Tomorrows Child Read online

  Tomorrows Child

  Starr West

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright Starr West 2012

  Discover more about the author by visiting

  http://starrwest.wordpress.com/

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To my boys

  You give me a reason to get up in the morning and to be more today than I was yesterday.

  To all my Angels in heaven, especially my Dad,

  who thought I could do anything, encouraged me to try everything and inspired me to begin this story.

  I love you all so very much xxx

  Tomorrows Child

  LAKOTA WARNING

  Only those who have learned to live on the land will find sanctuary.

  Go to where the eagles fly, to where the wolf roams, to where the bear lives.

  Here you will find life because they will always go where the water is pure and the air can be breathed.

  Live where the trees, the lungs of the earth, purify the air.

  There is a time coming - beyond the weather, when the veil between the worlds is thinning…

  The Lakota People

  A NEW EARTH

  The sun rose over a new earth, not the promised land, pristine in its perfection, but a devastated land, bathed in the blood of humanity and washed clean by the tears of the Goddess.

  Many people blamed the Christian God; it seemed only fair that someone shouldered the blame, but even a vengeful god wouldn’t go to these extremes. The truth was that the demise of civilisation was caused by mankind’s ignorance and greed. In the end, the enemy of humanity was humanity itself.

  Interestingly, no one blamed the Goddess, who controlled the cycles of the earth and was Mother of the natural world to some. Who would blame a nurturing Goddess when so many others stood to gain so much? Still, many ignored the Goddess and the old religion that had served earth since time began.

  Nevertheless, the world had been at war for almost twenty years and governments sent soldiers into battle, promising peace; although war was never for the sake of peace, but for power, vengeance, and the control of dwindling resources. In one day alone, seven nations vanished as if they’d never existed. On one moonless night, their leaders issued orders from foreign shores and bombed sacred lands until dawn. By then, there was no one left to shed a tear.

  Governments lied, and should, by right, have carried the blame, but lies and deception were so embedded into their structure that even they were ignorant of the truth. Neglect was easier; ignorance made the populace content and fear controlled them. Propaganda was simply a creative means to satisfy an apathetic population. In the end, the governments were nothing more than powerless figureheads trying to rule a crumbling world.

  Corporations, on the other hand, were neither powerless nor figureheads; they actually held the power to affect it all. They held governments to ransom and controlled the daily lives of the people, though few realised this until it was almost over. When scientists identified the green plague, blame fell directly into the hands of the corporate giants, who refused to accept responsibility for the mutant genes that spawned the plague in the first place.

  Mutated genetic material in the food chain created a new microvirus that produced chaos in the human body. It caused the body to develop phosphorescent skin and blood that glowed under ultraviolet light. It might have been fun, if it hadn’t mutated into psychotic mania and ultimately, death. The green plague became a tragic reminder that corporations shouldn’t screw with nature and this alone made everything else seem minor.

  All this occurred against a backdrop of natural disasters and extreme weather events. First, Mother Nature cried, but no one noticed, then she yelled and screamed and still, she was ignored. Finally, she exploded in fury; but by then, she was only cleansing away the filth.

  The truth? It was all of this and more. It was the abuse of a ravenous population, the neglect by egotistical governments, the insatiable greed of corporations, the fallout of vengeful wars and nature purifying the earth the only way she could.

  The source of the problem, however, began an eon ago, hidden in the mysteries that were given to humanity by the gods. As time passed, the mysteries became secrets, concealed in the shadows, stolen from humanity and twisted into lies or buried in sacred tombs. What no one realised was that the truth would have changed everything. The truth could have saved humanity.

  Chapter 1 ~ DAUGHTER OF THE APOCALYPSE

  In the hours before dawn, there is peace. A quiet stillness reaches across the land and deep shadows obscure the reality of life. There is peace in this nothingness. I know I’m not safe, but for a while I can pretend that everything is okay.

  Soon the sun will rise and wash away the emptiness, and this brief peace will be replaced by the bleak reality of life. For a while, I thought I could embrace the darkness; it was easier than looking for joy. But as the days passed, the darkness became an entity, consuming my life and pressing against my soul.

  I am Psyche Darnell, daughter of the apocalypse, an orphan of the end of times.

  When I close my eyes, I imagine how things once were. I can see people walking along sidewalks and in malls, chatting, laughing and drinking coffee from paper cups. Shop assistants chat as they scan food and pack groceries into crinkly plastic bags. Even the smell of fumes from the endless procession of cars stays etched in my mind.

  All this is gone.

  I was born in the days when rock stars were heroes and Facebook ruled. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was predictable and safe. In those days, you could ignore the bad stuff if you wanted to, which most of us did. It was easier than worrying about a world we felt we couldn’t change.

  Many say that life was destined to end this way and that the prophets had given us ample warning, but if this were our destiny, there would have been nothing we could have done to change the outcome. Others claimed we were given the gift of free will, not to save the world, but to enjoy our time while it lasted and nothing more.

