Ethon (The Other Worlds Series Book 2)
Read Ethon (The Other Worlds Series Book 2) Online
Authors: M.L. Greye
Ethon
m.l. greye
Copyright © 2014 m.l. greye
Sequel to
The Other Worlds
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Trenton Alridge. He’s my great-grandfather on my mom’s side, but I’ve always known him as just Grandpa. My actual grandfathers died long before I was born. Death seems to be the trend in my family. I guess Trenton and I missed the memo.
In our family, we’re like an endangered species or the last two survivors of a plague. Trenton has outlived his wife, three children, one grandchild, and three out of his four great-grandchildren. The fourth great-grandchild is me, of course. Although my enduring existence past my family members is less impressive than Trenton’s, I still am the second to last one standing in both my fraternal and maternal lines. I have no cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, or siblings. All I have is Trenton. We are each other’s last breathing relative. Lucky us.
Trenton Alridge had three sons, who all died young, sadly enough. Two of the three died at war within months of each other, leaving only the youngest alive. This was my grandfather, Ethan. He was my mother’s father. He lived to be about thirty-nine before contracting a form of cancer in his liver. Ethan died when my mother, Lisa, was ten. She was an only child.
When my mother entered college, she chose to explore the shores of Southern California. That was where she met my father. They were married and had four children, beginning with me. We lived average lives. Simple but pleasant.
And then, all at once, I was left alone. In one swift accident, I became the last surviving heir to a man I knew almost nothing about. I became the future possessor of a wealth that I had never envisioned obtaining. When the lives of my family ended, I thought mine had done the same. I felt stranded, lost, and abandoned. I merely existed, barely more than breathing. I wasn’t in this state for long, though. Trenton Alridge came for me.
Transplanting me to the lush countryside of England, Trenton began the process of renewing my life – reminding me that I was not the one deceased. I don’t know why he did it. I still don’t understand why he demanded I stay with him rather than just offer his condolences. We after all had only met once before. Perhaps it was because he had no one else and, in his old age, he’d grown lonely. Or maybe it was because he held stock in more than one world and was ready to share it.
It’s almost humorous at how similar Trenton and I really are. Not only do we share the sentence of life without family, we encountered resembling circumstances that, in the end, changed us forever. Trenton was twenty when his parents were killed in a tragic train derailing. They left him an inheritance of an expansive estate and fortune, but he cared very little for any of it. Having been raised the only child of parents who enjoyed spending their great wealth on travel, he spent most of his youth in boarding schools. His brief visits to the estate had been during the summer and Christmas holidays.
Yet, following his parents’ death, he returned to his family’s home, intending to sell it before beginning a life of travel in the exotic land of Asia. Something happened, though, that he had neither intended nor had ever dreamed possible. One day, while staring out miserably into the forest surrounding his estate, he felt an urge to go for a walk between the trees. Deciding he had nothing better to do, he headed outside. But unfamiliar with the terrain, he quickly found himself lost and suddenly face-to-face with a large brown horse. Not until the young rider spoke did Trenton learn that he had mysteriously entered an extraordinary place called the Other Worlds.
The Other Worlds is another realm – one filled with what my world would have deemed freaks. There, people morph into animals, move things with their eyes, and see the past the way I see the present. Gifts are the norm and phenomenon runs rampant. The impossible is disregarded. In that realm, reality is often fantasy. And Trenton loved it.
Through a series of events, Trenton managed to step into that realm as a naïve Ethon and transform into a renowned Balnorrean hero. Named the Key, my great-grandfather was made into an Other World legend. He even won the heart of a beautiful Eve, Tyra. I don’t think Trenton would have ever left the Other Worlds if not for her.
After Balinorre fell, in order to save Tyra’s life, Trenton returned to his world of Earth – or
Ethon
, as the Other Worlders call it – with the woman he’d grown to love. Because Tyra was in need of medical assistance, Trenton left behind his new life to prolong hers.
