The Siren Series 3: Brandon (A Siren Novel) (19 page)

Dark post-apocalyptic romantic fantasy

Book One: The Savage Series

Copyright © 2010-2011 Tamara Rose Blodgett

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved.

Prologue

1890

Samuel laid on his back, gasping for air as a fish out of the sea...
laboring
. They had done all they could, now the burden lay with their descendants. His gaze lingered on the house that he loved, now covered in ash, the sun no longer a bright orb in the sky, but shrouded in gray. A hush fell over the land, the environs a pewter wasteland of nothing, cold seeping into his marrow inch by insidious inch. Many would enter the spheres that had been constructed by the Guardians. They spoke of selective population, which rang false to Samuel, or true, as the case may be, his grandchildren safe and beyond the pale of this time,
this world that he was leaving.

He turned his head, rolling limply on its side, where his gaze captured Mae, also prone, a strange contraption with hand-hammered copper and a complex, inky black netting covering the greater part of her nose and mouth, leather thong-like straps braided and wrapped her skull, pushing strands of hair around like lost silver. She made odd, whistling noises as she breathed.

“Samuel, wear it,” Mae said, her voice distorted as she lifted the matching mask the Guardians had fashioned in the few preceding months they had been given.

“No, Mae. I wish to enjoy this fore-night without the chains of their advances.”

Samuel knew his stubbornness would cost him his life. The Guardians who were equal part savior and bearer of terrible news had made concessions for the elders. But those which survived would be the
strongest, most virile, agile, smartest and etcetera among them. Samuel and Mae understood at their advanced age of sixty and one years both, they would be excluded from the mercies of the sphere.

With blurred vision, Samuel saw a familiar dimmed figure approach. “Father! Why do you not take rest in your own bed?” Stella asked, her comely face a salve in his approaching death. Her wool skirts swirled as she knelt, setting an illuminated candle beside him, hissing steam from its seams.

Raising his hand, he cupped the loveliness of her face, knowing the time had come to enter the sphere the Guardians had constructed for the
select.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Papa, the Guardians have told you that you might survive... all is not lost.”

Samuel put a finger to her lips. “Silence now, child. This is your place now. Do not forget the things you have been taught. Take this, Dear Heart, hold it safe to your breast, guard it. It is our history.” Samuel handed her a slim leather book bound with a black silk tie.

Stella pressed it to her chest, the tears once held in check, now overflowing down unprotected cheeks. Mae's eyes met hers. “Go now Stella-girl... take the opportunity you have been given.”

Her knuckles white as she clutched the book, misery etched its path on her countenance. “It will never be the same without you both.”

A clear bell-tone pealed, reminding Stella of duty. Her duty to leave her parents behind. While the knowledge of
her
future, the safe environment of the sphere was a burden laid on her heart.

Stella's face turned to look at the sphere, shimmering in a watery iridescence as a giant cloche. But people were not plants,  their future safekeeping a promise of a life with a family, fractured by separation.

Stella bent her head to kiss Samuel and Mae goodbye. Gently unwinding the face mask the Guardians had constructed, she laid a kiss, soft as butterfly wings on the woman who had nurtured her every desire. The skin giving way like tissue-thin silk under the pressure of her lips. Turning to her father, his pale blue eyes watering, she cradled his head while she pressed a kiss to his forehead. She lowered his head and took a last, lingering look, knowing this was the final time she would view her parents in this realm.

Lifting her skirts, she pivoted away, dropping them as she walked...no,
as she ran,
brushing tears from her cheeks, the book clutched tightly in her other hand, the candle hanging from its copper loop in her squeezed finger. Approaching the doorway to the sphere, she was the last
select
to be ushered inside, casting one final glance, she saw her parents supine forms, clasped hands held tightly, her mother's mask forgotten beside her.

Stella whirled toward the entrance, losing hold of the book,  dropping it on the earth now laden with ash. She picked it up, her last gift from Father. Seeing the title, she peered closer:
Asteroid; A History of When the Rocks Fell.

