Listen ...Garden of Heaven: An Odyssey

GARDEN OF HEAVEN: AN ODYSSEY
by Malcolm R. Campbell
Available in Ebook Format

Prologue

“A man is always prey to his truths.

Once he has admitted them,

he cannot free himself from them.”

--Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

--Káyiopok, my little bear cub, Grandmother said, let us walk down to the creek on this late afternoon of your tenth birthday so I may tell you the secret of the universe.

Clementine Mae ‘Katoya’ Gordon claimed she was older than the speed of light and twice as fast. Before David could cut another corner piece from the devil’s food birthday cake with caramel icing stored negligently under tin foil in the centre of the kitchen table, she was already scattering the barred chickens through the orange sunset splashed across the back yard.

The screen door slammed behind him as he ran to catch up. She spun around the clothes line pole and looked at him sharply.

--What’s that? She snapped. A cherry bomb in your back pocket?

--Oops.

--Oops has become your favourite word, she said, striding through the tall grass toward the creek that connected the ranch and the high country with sacred water. You’re walking in a slump like Harry Carter after drinking a case of Great Falls shellac. There is no need to pretend you have not become taller than your tiny grandmother.

--Your grey hair is taller than you are, Grandmother.

She took his hand.

--Puhsapot, she said with laughter in her voice. Come here and don’t distract my attention with my vanity. It will be my downfall for I will one day trip over it.

Katoya rubbed her nose absently as they sat down next to each other on a flat slab of limestone that jutted out over the creek. She gazed at him without blinking as she removed the wood pin from her leather barrette, and waited until her hair had settled around them like a lace shawl, golden in the light.

--The twinge in my nose has announced tomorrow’s rain. I didn’t know when I got it that my crooked nose would be good for anything.

--Do you remember how it happened? He asked.

--As a matter of fact I do, she said. I was midwifing an inexperienced ewe through a difficult delivery and got kicked. Quick as a blind man’s wink: a broken nose.

--Did it hurt?

--Like hell, she said. But enough about my nose, did you rise at the snap, crackle and pop of dawn and hide a playing card among the sheep? she asked.

He had chosen the king of spades and had hidden it well.

--Yes, Grandmother.

--Then we are ready, she said.

She often said ‘my little bear cub, the world is not what it seems to be’ and then created grand delights of magic before his eyes, images that came and went, birds that materialized from the pockets of her coats, clouds that spun into shapes fantastic, voices that called his name inside his head, and flutes that sang crying songs that drew wolves down from the upper range.

--Ready, he said, and her eyes upon him were soft and deep and grey and settled amongst the crow's feet tracks on her face like young birds.

--You will return to school soon and your teachers will extract books from important shelves and point to one page and another, drawing your attention to facts. These facts will serve you well when you set out to accomplish the lesser tasks of the world.

--What about the greater tasks of the world, he asked.

Grandmother reached over and mussed his hair, laughing loud enough, he thought, to frighten the box elder leaves and rattle the screen door.

Listen ...The Sun Singer

THE SUN SINGER by Malcolm R. Campbell
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

Look to the stars for your dreams, for the heavens are a map of the human mind. –David Ward

Chapter One

Cold chaos of night and strangled moon, the great old trees drenched in sap’s perfume rise up like gaunt fingers out of the valley gloom seeking stars, any light. He shoves through tangled vines, hears small creatures running away in the dark, smells bones, close, crushed beneath the weight of eyes, feels owl’s call—sharp and true down off the black mountain’s ridge—hoooo hoo-oooo, hoo hoo, tear through his veins as mocking ice. A twig snaps beneath his boot. Choke hold. Shadows drag him down. He fights for breath, would sell his soul for it, and hears, is hearing, “There are numerous ways to die, little boy.” Cold blooded, that voice is mother of snakes.

Robert Adams could not remember his dreams. After the hollow whine of the wind called him out of sleep, after he scowled at the snow and fleeting memories blowing horizontally across the front yard, after he wondered why weathermen save bad news for Saturday mornings, he forgot what he was doing before he woke up.

Years ago, his dreams were clear. They showed him the future in a hundred little ways and brought him fame throughout the neighborhood as the Soothsayer of West Wood Street. He rode high on it, signed notes to his friends tS (for the Soothsayer or the Sorcerer, depending on his mood), and awoke each day with a rare skill and possibly a mission. Then he foresaw Julianne Wilson’s death on a sidewalk of dream, helplessly witnessed the event itself the following morning—her innocent sky blue eyes, the red hula-hoop—and after that, time spun twisted reenactments of it through his sleep. He fought back, weakly at first, then with willpower and medication, and succeeded in shoving his bright talent beneath the unforgiving shadows of the future where (he suspected) it would sooner or later save him or kill him.

It was for the best, though it had made him feel empty. Last fall, on his fifteenth birthday, he resolved to bring back his dreams—with control, but without the powerful “Seer’s Prayer”—he was not yet ready for that, for it opened the doorways too wide. Yesterday, Grandfather Elliott said he was making progress. Grandfather Elliott was a dreamspinner. “Destroy doubt, create certainty,” he always said, “and your dreams will be as clear as the tones from a silver bell.”

He’s of two minds about dreams:

Seeing the world before it happened was a powerful, right-feeling, joyful experience.

Seeing death crushed his spirit. His memories of the girl, the truck, the strange witness, and the absurd and twisted nightmares still haunt him.

That’s why he wants control. Control brings safety, doesn’t it? He can “resolve” to bring back dreams while keeping them away. And if they intrude too deeply, he can always run from them again.

As he dressed for breakfast, Robert thought last night’s “pre-dream certainty” was industrial strength. After saying goodnight to the barbs, tetras, and angelfish in his large aquarium, he had turned off the light with one thought in mind: I will remember my dreams when I wake up.

A dark forest, what could he make of that? He glanced at his Dream Notebook and found one scrawled word: cinnabar. A chill went through him. His first entry. He had expected more—feared more—enough to capture the dream while it was fresh, fresh like rolls just out of a baker’s oven.

He reached for the dictionary. A bright red mineral. The principal ore of mercury. No help there. No midnight wisdom—unless the dream was warning him about toxic metals. That sarcastic idea didn’t improve his attitude.

One thing was certain. The Arthur Wilson–Robert Adams Walk & Driveway Shoveling Company was closed for the day. Arthur was probably still asleep dreaming about their prospective earnings.

“What’s happening, fish?” he asked as he checked the water temperature. The fish responded by congregating just below the surface at one end of the tank indicating, he supposed, that they were doing fine. Eye to eye with the angelfish, he wondered what it thought. Was he a mysterious being who brought food or simply a meaningless dream image?

“Hungry?” he asked. He tossed in a pinch of food and all the fish in the little world rose in unison to eat.

Robert walked into the kitchen in time to hear the end of the morning newscast:

“Recapping our top story, a police search continues for Clark and Jennifer Nathan, reported missing in the three hundred block of South Edwards Street. The children were last seen walking their Irish setter in the alley next to their apartment building yesterday about six p.m.”