During the years that followed, Trenton and Tyra wed and raised their children the same as any other Ethon family. Their children took part in local activities, traveled, went to school, and one son eventually grew up to create a family of his own.
Tyra’s realm was nothing but a distant memory. Trenton Alridge’s descendants were never told of the Other Worlds. They had no idea that such a place existed. For all purposes and intents, they were Ethons – completely ungifted, just like every other person around them. Or so they thought.
Turns out, though, not all Ethons are utterly giftless.
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“Oh, I got such a nice tan.” The girl twirled her hair around her finger with such finesse that the movement had to have been practiced diligently everyday. “The Caymans are seriously the place to be.”
“How long were you there for?” A pity question. The twenty-two-year-old farmboy-turned-prep from northern Idaho didn’t actually care. He just didn’t want the conversation to die. The girl was what he had deemed “his type.” Basically all that really meant was she was an American blonde with blue eyes and a great body.
“Three weeks. The best three weeks of my life!” A lie. It had only been one week, and she’d disliked every moment of it.
“Yeah?” He grinned, silently dreaming of her and him having the best three weeks of
his
life together on some deserted beach. “Did you go with anyone?”
She nodded. “My parents took me.” True, but still not entirely accurate. Her parents had taken her and her younger sister to her aunt’s funeral. Yes, they had stayed at
The Caymans
, but it hadn’t been the group of islands she was leading the farmboy to believe. It was the name of the little one-star motel they had spent the week in – located in a podunk town somewhere in Arizona with a population that could be counted on one hand. There was no beach, not even a pool.
Olinia Reien rolled her eyes and turned up the volume on her iPhone. Keeping her music app blaring helped to block out the ever-present rumble of voices around her – both audible and silent.
This was college. In an environment that was supposedly breeding intelligence, Olinia was surrounded by idiots, and no one knew better than she. Since the moment Olinia entered Ethon, nineteen months before, her mind had been greeted with the thoughts of every man, woman, and child within a hundred yard radius. She no longer had to reach out to learn what a person was thinking – their thoughts came to her freely. It was awful. Olinia missed the days when she had to work for her gift.
Off to Olinia’s left, the blonde laughed loudly. Olinia groaned and shut her eyes, focusing on the music. Her music really was a lifesaver. Without it, she would be yanking her hair out from all the mundane chatter that shrieked out at her on a daily basis. At least with her music blasting into her ears, she could mask some of the prattle with anything from rock to hip-hop. It didn’t really matter what it was, as long as it was loud.
The first day of the semester was always the worst, especially right after summer. Everyone had some sort of story they were bursting to tell the first person willing to listen. Little did they know, Olinia could already hear them all.
Before she actually ever attended a university, she’d pictured the campuses to be thriving little regions of intellectuals. She was way off. Maybe some of the universities were the way she’d imagined, but from her experience, college was nothing more than a bunch of kids just out of high school either looking for a good time or preparing themselves for their future careers. Some students were bright. Many were not.
A new set of thoughts joined the mix and the audible conversations began to calm down. The professor must have arrived. Olinia opened her eyes, but kept her head tilted against the wall at her left. She always sat next to a wall. Sometimes it was thick enough to muffle the thoughts on the other side of it, leaving her to deal with just the immediate room.
At the front of the class, the professor, Doctor Adam Sanders, began pulling out this semester’s syllabus from his twenty-plus-year-old leather briefcase. This was the first time Olinia had ever laid eyes on him. He was in his late forties and had an average face – nose not too large or too small, forgettable hazel eyes, and mouse brown hair slicked toward the left of his head to cover up his thinning hairline. He was a little shorter than six feet and was slender with the beginnings of a potbelly in front. Olinia couldn’t really call him ugly or attractive – just average. If he were to step into a crowd it would be easy for him to blend in.
Unfortunately, his thoughts were not blending in with the rest of the class. He was dreading his upcoming court case with his future ex-wife. Apparently, she was trying to get the most she could out of their divorce. Maybe he shouldn’t have cheated on her with that pretty student from El Salvador.
