The First Story Read online

  The First Story

  C. Bradley Owens

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ©2018 C. Bradley Owens

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the publisher, except for use in brief quotations as permitted by United States copyright law.

  Published by Authors 4 Authors Publishing

  11700 Mukilteo Speedway Ste 201 PM 1044

  Mukilteo, WA 98275

  www.authors4authorspublishing.com

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-64477-000-9

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64477-001-6

  Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-64477-002-3

  Edited by Rebecca Mikkelson

  Proofread by B. C. Marine

  Cover design and illustration ©2018 Sam Dutter. All rights reserved.

  Authors 4 Authors Content Rating and copyright are set in Poppins by default.

  All other text is set in URW Classico by default.

  Authors 4 Authors Content Rating

  This title has been rated 14+ appropriate for teens and contains:

  moderate language

  intense violence

  violent hate crime

  brief implied sex

  moderate alcohol use

  LGBTQ+ discussion

  For more information on our rating system, please, visit our Content Guide .

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all of the daydreamers. The ones who escape to fantasy and feel more comfortable there. I understand you.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Toy Peddler

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2: A Meeting in the Woods

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4: Consultation with the Chittering Underground

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6: A Meeting at the Inn

  Chapter 7: The Puppeteer

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9: The Innkeeper

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11: Frau Iver

  Chapter 12: A Rough Start

  Chapter 13: The Dottore

  Chapter 14: Something’s Not Right

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16: The Damsel’s Lament

  Chapter 17: Taking Inventory

  Chapter 18: The Inn at the Edge of the Woods

  Chapter 19: Making a Plan

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21: A Broken Toy

  Chapter 22: Accusations

  Chapter 23: The Perpetual Danger

  Chapter 24: Separating Is a Plan

  Chapter 25: Baba Vedma

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27: An Appointment with the Dottore

  Chapter 28: Paroxysm

  Chapter 29: Further Complications

  Chapter 30: The Tower of Destiny

  Chapter 31: Leaving the Path

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33: A Gingerbread House

  Chapter 34: Droll Mary

  Chapter 35: Further Developments

  Chapter 36: A New Council

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38: The Origamist

  Chapter 39: Newly Acquainted Old Friends

  Chapter 40: The Angler

  Chapter 41: A Small Corner of Creativity

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43: A Growl and a Web

  Chapter 44: In the Dark

  Chapter 45: Daybreak

  Chapter 46: Below the Horizon

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48: Travis, in Sales

  Chapter 49: The Warehouse

  Chapter 50: The Newlyweds

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52: The Conspirators

  Chapter 53: A Drink at the Inn

  Chapter 54: Another Meeting in the Woods

  Chapter 55: A Plan

  Chapter 56: The Keeper of Ways

  Chapter 57: Flux

  Chapter 58: The Caves of Providence

  Chapter 59: Confrontation

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61: Meanwhile, in the Cave

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63: Rally

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65: One More Complication

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67: Abend

  Chapter 68: More Flux

  Chapter 69: Clarity

  Chapter 70: The Sea

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72: Flux 2.0

  Chapter 73: Parley

  Chapter 74: Wizards and Dragons

  Chapter 75: A New Reality

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77: A New Story

  Chapter 78: A New Beginning

  Chapter 79: One More

  Chapter 80: A Place for All

  Chapter 81: The Passenger

  Chapter 82: A Walk through the Forest

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84: Epilogue, the First

  PART TWO

  Chapter 85: The Slashing Hero

  Chapter 86: Interlude

  Chapter 87: Erde

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89: Consultation with a Duality

  Chapter 90: The Power of Flight

  Chapter 91: Judgment

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93: The Magic Board

  Chapter 94: The Sisters of Creation

  Chapter 95: Little Girl Detective

  Chapter 96: Magnus Woolgather and the Wish for the Day

  Chapter 97: A Meeting of Elders

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99: A Confrontation

  Chapter 100: An Untold Tale

  Chapter 101: A Coming War

  Chapter 102: A Secret Cave

  Chapter 103: War

  Chapter 104: Descent

  Chapter 105: The Unmaking

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107: Nothing

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109: The World Unmade

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111: Untitled

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113: Epilogue, the Second

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The Toy Peddler

  Out of the mists of a dreary night, the Toy Peddler came to sell his wares. His long, slender legs, affixed with large paddle-like feet, shuffled over the cobblestones and carried him through the early morning mist. His burden, a large sack filled to overflowing with toys of every description, perched atop his bony shoulders and was much lighter than it should have been.

  “Toys for sale or trade! Come to me, children!” His cry rang out, and the children came.

