Alright, so this excerpt deserves a little commentary. I actually wrote this excerpt as an entry for a contest up at Weber State for the Verbal Equinox. I initially wasn't going to enter the contest, because I had nothing to write about. But as I rode home on the bus one day, this kid that I had in one of my classes gets on the bus and all of the sudden, as I'm nonchalantly just looking at him, I get struck by this great idea of a boy on a bus, that somehow is special. It was a neat process for me to take this idea and run with it. I ended up recording writing the beginning of this excerpt just watching, as in the manuscript, his expressions cross his face, and eventually, over the course of the week, it blossomed into this. Sadly, I did not win anything in the contest, but this is the first excerpt I have managed to finish. Maybe sometime in the future it will develop into a full blown book, but for now, enjoy this excerpt:
The boy sits across the aisle two rows up from me, breathing heavily, emotions flowing across his features.
First, a type of preoccupation, then suddenly, worry lines fold his white forehead and his grey eyes seem to glass over as sad and disconcerting thoughts flash through his mind. A small, fleeting smile turns the corners of his pale lips and is gone, replaced by a bitten lip and a fretful expression as whatever worrisome thought returned. I wonder who he is, and why he seems so distressed.
He is dressed in a loose, long sleeved hooded shirt with light and dark grey stripes. His skin is so pale it gives me cause to wonder about his health. He has short, slightly messy, dark brown hair paired with arching eyebrows that push his forehead to worry; his stormy eyes hold a burden that is too heavy to bear. He sits with his skinny arms wrapped loosely, but possessively around the top of the beaten backpack resting on his lap.
I had been watching him ever since he boarded my bus at 31st Street where he made quite an entrance.
I first noticed him after we stopped on the street before, tearing out from an alley between two apartment complexes further down the road with a frightened look in his eyes. Upon seeing the bus ahead of him, he sped up waving his arms and yelling to catch the driver’s attention, all the while looking doggedly behind him as though he was being pursued.
Unfortunately, the bus driver is a little deaf, so the boy was forced to chase us all the way down to 31st before I stood up and alerted the poor man to the fact he was being flagged down. It didn’t take long for the boy to catch up. The moment the doors hissed open, the boy jumped on the bus, screaming at the driver to hurry and shut the doors. He rushed to a window and looked out as if searching for something. Only when the driver closed the doors and pulled back out into traffic did he relax, sliding with relief into a seat closest to the front.
Eventually, our eyes meet. A strange, wide-eyed look comes over his face, but is immediately wiped clean. Quickly he turns, dragging a set of earphones and an iPod out of the pack. Jamming the ear buds in his ears, he flips up the hood of his shirt as though he suspected I heard his thoughts. Startled by his reaction, I look away feeling as though I had been listening in on something personal. After a moment, I turn my gaze sheepishly back over the seats in front of me to the boy.
His lanky body is now stretched out across the aisle of the bus and he gazes miserably at the ceiling. Who is this strange boy? What is his story? Where is he going? Why was he running? What is this worry that creases his perfect features? Is it the same reason he was running? As these questions begin to bloom in my mind, he turns his eyes out the windshield, reaching a long-fingered arm up to pull the yellow wire signaling for the bus driver to stop. I know I only have a minute, if not seconds, to figure out who this boy is.
I rise from my seat and began to make my way toward the boy. Immediately, the boy’s attention snaps in my direction, and he stiffens, tensed up like a mouse coiled to run at any sign of danger.
I sit down in the seat beside him. “This isn’t saved, for someone, is it?” I inquire casually. His eyes look up at me warily. “No, no. Go ahead.” He mumbles.
“So are you from around here?” I ask nonchalantly. The boy looks highly uncomfortable, but doesn’t say anything.
I crane my head to see the tiny blue speck of the stop grow larger. I make a spilt second decision.
“You get off here, too?” I ask him, standing. He closes his eyes, obviously wishing me to go away, to disappear.
“I guess so.” The bus lurches to a stop and the moment the doors hiss open he’s outside walking quickly down the sidewalk. I sling my pack onto my back, thank the bus driver, and jog to catch up to the boy. “So where are you headed off to?” I inquire, hitching my load higher onto my shoulders. His body tenses up suspiciously, clearly indicating that he would prefer not to be followed or to be asked questions. I keep pace with him, looking at him expectantly. His face has become hard and guarded, as to keep me from prying into his secret thoughts. His pace quickens, and I adjust accordingly.
“No, really where are you headed off to in such hurry? And what’s your name anyway?” I continue to search his unsearchable features. His grey eyes, no longer soft looking, are trained solidly ahead. Again, his pace quickens. Annoyed, I cut in front of him, hoping to impede his momentum, but with no success. Without so much as blinking his stormy eyes, he turns off the sidewalk and into the surrounding trees to the left. Not about to be deterred, I follow him.
