A Sunrise in Nowhere
an excerpt

Chapter 2
The first sun rose in Dryada and the thousands of dew drops hanging on the trees exploded into a glistening sea of diamonds. Daybreak in Dryada was a beauty to behold. The first sun rose in a splendid yellow glow and the whole forest glistened and was coated in gold. The trees came alive and the leaves stood erect as they ached for that warmth, that food from the gods.
The creatures beneath the umbrella of the forest awoke with first sunrise and each morning was a festival of sounds and sights. As flower unfurled themselves to welcome the sun, tiny fairies escaped from their grasp waking from their shell of slumber. The nymphs of the waters came up to greet the sun and survey the land. The dirt-gols, tiny creatures resembling porcupines that burrowed underground, came out to greet father sun. And the Ravayanas, protectors of the land, came forth from their thatch huts, their skin pale and their bodies lank with the traditional white linen wrapped around the waist.
Though their bodies were thin, they were the strongest of the forest creatures. They had the gift of the song, the power to heal, the power to still others’ hearts. Their skin was deceivingly thick and their thin, deep-red, leathery wings sprouting from their shoulder blades provided the gift of flight and the look of an angel.
It was when 32 Ravayanas gathered in the center of their huts that second sunrise began. The red sun. As the red sun rose, the Ravayana’s began their song, a low hum sung by 32 voices. The creatures of the forest were still and their eyes all fell upon the gathering. As the Ravayana’s song grew louder every creature’s heart grew bigger and every creature’s pains were erased. The forest was renewed as the song of the protectors was sung. And when the song was finished, the red sun had risen in the eastern sky and joined its yellow brother in the western sky and the forest was bathed in an orange glow. And so, the day could begin.
There was something wrong with this morning’s gathering though. The gathering of 32 Ravayanas should have been a gathering of 33. Lyaina was missing her son. Kraya had gone on his first hunt last night against her wishes. He was too young. No one had the power at thirteen to still a beast’s heart, she had told Klavasa, his father that; but he insisted that his son was an exception, that he had the gift, that he was a prophet of the tree, a gift from the ancients. He would succeed. And maybe he had, maybe Klavasa was right, but Lyaina’s stomach did not sit right.
If Kraya had indeed encountered a beast and failed to kill it…no, she couldn’t think like that. Her son was ok. She had bartered with the gods and they would protect him. She wanted to trust her husband’s instincts, believe he was a prophet of the tree, but she despised him so much that she could think nothing good of him at the time. How could he send her son on a hunt? How could he have been so cruel to her? She could not look him in the eye, not after what he had done to her the night before.

Kraya awoke on the forest floor unaware for a moment where he was. He immediately sensed that he was not in the comfortable nest of his mother’s home. He slept on dirt and his right wing ached. Of course, the struggle with the beast, the tear in his wing, the healing, the strange dream…now it was day break and he had been away since nightfall yesterday eve.
His father had come to him last night and told him that it was time for him to become a man, time for him to take his place in the circle of the elders.
“What do you mean by this, Father?” Kraya had asked. “I’m only 13. Ravayanas don’t begin the elder ritual until the age of 19.”
“Kraya my son, you are no boy, you are a prophet of the gods, I’ve been shown in my dreams a successful hunt, a successful slaying of a beast and you as its slayer. And in my dream you are as you appear now. You will go tonight and hunt a beast for a sacrifice to the Sender Tree.”
Kraya didn’t understand any of this. He didn’t know the first thing about hunting. And how did hunting a great beast make him a prophet? And though he had seen the ceremony many times, he never understood why the Sender Tree needed the blood of the beasts to be spread at its roots. But father had made up his mind and it was not his place to go against his father’s wishes. So as the sun set that night, Kraya set off on his first hunt.
His mother was furious when she heard of Klavasa’s plan to send her son hunting. The hunt was dangerous. It took skill.