  They came from their homes, streaming into the night, hoping for that perfect toy, and they were not disappointed. The Toy Peddler’s stockpile of toys flowed freely from the sack, and the children gave up their money happily in exchange.

  One child received the perfect doll; another got the perfect truck, or stuffed animal, or puzzle box. The selection was impressively targeted; each child got just what he or she desired. The Toy Peddler smiled in response to all the satisfied customers, but he was waiting for something in particular to happen.

  On and on they came, but the sack full of toys never diminished, not even by one single, solitary bouncing ball.

  “I want a doll!” one young girl demanded suddenly from behind the Toy Peddler. Her fine nightgown, adorned with silk ribbons that matched perfectly the ones tying up her yellow hair in equal length pigtails, revealed her high station in life. The fistful of paper money confirmed her standing.

  The Toy Peddler turned and looked down at the little girl hold
ing the bills out in his direction. It was far too much for any regular doll. He thrust his hand into the toy bag and rifled through his stock until he found want he wanted. He held the doll in front of the girl; she reached for the toy. The delicately painted porcelain face, the exquisitely tailored gown, the bows, the hair; it was the perfect doll for such a wealthy patron.

  “What do you have to trade?” the Toy Peddler asked, holding the doll just out of reach.

  “I have money,” the girl said, confusion behind her eyes.

  He looked at her with his own transactional eyes until he found what he was looking for.

  “How about a dream?” the Toy Peddler asked, his skeletal finger touching the girl’s forehead.

  “A dream? What good is that?”

  “Then, you won’t miss it. Just one. A dream for a doll. What do you say?”

  The girl thought for a brief moment as the Toy Peddler held the doll closer to her. She nodded slowly. How would she miss one dream? The Toy Peddler’s finger touched the girl’s forehead, tracing a line just above her eyebrows until he found what he wanted. He held the dream in his palm, handing the doll to the girl.

  She smiled, but there was now a question behind her eyes. “What dream did you take?” she asked.

  “Ah, now that would be cheating,” the Toy Peddler said and thrust his dream-filled hand into the pouch at his side. “Toys for sale or trade! Come to me, children!” his cry rang out through the haze and the gloom.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the little boy said. “Do you have what I want?” He held up his favorite toy, a well-used model firetruck, for the Toy Peddler to inspect.

  The Toy Peddler looked the boy over and nodded. He reached into the pouch at his side and held out a bony finger to the boy’s forehead; then he spoke a secret word.

  “It’s warm,” the boy said, rubbing his temple, a smile slowly growing. The Toy Peddler took the truck and flung it into his pack. The boy shut his eyes, and his smile became nearly too big to be contained. The Toy Peddler walked on into the night.

  “I got a doll,” the young girl said, her head held high.

  The boy continued to smile and did not care to look at the toy.

  “Toys for sale or trade! Come to me, children!” The Toy Peddler disappeared into the mists of the dreary night, looking for some new place to sell his wares.

  Chapter 1

  Matt sat cross-legged atop the picnic table, facing his best friend, John. The park in the center of town was always deserted at this time of day, after three o’clock but before four thirty. They came every day, when the forces in their lives allowed, and shared their stories.

  “Well?” Matt asked, his eyes wide with expectation.

  “Is he evil?” John was sitting cross-legged, like Matt, his arms folded like his legs, his mouth shifted to the left and pursed, and his brow furrowed in thought.

  “No, well, not really, no.” Matt looked down at his laptop and the words he had written there. “He’s more like justice, y’know?”

  John, his mouth still screwed left, his brow still furrowed, began to nod slowly, hesitantly.

  Matt continued, “Like, he takes from people who don’t appreciate what they have.”

  “He took a dream from a little girl.”

  “Right!” Matt was too excited. He wanted John to like this new story. “Because she didn’t appreciate having the luxury of any dream she wanted.”

  “And the little boy was poor…”

  “So, he doesn’t have that luxury. The Toy Peddler tries to correct that.”

  “He’s equity, parity,” John said, his face taking on a calm, thoughtful look that Matt knew meant he understood. “He’s like the Robin Hood trope, taking from the rich to give to the poor, but with dreams.”

  “Exactly!” Matt clapped his hands together too loudly, which made John laugh out loud. “You said we needed something different. The Growl in the Night, the Chittering Underground, even the Slashing Hero, you said were too stereotypical.”

  “Yeah, so the Toy Peddler is like Santa Claus but—”

  “With a fresh new take.”

  “Is that why you set the story in a village right out of Grimms’ fairy tales?”

  “Yeah, it’s that juxsty, uh…”

  “Juxtaposition.”

  “Right, juxtaposition of the traditional but in a fresh, new way.”

  John nodded more animatedly, his mouth smiling, his brow raised pleasantly. “I like it,” he pronounced.