  I think they’re all wrong.

  But what I think doesn’t matter anymore; neither does the truth. Nevertheless, beyond blame and truth, people suffered. We all suffered.

  Farmland became salted wastelands and deserts turned into floodplains. Food crops failed and genetically modified sludge filled our bellies. Famine weakened nations and sickness spread like gossip, but this was in the early days of government-managed relief camps. Eventually, even the tasteless sludge ran out and Utopia became a dream lost to the horrifying reality of life on earth.

  It didn’t happen overnight. If it had, we would have set aside a day to remember the dead and celebrate life. Looking back, we realised it took years to get this bad, we just never noticed when it all began. The dark days, the ones we remember as the end of the world, lasted just a few months. The population of planet earth, once almost seven billion, was now just a few million.

  If you ask me, the lucky ones were not the survivors, but the people who died in the early days, before the famine and the plague. Still, there were survivors and as we know, where there is life, there is hope, even if it is only a tiny glimmer. With hope, that is enough.

  I am a survivor, so is Libby.

  Libby is my grandmother, my mother’s mother. Libby is a stranger to me although she is the only family
I have left in the world. She lives in a valley protected by tropical rainforest, supported by a group of friends who saw the end coming and prepared. They are self-sufficient and live entirely off the land. In many ways, it is a lifestyle based on an obsession to survive, but it’s not the only obsession in their lives.

  Libby is obsessed by the old religion. She worships the goddess and practices magick. This was a new experience for me, but for Mum it was normal; it was how she grew up. Beyond the necessary changes to our lives to ensure our survival, I also had to adjust to a religion I didn’t understand. Even doing the dishes became an exercise in ritual and routine.

  The kitchen, according to Libby was the heart of the home, by tradition, and an altar to the Goddess, by design. Working in the kitchen provided time to reflect, to give thanks and to honour the Goddess. Libby held our earth mother in the highest esteem, but she also allowed room for other deities in her home, paying homage to whomever or whatever the situation called for.

  We observed the cycles of the earth and our days were organised by the phases of the moon. “This is how it always was and how it was meant to be,” Libby said. I adjusted to the routine easily, it was weird and a little crazy, but so was everything else these days.

  Magick had never been part of my life as it had been for my mother and grandmother and a dozen generations of Darnell women before them. But now that we were home, Libby expected me to make up for the “lost years”. Mum had sheltered me from the magick when I was young, hoping that I would be happier and safer growing up away from the madness. She claimed that living under the shadow of magick had made her life miserable.

  So I was initially raised away from my grandmother and a heritage that dated back hundreds of years. Libby argued that we had wasted time, time when I should have been learning and preparing for the future, but I didn’t learn about any of this until recently. I knew they had a big disagreement about something, but I didn’t know it was about me.

  Only after we arrived home did my mother reveal the truth about our family, a legacy and a prophecy that bound us to the past and dictated our future. Mum said it was more of a curse than a blessing; while Libby had dedicated her life to preserving the secret and preparing for the future. She just expected us to do the same.

  Without knowing the effect it would have on my life, I promised Libby I would make up for the lost years and begin the lessons that she considered mandatory for our survival. Mum’s attitude flipped overnight. Suddenly she feared she had left it too late and admitted it was a mistake to isolate me from my heritage. It all seemed a little melodramatic and the significance of my promise was not as important to me as it was to everyone else, but the relationship between Mum and Libby improved and peace finally arrived in the Darnell household.

  It wasn’t always like this, in the old days, I was happy. I grew up living a gypsy’s life with my mother travelling with the wind and sleeping when the sun set. Life was easy back then. I admit we didn’t really travel on the wind, we drove an old Bedford bus, but it made our life an adventure.

  When it became obvious that the world was beyond repair, we headed north to the safety of my mother’s childhood home. As we travelled, we listened to the radio and watched civilisation dissolve before our eyes. Reports of tragedy and despair filled the airwaves as some organisation kept track of the devastation, watching the world’s population decline while recording the death toll; but they didn’t report the numbers in the final days. There was no need.

  We arrived at Libby’s in the summer, amidst tropical storms and warm summer rain that eased the heat and washed away the horrors of life. There was no celebration to mark our arrival or acknowledge the changing seasons or the start of a new year. Instead, we watched civilisation take its final breath and all that we took for granted vanish. We mourned for those who had lost their lives, for humanity and for ourselves, but we were the lucky ones; we were safe and we were alive.

  For a time, I was glad we had returned to Mum’s childhood home and my birthplace, but time passed slowly and the serenity was short-lived. If I had known at the time, I would have embraced these precious days, but I couldn’t see into the future and didn’t know how precious they would become.

  When the fever arrived, we hoped it was nothing more than a common cold, but deadly fevers shrouded the new world and influenza killed millions. We knew it could get a lot worse. Within days, Mum grew weak and pale and the fever made her delirious until she was barely conscious. We waited in vain for the fever to break.

