembling time
will be used, they will have little meaning.
Enjoy the first leg of the journey.
-- Ambika
Chapter 1
Click. Click.
A brown-haired girl between the
ages of 15 and 16 stood on the porch taking pictures of the night sky.
The night was unlike anything she had seen in many years. According to
the air meter, the air contained no traces of deadly bacteria, chemical
fallout, or smog. The First Chemical War had wiped out the safety of outdoor
activities and traveling, causing a high mortality rate for those not wearing
protective gear. Bombs had levelled the city, which was a prime target due
its multiple factories that had dotted the countryside and the National
Institute of Robotics and Genetics, where the top scientists of the country
had worked before the war. Now the city was a tomb. The factories and the
institute were gravely quiet, under the green, thick, hanging smoke of
the atmosphere.
But tonight, she could see the stars.
She barely remembered them before the destruction. As one of the photographers
for the National Weather Service, the girl felt that it was her duty to
record them for prosperity and for herself. Her uncovered face pressed
against the tox-blinds of the front porch, aiming upward:
Click. Click. Click. The
camera itself was juxtapositioned through a narrow hole between the tox-blinds
and the outside. The girl easily controlled the apparatus by using levers,
a video monitor screen, a periscope for distance viewing and computer positioning
signals, which was used in the interior of the porch. The camera was an
older electronic model, a Canon Y456 2015, which took images that were
automatically viewed and later sent to the NWS by a PC. Out of the corner
of the girl’s eye, she saw some robotic patrollers coming up the driveway.
Goddamn. What are they
doing here now, she wondered to herself. As far as she was concerned,
she had done nothing wrong. But she had no fear of them. Those androids
were nothing but nosy critters. Adjusting her camera towards the ground,
she took pictures of them, out of spite. The patrollers’ auditory devices
were extremely sensitive, and the clicking sounds activated their flight
and fright response. They wildly wound themselves in a circular pattern
until they started to overload, causing them to hit each other.
This made the girl laugh. It was
her first ounce of pleasure in a long while. Not only was she was responsible
for taking pictures of the lower atmosphere for NWS, she had to raise her
two younger brothers and deal with her emotionally troubled mother. She
literally had no time to relax and be a kid. She barely remembered being
a kid herself.
Suddenly, the front door opened.
A young boy, aged twelve, came out of their house wearing his protective
suit and oxygen mask. Noticing that his older sister was not wearing her
mask, he quickly ran towards her.
“Frieda!”
Frieda ignored Eric (or Chip, as
he was sometimes called) as usual, focusing on the sky again as the last
duelling patroller left their property. He was such a pest and a worry-wart.
He’s probably pissed at me for the patrol pics, she thought to herself.
Eric didn’t take the hint. He continued:
“Frie, why aren’t you wearing your
mask?” His words sounded garbled since his face was covered up. He tugged
at his sister’s arm, which accidentally shifted the positioning of the
camera back to the ground a second time.
“Chip! Shit, now look what you have
done!” she yelled. As she quickly brought the camera back to the original
angle, she turned towards him. “What is your problem? The NWS may dock
me an half-hour’s wage thanks to you,” she exclaimed.
“I’m sorry,” Eric tried to explain.
His whole body tensed up as if he was mortally wounded. Frieda immediately
softened and gently put her hand on his head. He went on:
“I was afraid that you would get
sick and die,” he told her, sniffling.
She smiled at him. He loved and
cared for her so much, it humbled her.
Lightening the mood, she answered:
“Chip, I still don’t understand
a word you’re saying. Why don’t you take off your mask so we can talk?”
“But…”
“Honey, go over to the air meter
and read it please,” she ordered, pointing as she bent over to look out
of the periscope to check out the sky again. As he did, she took several
more pictures.
“What do you see?”
Even though Eric was a computer
and electronic wunderkind, it took him a long time to react to the logicistics
and nuances of normal situations outside the computer screen. After a couple
minutes Frieda’s patience was wearing thin.
Looking up, she demanded:
“Do you see it now?”
“Oh, my God,” he exclaimed.
Bingo, she thought.
“There’s no residue in the air tonight.
Wow!!” the boy shouted with delight.
“Precisely. Now take it off,” she
instructed, leaning over and grabbing his mask behind his head, intent
on ripping it off of him. Eric grabbed his sister’s wrists.
“I can do it myself, wench. Don’t
treat me like a baby,” he commented crossly. Frieda managed to get her
hands free so she could flick his ears, which stuck out. Eric hated having
his ears touched.
“Sorry, bud. It’s my job,” she laughed.
