Wysteria Read online

  Lillith Abendroth

  Wysteria

  Copyright © 2020 by Lillith Abendroth

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  For everyone who thought that I couldn’t do this, and for everyone who knew that I could.

  I did.

  “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

  ― Frederick Douglass

  Contents

  Acknowledgement

  Prologue

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Chapter 25

  26. Chapter 26

  27. Chapter 27

  28. Chapter 28

  29. Chapter 29

  30. Chapter 30

  31. Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgement

  For everyone who helped me, no matter how many times I redid the cover, and then decided to pay an artist anyway. I still appreciate you, and all of your input. Words cannot express just how much I appreciate all of you. Along with those of you that read and re-read the prophecy as many times as I revised it, becoming honorary Wysterians yourselves:

  Sarah Kay

  Kelsie LeCrone

  Samantha Snyder

  Zack Abendroth

  Prologue

  The people of America had grown divided, first by class, and then by religion. Torn apart by a corrupt government and the coming of a new plague, they shortly came to hate each other. It started with a president that had turned into a tyrannical maniac, not caring whether his citizens lived or if they died. Soon it had all crumbled into a merciless civil war, each side ran and fought by those who had survived the plague, or had been immune to it all along.

  Too caught up in their conflict, the people of a divided nation had failed to see the storm bearing down upon them. The Christians called it a biblical prophecy, the second coming of Noah, but to the unbelievers, it was called a ‘consequence of climate change’. The earth was angry, and she was vengeful.

  Fueled by the warming of an angry planet, boiling in its rage, the ice caps melted so rapidly that scientists barely saw it coming. Left with no chance to warn the masses, the higher up among them fled, leaving the less fortunate to fend for themselves, or to die.

  It started simple enough, with a pattering of rain. The simple shower turned quickly into an unstoppable, torrential downpour that went on for days. The days morphed into weeks and then into months until the rain had fallen for so long that some had forgotten a time when the earth had been dry. Children were born and grew to adulthood knowing nothing but rain.

  Swollen by the feeding downpour, the oceans grew until they enveloped the coasts, devouring the seaside towns like a merciless, ravenous monster. It moved inward until all that was left were two islands, fractions of the size of what had once been North America. When the rain had finally stopped, it had left the people as divided as the land.

  One, a group known as the Arcadians, who believed the flood to be akin to Noah’s biblical plight. They fought to force the pagans and nonbelievers from their land, driving them into the sea until they gathered on the neighboring island that soon became known as Wysteria. They forced them out to cleanse their lands in hope that they would be spared.

  Both islands came to be dominated and ruled by a book. For the Arcadians, it was a book they had followed for thousands of years. The one and only holy word of God. They followed it carefully, religiously, becoming slaves to the words written on the pages. Only a few of the original books had survived, copied by hand until they lay in the hands of every Arcadian, the originals kept safe under lock and key.

  Across the ocean, the Wysterians had forged their own tome. A great, leather-bound book filled with prophecies and readings that detailed a time in the future, written by a trio of the most powerful witches among them. One prophecy in particular, told of the end of their world, and every Wysterian among them knew it by heart.

  Beware the awoken. They are seated in ruin.

  A child of Arcadia will start a war, overthrowing the corrupt.

  The serpent defiler will be their end.

  A triad of gems will forge her path of darkness.

  With the power of a foreign sorceress and a fallen soldier, she will grow the talons to tear his heart from his chest.

  When the dragon ascends from the fiery gate, the fanged one will be her end. The Beast of Wysteria will be her final downfall.

  The Feral King, born beneath a halo. He holds fire in his heart, and purity in his soul.

  He will rip the lies from her throat, and become the king of the blue forest.

  When the Feral King finds his queen, only then will she find the key to unlocking the moonlight in his heart.

  When his heart cracks open the sky, the change will rain down among them.

  Together, they will birth the star child.

  The star child alone will unite the nations.

  She will bring forth the new dawn.

  1

  Chapter 1

  She ran.

  Branches scratched her arms and tore through her tangled blonde hair. She stumbled over razor-sharp brambles that tore the hem of her dress to tattered ribbons. She forced herself to move faster, her feet slapping through murky mud puddles. Bare feet crunched over fallen leaves in a rainbow of colors from yellows to fiery reds, and oranges. Over her head, naked branches creaked and swayed in the chill wind. They reached out to grab her like the decayed, skeletal arms of a body long dead.

