The Arrow Journey

The Arrow Journey

Gerard Mulligan

Smashwords Edition May 2017

The Arrow Journey is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2017 by Gerard Mulligan

All rights reserved

Published by

Whimsical Publications, LLC

Florida

http://www.whimsicalpublications.com

ISBN-13 for print book: 978-1-940707-96-9

ISBN-13 for e-book: 978-1-940707-97-6

Cover art by Shyanne England

Editing by Melissa Hosack

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Dedication

In Memory of Dang,

With us for a short time, but the best of times

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Prologue

6000 B.C.

I remembered how the old woman would sit on the log stool and poke continuously at the fire that my mother kept burning day and night. The hearth was located in the center of the big room in our house on hardened clay surrounded by a circle of stones. Grandmother was, it seemed to me at that young age, as eternal as the flame. She simply always was there. She was settled and quiet in front of the fire for most of the time, content to be with the rest of us, and left to dwell on what she alone knew ran through her mind. It was only on rare times, well into the night, that she sometimes livened up. Then, when the men had finished their talking of cattle and crops, when the youngest children had drifted asleep in their mother’s arms and the family was hushed around the fire, would she talk. The story was always the same one with the same beginning and always about the same stranger.

I remember the arrow, she would say. How the flint head flashed in the sunlight as it struck down my father in front of the burning house. I remember the terrible fear and pain as my mother screamed out. And how the Wolf Man loomed up in front of me, axe in hand and ready to strike, when that wonderful boy, with his odd words and strange clothes, appeared as if from nowhere.

Chapter One

Present Day

Henry, turn it off.

Nearly finished, Dad.

And we’re nearly there. Turn it off now, please, or I’ll take it for the rest of the afternoon.

I knew the threat was real enough, as he had done so before, and so reluctantly I switched off the game app. I slipped the phone into my jacket pocket and looked ahead at the road.

Just relax, I said after a moment.

I am relaxed.

You don’t seem relaxed.

I am relaxed, he said slowly. You know Grandad hates those phones.

Grandad is living in the stone age.

We’re here now. Maybe you can leave it off, for me, and try to show some interest in what he’s saying.

Like you do?

He said nothing, deliberately ignoring my remark, and turned off the main road. The car glided along the driveway up to the large ivy-covered house to stop in line with the front porch. Grandad lived on the far edge of the city where there were still some open fields and scattered patches of trees. He kept the gardens and exterior of the house in pristine condition, but the interior had not been changed or decorated in years.

Out, and try to be good, just for the afternoon, Dad said, gathering up his coat and bag. And when we get home, you can play your silly games for the rest of the night if you want.

How long are we staying? I asked as we walked to the door.

Henry, I told you, we’re staying for dinner. Let’s have a nice family afternoon. I am asking you as a favor to me. Besides, it’s not that bad. You used to love coming here when you were small, listening to Grandad’s stories and looking at all his cool things.

Dad, please, I was a kid then.

But all those arrowheads and axes are still exciting, aren’t they?

They were, when I was a kid. I’m not a child anymore. Anyways, he doesn’t let me go near them.

Because they’re thousands of years old. They’re valuable, I guess. He spent years at the university collecting them.

He pressed the doorbell and we waited in silence. I was not looking forward to this. An entire afternoon wasted doing nothing, basically.

A few moments later, the door was opened by Grandad, tall and slim, leaning on a walking stick.

Well, my two boys, good to see you, he said with a smile.

I went forward and gave the older man a brief half-hearted hug, as was expected. He tapped me on the shoulder and was probably as relieved as me when I pulled away.

Grandad, missed you.

I am sure you did.

My dad and the older man shook hands.

You’re late, Grandad pointed out.

The hospital called me in this morning. There was a problem with one of my patients and I had to sort it out first. Work is always…busy. You know how it is.

Work, work, work, Grandad said, turning into the house. That’s all the younger generation does these days. You have all those gadgets and machines, and still you work all the time. Come in.

The two of them had settled down in the front room with coffee to discuss what they always talked about—Grandad’s health and his continued insistence on living alone in the house. My dad wanted him to sell the house and move into an apartment closer to us in the city, but Grandad always, politely, refused. I was sitting in a large antique chair beside an overgrown, almost wild, fern and was growing increasingly bored by the conversation. At my first planned and deliberate yawn, I was given the nod from my dad. That meant I was officially excused at least until dinner. After a few moments, I slipped out from the chair and left the room to roam the house.

As a child, I had spent hours in the house running from room to room or playing on the floor of Grandad’s office, messing around with toys while he worked on his latest academic paper. The house had been huge and exciting back then, but now just seemed old-fashioned and borderline unkempt.

I found myself walking, almost without knowing, toward the old office on the ground floor. Reaching it, I pushed the door open and peered in. It was exactly the same as it had always been. The oak desk was piled high with papers, books, letterheads, and various odds and bits. The shelves were similarly cluttered and dusty.

My phone started to ring in my pocket and I was turning away from the door to answer it when I noticed the glass case on the wall behind the desk.

As the phone rang on, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure my dad had not crept up on me and then stepped into the room. I went around the desk to the glass case. I remembered, as Dad had mentioned in the car, it contained a number of stray finds from some of the many archaeological excavations Grandad had worked on all over the country.

The phone stopped ringing.

It was true what Dad had said, I used to love listening to what I thought then were thrilling tales from Grandad’s time as an archaeologist. I would look with awe over his collection of ancient flint arrowheads, broken ceramic pieces, and pieces of animal bone he had inadvertently or on purpose forgotten to hand into the university.

