In late 2012, I began work on my first fantasy novel.  Got the prologue and chapter 1 completed within a few months and then life got in the way in 2013. Why I would even remember the novel’s existence now, three years later, is a bit of a mystery to me.  The prologue, which was written in summer 2012, is posted below.  Chapter 1 will follow within a few days, once I get the chance to give it a once-over.  

Secrets of the Sky Kingdom (tentative working title)

Prologue

By Rita H. Chen

There was a part of him that deeply resented his father for forcing them to move, though he knew his father had little choice in the matter.  Having to live by the newly built car plant for one year was part-and-parcel with his father’s recent promotion – the promotion itself a recognition of his ability by his superiors in Japan and the culmination of many years of studying and hard work.   With a very attractive salary, his own company car, and great benefits, he knew his father would have been a fool had he not accepted the position – even if accepting it meant moving them away from the exciting, bustling metropolis which they lived to a small, quiet farming town two hours away.

Applewood, Takeo thought with small quirk of his mouth.  Even the name of the town sounded horribly rustic.  What he found immediately ironic was that, despite its name, Applewood wasn’t even well-known for its harvesting of apples.  Instead, it was a town known for its numerous dairy farms – a fact he and his sister had quickly figured out as they drove past field after field of grazing cows.  The sight of all the gentle beasts could potentially have been charming had it not been for the giant clouds of methane that seemed to envelope and seep through every possible crack of their light blue Honda sedan.

“How much longer until we arrive?” his mother asked in Japanese, her gentle voice oddly loud in the quiet of the car.

His father smiled and replied back in Japanese, “Soon.” Despite his many years speaking the language, he still couldn’t quite shake that strange lilt when he spoke – the lilt that betrayed the fact that he was actually a Chinese-Canadian man who just happened to meet his future wife while he was on a one-year engineering exchange program in Japan.  The fact that he, as a foreigner, could climb the ranks of a Japanese car manufacturing company spoke volumes of the amount of effort and dedication he had put into his career.

“How soon?” his mother asked.

His father clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he considered the question.  “Probably another 20 minutes or so?”

His mother nodded and brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ears.  She then turned to look out the window with a thoughtful expression on her face.  If she was as upset about moving to a small town as his sister and him, she didn’t show it.  His mother, true to all the stereotypes people had about the Japanese, possessed the art of masking all her emotions behind an impassive visage whenever she felt it was necessary.

With his mother’s face turned away at an angle where he could no longer see it, Takeo resumed staring out the window of the car.  He was struck by how much of a countryside Applewood was turning out to be.  The road they were travelling on was narrow with only one slim lane going in each direction.  Instead of sidewalks hugging the lanes, there was a small strip of dirt and gravel just wide enough for one car and then a ditch about a meter deep.   There were no street lamps anywhere and Takeo couldn’t help but shudder as he imagined what could possibly happen if one accidentally veered into one of the ditches in the dead of night.   The houses were so far apart from each other that you would literally be left alone to fend for yourself in the pitch black darkness while you waited for CAA or your family to come and rescue you.

“This place sucks,” his sister suddenly announced out-loud in English, her voice taking on the petulant whine that all thirteen year-olds got when they felt that they had been wronged by life.  “There’s nothing here but cows and trees.  I can’t believe you moved us out to the boonies, Dad.”

Before their father could reply, their mother immediately twisted in her seat and fixed her daughter with a stare that made his sister flinch.  “Naomi, don’t speak to your father that way,” their mother said in Japanese.

“But I didn’t-“ his sister began to protest before she wilted under their mother’s steely gaze.  It was times like this when their soft-spoken, youthful-looking mother was truly frightening.  His sister’s light brown eyes flicked down as she muttered in Japanese, “Sorry.”

His father chuckled.  “Now, now,” he said in English, something that he always did whenever he wanted to soothe his children’s wounded feelings after they had been disciplined by their mother. “I know it’s not what we’re used to but this place will grow on you, I promise.”