Stella moved forward as the hole closed behind her, a fierce idea blooming in her consciousness to remember...
who they had been
.
As an indeterminate future stretched before her....

CHAPTER 1

One Hundred Forty Years Later

Clara beheld the shrouded exterior as she did each morning, her hands pressed against the pliable interior of the sphere, fingers sinking into its surface, stopped before breaching the Outside. The yearning was the same,
she wished to experience the Outside
.

Sighing, Clara turned from the misty view outside the molded window. Her petticoats swept together, wrapping her bare legs, stockings laid out for her on the bed.

Olive knocked on the door. “Mistress, may I enter your chamber?”

“Yes.”

She entered with steam-pressed clothing draped over her arm, scads of material in a rich turquoise. Clara hated it, hated it all.

“Princess,” inclining her head.

Clara recognized she was penalizing Olive unfairly. Who truly wished to celebrate her Day of Birth? Utter nonsense.

Olive peered at her Princess from under her lashes, she was a formidable young lady, aquamarine eyes which flashed with energetic temper, deep mahogany hair that cascaded to her waist, very handsome but...uncooperative when it came to dressings.

“Please Princess, they await your appearance this day.”

“Does my mother await?” Clara asked.

Olive knew that the Queen was deep in her cup and it was not yet midday. “Our Queen has begun her own celebration.”

No surprise to Clara, deep in spirits,
celebration or no.

Her people wished to see her adorned in her finery (a loathsome pursuit) to be reminded that she was their Princess, the one that saw to their happiness, where her mother, the Queen, failed them at every turn.

Olive interrupted her internal musings, “My lady, please employ the bedpost.”

Grabbing the stays that bound the corset, pulling each cross-member, Olive took up the slack, when reaching the end, she pulled with all her might, Clara gasped, “Must it be so tight, I cannot breath properly.”

“It must be hand-span,” as the last stay was tightened to faint-worthiness.

Finally, Olive bent to use the shoe hook on Clara's high heels, each button a luminescent mother-of-pearl.

Clara took in the altered version of herself, the one that did not roam any space in her head. “Do you not think you are agreeable, mistress?”

Clara gazed at her image, creamy expanses of pale skin met the weak light from the sphere window climbing up to a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and strange-colored blue eyes, a dark fall of hair that was red in a certain light, brushed her hips where they swelled. Her mother would be pleased, she supposed. But Clara wanted to change into her waistcoat and linen skirt she wore when she visited the oyster fields.

She turned to Olive. “I look comely enough to satisfy the Queen.”

“And Prince Frederick,” Olive added.

Yes, she must not forget her upcoming nuptials to the Prince. The thought brought a searing tide of resentment, coiling in her breastbone painfully.

Clara sat at the vanity while Olive began weaving the pearls into her hair, a rainbow of shimmering colors began to wink and disappear in the plaiting. “Do you wish to wear it all at the,” she indicated the back of Clara's head, “your highness?”

She wished to not attend her Day of Birth celebration.

“No, Olive, just the forward section... leave the remainder down.”

She swept the forward part of Clara's hair off her face in an elaborate coil, twining at the top, back of her head, the pearls the size of a pinky nail, weaving around it like a crown. Then arranged and rearranged Clara's hair until she was satisfied.

“There. That will do,” she said with satisfaction.

Clara stared at her reflection, voluminous eyes gazed back, huge in her small face with part of the rich, deep red hair piled on top, the pearls shimmering in the low light.

She stood, giving Olive a gracious nod. “You are most clever with your ministrations.”

Olive gave Clara a deep curtsey, which she bore as she did her other royal obligations.

Clara procrastinated, wandering over to her window again, pressing her face almost to the sphere barrier, its soft but impenetrable surface her prison.

“Princess?”

“Yes, Olive,” Clara said without turning.

“I implore you, do not stand so often or close to the window. You have heard the reports of
savages,
have you not?”

Yes,
she had
. Again Clara thought of how she longed to explore, seeing for herself what lay beyond her world, the Kingdom of Ohio.

