Parisa (eBook)

Conrad Trump (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
290 Seiten
High Peaks Publishing (Verlag)
978-0-9761597-7-3 (ISBN)

Snowboarding sensation Scott Locke returns to his home in West Virginia to be honored by the ski resort where he worked as a teenager, but a freak accident costs him the opportunity to compete in the upcoming X-Games. Broken and distraught, the competition becomes a secondary consideration when Scott unwittingly releases a force that has been locked away for centuries. Parisa is an ancient spirit; exotic, beautiful, and mysterious. Scott must find a way to help her acclimate and nurture respect, love, and tolerance for humanity. His plan begins to backfire as he develops feelings for Parisa, and is drawn into her world of magic and power. But Scott is forced to make a choice: sacrifice his love for the sake of all mankind or give in to his passion and enjoy the riches and rewards of unlimited power?

When world class snowboarding sensation Scott Locke returns to his home in West Virginia to be honored by the ski resort where he worked as a teenager, a freak accident costs him the opportunity to compete in the upcoming X-Games. Broken and distraught, the competition soon becomes a secondary consideration when Scott unwittingly releases a force that has been locked away for centuries, a force so powerful and dark that it threatens all mankind. Parisa is an ancient spirit; exotic, beautiful, and mysterious, yet out of place in today's world. Scott must find a way to help her acclimate and nurture respect, love, and tolerance for humanity. The plan begins to backfire as Scott develops feelings for Parisa and he is drawn into her world of magic and power. In the face of great temptations, Scott must make the ultimate choice. He must decide to sacrifice his love for the sake of all mankind or give in to his passion and enjoy the riches and rewards of unlimited power.

Prologue

Many moons ago—about fourteen hundred years

Yiska stood before the longhouse home of the tribal elder, the Chillicothe. Having completed twelve full cycles of the seasons, he was ready to begin the rite of passage into adulthood through the undertaking of his first vision quest.

The harvesting had been completed, and winter was fast approaching the Shawnee Village in the Ohio Basin. Soon the larger village would break down into extended families and smaller hunting camps.

Yiska had no family. His mother had died during childbirth after bleeding inside all night. She had passed just as the sun had cracked the sky and a new day had begun. It was for that reason Yiska had received his name, which means “the long night has passed.”

Yiska’s father had been claimed by a fever in the season of sewing, and thus the boy on the precipice of becoming a man stood alone before the council elder’s home on the eve of his vision quest.

Smaller in size than some was Yiska, but no one had a larger heart, and no one was more true to the teachings of his people. Yet he was afraid. He was fearful that he might not measure up to the worth of a Shawnee warrior and would be passed over by forest spirits and return to his village unclaimed and unworthy.

There was a fire burning in a pit outside the home of the Chillicothe, and even though the air was cold and spitting snow flurries, Yiska stood apart from the blaze. He did not want to appear weak before the tribal elder.

Inside the longhouse, it was warmer, but it stank of too many people. Yiska stood with his back straight and his head up, looking upon the face of a wrinkled, weary man. The man drew scented smoke from a long clay pipe decorated with dangling feathers.

“Yiska,” the Chillicothe said. “You are prepared for your journey when the sun is new?”

“Yes, Chillicothe,” the boy answered. “I have fasted two days in preparation. I have the knife of my father and a crock made of clay by my mother’s hand. I have learned the chants and the songs. I am eager to find my path.”

The Chillicothe nodded. The vision quest was a tradition in the Shawnee tribes as old as the Shawnee themselves. Since perhaps the time of the great migration that had brought these people across the Bering Straits some ten thousand years before, the Shawnee had undertaken a vision quest when stepping from the age of childhood into adulthood.

“I called you here on the eve of your journey to offer my counsel. It is so that your father is among the spirits beyond our sight in the Never Forest, and he is not here to counsel you. Would you hear my counsel, Yiska?”

The young man bowed his head gratefully. “Yes, Chillicothe.”

“I have been alive too long, Yiska, and my dreams come faster now. I dream of running and fishing and hiding in the tall green fields of maize. I dream of my first bow and my long gone mother’s kisses. I dream of you, Yiska. This last night of childhood— embrace it, for after the sun rises, a Shawnee Warrior with a warrior’s burdens you will be.”

The boy hesitated, uncertain whether he could speak, but the Chillicothe had called him there to give counsel, so…

“You have questions…”

“Yes, Chillicothe. I have prepared well, but what if I am not chosen? What if I come back unclaimed by a forest spirit?”

The old man nodded solemnly and took a puff of his pipe. “I tell you now what my father told me when I put forth the same question to him on the eve of my own vision quest. ‘Lie,’ he said.”

