Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (76 page)

Remember when we found that cave in Nymliss and
there was that huge claw sticking out of a pile of rocks we couldn’t move? Well
that day I realised that wonderful terrible incredible things were actually
possible because that claw had to have belonged to a real animal big enough to
eat cows or trees for breakfast. (I hope it preferred trees.) And it wasn’t a
pretend discovery! No matter what Emroy and my father and my tutor said when I
told them. (This doesn’t mean that I think pretend discoveries aren’t important,
it’s just that a pretend discovery can’t actually bite you.)

Can you imagine if we could have lived in times when
enormous animals like that were alive. I know trolls and dragons and all those
are made up (I think) but imagine if there were creatures just as spektackuler
(I’m really going to have to ask your mum about this word) that were actually walking
around and we had to run away from them unless maybe hopefully we could make
friends with them.

Now this brings me back to what I wrote in my last
entry, about the song that I can sense all around me. It’s like the earth and
the trees and the birds and the flies, no not the flies, but everything else is
excited about something. Everyone would laugh at me if I said it, but I think there
is some huge and ancient power breathing into the world the same way we blow on
little sparks to make a fire. Remember that ecscwisit storm you told me about
that happened over Nymliss that one time, and ever since then Nymliss has felt all
tingly and mysterious? From what travellers are saying it sounds like those
storms are also over DinEilan. Maybe they’ll move over the whole world. I’m sure
they are changing things.

Just imagining what could happen is already making
me full of jumps and squeals. I can’t even describe the feeling I have about
it. How do you describe something indescribable? I read somewhere that the best
word for things that are bigger than words is wonder. It’s now my favourite
word and I need it here, because I think the time we are living in is going to
be a dawn of wonder, the beginning of something incredible, a time of mysteries
and legends and heroes, just like in the old stories.

If that’s what’s about to happen then I’m going to be
excited and scared and you are going to have to let me hold your hand. Just
please don’t spit in it first.

Aedan grinned at that. He wondered now for the first time if the
claw had really belonged to a
dead
animal. They had prodded and tugged
and wrestled to pull it free. What had really lain behind that screen of rocks
– a skeleton, or something in a deep sleep?

The second entry he wanted to read had broken his heart at
the time, and now called to him like the sounds of a celebration. He found the
page and angled it so that the morning sun reflected off paper that was stained,
thumbed, creased, and crinkled from more than one soaking. Around the edges,
ink had run into little rivulets and pools now dried, but the young handwriting
he knew so well was still legible.

Dear Aedan

You weren’t at Badgerfields today so I played hide
and seek with Thomas and Dara. I decided to hide in the forest and I went in a
bit too deep. At first it was fun practising all those bird calls we’ve been
learning and hooting into my fist like an owl (I’m getting really good now) but
then I realised it was too quiet and I got muddled trying to find the way home.
By the time I got out again it was dark and I was horribly frightened. I’m
scared that one day I might get so lost that nobody will find me. I thought
that was going to happen today.

It made me think about that story of the little boy
who wandered into Nymliss and he was given up for lost by the end of the week. I
think most people were just too scared to go and look for him properly.

I wouldn’t have been scared if you had been there.
You can find anything. I’ll never forget the day you took me along a fox trail
and we actually saw the fox and her cubs. I don’t know how you see prints from
those little scuffs in the dirt. I actually thought you were making it up until
the vixen growled.

I suppose it’s silly to write this in
my
diary, but I’m going to one day ask you to promise me that if I’m ever so lost
in the forest that nobody even knows where to start, you will look for me until
you find me. I’ll draw flowers in the earth and arrange pine cones like hearts,
you know, all that girly stuff you tease me about, then you’ll know it’s me and
not some bandit’s trail.

I’ll have to tell you one of these days.

When you set out, please bring some of Dorothy’s
muffins because there’s nothing to eat in most places that are any good for
getting lost in, so I’ll probably be starving. But don’t wait for her to cook
new ones, just take whatever is in the cupboard. And bring my wool jersey too,
the old blue one with the holes in the elbows. It’s probably going to be lying
under the bed or dangling over the chair or hiding under something. Ask Tulia
to dig for it.

Just so you know, I’m not asking you to do all this
only because you are good at finding things. It’s because when I get rescued I
want it to be you. It was sort of weird when your father found me once. And if
I see Emroy first, I think I’ll pretend not to see him and stay lost until
someone else comes along. He tried to kiss me one time and when I pushed him
away he raised his arm like he would hit me. I didn’t tell you because I knew
you would go and punch him in the face and then he would have tried to use that
horrible cane on your head. He is really not a nice boy. He is not allowed to
be part of my rescue!

I’m very fussy about this. It has to be you because
I want to be found by someone, you know, like a princess being found by a
prince. I haven’t forgotten that you always made your nose go like wrinkled dead
frog skin when those parts of the stories came along, but this is
my
rescue, so I get to say how it happens. If I cry, it will be because I’m happy
to bursting. Just remember that. You’ll spoil the magic if you ask what’s
wrong.

I have to go. Dinner’s ready. Don’t forget about the
muffins.

Aedan closed the diary for the last time and slipped
it back into its cover. And for the first time, there were no tears. He held it
before him and looked again at the image on the case – the toadstool and the
sapling. He still remembered asking her what it meant and hadn’t forgotten her
answer.

“Oh, Aedan! I’d spoil it all if I told you what I
think it means before you’ve had a chance to think too. A mystery is so much
more exciting than a wrapped up answer, wouldn’t you say? A mystery carries on
but an answer just ends.”