“Okay,” his sister muttered.  She couldn’t help the slouch in her shoulders as she glared back out the window.

He followed his sister’s gaze, idly taking in yet another field, before he froze in surprise.  A teenage boy with closely-cropped dark brown hair was walking by himself along the gravel shoulder of the road.  The boy was wearing a heavy blue and white baseball jacket and faded blue jeans, and Takeo hastily averted his eyes and turned away, fixing his eyes on the window on his side of the car.  With the boy’s inappropriate fall attire in the hot, final days of August, he knew right away that the boy was no longer living.

Takeo’s mother had once told him that she had realized his gift when he was about six months old; when he would smile, gurgle, and stretch his arms out to be carried by what appeared to her to be thin air.  It had alarmed her to see his actions but, as a spiritually aware person herself, she hadn’t been scared.  The only difference between mother and son was that while Takeo was fully able to see and hear spirits, his mother only possessed the gift of being able to hear spirits.  His sister also possessed the gift – albeit to an even more diluted degree where she could sense a spirit’s presence but not see or hear it – and his father possessed no supernatural gifts at all.

It hadn’t been easy to hide this ability of his when he was younger, much to his father’s worry.  Contrary to what was shown on TV shows and movies, spirits were not translucent nor did they float.  Save for the fact that they passed through matter, they looked, acted, and spoke like any living human being; and it had been a struggle when he was younger to figure out if the person he was talking to was living or dead.  However, as he got older, he was able to develop his own little set of tricks to allow him to quickly identify who, or rather what, exactly he was talking to.  With further guidance from his mother, who knew exactly what he was going through, he was also able to learn how to consequently ignore the spirits around him and live what was, for the most part, a fairly normal existence.

I wonder if there will be a lot of ghosts here, Takeo mused.  Madison, the city they had come from, had a bustling population of 4.5 million people and had been full of the unliving.  He wanted to assume that people in a smaller town, such as Applewood, would generally be more satisfied with a simpler way of life and thus would be less likely to die with unfinished business or lingering regrets.  However, who really knew?  His mother’s hometown, a small fishing village in the south of Japan, had been packed with ghosts.

His father made a right turn at a stop light and he couldn’t help but notice that the scenery was beginning to change.  Instead of seeing one house standing by itself amidst large stretches of trees and fields, he began seeing houses built more closely together and street lamps decorating the sides of the road.  He further felt his spirits lift when they drove past first a church, then a golf driving range, and then more houses.  This isn’t so bad, he thought to himself.  He glanced quickly at his sister, who had been the most vocal protester of the move, to see what her reaction was to this development and saw that she was still pouting.  Then her face suddenly lit up with a huge grin.

“Finally! Civilization!” his sister exclaimed and pointed out her side of the window.  Unable to see what she was pointing at from his seat next to her, he strained his head to look out the front window and saw a WalMart store standing proudly in the distance.

“WalMart is your idea of civilization?” he asked his sister in disbelief, an eyebrow raised for added effect.

Unfortunately, his effort at being snarky was wasted as his sister continued to examine her surroundings for more stores, her expression considerably brighter than before.

Their father looked pleased by his daughter’s reaction.  “See, I told you it wasn’t so bad.  We’re just about home too so you can probably come here often on foot.”

“Really?” his sister asked eagerly.

“Oh yeah.”   Their father made a left turn at a set of traffic lights just a little past the WalMart and began driving down what looked like a residential street.  “I would say it’s maybe a 20 minute walk or so?”

As they drove past one-to-two storied bungalows with varying degrees of showiness and maintenance in their landscaping, their mother offered demurely, “These houses are quite nice.”

He could hear the growing happiness in his father’s voice as he said eagerly, “Just wait till you see our house.   I think you’ll be really pleased.”

“Is that so?  Then I’m looking forward to it,” his mother replied with what was now a small smile on her face, obviously amused by her husband’s excitement.

Takeo smiled secretly to himself as he watched his parents’ interaction, but his smile soon disappeared as his mouth dropped open in surprise.  His father had just made a right turn and suddenly all the bungalows were replaced by a street full of fancy, sprawling 3-storey mansions.

