Story Knights

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The Galaxy Books of Challenge

Here’s the first four chapters for your enjoyment . . .

Story Knights

www.hgabby.com

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be considered real. Any resemblance to actual event or person, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

         All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

First Printing, 2019

First Paperback Edition

ISBN-13: 9781798860656

Dedication

The dedication of this book goes to my husband Korey L. Ward, the inspiration for my hero, along with my family and friends, who believed in me.

I’d like to send a special thanks to my cover designer Olivia, and editor, Patrick Hodges.

Part 1:

The Hero of the Story

The essence of a hero is not measured by his strength, wit, speed, or magic. His heart measures him.

Chapter 1

The glint of a candle flickered in the green, cat’s-eye marbles beneath the shadows of a bed.

Spring. A time of new beginnings.

Gabriel could almost hear the wind and rain whisper “once upon a time” as it pelted the tall arched windows of this room. He was on the hunt for a story that would surely rocket him to the top of the charts as the number one Story Collector of the millennium.

He wanted to win “best disguise of the year” as well. To do that he had to be visible, and interactive in the least possible amount as not to hinder the story’s natural flow.

The dust bunnies tickled his nose. He pinched off a sneeze and his ears popped.

Cats were curious by nature and had nine lives. Should one turn up at the scene of a crime, or get hit by a meteor blast and live, no one would suspect the cat as being an alien spy.

The tips of his ears perked as a soft snoring came from the topside of the bed. He crept out from under, placed both paws alongside, and squinted. The boy’s chin rested on his drawn knees, and the book he’d been reading into the early hours had fallen free of his grasp.

Gabriel sat, locking his twitchy tail around his forepaws. Who was this handsome young man? His eyes traveled over the bookshelf above the small writing desk, piled high with western dime novels. Although dream sequences were often misleading and not the best choice to beginning a story, he found they revealed much about the character. That is, if the Story Collector was clever enough to manipulate the dream.

And so, the spy invaded the dream.

Chapter 2

“Lord Ludwig hates cats,” said sixteen-year-old Chris Steampunk, reaching out a hand to stroke the rich blue-black fur. “But don’t worry, we’ll send word to Roman, my manservant. He is sure to help you escape, before the servants return and tell him. They come during the day and leave before nightfall.”

A tiny black book and pen appeared in the cat’s paws. Adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his velvety nose, his eyes popped wide and he leaned in close. “And just why is it they leave before nightfall? Are they afraid of something that only appears at night?”

“Castle Steampunk is haunted. A hundred years ago, there was a masquerade ball. My great grandfather’s creation killed the guest–”

The cat dug its claws into his knees. “Any ghost?”

“I haven’t seen any.” He dropped his knees, nearly topping over the furball. “I’ve been awakened by screams and the phantom screech of an instrumental waltz during the night though . . .” He scratched his cheek. “Wait a minute. You’re talking—cats can’t talk.”

The cat’s eyes twinkled. “Indeed not, I say.” It sneezed. “Have you a tissue?” His head wiggled side to side. “No–”A wild wind blew the bed curtains loose. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a forest of snow-covered pines. Was he dreaming?

A blue streak of lightning soared above his head and entered the thicket, followed by a thunderous clatter of musical notes.

“He’s here!” Chris unseated the cat in the process of untangling his legs and nightgown from the bedding.

His bare feet hit the cold wood floor, and followed a path of suspended snowflakes.

He halted in his tracks as he spotted the Blue Cowboy, dressed in a long leather trench coat. The wide brim of the Stetson hat concealed his features in shadow. In his hands, he held an ebony guitar.

The cowboy began his tune with a skillful intro of soft bells. The wind amplified the sound with a soothing ease and charmed the senses.

“The song is called Peaceful Journey, Christian Steampunk.”

“You know my name?” Chris clasped both hands over his mouth and took several steps off the path into the bushes. Kenny Rogers, John Wayne, and The Lone Ranger took second, third, and fourth place to this drifter. He was the only one powerful enough to battle the monsters out west.

The cowboy’s pinky finger plucked the thirteenth string, and the rhythm took a ruthless twist. The strings burst to blue flames, while a specter’s hand emerged from the sound hole of the guitar and beckoned with one long extended scythe finger.

The axe has been waiting for you,” said the cowboy. “We both have.”

A thrill ensnared him to forgo his hesitation and move his feet forward. “Me? Why?”