The following day Aedan had told her that he’d
thought about it, and decided it meant slow beginnings were not so bad because
the sapling would outgrow the toadstool. Then he demanded her interpretation.

“Maybe,” she said with one of her thoughtful,
faraway smiles. “But what if it’s a toadstool like the pearlnut tree? When I
look, I imagine the remains of a tiny picnic under the sapling, and the hasty
footprints of the silver dwarf. On the ground are little holes where his sword
and arrows were pushed into the ground, just so he could be ready in case of
danger. There’s a concealed hatch in the side of the toadstool that has been
slammed tight, and the grass is starting to move as a wicked creeper
approaches, awake like the pearlnut tree, only in a dangerous way. It’s a story,
an adventure – and it’s just beginning.”

“So it is,” Aedan whispered as he got to his feet and looked
out to the west. Out there, far away was Lekrau, and somewhere on the northmost
island, she was captive. He wished he could say something to the wind and have
it carry the message to her. He raised his eyes to the sky again.

“I’m not sure if you can hear me,” he said, “but I
don’t really think you need a storm to carry you around. And I’m not sure if I
can ask you this, but I can’t see that you would be angry, so would you mind
telling her somehow that I’m getting ready to find her?”

There was no rumbling answer, but neither did he have
that awkward feeling of having spoken to nothing.

With a deep breath, full and rich, Aedan turned
around and looked at the protruding rungs of the long, shuddering ladder he had
climbed in order to gain the top of the wall.

His feet and hands began tingling again, and in a
sudden flood of something he could not define and dared not contain, he
sprinted past the ladder and leapt off the wall. He hurtled out over an awful drop
that was now inevitable. It would be a landing to crush every bone in his legs.

But whatever it was that had blazed in him
earlier, now flared up again. He spread his arms and pulled down on the air as
it whistled past. It caught in his fingers, almost like water.

And he slowed. Slightly, but enough.

He landed with a solid thud. Dust leapt from the
ground, but his legs did not buckle. They felt strong, he felt strong, though
he lacked even the beginnings of an explanation.

A stonemason had been working nearby. He was no
longer working. His mouth hinged open. A chisel dropped from his grasp
unnoticed and clinked into the debris of chippings and rubble.

Aedan stood up from his crouch, peering at his
hands and feet with dawning astonishment. Gradually, he became aware of the
stonemason and realised he was the object of the man’s gaping stare, so he
nodded a hasty greeting and jogged away, a slow smile spreading over his face.

He had a book to finish today. He would make it
two.

END OF BOOK ONE

Author’s Note

Some writers manage to work effectively in the gaps
around a day job, but I’ve never had much success that way. I wrote for about
ten years part-time, and while I scratched and tapped a good deal and learned a
good deal more, I could never keep a big idea together during extended
interruptions when the day job burst its banks and stole personal time. I also
found that much of what I wrote in the exhausted hours around work was as flat
as the way I’d felt while grinding it out.

Eventually, I realised that in order to imagine,
capture and build the first part of this story, I needed uninterrupted time –
and lots of it. Without the gift of time, there is no way I could have finished
this book.

So I would like to thank my parents for constant,
generous, trusting, uncomplaining support, without which my collected efforts
would have been no better than one of Osric’s stews – an under- over-done
disaster of little bits and pieces glued into a sticky and unpalatable
confusion, prose to be attempted only by the very brave or the closely related.

Then, much is owed to Richard Allen who did most of the
artwork and fought his way through a thorny first draft in order to arrive,
torn and bleeding, at the idea for the cover. He made hundreds of corrections
to the text, and many excellent suggestions. The sketches are even better than
I’d hoped; they truly capture the world of the story. Fantastic work, bro!

Many thanks to Jared Mitchell for appearing on the cover and
for the hours spent putting up with cameras as we acted out the scenes for the
sketches.

To the proof readers (whose feedback in many cases
was too deep and detailed for me to call them beta readers), surname-alphabetically:
Richard Allen, Ed Dalton, Adam Fairall, Valerie Ganzevoort, Elizabeth Haber,
Samantha Hawkins, Angie Hayler, Danny Jacobs, Brad Kingon, Rob and Ally Jones,
Jean MacCallum, Wendy Morgan, Brent Meyers, Bryony Nicol, Max Painter, Stephen
Pohlman, Andrew Poppleton, John Poppleton, Leandra Scheepers, David Tapp, Gary
Van Lieshout, Jason Viljoen, and then my family – Shaun & Charnell, Josh
& Carol-Ann, Kitta & Andy, and of course, Mom and Dad.

I cannot even begin to explain how much improvement
you were responsible for – not just typos, but fixes to character, plot and
artwork. I am so grateful for the time you made to read, to consider what you’d
read, and then provide me with pages of comments, suggestions and reference
material, all of which have made this a much, much better book than it was. You
guys are amazing!

To the reader, thank you for beginning this journey with me.
I really value the company of every reader and hope that you’ve enjoyed the
story so far. The sequel is well underway, and I have no intention of dawdling
with it.

I’d love to hear from you. If you’re able to write
a review of this book, I’d greatly appreciate it. Every review helps pave the
way to future books in the series (or, if the reviews are terrible, they will
help pave the way to a different career). Either way, honest reviews are
helpful to both writers and readers. If you spot any typos or errors (other than
intentional ones – mostly used in dialogue) please mail me. I’ll be more than
happy to credit you on the website.

You can find me at
www.jrenshaw.com
or on facebook: Jonathan
Renshaw (Author),
www.facebook.com/authorjrenshaw

I hope to meet with you again in book 2, and this
time you’d better bring an oilskin …