“How dare you send our son out and put him at the mercy of those savages! Surely they will kill him! He doesn’t stand a chance! His wings are still young and his body is not yet that of a hunter. Klavasa, you know that by sending him out amidst those bloody fiends you send him to his death and I will not allow it!”
Klavasa struck Lyaina hard across the face and she fell back, her long black hair falling over her eyes. A woman did not speak against her husband as she had just done and Klavasa’s rage had shown. Lyaina took the blow with a bow of submission, but inside she was far from admitting defeat. She had spoken against her husband and the power felt good. She was alive for the first time and the flush of anger, the rush of emotions, the moment of independence had given her a taste of what freedom could offer.
But she had no time to think of that now. Kraya was among the forest now, no longer in her protection. Her watchful eye offered no protection to her boy now; he was as much an open sacrifice to the moon as was any other creature. In the moon’s gaze, let each creature choose its own sacrifice…for there is no protection and Luna is not a picky god.
Lyaina went to the Sender Tree and laid her hands on its thick trunk. The sender tree stood in its own clearing away from the huts of the village. Around it no other trees grew. The tree itself bore no leaves, yet its bare branches appeared more alive than any other tree in the forest. The 33 Ravayana’s could barely join hands around its thick trunk, for it was thousands of years old. Its bark was smooth and a beautiful beige color slightly darker than the Rava’s milky skin. Its branches twisted in unusual shapes and when a beast was sacrificed at its roots the branches seemed alive with its spirit. Tonight, Lyaina prayed that the tree would hear her plea of protection.
“My son is no man, he is but a boy. He journeys now to find a sacrifice to lay at your roots, Sender. Klavasa sent him on this hunt and he is not prepared, he is not trained in the ways of a Ravayana hunter. He is not skilled in the song, not skilled in the stare, not skilled in the attack. Spare his life and if he returns without a beast, I shall bring you one myself.”

Chapter 5
Dryada had a queen and the queen had power. Her name was Deslilya, pronounced Day-leal-yah. She was the only woman in all of Dryada that had any kind of power and the power that she had far surpassed any power that any of the male Ravayanas had. So it was that when Lyaina laid her hands on the Sender Tree and sent her plea of safety for her son, Deslilya was there to receive it, in her cave of crystal between the mortals and the gods.
It was not the plea that brought notice to Deslilya’s ears. She had heard many weak, foolish mothers weep for their sons and claw at the mighty tree begging for their children’s lives. No, it was not that same old plea. It was what came after the plea. “Spare his life and if he returns without a beast, I shall bring you one myself.”
If this woman was anything but a mortal, a Ravayana, Deslilya would feel threatened. But she wasn’t. Sure, she had the gift of the song, the gift of regeneration and healing, but even the lives of the Ravayana would come to a close in time. Deslilya’s life would not last forever either, but the Ravayana’s lives were but a blink compared to hers. Deslilya had watched the Sender Tree grow from a sapling and she would watch it grow for another thousand years before her time came, so she felt no threat from this woman. No, what she felt was pride.
The queen had witnessed few women over her years as protector of the forest such as Lyaina. Lyaina’s husband would soon enough have her head on a spike if he knew she interfered with her son’s first hunt by appealing to the gods. The first hunt was a precious ceremony to the Ravayanas. Kraya was to make it on his own and here Lyaina was offering another option – offering herself, nonetheless – a woman! A woman in the place of a boy’s first hunt!
It brought a smile to Deslilya’s face. She would help this woman if she could. She would give this woman a chance, and she would see that she was not harmed along the way.
Deslilya stood on the ledge of her cave of crystal, dug into the mountainside overlooking the whole of Dryada, the beautiful forest. Above her the two suns, yellow and red, were about to meet in their splendor of midday orange where they would explode into that mellow glow that still filled her with warmth and awe after a thousand years. She spread her great black wings, five feet on each side of her body. They were a stark contrast to her smooth moonstone colored skin, so pale that it was almost blue. Yet her skin was beautiful, it was flawless stretched taut over her distinctive features. Her hair was jet black, as were her eyes. Her eyes were like two discs of obsidian, no whites to them. She wore her traditional crown of ivy and a wrap of thin dark blue silk around her waist and chest, her abdomen bare to the wind. She let the current of the winds blow against her as she stood on the ledge and then she fell into it and rose up into the sun.