Olinia shoved her earbuds further into her head. This was exactly the sort of worthless babble she attempted to avoid. Everyone always had some drama going on that she cared nothing about yet was forced to listen to.
“Welcome to Anthropology 212.” Olinia watched Sanders mouth the words as she simultaneously heard them inside her head. “I’m going to pass these around.” He held up the stack of syllabi. “Take one when it gets to you.”
His eyes landed on Olinia, music still booming, and almost instantly he began his rant on his absolute hatred for electronic devices in his class. Olinia rolled her eyes and yanked out the earpieces, grimacing as her thoughts swarmed with the images and unspoken remarks of the class in overwhelming amounts. Why must everyone think so much?
As Sanders’s droning switched from texting and music to his page-by-page syllabus breakdown, Olinia sighed. It was going to be another long and boring semester.
For the thousandth time, Olinia wondered what had happened to her life. For over a year and a half, she’d been playing her portrayal of the average American. So far no one seemed to suspect her, but then, she didn’t exactly have any close friends. She really only had Trenton Alridge and her brother Legann. Her former friends and other brother, Zedgry, had long since deserted her to this realm of technology and self-centered war. It still surprised her that a world would fight within itself on such a regular basis. Countries were so strange.
Just then, the classroom’s door opened, and a straggler walked in. Olinia frowned while she took in his features. At the moment, watching him was her only form of amusement. Sanders definitely wasn’t giving her anything interesting to do.
The guy was taller than her, but that wasn’t hard. She guessed he was about five foot ten. He was clean-shaven and had the thin, toned build of a runner or soccer player. His dark hair was thick with lighter natural highlights throughout, and his eyes were a honey brown. The brown didn’t mean anything in Ethon. In the Other Worlds it was the branding mark of the Wends, but here in Ethon it was just another eye color.
He took a seat in an open desk at the front by the door. Sanders scowled at him for interrupting, but the guy didn’t seem to notice. In fact, he was quite pleased with his entrance. Olinia rolled her eyes. He just liked having everyone’s attention. When Sanders returned to his syllabus explanation, the guy unlatched his book bag and pulled out a pad of paper followed by a mechanical pencil. His thoughts drifted to the class syllabus as he began listening to Sanders.
Bored again, Olinia glanced away. Two rows ahead of Olinia, a red-haired girl was texting her friend about a new frozen yogurt shop she wanted to try out later that day. Olinia groaned inwardly and dropped her head into her hands. Why did she even go to class? It wasn’t like she needed a degree.
It was almost comical, really. Here Olinia was – the princess heir to the Other Worlds – learning about Ethon culture. It seemed so ill-fitting. Wouldn’t any world but Ethon be a better option for her and her brother?
Too focused. Too sloppy. Too…cliché?
Olinia glanced up in surprise. She’d been unconsciously still listening to the latecomer’s thoughts. He was practically reclining in his chair, surveying his classmates. Olinia couldn’t help but stare. He was searching through the women in the room for someone to hit on. This was a first. Olinia had witnessed many couples flirting in class, but never had she seen a guy go out of his way on opening day to find the next victim of his charm. Olinia felt like laughing.
His gaze landed on Olinia and their eyes met. He flashed her a brilliant smile.
Hello, beautiful.
She grunted and looked away. Once again, why did she even go to class?
: : : : :
Legann Reien watched each tiny tick of the second hand on his classroom’s clock. In about ten minutes, the final bell for the day would ring, freeing him from the nightmare known as high school. The clock wouldn’t go fast enough. He was restless and hungry.
Letting out a sigh, Legann sunk further into his chair, his arms draping over the connecting desk. English was such a dull class. He still found it strange that Ethons could make professions out of a language that in the Other Worlds was often thought of as common in comparison to Eveon or Arthelian. Legann glanced at the girl to his right. She was hurrying to scribble down even more to her pages and pages of notes. The girl was too devoted for Legann’s taste, at least as far as English was concerned.