  Without hospitals, our only access to medicine consisted of herbal remedies and concoctions brewed in the kitchen. Libby called it “delirium fever” as if that were a proper diagnosis. She treated Mum with tinctures and teas and soaked her feet in herbal brews. Then we wrapped her body in hot cloths to draw out the poison. Libby even hung magick charms from the bed head to chase away mysterious things and she cleansed the room with incense and smoking sage. We treated everything from influenza to demonic curses. Nothing helped.

  Nine days after the fever appeared, my mother died.

  Some men, strangers then, dug a grave at the bottom of the garden and did what neither Libby nor I had the heart to do. They lowered her body into the ground and covered my beautiful mother with damp earth.

  We stood on the edge of the grave that day, under a grey sky, in the misty rain and said our final goodbyes. I watched the rain fall on the red dirt and trickle into the grave, forming little rivers that looked like blood flowing from the earth. Libby spoke words of love and told stories about the girl she used to know. I said nothing.

  My world changed in an instant; the sanity was gone and darkness replaced the only love I had ever known. At first, it was unbearable, the ache in my heart, unimaginable. I wanted to die, I wished for it to come. I even thought I could end my life and join my mother. I tried, but I failed. I doubted Libby would mourn my passing, she hardly knew me. There was no one else.

  I prayed that I would go to sleep and not wake up. But each morning, I would wake with my eyelashes crusted in salt. Tears formed before I opened my eyes and a bitter acidic taste burned my throat. I wallowed in the grief of my life and waited to die. And I waited.

  Until, one day, I no longer wanted to die.

  Chapter 2 ~ EVERY DAUGHTER’S DAUGHTER

  A labyrinth of paths wove in and out of Libby’s garden. Vegetables grew beneath fruit trees and vines rambled over the hen house. Herbs grew everywhere, scattered in the garden like weeds. Delicate herbs were pampered in pots while others had become rambling hedges. There was no space wasted and nothing left untended. It had to be this way if we were going to survive.

  It’s possible that I could get lost wandering in Libby’s garden, more than possible, actually; my sense of direction is appalling. I am probably the only teenage girl capable of getting lost in a shopping centre, or at least I used to.

  If Libby's garden is a labyrinth, then her house is Aladdin’s cave, but not the type of cave filled with riches and treasure. Hers was more like an eclectic hoarder’s cave with storage for every useful tool and device invented in the past hundred years. I didn’t know everything that Libby had stashed away for the next rainy day, but her motivation made sense in an obsessive kind of way.

  Noise in the kitchen told me that Libby was awake. I knew her routine: stoke the fire in the woodstove, boil water for tea and prepare oat porridge for breakfast. Some days it was eggs, but I could smell the oats cooking; today it was porridge. I let the sun bathe my face for just a moment longer before joining her.

  “Morning, Libby,” I said as I forced a smile.

  “Good morning, Psyche. You’re up early.” Libby was already dressed and drinking tea when I sat at the table. She didn’t look old enough to be my grandmother or at least, she never looked like the grandmother I expected. Today, her grey hair was pulled away from her face to reveal tiny creases around her blue eyes. She didn’t have deep wrinkles, her movements weren’t slow and she didn’t complain about
her aging body. She was youthful and energetic, “sprite” was the term she used to define herself, and I thought that described her perfectly.

  “Are you ready to start your lessons today?” I knew Libby wasn’t sure how I would answer. She refused to watch me wallow in grief any longer and made me promise that I would leave my room and choose to live. I made this promise reluctantly, but I also promised that I would participate in the “family legacy” and catch up on the “lost years”. I still wasn’t sure what this meant, but I made the promise anyway; it seemed such a small thing compared to everything else. I’d just spent the better part of three months living in exile, wallowing in self-pity, treating Libby as if she didn’t exist and behaving like a spoilt child. Guilt oozed as the realisation hit me and I felt ashamed for the first time. Mum would have been disappointed.

  “Sure,” I shrugged, “today is as good a day as any.” I swallowed the lump of guilt and smiled again.

  “Perfect,” she said, “today is a wonderful day for magick.” Libby leapt from her chair and pulled a large book from one of the shelves that lined the walls. They held hundreds of books. I hadn’t bothered to read the spines to see what subjects interested her; perhaps today I would.

  “This is our family diary; it is a tradition that we pass from mother to daughter.” Libby paused and held her hand to her heart, “But we also have our own. Your Mum and I have a similar book and you will begin writing in yours today.”

  Libby noticed the look on my face and frowned, “It’s more than just a diary or history book, it’s an instruction manual for life. It’s our family’s Book of Shadows. It holds all the wisdom I have learnt, the lessons my mother taught me and all that her mother taught her. Generations of Darnell women have contributed to the information in this book.”