Swiftly, I catch up and cut in front of him a second time. He turns to walk around me in a different direction, but I grab his sleeve, preventing him from getting any further away from me. “Alright, listen kid. There is something about you, something strange about you that I cannot explain. This moment our lives have crossed has really left me wondering about you, and I intend to find out why you are so different from everyone else. You may as well answer me straight.”
This caused the boy to stop, mainly due to my grip on his sleeve. “I can’t tell you anything.” He shakes my hand off his arm and continues walking, very cold, very closed. I am determined not to give in to the temptation to just walk away.
I catch pace with him, this time standing exactly in his way. “What’s your name? Who are you? Where are you going?” I demand again. He stops short, his face working as he tries to control his emotions. I notice the sky has suddenly become darker and rainclouds are beginning to collect. This was strange, seeing as the day had started out almost ethereal.
“Looks like it’s going to rain. Do us both a favor and answer my questions before that storm hits.” His eyes widen in panic, and we both look up to the forming black mass. Immediately, his head drops to his chest, and I can see him heaving deep measured breaths. His long fingers clench into fists, and for a moment, it is as though the air shifts because a slight shimmer appears all around him, like heat rising off of sun-baked asphalt. The air seems to get heavier. The sensation passes quickly and the aura around the boy dissipates, leaving me to believe it a figment of my imagination.
Slowly, he lifts his head, his eyes clenched tightly shut. “Listen girlie,” he says through clenched teeth “I am in danger. You don’t want to get to know me. I can’t let you know me. Everyone close to me gets hurt. I don’t know what you think you are on to, but trying to ‘figure me out’ and discover what makes me so ‘special’ could cost you your life. I can promise you my ‘special-ness’ isn’t worth that steep of price. It’s certainly one I am not willing to pay.”
There is a moment’s pause. I can’t tell if he is joking or is actually serious. His features are set in stone, his eyebrows drawn together in a scowl so deep, it darkens his countenance. And, for the first time, I am afraid.
I open my mouth to tell him to cut the melodrama but the words die abruptly in my throat when suddenly he is there, inches from me with his hand pressed tightly against my mouth, almost suffocating me. I begin to struggle a little, but he holds me firmly and whispers in my ear, “Don’t move” with such fierce and fearful urgency that I freeze.
The trees are eerily silent. Nothing moves. I strain my ears, trying to detect whatever it is the boy heard, but all I can hear is the sound of my pounding heart.
After what seems to be like an eternity, he drops his grip on me. “You have to go. You are in serious danger. Forget you even saw me. Forget we ever talked.” He gives me a rough but insistent shove back towards the way we came. He sees my hesitation. “If you don’t leave now girl, they will find you too! I can hold them off! Just run and don’t look back! The moment they catch sight of you, they’ll be after you too! You have to go!”
“What? What are you talking about? Who is ‘they’? And why are ‘they’ after you?” I demand, trying not to allow the fear I feel in the pit of my stomach grow. “You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.”
The boy turns, deaf to my protests, and takes a defensive position directly in front of me. He spreads his long legs as though bracing for a huge impact, the air around him shimmering as though he is charged with electricity. Thunder growls faintly in the distance…and so does something else.
It was a faint, low, warning growl of something very large and very close, hidden in the trees.
Silently, a set of large, luminous eyes appear in the dark of the trees ahead, and a massive wolf materializes with wickedly sharp teeth bared. Its fur is thick and matted, as though woven out of the colors of darkness.
My stomach drops sickeningly. The boy’s body goes rigid as he stares directly into its furious blood red eyes.
The wolf opens its black maw, rending the air with an unearthly scream! As though triggered by an explosion, the trees directly in front of us are ripped outwards! The force blows me backward, ripping the pack off my back, flinging it in a direction I cannot see. I find myself buried under broken twigs, leaves and heavy branches. For a moment, I am disoriented, and I can’t tell which way is up or where I am. I lay there stunned for almost a moment, my ears ringing, before I managed to come back to my senses. I claw my way to the top of the rubble.
The scene that stands before me is unbelievable. The tall trees that once stood only feet before us were ripped to shreds, downed and shattered, broken as though some terrible monster had rampaged through. The boy is nowhere in sight.
It is then I come to a horrible, sinking awareness that I am completely exposed, and the wolf’s scarlet eyes are now fixated on me.
Moving faster than any wolf in existence, it bounds straight for me, flashing the longest set of pure white fangs I have ever seen, dripping with a viscous, acidic substance that chars and burns the ground beneath it.