“Wow!  Is one of these ours?” Naomi asked as her grin widened even more.

His father didn’t answer her.  Instead, he pulled into the driveway of what appeared to be the largest mansion on the block with three garages, large panelled glass windows framed by freshly-painted white sills, and an immaculately landscaped front lawn complete with small rock gardens, a maple tree and a bed of purple hydrangeas.  Unlike the other mansions which had walls of primarily made of red or brown brick, the stones of varying shapes, sizes, and colours seemed to make up the walls of their mansion.  Turning off the engine and twisting his body around to look at his two awestruck children in the backseat, his father announced with understandable pride, “Takeo, Naomi, “ a loving glance toward his pretty wife, “Miyoko. We’re here.”

Takeo wasn’t sure whose mouth was open wider in shock – his, his sister’s, or, rarely enough, his usually unflappable mother’s.  Though he had never once considered his family to be poor, it had also never occurred to him that their family could live in anything better than a newly-built townhouse or an upscale condo.

It was his mother who recovered from the shock first.

“This…is really our house?” she asked hesitantly, the disbelief heavy in her voice.

“Ah.”  His father smiled tenderly as he reached out to squeeze his mother’s hand, which lay lax against her thigh.  “Welcome home.”  He paused before asking, “Do you like it?”

His mother stared for a brief second before a large, beaming smile crossed her face.    “What kind of question is that!  Of course I do!”  If her father and mother were Western, Takeo imagined that this was where his mother would exuberantly kiss his father.  However, being Asian, his mother merely gave his father’s arm a big squeeze with her free hand before withdrawing completely to fiddle around with her seatbelt, eager to get out of the car so that she could explore the grounds for herself.

As if on cue, her movements caused everyone to leave the car after her.  His mother, who had a love for flowers, immediately went to inspect the blooming hydrangeas and their father followed close behind with a big grin on his face and an almost boyish bounce to his step.  His sister tagged along after the two of them, already begging excitedly to see the inside of the house.  Takeo made to follow everyone but suddenly paused in his tracks as he felt a person’s gaze on his back.  Turning around slowly, he saw a boy, who looked about sixteen as well and had bright blue eyes, a pert little nose, and wavy golden hair, watching him.

His eyes flicked over the boy’s figure quickly as he tried to determine if the boy was a living person or a spirit.  The boy was dressed appropriately for the weather, which was always a good sign.  The boy’s hairstyle and clothes were also of the appropriate era, which was promising too.  However, it was the green garden hose which the boy appeared to be using to water the lawn of the house diagonal to theirs that made Takeo breathe a small sigh of relief.  Human.  There was no doubt about it.  He raised his right hand and wiggled his fingers slightly in a stiff, little wave; and saw, much to his secondary bout of relief, the boy smile and wave back in what appeared to be a friendly manner.

The boy bent to set his garden hose down on the grass but paused when he heard Takeo’s father’s yell out to Takeo to come inside and see the house.

Takeo smiled apologetically.  He wanted to yell out, “Sorry,” to the boy but he didn’t trust his voice to carry that far and he didn’t want to appear a fool attempting to shout.  He settled for a small shrug of his shoulders which the boy, who had straightened already, returned with a shrug of his own.

“Next time!” the boy yelled, obviously not as self-conscious as Takeo.

Takeo nodded in acknowledgement and waved again.  He then turned and trudged into the house.

After Takeo had left, the boy dug into his pocket for his cellphone.  Fingers moving rapidly across his screen, he tweeted excitedly, “Chinese family moved into THE THOMPSON HOUSE today!!!”  He then pocketed his cell phone and gave the house one last eager glance before he resumed the watering of his parents’ lawn.

Chapter 1

Rita’s Musings:  Anyone who knows me will know that the town of Applewood is heavily based on a certain small town with a Toyota car plant, and that the mother of Takeo and Naomi is modelled after one of my Japanese friends.