If they were in Biology, then he wouldn’t blame her. That was his favorite subject. Now true, the best part of that class was listening in on the lab rats’ thoughts, but it was still more interesting than English.
At the front of the class, Legann’s teacher stole a glimpse at the clock. Legann almost laughed. Even the teacher was ready for the day to be over. Just five more minutes. Why did Ethons have so many time constraints? It seemed so pointless. He never had to deal with this in the Other Worlds. There, his schooling had lasted until the teacher ran out of things to say for the day, usually around lunchtime. At the reminder of food, his stomach grumbled. It didn’t like being empty. He wondered what Olinia would make for dinner.
Upon coming to the United States for school, about thirteen months before, Olinia had rediscovered her talent in the kitchen. It was something she hadn’t really used since her slave days. That wasn’t to say she had forgotten how to cook. Legann liked her cooking, but then he was never one to complain when he wasn’t the one doing the work.
Legann ran a hand through his short hair. It was strange to think that he had once kept his light brown hair shaggy, falling just past his ears. It had been the style of the Other Worlds. Since coming to Ethon, he’d cut his hair short, less than an inch long. Over the months, he’d grown used to it and actually preferred it now. The cut lengthened his oval-shaped face and helped his light brown eyes not appear so sunken in, not that his eyes were really that deeply set in his face in the first place.
The bell finally rang, and Legann practically leaped out of his seat. As he reached for his binder from his desk, the front pocket of his jeans vibrated.
Like clockwork
, he mused, pulling out his cell phone.
He read Olinia’s text, telling him she was waiting outside for him as he left the classroom. It really was the beginning of another wonderful school year trapped in Ethon. Life here felt so mundane in comparison to what his life had been in the Other Worlds. Legann made a quick stop by his locker, picked up his backpack, and headed out to his sister.
Through the glass doors leading to the outside, Legann noticed it was oddly sunny. The weather was supposed to be cloudy, cool, and crisp. It was the beginning of autumn after all. Legann frowned. The app on his phone must not have updated entirely that morning when he’d checked it for the day’s forecast.
“Legann!”
He whirled at the sound of his name. The exit to the free world was right in front of him. Who dared to stop him from leaving?
Across the hall, Emilio Martinez and Todd Peters, both seniors like Legann, were making their way towards him. They were sneering. Legann rolled his eyes. He preferred to fly under the radar of most students, but once during the last year, he was put in a study group with Todd. Unfortunately, the Ethon caught Legann staring off into a group of geese and unconsciously mouthing the thoughts he was sending them.
Apparently, that was grounds for being a freak who talked to himself. Not that Legann really worried about his popularity. He just didn’t want the unnecessary attention. For the last three months of their junior year, Todd had made it his duty to inform every member of the student body about how weird Legann was. If only Todd really knew that he’d been talking to birds rather than himself.
“Hey there, loner,” Emilio snickered, stopping in front of Legann.
“Hi,” he replied, moving his eyes up and down Emilio. The olive-skinned, dark-eyed kid still only came up to Legann’s chest. Apparently the summer hadn’t changed him. Legann didn’t really feel threatened by him at all.
“Where are you off to so fast? Do you need to talk to your imaginary friends again?” Todd asked. “Or is your sister out there?” He glanced out through the front glass doors, his pale blue eyes squinting. “She’s hot, like way hot.”
Legann grunted. “If you think you can date her, be my guest.”
His phone started vibrating again. Olinia was calling him. Soon, she would try to reach his thoughts. She hated waiting. It was time for him to go.
“Maybe you should introduce us. She’ll be happy to get in on this action.” Todd flexed his arms.
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” Legann returned.
Before they could stop him, Legann spun on his heel, leaving his drab school and all those inside behind him. Once through the doors, he took a deep gulp of fresh air. As he took the front steps two at a time, he noticed how hot he suddenly felt. It was still more summer outside than autumn. The weather hadn’t quite caught up with the calendar yet.