Deslilya sailed upon the currents of the day flying above the lush treetops in search of Lyaina’s son, Kraya. His chi-ya, his life-force, had traveled far from his home village since last night. He had been unsuccessful in his hunt or else he would have returned home. But he was alive. She sensed his chi-ya. Though in the distance, it burned brightly. He had been injured in the hunt and had recently healed himself.
Along the way, she sensed something much more powerful than Kraya’s life-force. She sensed a strong disturbance in Dryada – a rip in the continuum of the harmony of the forest. The tunnel between this world and another had been opened last night. There was a slit in the continuum and something had broken through.
Deslilya made a sharp dive between the trees. It was near here, somewhere in between the Ravayana village and the place where Kraya now lay that the disturbance had taken place. Who had such power in this forest? Who besides the gods could create such a gap between two worlds? Deslilya was granted the power to do so by the gods, but no other creature in the forest should have that type of power. It was dangerous in the wrong hands. The beings in the other world had no defenses against the creatures in this world and the creatures in this world had no defenses against the weapons of the beings in the other world. Deslilya had seen firsthand the destruction that human weapons could cause. The forest could be destroyed in minutes. Such a gateway between the two worlds was dangerous and had to be closed.
The gateways were hard to find. They were not created often. They were only used in times of dire emergency when passage into another world was absolutely necessary. There had been few times when medicine was needed from the other world and a couple of times when the other world was used as a place of refuge. When Dryadians crossed over they had to be sure not to be seen by humans. Their world could not be known. The gateways could not be seen unless a person knew exactly where they were and stood directly upon them.
Deslilya closed her eyes and spread her wings. She raised her head to the sun and the gods pointed her slightly to her left. She turned that way, opened her eyes and threw her wings forward creating a rush of air and dust which revealed the gateway. She approached the gateway and laid her finger at the top of its opening. She prayed that nothing had gotten through, but knew that surely something had. Why else would a gateway be created? She knew that whatever had gotten threw had not been up to good. It meant harm to the other side or was seeking refuge from something it had harmed on this side.
She had no way of knowing if whatever had crossed over had returned, but she had to close the portal. Dryada was hers to protect and she could not risk more creature’s crossing over or worse yet, something from the other side mistakenly crossing in. She would open another portal later in a different place and search for the beings that had crossed. She could find them in no time.
She ran her finger along the portal from top to bottom and the portal closed easily, like a zipper. There was no longer a gap between the two worlds. There was something foul at play last night. The boy’s hunt had ended in a failure, obviously. He was away from home, lost. Where was the beast that he hunted? And who had enough power to create this sort of gap? Deslilya sought answers, and she must find the boy. She had suspicions that this boy was no ordinary Rava. He would hold the key that would begin to unravel the mystery of why this portal was opened.
She took flight again and continued her flight towards Kraya’s life-force. It was not much further now. She landed across the lake from him, hidden behind a dense group of trees. Kraya had never witnessed the queen and she did not want to startle him. It would be too much for him to witness Deslilya’s glory after just healing himself. He still slept, still recovering. She would use this time to cross into the other world and find what had crossed the night before.
Her finger rested on empty air but appeared to fall onto something solid, a plane of glass. Deslilya closed her eyes and parted her lips and the sound of a thousand whispers came forth from her mouth in a beautiful lost language that no man could understand. Swirls of pink, purple and yellow light surrounded her and she drew her finger down towards the ground as the air before her split in two leaving a gap between Dryada and the world that was called Earth. She stepped forward and bid farewell to Dryada.