The cowboy raised his head. Low lights of soft blue flames surged through the hollow space of his fleshless skull. “To see if you have what it takes to be a hero. Are you up for the challenge?”Chris came to a jerky halt. “Sure am. Plan on cleaning up the filth out west.”“Then you’ll need the aid of my old friend.” With a wave of his arm, the snow began to fall. “Count the snowflakes as they fall.”

As impossible as the challenge sounded, and the fact that the voice now sounded like Roman’s, Chris wasted no time in asking questions. He stretched out his arms to either side of his body, palms upward, and the snowflakes transformed into mathematically equations of space multiplied by time.

Passing minutes gave way to hours. His limbs began to waver, and his head to nod.

The snow halted. Somewhere in the distant pitch he heard a clock chime with the dead hour 13, a time when the dead could see the living.

Cool hands took hold of his shoulder from behind. “Answer, boy?”

His head rocked back on his neck. He saw the illumination of blue-flamed eyes above him.

“Two billion and fourteen,” he said, barely pushing the whispers past his frozen lips.

“This night, you win the axe.”

Chris yelped with a jerk of his head up. “Really? I counted correctly?”

“You were at least two or three off.” A short burst of laughter rumbled in his chest. “But the challenge wasn’t in counting the snowflakes. You didn’t give up, even when you thought the challenge impossible to win.”

He grew dizzy headed as the ebony steel was place into his hands. The words blue blazes were engraved along the neck. He whooped and hollered, pumping the air with a fist.

“Tell me, boy,” said the cowboy, giving each of the knobs a slight turn to tune them. “Do you know what it takes to be a hero?”

He lifted his chin and pushed back his shoulders. “The essence of a hero is not measured by his strength, wit, speed, or magic. His heart  measures him.”

The cowboy looked him straight in the eye, nodded slowly, and then ruffled the hair on his head, causing it to spike. “I’m proud of you, boy. The heart is the core of a hero, the empowerment for which to reach beyond the limits of endurance. Remember that.”

A slow drawing smile pulled up the slack of his mouth “I will. Always.”

The cowboy tipped his hat and turned away, his coat whipping in the wind. “The fate of the planet depends on you, boy. Be the hero of the story . . .”

Chapter 3

The dream vanished with the dawn of light, pouring in through the tall arched windows of his bedchamber. There was a smell of singed wax in the air, coming from the bedside table where a candle had burned to a stub, and the flame droning in its wax.  The hands of the grandfather clock in the corner were stuck at 13. No tick-tock.

Chris found himself among the twisted bedding, drenched in sweat. He sought out the writing nook and hanging shelf, filled with his favorite dime novels. It had only been a dream.

He heard the barking of the basset hounds coming from outside and kicked aside the bedding, but could only look from his bed because his ankle was shackled to a bedpost. 

The lush meadow was consumed by milkweed, and dancing monarch butterflies with orange wings trimmed in black. Lord Ludwig was preparing for a fox chase with the new neighbors in front of the stables. It looked like rain. Dark clouds. 

Spying the last issue of the Blue Cowboy, laying in the floor by the bed, he stretched over the edge with fingertips, grasped the cover’s edge, and slipped it under his pillow. Cradling an imaginary guitar, he plucked its strings, while humming the peaceful death tune.

Roman entered with an on average breakfast of oatmeal, biscuits, and blackberry jam, and with him the smell of tea-mint pipe tobacco. The gold split tailcoat he wore strained to hold in his round middle as he waddled toward the bed.

“Can’t say your singing is getting better, but that don’t keep you from trying, and trying some more,” he said as he shook a finger in one ear. “Nightmares again, Master Steampunk?”  He placed the serving tray at the foot of the bed and unlocked his shackle.

Chris wiped his brow with a sleeve of his nightgown and got out of bed.  “Actually, no. Had a good dream—well, except for the crazy black cat.” He walked to the basin and poured water into a bowl. “Lord Ludwig is going hunting, I see,” he said between the cold splashes against his face, “with the Bakersfield widow and her son.”

“Your father has given me strict orders to keep you in this room today.” The sound of Roman’s lungs laboring appeared at his side. He took the towel shoved on him. “If you’re thinking about rushing out there and making a fool of yourself–forget it! You’re sixteen, not ten.”

Chris slowly drew the towel down to reveal an arched brow. “Did he?”

“Stop that at once, you young pup! I’ll not play these games today!” His whole body shook with each word, and he dabbed at his brow with his sleeve. “If your father ever finds out about the things you put me up to helping you do—like hiding all the outlawed junk you’ve collected in the basement.”