  She could hear them, baying after her like slavering hounds, screaming her name. She could feel eyes upon her as if a hand would reach out and grab her at any moment. She tore through a break in the trees, the full moon shining over her head. A hand came up to press against her chest as if she could still the hammering of her heart by will alone. She gasped for breath, the cold fall air tearing into her lungs until her chest ached.

  “Stella!” A voice called to her again, this time closer. She felt it like an icy chill against the nape of her neck and she forced herself to continue. To forge ahead despite the fear clutching at her heart like squeezing tendrils.

  She had never been this far away from her home until now. Arcadia lay on a huge island, surrounded on every side by rocky cliff faces that fell into a steep drop into the icy sea. The forest was like a wall separating her village from the outside world.

  Blue eyes wide and shining from her fear, Stella pushed herself t
o move. She forced herself along, even if her legs shook and her heart pounded against her sternum. She had to go, to move. She ran because the fear of what would happen if they caught her devoured any fear she had of the unknown.

  “Stella!” That voice again, a voice she recognized. Her father. He’d caught her leaving the house, as the front door slammed behind her, ripped out of her hand by a strong gust of wind. A sound that rang out around her like a gunshot, awakening him, asleep on the couch. It was as if the elements themselves were out to stop her. To urge her to go back. Stop being foolish.

  She ignored the warnings, but as she ran through the forest, she wondered if she had made the wrong decision. Had running been a mistake? Where would she go, if not back home? Even if she survived the perils of the forests outside of her home, there was nowhere she could go.

  She stopped again, her brain working in tightening circles. If she doubled back and took a winding path, she could avoid the search party. She could make up an excuse and get back in her bed, ready to get up bright and early for service as she had every Sunday.

  As she moved to turn around, something pulled her back. Something deep within her that called to her like a long lost friend. Something primal and instinctual that wouldn’t let her go back. It urged her forward despite the ache in her knees and the shooting pains in her feet. She thought back to the events of that morning. The events that had set thoughts in motion that had pushed her towards her decision to leave.

  Jacob Fischer had been born too early to a mother far too young. They had forced her to carry a baby she didn’t want because the child was ‘God’s will’. She had died in childbirth from her blood loss, leaving the child orphaned and alone. Because of his rough start, Jacob had always been a bit slower than most. Jacob had been taken in by his maternal grandmother after her daughter’s death. She had done little more than use him as another farmhand. A plow mule that she called her grandson.

  He hadn’t spoken his first words until he was school age, and even then they were garbled and hard to understand. He didn’t learn because he hadn’t been taught. No one had bothered to try, seeing him as a burden rather than a living, breathing member of society.

  Stella’s father often said ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, and so Stella had taken it upon herself to teach him. One thing he had never quite gotten the hang of was the concept of thievery. He had often taken what didn’t belong to him because he hadn’t known better. Stella had taken it upon herself to teach him right from wrong. He understood well enough at the moment, until he didn’t anymore. His memory had never been his strong suit. Everyone knew it, but her father had decided to punish him anyway. He didn’t remember what he had done wrong, and most likely didn’t understand why it was wrong in the first place. She had walked into the general store in enough time to see her father striking young Jacob across the face. The spine of his bible caught his nose, breaking it with a sickening crack that Stella could hear at a distance. Jacob shrieked, hands clutching his face as blood splattered down his dirty white dress shirt.

  “Daddy!”

  Her voice had erupted from her throat in a howl before she could stop it, halting her father in his tracks. He turned to look at her, beady brown eyes narrowed to near slits in the shadows of the store. How dare she question him or his choices.

  “Now Stella, listen to me-”

  “Daddy! Why are you hittin’ him? He doesn’t understand! You know that!”

  She threw herself around the edge of the counter to kneel beside Jacob. Wiping away the blood dripping from his nostrils with the back of her hand. His hair, deep blue-black like an oil slick, hung loose and tattered around his gaunt and hollow face. Stella had been raised to respect her elders, even fear them. At that moment she had felt murderous rage that she had yet to feel in her eighteen years of life.

  “Proverbs 13:24. Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.”

  Her father’s voice sounded over her, speaking words that she had heard far too many times in her young life. Words that she was sick to death of hearing. Turning from Jacob as the tears poured down his face, Stella stood. Not for the first time, Stella questioned the bible.

  “He doesn’t know what he was doing! You can’t hit him like-”

  Her father stopped her words in one swift slap that lay hot across her cheek. It snapped her head back, her butterscotch hair flying out around her head like an obscure halo.

  “Hold your tongue, Stella. Honor thy father and mother.”