She hated the smell of Earth. She had been here a few times and it always smelled of must. Dryada smelled of pine and citrus, clean and woodsy. She had never been to the part of Earth that she stepped into. It was humid here. The air was thick and moist and mosquitoes buzzed in the air around her. Cicadas hummed loudly in the trees around her. It was still night on Earth. Whatever creature had passed through was still here. She felt it and it was nearby. She knew what it was now. It was disgusting; it smelled rank and insisted on being fed after losing its meal last night. It was Kraya’s beast.
She spotted it now. It was chasing two humans through the woods. What fool let such a creature through the barrier and allowed it to show itself to humans! Did they not understand what was at risk by doing this? Deslilya had to intervene, put this to an end. She dove into the sky and flew quickly forward to catch up with the chase. It would do her no good to try to maneuver between trees. The humans had stopped, trapped by a body of water. The beast had stopped too, knowing that its meal awaited him. Just as it charge, Deslilya dove down and slit another portal into the air and the beast had no time to change directions. He had crossed back into Dryada. Deslilya quickly zipped the portal closed again and flew off, unseen by the two humans, for they were frozen, their faces covered. She was gone when they stood there with a look of shock on their faces.

Chapter 9
Kurt and Rebecca walked into the door of their three bedroom house early the next morning. It was quiet. Too quiet. The house didn’t feel right without Henry and Lyle in it. There had been times when they had both been gone before. There had been times when it was just Rebecca in the house before. But she always knew that everyone was coming back. And she knew where everyone was. Her husband wasn’t in the hospital. And her son wasn’t with an angel as Kurt had said.
It scared her that Kurt had said that. She knew that it was most probably just a dream. Kurt’s mind was probably thinking the worst right now. He and Henry were 13 years apart in age, but they were close. They always had been. Henry was so excited when Rebecca told him that he was going to have a baby brother. She’d never forget that.
Henry always wanted a brother and always thought that he would be an only child. Rebecca thought that as well. She never planned on having any more children. But Kurt came along as a little surprise, and what a lovely surprise he was. She didn’t know what she would do without him. Especially now. She couldn’t survive this on her own. He had done so much for her these past two days. At just 13 years old, he had done so much. She felt guilty. He needed time to process this for himself. He had spent so much time being a grown up to support his mother that he hadn’t had time to be a child and miss his little brother and worry about his dad. No wonder he was having these horrible nightmares that his brother was dead and with angels. He couldn’t talk about it, he was too worried for his mom.
But when he said that Henry was with angels, he said it as if he was alive, as if he were safe. It was a bizarre dream that he had. She’d talk with him about it.
“Hey babe, you want some breakfast?” she asked him.
“Nah, I’m just going to go lay down in bed I think. I didn’t sleep to good in that chair at the hospital.”
“I don’t think I slept at all” Rebecca rubbed her eyes, smearing her mascara even more.
Kurt laughed, a hearty laugh. Rebecca loved that laugh. It filled her with emotion when Kurt laughed like that and she couldn’t imagine what would bring such a response out of him in the middle of all this. It didn’t matter though. It was what she needed right now. To see that smile, those dimples, those half moon eyes. His laugh brought her back to memories of him at three years old and she couldn’t help but break into laughter herself. Of course this made him laugh even harder and soon enough the both of them were in tears.
She walked over to him and put him into a bear hug. “What was that all about? I needed that you know. You always come through for me.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “Go look in the mirror and you’ll know what that was all about.”
She went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror and she laughed so hard she snorted. “Please tell me I didn’t look like this at the hospital, Kurt!” Her eye makeup looked like something that Marilyn Manson’s backup singers would wear and her hair-do would look quite becoming on Medusa.
“Nope momma, you managed to do all that damage just since we walked in the door.” He still had a smile on his face. “I think I’ll take you up on breakfast if you’re still up for cooking it.”
“Eggs and bacon ok?”
“You’re the chef!”
She soon had a big plate of eggs and bacon made up for the both of them and a cup of orange juice for them both. They sat and the table and dug in, neither of them realizing how hungry they were until they started eating.