“Yes, I
have
heard and it aggrieves me mightily. If some have survived the bounds of this place,” Clara stretched out her hand to encompass the sphere, “who are we to feel disinclination? Should we not welcome others?”

“It is not safe, my Princess.”

“And who has such musings?”

“The Record Keeper, my lady.”

Clara's full lips thinned into a line of distaste. She detested the idea that one individual held the history and direction of so many.

“Please... make my excuses for another half hour hence.”

Olive hesitated, thinking of the Queen's displeasure. “Yes, Princess.”

Clara turned her face, Olive catching sight of it in profile, “You are not to be blamed, tell the Queen that I was obstinate, as is typical.” Clara's mouth curved into a smile, it pleased her that Queen Ada would suffer irritation
and
keep the dreadful Prince Frederick waiting. A bigger pompous ass the spheres had never seen.

Clara turned to face Outside again, Olive slipping out the door and closing it quietly behind her. A tension slipped out of Clara's shoulders, relieved to own another moment of time before the abhorrent celebration began.

She stood for time uncertain, watching the wind (as she was told that was what it was), caressing the Forest of Trees Outside. As she turned away, her duty before her, she saw movement, whirling around she pressed her face to the sphere's interior, her nose pushing in the softness as goose down. Outside her window, a great male stood, trees flanking his body, partially covered by branches. On his face lay a fierceness. Arrows were slung over a shoulder corded with muscle, a bow in one hand, and strange clothing covering only part of his body, a shocking expanse of skin showing,
immodestly so
.

He was fascinating and most assuredly... a
savage
.

Without warning he flew out of the stand of trees that Clara had been admiring since her childhood, rushing straight for the window she leaned against. Clara clenched her teeth, holding her position, knowing that the sphere was impenetrable but stale fear flooded her mouth as she stood watching the huge male advance at an incredible speed. Clara's heart thumped painfully in her chest and when a hair's breadth remained between the sphere and Clara... he stopped.

*

Bracus looked at the female behind the sphere that the Evil Ones had constructed in his grandfather's grandfather's time, her image obscure. He had watched the female for months and had seen her in strange clothing while supervising workers in the fields of sea creatures that yielded shimmering jewels.

He also knew she was beautiful and... he wanted her.

She was unlike any of the females he had seen, which were rare in his clan. A female was highly prized and safeguarded. His eyes caressed her face, the skin like cream from the cow, her eyes like the sea near his cousin's clan...hair the color of fire burnt down to embers. Bracus looked around warily; knowing he must leave, he was too exposed without the trees at his back. He gave a last look at the female, her expression indecipherable, already he felt
vulnerable that he had revealed himself after his careful months of hiding. Turning, he ground up the hill toward the stand of trees, his long and powerful strides eating up the ground ahead of him. Reaching the forest he looked back at the window where the female watched him, then he turned, disappearing into the stand and made his way back to the clan.

Clara released the breath she had been holding, letting it out in a rush. Light-headed, she sat upon the fainting couch and put her head between her knees. Between the strange episode with the
savage
and the absurd corset, she could not regain her breath. This is how Olive came upon her when she returned to escort her to the celebration. How could that hold a candle's excitement to what had just transpired Outside?

Olive rushed to her. “Princess, what ails you?”

Although not her favorite transgression it was effective and she lied smoothly to Olive, “I think the stays may need loosening.”

“Oh! For the love of the Guardian! Please... forgive me.” Olive rushed around to loosen the stays but Clara knew that would just lengthen the horror of the event and incur additional wrath from the Queen.

“Never mind, it matters not, Olive... hand-span it shall be.”

“As you wish, Princess.”

As she began walking to the doorway, she turned, giving one look back to the window, where the
savage
had looked at her so intimately. He had been
so
alive...
vital.
She knew one thing she had seen would distract her during the entire celebration.

The
savage
had gills.

Turning away from the window, Clara made her way to the door, swinging it open to the hallway which led to the Gathering Room, a place of joy. But not for her... not today.

#

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