As I looked down at the collection in the case, it now, however, seemed drab and uninteresting. But then I gave a short laugh for there, resting on the top shelf covered in dust, was the small arrowhead which, in a jolt I abruptly recalled, had so fascinated me as a child. It had been struck from a single piece of pure white flint except for a black jagged line, looking almost like a stylized lightning strike, running down its center. I wondered, then and there in the moment, what the arrowhead felt like to touch. As Dad had said, Grandad never allowed me to hold them when I was a child, saying they were too fragile. What he really meant, of course, was he did not trust me not to break them.

I reached up and pulled at the round handle on the front of the case. It was locked. I pulled again harder. To my surprise, the lock simply snapped away under my strength and the door to the glass case popped out. I had not meant to do that, had I? Either way, the glass case was now open. Slowly, inch by inch, I brought my hand up toward the arrowhead. My finger grazed the hard smooth surface.

I felt a punch against my shoulder as I slammed straight into something large. The impact and unexpected sting shook my whole body. What had happened? Had I slipped and somehow fallen against the desk? The object I had banged into was thrown forward, though, by the crash. It hit the ground, which I realized was not covered anymore in the wooden floorboards of Grandad’s office, but tall brown grass.

Where was I exactly? Had I not just been in the house? I peered down at the object and saw it was covered in short hairs and now lay still. Had Grandad gotten a dog without telling anyone? After a moment, when my mind caught up with the reality of what my eyes were seeing, I saw in fact that it not an animal but a man who, for whatever reason, was dressed in a dog costume of some sort. Now that he was lying down, I could clearly see his form underneath the costume. He seemed to have stopped cold. To his right, I just then noticed, there was a large stick on fire implanted into the ground.

What was going on? The whole thing must, I thought, be part of a stage play that the man was acting in. The costumes and flaming stick all looked like they came from one of Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear or one of them, that we had read in school over the years. I stepped around the man, more out of curiosity than for any sane reason, and saw that he had a gash of blood on his forehead. A very realistic bright berry red, I had to admit. There was a boulder protruding from the ground and it almost appeared as if he had fallen and hit his head on that. How, though, had I gone from Grandad’s office into a play and, moreover, one that was set outdoors? Had I fallen out one of the windows into the garden? I needed to find out where I was first.

I looked up from the man to see a wooden house with its roof on fire, grey smoke drifting up into a pale blue sky, a short distance away. The house was standing in the middle of a large clearing surrounded by woodland. Perhaps it was not a play after all. Was I on a movie set instead? A girl appeared in front of me. Where had she come from? Had she been hiding in the grass? She was about my age with raven-colored hair cut short and stood up to my shoulder. She was also wearing a strange animal costume. She shouted something I did not understand. She must not speak English, I thought, so maybe she was from abroad. She was very pretty, I noticed. Again, the girl said something, quieter this time, and pointed away from me over my shoulder. I turned around and found another older woman standing there.

Hello, I said.

Then, behind the older woman, where the ground sloped slightly downward, I saw what the girl was probably really pointing to. A line of men, five or six, likewise dressed in dog costumes, were slowly coming up the incline toward us. I watched them for a few moments. Was it just me or did they seem to be spreading out as they got nearer, as if, almost ridiculously I thought, they were attempting to circle around us. Who were these men?

Everything seemed wrong here. The girl said something once more and reached out to grab my hand to pull me toward her. I stumbled a foot or so in her direction but then remained there in a stunned sort of way trying to figure out what was going on. I just could not understand what she wanted, but I could see she was genuinely scared. She shook her head at me and, releasing me to take the hand of the older woman, they both ran toward the burning house. I watched them as they reached the house and veered off to one side to head for the tree line behind.

Why were they fleeing a movie set? I looked about me again and saw, other than the men who were still getting closer all the while, there was now no one else near me. The only other structure I saw was a timber fence about twenty feet away with two shaggy brown cows who stared at the burning house with detached bovine curiosity. I had been on a movie set once. My friend Pauline from school had a friend who got a small part in some low-key television movie and invited us on a day tour as a treat. That movie set had been a busy place. There had been lots of people, cameras, monitors, food stalls, long rows of wires, and equipment everywhere. There was nothing here but a burning house, two cows, and some men. Were they actors? I gazed at them for longer this time and saw that each man was holding a type of stick or something in their hands.

This was just plain odd, but one thing I knew from growing up in the city was that if you thought it was trouble, it probably was trouble. I decided, movie set or no movie set, to run. I broke into a jog and, for want of a better direction, set off after the girl and woman. As I went by the house, and felt the heat coming from the crackling thatch, I saw a man lying prone on the ground. There was a rod with feathers at the end sticking out of his chest. This was no movie set.

Chapter Two

The Wolf Men attacked during the day while Yellow Face was still in the sky looking down. Such was the arrogance of the Wolf Men. They did not even hide their crime in the darkness.

I was by the river, collecting water for the night, with my mother. We were idly discussing how soon the heavily pregnant cow might give birth when I smelled the smoke coming through the trees. I knew in a moment something terrible was happening. I dropped the water jug and ran back along the path with my mother coming behind me. We broke into the clearing as the fire was spreading to cover the entire roof of our house. I saw my father there. He must have been inside the house and had come out, for he was standing right in front of the doorway. He was peering out through the smoke across the farm to see where the attack had come from. I spotted the archer, in the wheat field with his back to us, who had fired the burning arrows onto the roof.

The archer must have seen my father as well for he selected another arrow from his quiver and, not wasting time to light it from the torch struck into the ground beside him, pulled back on the bow.

I knew my father would not hear me over the noise of the fire so, instead, without even thinking about my actions, I set off running toward the archer. I was unarmed and he was twice my size, but I had to do something to help. I covered the ground between myself and the