“I don’t think we ate anything since yesterday, Mom”
“Nope we didn’t. And I emptied everything I ate yesterday morning on the floor of the gift shop. Jesus, what a couple of days it’s been, huh Kurt? Can you believe all this stuff has really been happening? I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe that this is all really happening. It’s like a bad dream. A real bad dream.”
Kurt didn’t say anything. He just looked down into his plate and scooted his eggs around with his fork.
“God I hope we hear something about Henry today” his mom said.
Kurt’s eyes teared up again and his bottom lip was shaking. He was trying hard to keep it in. Trying hard to be strong.
“I’m sorry sweetie; I don’t mean to keep reminding you about it. I forget you’re only thirteen sometimes. You want to talk about it? Will it help? You’ve been being the strong one for me and it should be the other way around, Kurt. I know that. Things like this shouldn’t happen, you know. No one should have to go through this.”
Kurt just nodded, letting a few tears fall down his cheeks. His mom wiped at his face with a napkin.
“Look, you had that dream that Henry was with an angel, right? You know what I think it means? I think it means that he’s ok. I think it means that wherever he is, he has angels watching over him and he’s safe. They’re going to find him, Kurt. I know it. I can feel it. And when they do, your dad’s going to be there to see him.”
How could she tell him all this? She had always hated it when parents did this to children and here she was doing it. She had no guarantee that Henry was even alive anymore and she had no guarantee that Lyle was going to ever wake up from his coma. Yet she was making all these promises to an already downhearted boy. She felt so shameful, yet what else could she do? Tell him that, yes, statistically the longer it was until they found Henry, the greater the chance was that he would be dead? That sometimes people never woke up from comas and had to go on life support and eventually it becomes up to the family to pull the plug? She couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t do it.
“The angels weren’t from heaven, mom.” Kurt had stopped crying. His eyes were rimmed in red. “I know Kurt’s still alive, I just don’t know if he’s ever going to make it back to our world. He’s gotta come back, mom, he has to!”
“Kurt, he’s coming back, he’s coming. Now listen. It was just a dream, sweetie. A bad dream.” She grabbed him by the wrist and looked him in the eye. “You hear me? I don’t want you working yourself up over this.”
She realized how ridiculous of a thing that was to say as soon as it came out of her mouth. Of course he was getting worked up. Who wouldn’t?
“It wasn’t a dream. Well it was, but it wasn’t. It was a vision in my sleep. He was showing me where he was. He was showing me or something else was. The angel looked like a boy about my age, but he was real pale and had black hair instead of blond like mine. And his wings were dark red and made out of leather. He was real nice and didn’t know that Henry was from our world. He thought that Henry was an angel too who had lost his wings.
“He’s in a forest. There’s trees all around and little fireflies. It’s really nice there, peaceful. I think he’s scared though. He doesn’t know where he is. It’s like he fell asleep and then woke up in another world.
“And there was a queen – A queen who was sitting in the treetops looking down on Henry and the angel boy. She’s the one who brought Henry to that world. She’s the reason he’s missing, mom. She doesn’t mean him any harm, but she wants him for something.”
Henry looked upset. She could see in his eyes a look of desperation, a look of pleading. He was begging her to believe him, begging her to somehow go into that other world and take Henry back; bring his big brother back to him. She wished it were that simple. If that was all she had to do, she would do it.
“You just think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Kurt asked his mom.
“Of course I don’t think you’re crazy” she answered. “I like your idea of where Henry is. It doesn’t sound like such a bad place. I’d rather him be there than in some of the places where my mind has put him over the last two days. It’s amazing where our imagination can take us in times of a crisis, huh?”
She realized her mistake as it came out of her mouth. She had just dismissed everything he had said. She knew that Henry wasn’t in a magical land with angels with leather wings and a queen, but if it helped Kurt to believe that, maybe she should support it, and she had just called it an object of his imagination.
“I’m going to bed” Kurt said. And he got up from the table and walked to his room, hoping to find his brother again when he closed his eyes.