Read an Excerpt
Windland's Rescue
A Novel
By L. AUDEL CAYCE Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 2011 L. Audel Cayce
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61852-002-9
CHAPTER 1
The Grids
Windland cloud woke up from a dream so deep and real she felt dismembered from her physical body. The source of the intrusion came with the sound of a soft growl. The sudden awakening left her groggy and disoriented. Her body felt as heavy as a corpse. She waited for energy and life to return while willing herself to retain the memory of the mysterious place she had just been to. She knew it to be a real place because every object, every step, and every emotion she experienced had been too vivid' and way too real. The pressure of a soft paw, claws faintly extended, against Windland's forehead came into mental focus. Without opening her eyes, Windland addressed the furry intruder.
"Kell Cat. No." Windland knew better than to swat the paw away or make any other sudden moves. Those were invitations to attack.
With a meow that sounded like a bird chirp, Kell Cat seemed satisfied. She retracted her claws and removed her paw, then unceremoniously jumped across Windland's face. Windland knew from years of experience that the black, long-haired cat was now sitting on the floor with her silky back to Windland, facing the exterior door, waiting to be let outside.
A flash of the interrupted dream came back. It was not pleasant. The last part of the dream had hinged on becoming a nightmare. Windland opened her eyes and looked over at Kell Cat. "Thanks for waking me in time. Again."
Windland would have never admitted it to anyone, but she honestly believed Kell Cat knew when she was having bad dreams. The cat had a habit of jumping on Windland's chest or meowing in her ear, or of lightly waking her up with a paw gently placed on her body (sometimes not so lightly) or with a cold, wet nose pressed to her face. It was as if Kell Cat knew how deeply Windland was sometimes held in that other world and was helping Windland to get back home safely, doing so softly, allowing time for her to come back completely.
Rolling over and pushing herself up, Windland smiled. "It's February 29, and although it's only my fourth birthdate, my sixteenth year starts today. It's a teacher's conference day, so no school, and I know my friends are planning a big surprise party for me tonight. So I'm going back to sleep."
Kell Cat turned and looked at Windland and meowed at her before turning her golden eyes back at the door.
"Is the cat door stuck? Why aren't you using it?" Windland pushed her long, silky, copper-blond hair away from her face, sat up and then got all the way out of bed, and went looking for a hair tie to use to pull her hair back into a ponytail. Her tall, slim frame bent down so she could pet Kell Cat before she tested the cat door that had been installed in the wooden bedroom wall. It swung freely.
Windland laughed and opened the regular door. It was barely open when a silent black streak shot through the shaft of daylight and was gone. "Should have named you Stealth Cat." Windland laughed and relaxed into thoughts of the times she had walked in the pasture with Kell Cat trotting beside her, bushy black tail sticking straight up in the air like an antenna. The feline had a charisma most cats lacked. Other people had said so, too. Kell Cat's veterinarian once explained that cats raised by humans at as early an age as Kell Cat was did not realize they were cats. Windland had her own theory. Could other cats sit quietly in one spot and then appear a hundred yards away, having traveled through trees and brush in the mere turning of a head? Kell Cat could. Several times Kell Cat would be sitting at Windland's feet. Windland would walk ahead a few feet, turn, and Kell Cat would be gone. Windland usually found the cat waiting for her up the steep, rocky hillside of one of the gullies that created the landscape they explored. Kell Cat seemed to know which direction Windland was thinking about heading in, beating her to the spot.
The dream from the night before flooded back to her. Windland looked around her cluttered room. She spotted her journal and pen. Grabbing both, she sat on the bed and began to write, being careful to detail every part of the dream before rerunning it altered or distorted the original dream.
She could not remember at what point in her dream she came to be in the white room, so long it was almost a hallway, but the details of its gleaming white ceramic tile walls were so distinct they made Windland briefly open her eyes to make sure she was still in her bedroom. The familiar walls painted in light shades of purple and midnight blue reassured her. Back to the dream.
The white corridor had been empty but as Windland walked the broad, serpentine path, she came upon an area reminiscent of an empty food court at the mall. Stainless steel kiosks stood in the center of the round room and booths created of the same white ceramic tiles lined the walls. Interruptions in the walls, barely discernable and covered in shadows, indicated hallways leading off the main room. One hallway opened up to stairs leading up. Windland had chosen to investigate, and her heart raced as she wrote what happened next.
Approaching the stairs, the thought that the place was way too quiet for a mall came to Windland. Was the mall closed? Immediately after she asked the question, an invisible something brushed past her. She stopped and turned to look but no one was there. As she stepped back, she heard intermittent sounds of voices. Feeling like a radio receiver turning to improve reception, she moved slightly in an attempt to hear the voices more clearly. There was more than one voice, and they all seemed to be talking at once. She peered over the edge of one of the booths to see if anyone was crouched down out of sight. No one.