“What about the things you put me up to?” said Chris, wiggling his brow as he wrapped the towel around his neck. “Like helping you cheat at cards?”

He snapped a faded blue eye closed. “Know when to hold, when to fold, and when to cheat a cheater!” He jabbed the end of a corncob pipe into his toothless gums.

Chris cupped an ear with his hand and bent it forward. “Words of wisdom from an old dog to a young pup, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Damn straight—beats me every time.” He puffed on the stem of the pipe and blew smoke rings in the air. “Spring is here, and that means courtship time in New Coal Town. That widow Bakersfield wants to visit you tonight after dinner. I urge you to be on your tiptop behavior in her presence. Lord Ludwig wants to assure her you’re tame.”

“So, I shouldn’t do anything like this?” He crossed his eyes, let his tongue hang out, and twisted his face as if he had lost his mind.

Roman pursed his lips.

“Guess not,” said Chris.  Looking at his reflection above the water basin, he spiked his hair with his hands. “I won the Blue Cowboy’s guitar in that dream last night. And get this: his voice sounded just like yours.”

“Blue Cowboy?” said Roman, retrieving tan breaches and white shirt from a wardrobe in the corner. “Like me?”

Chris walked to the bookshelf and plucked out the first issue of the Blue Cowboy. Thumbing through it to find a picture, he said over his shoulder, “I know he’s a made-up hero, but one day I’m going to go out west and battle the monsters just like him.”

“Hold up,” said Roman with a hand in the air as he placed his clothing on the back of a chair. “It’s coming to me now, the creepy cowpoke that battles the monsters with a contraption called a guitar and flashes of blue light.” 

Chris pointed out the spiky-haired cowboy, wearing a long leather trench coat and wielding an ebony guitar.  “He got caught in a storm, the lightning struck him, spiking up his hair like that.” The Blue Cowboy stood in the midst of battle, the specter’s hand lashed out at the monsters with long scythe fingers, their eyes like soulless pits of coal.

“Don’t pretend. You know these stories as well as I do,” said Chris, replacing the book in the shelf. “You read them when you think I’m asleep, and you never forget a detail.”

Roman folded his arms over his potbelly and gave a short bow. “Maybe I do’s, and maybe I dont’s.” He left the room.

Chris’s brow shot up as he heard the sound of a key in the lock.

Chapter 4

Eighteen-year-old Heroine Rosemary licked her tingling lips as she made it beneath the entrench archway of the solitary tower. Steampunk Castle had been reopened. There were questions she needed answers to, and a puzzle, she had to solve.

Leaning against the wall to catch her breath, she flung her hood back and wrung out the wet mass of her red hair. The old abbey was built nearly a century ago, but now lay in wood splintered ruins. The cemetery, adjacent to the abbey and courtyard, was surrounded by the tangled branches of yew trees.

The superstitious people of New Coal Town believed the shadows of the yew trees kept the dead bound inside their pine boxes. It was a myth. The roots of the trees imbibed the poisonous gases from the dead’s rotting flesh. Thus were the unabsorbed gases the people saw over bogs and marshes, and miss took for ghost or apparitions. 

With a last glance over her shoulder to ensure she hadn’t been followed, she made her way up the crumbling staircase of the tower. This backwoods town was still haunted by the tale of the bloody masquerade ball. Their fears of the dead rising from the grave originated from the long-dead Dr. Richard Steampunk, who robbed graves for parts to make his monstrous creations.

Dr. Steampunk was described as a mild-mannered man from old wealth, widowed after his young wife died in childbirth with daughter Edwina. His son Heathcliff was a charitable man to the poor, and an inventor.

The family harbored a dark secret: Heathcliff was one of the Dr.’s creations. This fact was revealed the night of the masquerade ball. The morning after, Heathcliff had disappeared and was  blamed for the lives of over two hundred guests,  thirteen of whom  were part of the town’s council, and his own father, Dr. Steampunk.

Daughter Edwina, a youth of eleven, had hidden beneath a table. She never spoke again of the horrors she witnessed. 

Heroine set aside her damp cloak and mud-caked boots. Her wool shirt and leggings were thick enough to ward off the chill in the air. Giving herself a quick braid, she braced her back against the cracked bell and drew her knees into her chest.

All the guests were missing various body parts. What had happened to them? And how had one creature, man or monster, accomplished it all on his own and vanished into nothingness?

She sought out the abbey days ago as a place no one would think of looking for the living, and cut a box in the worn floorboard to hide her forbidding art.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for what awaited inside.  She found it easy enough to remove the pencil, but it was when she removed the book that she felt her stomach knot. A half zombie’s face marked the cover. Its pages were as white flesh, a soulless, hollow vessel.