Yiska followed the river north in the morning under the early sun. The ground was frozen, and his thick leather footings crunched the ground as he walked. He carried a large pouch over his shoulder. Inside it were crow feathers and a wild turkey talon. He had a small pipe and a pouch of tobacco. He carried an arrowhead that the Chillicothe had given to him the night before and a box turtle shell that had been bleached by the sun. There were other herbs and medicinal plants that Yiska was to mix with the tobacco, and of course there was the crock that his mother had made. The hunting knife of his father, Yiska wore in his belt.

There were no true protocols for where Yiska was to travel. Part of the vision quest was to find his own path. The boy took a flat route along the river, following it upstream to beyond the swift rocks where the water lay smoothly.

Even though the air was just below freezing, the river remained ice-free due to the movement of the water. The boy stopped to watch a school of tiny feeder fish dart in and out of the river grass, and he wondered in what form his spirit guide might come to him. He hoped it was not going to be a stupid animal like an opossum. A hawk or a stag would be awesome.

Yiska walked for hours until he found a small cove along the river. There was a high rock face to the east. Just below it was a soft basin of mud and stone. To get there, he had to cross the shallows, but the spot seemed so perfect for his purposes that he slipped off his boots and waded into the frigid water. The river numbed his legs to his knees during the crossing. Yiska held his boots and the pouch above his head so that none of his treasures and totems would be damaged by the water.

Once he was on solid ground again, Yiska set about picking up small twigs and driftwood. He made a tiny pit out of river stones and filled its belly full of dried autumn grass. He covered the layer of grass with the collected twigs and heaped more brown grass on top of that. There was plenty of natural kindling near, and Yiska built a pyramid over the grass from larger dead branches. Once that was done, he opened his pouch and placed around him the items he had brought. He said the words and chanted the songs of his people.

With his father’s knife, Yiska dug the blade under the skin of his forearm—not too deep but deep enough to create a trickling blood flow that he dripped over the dry grass and into the crock formed of clay by his mother’s hands.

He took a flint and struck it against the rock. Sometimes Yiska had trouble getting a fire started, but not that morning. The very first spark landed on a mound of dry river grass and began to smolder as if the flames had always been there just waiting for him to raise them.

In no time Yiska had managed to nurse a healthy fire, and his damp, cold legs began to feel the heat of the flames. The river water on his skin began to steam in the fire’s heat. Yiska sat close to the blaze until the flames threatened to singe his fine leg hair. He adjusted his position so that his feet would dry but not be burned.

Once he was comfortable, Yiska took the tobacco from his pouch and placed some into the inverted bowl of the turtle shell. To that he added a mixture of the other dried plants, leaves both red and brown in color. He used the heel of his father’s knife to grind the tobacco and to mix it with the other plants. With the clay pipe, he scooped the bowl full, and then he lit its top with a burning sprig from his fire.

Yiska drew in from the mouthpiece of the pipe. It burned his throat and his lungs, but he held his breath just the same. In no time his head began to swim upstream with the river, and he felt as if he had left his body unattended by the riverbank. Exhaling, he coughed and gagged, feeling the tainted breath escaping violently from his lungs. It hurt. His chest burned from the cough, and his stomach and shoulders pinched from the clenching in his abdomen as he coughed out the poisons.

Yiska took another draw from the pipe, repeating the process of holding his breath and then coughing out the smoke. After his second deep exhale, the young Shawnee Brave to be almost vomited. His stomach did a sideways flop. His head was spinning like leaves caught in the wind, and he seemed to be falling even though he was still sitting by the river’s edge. The smoke from his fire pit shifted and carried into his face. Yiska’s eyes burned, and tears crept down his cheeks. His face was hot and dry. His mouth burned and begged for water, but Yiska didn’t trust his legs enough to carry him to the river for a drink.

Yiska wanted more than anything to become a great Shawnee Warrior, and to that end, he had to prove his worth. He took another long pull on the pipe, a deeper one that time, and he held the smoke inside him for as long as his hairless chest could stand it. When he coughed it out, he wiped the spit off his chin, not realizing he was only replacing the saliva with blood from the cut on his forearm.

No longer floating upstream, Yiska felt as if his head had gone under water. He could not breathe, and try as he might to take in pure, clean air, the smoke from the fire only made his coughing worse. It was too much. He could no longer sit upright, so the boy lay back onto the soft mud, resting his head on the jagged edges of snail shells and soft green ferns. The sun was almost in its zenith and much too bright to look upon, so Yiska turned to the river and watched the water glide past. In one fist he held the pipe, and in his other he clutched the turkey talon.

Continuing to chant the songs he had been taught and praying the prayers of his people, Yiska asked the spirits of the forest to come guide him and to deliver him to his path and his destiny. Time was meaningless, for the fire...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.9.2015
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
ISBN-10	0-9761597-7-5 / 0976159775
ISBN-13	978-0-9761597-7-3 / 9780976159773

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