Panic sets inside my chest as I try and tug myself from underneath the rubble, only to find my foot trapped beneath a heavy branch. I tug and twist desperately, and at the last second, it jerks free, sending me sprawling backwards. Scrambling up, I throw myself to one side in the nick of time; I hear the plate-sized paws of the wolf pulverize the debris where I was stuck only seconds ago.
I gather my feet beneath me, well aware I escaped dismemberment by a mere few inches, and discover my ankle will not support my weight. I collapse to the ground as an excruciating pain shoots up my leg. I hear the wolf’s deathly growl behind me. I will not be able to escape it a second time. I look back, instantly regretting it. The moment my eyes connect with the wolf’s, it bears its teeth menacingly and lunges forward to gore me with knife-like claws. Out of nowhere there is a loud crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning, slashing the air in two, explodes the base of a nearby tree, felling it directly into the monster’s path.
I lay there stunned, blinking painful, flashing lines from my vision. My head clears just in time to see the silhouette of the boy explode out of the rubble a distance away, and throw a glowing blue ball of crackling energy at the disoriented beast.
The beast gives a piercing yelp as the ball hits, causing its whole body to convulse as if electrocuted. It staggers drunkenly to its feet, shakes its head and turns angrily toward the boy.
“Come on you ugly beast! It’s me you want!” he yells, “Come and get me!”
I feel very dizzy, unable to get over the initial shock of the proximity to death I had come, not only by the wolf, but the by the sheer luck I was not hit by that falling tree! The thing perplexing me the most was the accuracy of the lightning strike that felled the tree. It was not a serendipitous event. There was no way it could have been an accident. It had to have been controlled somehow….
I snap back to reality as abruptly, the wind picks up exponentially. Charcoal clouds sizzling and writhing with liquid electricity spin over the two opponents, now engaged in lethal and almost fantastical combat!
The boy ripples as if super charged, illuminating periodically in the increasing darkness caused by the thick, black clouds. He sends shots of vibrant, deadly lightning at the wolf as it advances rapidly toward him. My stomach drops as the wolf takes a flying leap straight for the boy, claws primed and positioned for the kill! The boy’s face registers the monster flying towards him. Diving to one side, he shoots a bluish-orange charge from his palms directly into the wolf’s exposed underbelly!
I hear a small noise and something huge slams into my chest from behind, knocking the wind out of me, pinning me painfully to the ground! I hear and feel a series of sharp snaps as my ribs break! I find myself face to snout with another deadly wolf, almost identical to the first. It roars hungrily, lips drawn back for the kill, and I know I am about to die.
Time slows as I look desperately toward the battle between the first wolf and the strange boy. I register an entire pack of death-wolves springing out from the trees to the center of the destruction. The clouds above surge, then combust into an inferno of blinding, raw, natural power! The battle is lit up brighter than noon-day, etching everything into a surreal photograph before the bolt itself strikes the scene with such power and magnificence, the world begins to crumble into nothingness.
The great beast pinning me gives off an inhumane scream that seems to echo through what is left of my consciousness even though I know its cry was inevitably lost in the cacophony of the strike. I feel the pressure of its paw lift only enough, and I know it is undeniably dead.
I lay there in the pervasive darkness as the rumbles and crackles of the bolt fade. Pain pulses through every vein, artery and thread of my existence. Amazingly, yet agonizingly, I breathe. I survived the end of the world.
Slowly, as if an angel were descending, the suffocating black shroud opens, and a single beam of light rests on a figure on the ground, which stands, taking on the glowing appearance of a god. Then the moment is gone with the light, overtaken by the mild grey clouds that now pervade the skies. I watch as slowly, meticulously, the boy who saved my life begins to pick through the remains of the battle looking for something, calling for someone. Ever so slightly, it begins to rain.
I close my eyes, feeling the wonderful rain fall on my face like tears from the sky, enjoying the fact that I am still alive. I hardly hear the boy’s footsteps come closer and closer until abruptly, they stop cold.
“Oh no…’ he breathes. I hear him fall to the ground. Immediately, it begins to rain harder, as though the skies had empathy for the boy and his loss.
Suddenly, it hits me. My eyes jolt open and I find the boy slumped on his knees, tears streaming down his face.
Images flash through my mind: the lightning strikes, the rainclouds, the lightning balls, the wind, the rain, all in accordance with the boy: his actions and his feelings.
An atrocious pain shoots through my head, causing me to moan involuntarily.
Instantly, he’s there, wiping away stormy tears, a note of panic is in his voice as he speaks: “Oh my gosh! Are you alright? Please say you are alright…”
I am unable to answer. I know who he is. I know what makes him so special.
He is a Weather Mage; the last of his kind.