As a child, she suffered from the worst overactive imagination possible. If she were to  tell anyone  just a fraction of the things she saw when looking up at the constellation of spinning star-clocks, TV, electric lights, computers, cellphones, airplanes, rocket ships, an inky ocean adrift with sea like creatures, she would surely be locked away and labeled mentally ill. It wasn’t the fault of the planet. Their knowledge was limited. Her lips smirked at her own ounce of smugness.  A writer’s imagination was limitless. 

A buzz tickled her ear, and she jumped. The bell hit the wall. She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her head as her eardrums nearly popped from the ringing.

A button smile pinched her lips. It was only a little black cat on her shoulder. It had been five years since she’d seen Omniscient, as she had named him back then.  Even if it wasn’t the same one, she believed cats were story collectors, all knowing, all seeing.

She patted his head. Odd that it was dry. “Hello, my friend. Have any good stories to swap?”

Seemly ignoring the question, he chose that moment to give himself a bath. Or, was he drawing attention to what looked like candle wax on his coat?

“That’s okay. Bet you think I’ve returned home for the swirl of the Season, right?” Her nose crinkled with the thought of being one of those prissy dolled up ninnies in oversized hooped ball gowns and laced-up corsets on the market like a prized turkey. “Oh, no, not me.” She jabbed herself in the chest with a thumb. “I’m here to do research for a new story. The Season is just a diversion to move about. If you care to stick around for a while, I’ll share the story with you.”

She parted the book down the middle in her lap, skipping over the pages stuck with some mysterious pink goo. “There is an abandoned mining town beyond the cemetery, Old Coal Town. Top the hill and you’ll see a rickety line of buildings. It’s got real spook charm. Used to play there as a kid.”

His bath finished, the cat wrapped his tail around the back of her neck and turned his attention to the book and pencil in her hands.

“Give me an insight into the monster’s heart,” she said, invoking the swirl of green pools in the center of her eyes. “A lead to follow.”

She was drawn by the blinding luminosity of the blank page, her imagination submerged in a sea of frequency, the static of white noise. She drew a pair of doors, held her breath, and watched as they opened outward.

Shrill screams rent the air and an instrumental waltz began playing. A man appeared beneath the archway wearing a gray tailored suit to fit his tall, broad-shouldered frame. He had a zigzag pattern of scars across his temple, a chiseled jaw, a broad nose, and a full lower lip. His green eyes cast an ominous allure.

“Father, are you out here?” he shouted. “The devil has come for our souls. He claims it’s harvesting time.”  The animation vanished, returning to the sketch of the double doors. 

“Is that it?” said Heroine. “Surely not?” 

The wind danced with the pages, stirring up the surrounding dust and cobwebs. She stumbled backward against the bell as the huge man’s face ascended in the middle. If the bell made a sound, she couldn’t hear it over the sound of his voice. “I’m not a monster . . . I’m a man.”

Her breath caught in her throat as she fell into the green globs of his eyes. So much pain.

The face began to fade.    

“Wait,” said Heroine, “are you Heathcliff Steampunk?”

The sound of dogs barking caused her to look away for a moment, just long enough for the face to vanish altogether.

She slapped her thigh.

She peeked out the gaps in the wood planks. The rain had lessened to a mist of vapor. An orange fox burst from the bushes, through the cemetery and into a hole at the base of the hillside. A group of rabbeted short-legged, black and white hounds was hot on its trail. Reaching the entrance to the den, they pawed at the ground.

Relieved that she hadn’t been discovered, she allowed herself to laugh, and curl her spine.

She returned the book and pencil to the spot beneath the floorboards, gathered her clothes, and made her way down the stairs of the bell tower.  She had just reached the bottom when she saw a lone rider on a black pony.

Too late to hide.  The boy had seen her. He was pale and frail, with piercing blue eyes beneath a stack of blond spikes. He wore a royal blue cloak, tan breeches and shiny black boots.

“Good evening—” she called out. 

The boy’s eyes rolled back in his head, leaving him to slouch forward in his saddle.  She feared he would fall off. He was a hundred yards away, she judged. She had to try to save him.

She took a deep breath, preparing to kick it into high gear, when other riders broke through the trees. Chewing a knuckle, she fled back up the stairs.

Hey guys and girls–h.g.abby here. If you like the story so far, please leave me a comment. This book can be found on Amazon.com. Thanks for reading.