  “I honor you as I always have, and that will never change. But honor never spoke of following blindly. I question your teaching’s when it comes to matters like these. As mom did.” A timid, fearful part of her urged her to stop, quiet her words. Something inside of her wouldn’t allow her. Something primal had risen, squirming from the depths of her soul and it could not be silenced now.

  “Then you will be put down as she was!”

  His word hit her harder than the slap to her cheek ever could have, and she found herself drowning on dry land. She choked on the breath that wouldn’t come as the world slowed down to slow motion around her. It was an admission of guilt. It was the puzzle piece she had been missing her entire life. The death of her mother had always been a mystery, though she had always suspected him.

  “You? You killed-” she choked on the words, mumbling and sputtering as she desperately pushed them out.

  “There is no place for wild women among the people of Arcadia. I made a mistake by marrying her and lying with her. She could never be tamed.”

  “You killed my mother!” Her voice was a roar in her throat, and when she looked into her father’s eyes, she could see a fear seated within him.

  “She would not obey! So she was put down like the animal she was.” He towered over her, his words bringing a shower of spittle to fleck against her hot cheeks. Normally, she’d have shrunk away, pulled back from him, crippled in her fear, now she took a step forward until she was close enough that when she next spoke, she needn’t speak above a whisper to be heard.

  “I hate you…”

  Stella had always done as she was told. She followed her father’s words without question. She had always held her tongue and swallowed her pride, but now that had changed.

  She wouldn’t fight, not then. She chose to grab Jacob by the hand, smeared crimson with blood, and the slick saltwater from his tears. Without another word she led him from the shop, ignoring her father’s calls for her to stay. She’d avoided him as long as she could, ignoring every word he spoke to her. No explanation could save him, though he tried. During the night when she lay still and seething in her bed, she’d made the decision to go.

  But where would she go? She knew nothing and no one outside of her tiny village. She had no other family anywhere else. Aside from here, there was only Wysteria.

  Legend told stories of Wysteria, an island where flowers bloomed all year long. The bark of the trees grew in shades of blue and purple, imbued by magic. The Wysterian people with their devil magic and heathen beliefs. Magical people whose eyes glowed green in the moonlight, like feral animals. The bloodthirsty monsters who sacrificed souls to appease their gods. Compared to the lies of her father and the fear that he would do to her what he did to her mother, anywhere sounded better than here. Even Wysteria.

  Now, coming through a cluster of trees, Stella could see the edge of the cliff ahead of her. The moss-covered rocks reached up towards the black-velvet sky like dragon’s teeth. To tear at her flesh and throw her into a blackened abyss that terrified her down to her very core.

  Through her stockings, she felt the cold ground pulling at her bare feet, chilling her to the bone. Like a warning, the wind blew around her, frigid and merciless, telling of coming winter. She hesitated as she came to the edge, staring down into the churning water. The waves lapped at the cliff face in mesmerizing patterns. Frothing seafoam hid the bottomless blackness of the ocean beneath. br />
  She had never swum in the ocean before and wasn’t even sure she could if she tried. Her people were taught to fear the ocean and the savage beasts that lay beneath its surface. Even now, fear pushed her to run, but something held her there, rooted on the spot. Something stronger, from somewhere in her heart.

  “Stella!”

  She whipped around, blue eyes searching between the shadows of the forest. She could see figures moving behind the tree trunks, coming to take her. Coming to steal her back to the only home she had ever known. To her death.

  A new fear found her now. Fear of what would happen to her if they caught her. Of what they would do to her. She had heard the whispers. The people of Arcadia told rumors of people running away, and being caught by the night patrol. They were killed, and not quickly. Would her own father do that to her? Surely he would, even to his flesh and blood. After learning of her mother’s death, there was no doubt’s in her mind now. The thought of going back scared her more than the thought of witches and magic.

  “Stella?” another voice, questioning, and this one much closer. She whipped around, and what she saw nearly dropped her to her knees.

  Her mother’s smile looked at her from the shadows, her eyes glinting as if they’d caught the stars themselves. Her blonde hair billowed out behind her, so similar to Stella’s own flaxen mane. She stepped forward, and Stella could see that near the hem of her dress, she faded into blackness.

  She’d come to her, but she wasn’t really there. She was the same dream that Stella had always had. No matter how hard she cried for her, or how desperately she reached for her, she was never close enough to touch.

  “Mama?” Stella’s voice was a whisper, a breath from her lips tossed away by the wind. The sound of it startled her, and she stepped back and away from the rocks.

  “You have to go, child,” though she hadn’t seen her lips moving, she heard her mother’s voice just the same. It was a sound she hadn’t heard since her childhood. She barely remembered it, even now, but she clung to it.