The stairway beckoned. It led upward to a small playground sitting on the edge of a large park. Windland stepped onto the damp grass of muted gray. Small children silently turned on a colorless merry-go-round, their small bodies backlit by the empty, steel-colored horizon. An unease came over Windland as she turned back to look and make sure the stairs were still there. She walked toward the children to ask where this place was. When she was halfway there, a swarm of older people 'Windland felt the adults were the children's parents 'ran from a distant stand of trees, waving and yelling at her. She could not make out their garbled sounds but their actions did not seem friendly. A young girl standing on the now-stilled merry-go-round pointed a finger toward Windland and spoke a single word.
"Red."
Windland felt accused but did not understand of what. Then she looked down and noticed the brilliant shade of red that her copper-blond hair had become. The red stood out vividly in the gray world. Looking down at her hands, she saw her flesh still had color. Was she the only spot of color in the place? The thought terrified Windland as she hurried back down the steps into the calming white setting of the empty corridor.
Windland jumped and let out a small gasp as a black paw touched her hand and a deep growl once again brought her back to present time. She had not heard the cat door flap. Windland stopped writing and picked the large cat up, draping her over one shoulder like a live fur shawl. A brisk February sun was peaking over the low rolls of Texas hill country, the only home Windland had known. An overpowering feeling of being motherless, even though she wasn't, washed over her. Windland suddenly needed human company and the human touch of someone who loved her. Surely her mom would be up. Kell Cat trustingly hung over Windland's strong shoulder, purring as they walked to the interior door that led onto the dog run that separated the main part of the house from the bedrooms. Lifting the cat and peering into her golden eyes, Windland kissed the sweet-smelling face and then placed Kell Cat by her cat bowl and scooped some fresh cat food out of a storage container.
The main part of the house was silent. No one else was up and Windland felt a pang of disappointment. She had hoped her parents would be up to wish her a happy birthday. After all, it was a pretty monumental one.
She turned to her parents' bedroom and gently tapped on the door. No answer. Slowly opening the door a crack, she saw the bed was empty. The shadowed room made Windland shiver. It felt too much like the dream. Something wasn't right. She ran to the kitchen to see if her mom had left a note on the kitchen table. There was no note, but the car keys were gone.
Windland felt better despite the absence of a note. Knowing her mother as she did, Windland guessed that Jennifer Cloud was most likely out buying the needed ingredients for making a cake. Her mother never seemed to have the necessary ingredients in her oversize, disorganized pantry. Windland did not pursue any thoughts as to where her dad, Elvie Cloud, might be. Some mysteries were best left unknown. Windland just hoped that her mother's absence was not related to her father's.
The ranch house that Windland lived in was built in the 1930s using native honeycomb limestone that allowed the harsh winter winds to whistle with glee through the walls. The sound could create delirium in a weak-minded person, but Windland was used to it. Only now, the house suddenly seemed to close in on her. She scribbled a hasty note, laid it on the kitchen table, and went back to her room to dress in hiking clothes. The sudden urge to be somewhere else was overwhelming. The first place to go that came to mind was Pedernales State Park.
Prior to their daughter's sixteenth birthday, Jennifer and Elvie enrolled Windland in driver's education and applied for a hardship license. Last summer, Windland was able to drive but only to school and work. Work being the operative reason for the permit. Her dad had shown they needed her income. She hoped her friends at school never realized just how destitute her family was. They had also given her a year-long pass to the Texas state parks, a nice gift marred by her father's comment about it being cheap entertainment.
Her escape was delayed by the large black Angus bull and his small herd of heifers that had decided to bed down behind her car. Windland was well past the point of feeling pissed off by the time she got the cattle to move. She drove through the countryside and the sleepy town of Cassell Springs.
Windland never ventured out to the park in wintertime, much less alone. Park time usually was reserved for when she craved hiking trails and climbing boulders on cool spring days and swimming in the cold, spring-fed river to escape the scorching heat of a Texas summer day. Today, she very much needed to go somewhere quiet and yet wild at the same time, to rid herself of the feeling of depression the dream had left on her like a layer of smoke from a smoldering fire.
The thought of hiking in a fifty-two-hundred-acre park that would be virtually empty of people should have frightened her. Instead it offered her the opportunity to meditate, dream, and make a wish upon that faint line of light and hope that sat between heaven and earth, teasing her to follow it. Driving west toward the park, she saw a golden sliver of her future sitting ahead of her, as sunlight catches between the clouds along the horizon. It felt like a narrow opening to another world. It beckoned her.
Go west, young girl.
Windland jumped at hearing the sudden voice in her head. But it wasn't the first time she had heard words spoken aloud by an unseen being. She let the words pass over her, not knowing what they meant.