Bitch, Eric thought to himself
as he took the mask off. He dropped it down by the door and joined his
sister sitting on the ground as they took turns watching the clear, starry
sky. Their faces huddled together as they took turns peering upward through
the scope. After taking the last pictures, Frieda flipped the switch, sending
the electronic images through a cable to the PC inside the house. Switching
the monitor off, both siblings continued to gaze at the midnight blue.
Eric had never seen a night like this.
“Mmmmm…” he muttered dreamily. He
was clearly enjoying himself.
Frieda grinned.
“Kid, enjoy it while it lasts. It
will probably be shit again tomorrow. I saw the patrollers on our driveway
earlier going crazy,” she told him.
“I know…I saw the pics,” he informed
her. “They were hilarious…but, are you planning to delete them?” he wondered,
facing her.
“Don’t worry, Chip. I’ll do it,
I promise,” she reassured him.
“Do it now.”
Frieda sighed. Eric was so paranoid
about the system being detected by the authorities. As far as they were
concerned they weren’t considered a threat to security…yet.
“I’ll do it later tonight,” she
told him.
“Maybe you’ll forget. You did that
one time, and we almost were evicted by the state,” he reminded her. Frieda
rolled her eyes.
“Who are you, my keeper?” she asked,
annoyed. She hated it whenever anyone tried to boss her around, especially
her mother.
“Someone has to be. You take care
of everyone in this house but yourself. Someone needs to take care of you.”
“And you automatically elected yourself
for that position?”
“Yes, I did. Now delete those pictures,”
Eric ordered her.
Frieda sighed. There was no way
she could get out of this.
“Oh, all right! Hand me my gloves,”
she asked him, getting up from her seat.
Eric crawled towards the gloves,
which were locked in a sealed container under the right boarded-up window
against the wall of the house and handed them to her. In order to delete
pictures, she had to physically remove the camera from the 1x3 inch hole,
covered in blocker plastic. The face of the camera was lightly exposed
to the elements outside. Eric hadn’t figured out how to delete the pics
using the PC, so they had to be done manually without switches. Using a
motorized “walking crane,” the camera glided past the sealed glass partition
and the heavy mesh backing towards Frieda. Both the mesh and the glass
sealed the good air inside from the elements outside. Still, the camera
itself had to be fumigated before they could do anything else. In case
the apparatus was indeed contaminated, Frieda put on her mask to protect
her face and ran straight over to the indicator. Incredibly, the reading
on the camera was negative.
Both Chip and Frieda couldn’t believe
it. The camera itself was completely clean. Frieda let out a whoop, jumping
high into the air.
“Oh, my God, Chip! Can you believe
it?”
“No way!” Both of them hugged each
other tightly, screaming like five year-old babies.
“Hey, maybe we could take our gear
off and run naked in the yard,” she shouted.
Eric stopped jumping.
“That’s crazy, but it’s cool…well,
I don’t know,”
“I’m kidding, Chip,” she assured
him.
“Oh, good! We need to delete those
patrol pics now,” he suggested.
“Okay, ok…” She turned on the camera
and quickly scanned all images as Chip watched with a careful eye. Eventually
they found the offending prints and promptly erased them from the camera’s
memory. As they deleted he asked her:
“What was it like, before the war?”
Frieda sighed deeply.
“It was nice. You could breathe
the air outside without dying in a week’s time, children could play in
the yard without fear, and the sky was clear all the time, like it is right
now.”
Before they repositioned the camera
back through the hole, they peered through it, checking out the stars.
They were so bright and big; one could almost reach up and touch them.
Frieda remembered nights like this, long ago before her father disappeared
from the face of the earth.
To
be Continued…
We
always appreciate your feedback!
Biographical
Information: Ambika is a woman-on-the-go in her late twenties, juggling
two jobs, graduate school at the University of Oklahoma and her creative/activist
workings. She earned a BA from Bethany College (Lindsborg, KS - 1994) in
Music. "I still consider myself a musician even though I am not performing
these days. Every day music still rouses me up and sparks me creatively
and mentally." Ambika started to write in 1996, chronicling the hurts and
disappointments that had haunted her in the past, thus keeping her private
monsters at bay. "First I wrote about pain because that's all I knew, now
I write of joy." She writes poetry, short stories and music lyrics and
has published several of her poems in school and independent poetry collections.
When she's not working, going to
library school, writing, singing and/or battling dark moods, she dances.
"I started meditative dance in July 2001, and I was changed for the better.
Now I am aware of my body, have fantastic visions, and have progressed
as a human being mentally, spiritually, and physically. It is my religion."
This "alternative librarian-to-be" currently resides in the town of her
birth, Norman, OK with her grandparents. She enjoys traveling, animals,
meditation and nature. She is also a member of The DreamSpinners elemental
dance group and the Xeebrix performance group.
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