Turning off the main highway, Windland headed north on a small, two-lane blacktop road that was quiet, still, and free of traffic. Dirt driveways met the road now and then to remind her the country was not as remote as it appeared. The sun broke over the hilltop-hugging clouds, turning the morning dew on the dry grass blades into diamond-laden stems. She laughed at a feeling of recklessness that was building up inside her. She was on the verge of a feeling of rapture.
She understood the risk she was about to take as her foot pressed down on the accelerator. The small car had plenty of get-up-and-go, and Windland felt it respond to the pressure of her foot. She rolled her window down to catch the cool air and a feeling of flying. Gravity seemed to let go of the car and she could no longer feel or hear the pavement rubbing on the tires. She felt airborne, barely noticing any resistance as she turned the wheel to compensate for the curves in the road. In a state of mental buoyancy, she saw purple-gleaming wires appear ahead of her. Her mind began to react in computer mode, bringing in data and calculating the necessary reaction to the approaching latticework of glowing wires. She registered that the wires did not touch the ground nor go as far as the edge of the road. The small section sat in midair at eye level and seemed to waver as if it could disappear in the blink of an eye. She kept her eyes wide open.
As she ran into them, the crisscross purple lines seemed to hang on her windshield. While they sat before her, begging her scrutiny, Windland felt a release of something from her being. Time and her heart stopped as every bit of her world fell away from her, leaving only her and the gleaming grid as a new energy pulsated through her, connecting to a single life force. And then the lines were gone. Pure instinct caused her to lift her foot from the gas pedal as a dead-end sign came into view. The symbolism of the time washed over her. Her current life road had dead-ended. She turned the car. Not until she drove into the park and pulled over did she allow herself to react.
"What just happened here?" she asked the wind and dust that stirred around the car.
Is space the final frontier or is it the original frontier?
"Original of course," Windland answered aloud.
And what of time?
"One can't survive without the other."
How do you know this?
"I don't know. I just felt that was the answer. Why are you asking me this?"
Kell Cat knows and has shown you.
"Who are you?"
Silence. In the quiet Windland noticed how her whole body tingled. Her nerves jumped and twitched. She got out of the car and walked around, debating on whether to continue or go home. She felt a desire to call her friend, Angie Bell, but quickly dismissed it. An understanding that she needed to be alone came to her overlaid by the thought that she was never truly alone and that gave her comfort and courage to continue.
Driving through the park of treacherous gullies and twisted cedar trees, Windland felt unnerved by the new, nerve-tingling sensation that lasted until she stopped at the park ranger's office to show her driver's license and park pass. The kind lady in the small booth asked if Windland needed a map of the park.
Windland smiled and shook her head. "I doubt if what I'm looking for is on that map."
The park was a shining example of the harsh Texas terrain. Reaching the stretch of the Pedernales River she liked best required a ten-minute hike that took her on a closed-in path outlined by ancient oaks and a thick overgrowth of cedar that limited the view to allow only the trail's direction. It felt creepy not meeting anyone else on the trail. Patches of four-foot-tall red stem grass were thick, swaying shoots of red and gold. Cactuses lay low in the tall grass waiting to ambush bare ankles. Algerita bushes with thorny-tipped leaves that became more vicious once they dropped from the bushes and dried out, bordered the path. Fire-ant mounds lay in unexpected places. Windland's body reacted to their sting with small pustules that left ugly marks on her skin. All served as reminders of the harsh Texas landscape. Windland often longed for a softer, less violent environment, but today she felt comfortable with the landscape.
The denseness of the shrub brush opened up to a lookout point where she could view a long stretch of the river. Not another person in sight. She thought about the seclusion and what it could mean. Pulling out her cell phone, she checked to see if she had any bars. She did and she felt more confident.
After two years of drought, the forty-foot-wide river was lower than she had ever seen it. The cypress trees that normally lined the river with their thick roots were several feet away from the water's edge. Several tree limbs held nests of debris left behind after long-ago massive floods tore down the valley. The place was void of any human noise other than her own breath. As she looked about her, making sure no lovers were taking advantage of the seclusion behind some of the larger tree roots, she began relaxing into the moment. This was her park today and hers alone. This day was quickly becoming an amazing one.
She wanted to find a place in the sun where she could lay down and daydream. She spotted a boulder near the middle of the river that she had never been able to sit on before because of the swift-flowing water. She walked over the tops of smaller exposed river rocks, the water quietly running past them. Jumping up, she saw an indentation in the boulder that was oblong, like a chair seat. Pulling off her clothes to reveal a two-piece bathing suit, she nestled down into the naturally carved surface and soaked up the midmorning sun, letting her legs dangle over the side of the boulder.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Windland's Rescue by L. AUDEL CAYCE. Copyright © 2011 L. Audel Cayce. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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