  Matt sighed, a broad, satisfied smile filling his face. “What about you?” Matt put his laptop back into his backpack. “You got anything new?”

  John shook his head. “I’ve got some ideas, but I haven’t written any down yet. I like this direction. Old fairy tales with new spins. This could work.” He glanced down at his phone, checking the time. “But I got this thing, a family thing, I have to go to.”

  “Okay.” Matt couldn’t hide his disappointment. It was Friday. Usually, on Fridays, they could work for hours, uninterrupted, until the people going out for the evening started showing up.

  “I should go,” John said as he slid off the table top and plopped onto the ground. He dusted off the back of his black jeans, fiddled a bit with his black t-shirt, and ran his fingers through his dyed black hair. Matt remembered when John had first begun to wear nothing but black, about the time they had both turned fourteen. It had been a type of rebellion, Matt supposed, especially when he had first dyed his hair, but now, a year and a half later, it had become his personal style. It meant something to him—that was obvious—and Matt accepted that implicitly.

  Matt watched John shift from foot to foot, his black sneakers drumming up miniature dust clouds. “Is it still bad?”

  John nodded. “I’ll just go the long way ‘round,” he said, rubbing his shoulder, the one where the bruise was just visible above the neckline of his shirt.

  “We could go to the police.”

  “And say what?” John was shaking his head and rubbing his sore shoulder.

  “It’s assault. This ain’t the 1950s. Nobody has to put up with bullies anymore.”

  John continued to shake his head. “Dad said to man up.” John’s voice was colorless as he reminded Matt of the one time he had tried to get help before, and pointing out, in a subtly figurative way, that the police were men very much like his father.

  “You want me to walk with you?” Matt offered, his back just a bit straighter than usual, hoping the added posture made up for the complete lack of musculature.

  John smiled, his lips turned inward, trying to be respectful. “It’s a nice thought, but no reason you should get beat up too. I’ll take the long way ‘round.”

  “Okay, but be careful.”

  The two shook hands, awkwardly. They never quite knew how to say goodbye. They used to pat each other’s arms in a decidedly rhythmless staccato, but that had gotten old quickly. John had offered a fist bump once, only once. It had felt so inauthentic that they both had grimaced. So, they graduated to handshakes, which was better, marginally, than the waving to each other from less than two feet away.

  Matt took his time rearranging his backpack. The laptop had mashed the handouts from school, but he didn’t care much about that. There was a nagging, a thought, dark and sinister, forming in his head. He started to walk toward his house, the exact opposite direction from John, but felt the need to turn. He watched John walk directly down Main Street.

  “What’s he doing?” Matt asked no one. The long way around would have been to cross over two streets, go through the pharmacy, pretending to shop but buying nothing and exiting through the back door, then around the hotel by the river. Main Street would take him directly toward the group of seniors who always hung out in front of the convenience store on main, the very group that always bullied him.

  Matt stood still, watching his friend walk toward danger. He was too far away to call to. Maybe he had forgotten what awaited on Main? That didn’t seem likely. Maybe he was going t
o try to face them, to fight them, to… Matt sighed as John disappeared around the corner and was firmly on Main Street.

  “Damn it, John!” Matt exclaimed and walked briskly, following John’s trail, trying not to run; running would mean there was absolutely something bad about to happen. He had no reason to expect the worst. Maybe the seniors would just call him names, those truly creative names that no bully ever had thought of. He laughed at his own sarcasm and thought about creating a character who was a bully and just as original as every other bully, a walking stereotype, a caricature of humanity, a twisted, desiccated view of humanity.

  He smiled at his use of language. John had taught him the definition of “desiccated” in reference to a character he had created with vampiric qualities. John would be proud of the relative elevation of the verbiage of his thought process right now. But that was not the pressing issue at the moment.

  Matt walked faster, which became a half-walk, half-jog, which made his backpack jump and jar against his back. He could feel the hard case of his laptop slapping the bone at the top of his shoulder, and then he thought about how much worse a fist would feel. He began to jog.

  It took a moment for him to register the sight in front of him. The group of seniors, that ever-present mob of delinquents, had pulled John just inside the alley between the convenience store and the bank. He could just see John’s black hair between the dirt-colored heads of the bullies. Then he saw something hard, wooden, in the hands of the main bully, a truly disgusting example of humanity whom everyone called Little Bill because he was named after his father.

  Matt stopped walking, the sight so jarring that it literally stopped him. It wasn’t until he recognized the wooden thing as a baseball bat that he started walking again. He took a step as he watched Little Bill hold the bat, one hand on the handle, the other on the barrel, and press it against John’s nose. There was laughter coming from the others, sick, demented, disgusting laughter. Matt took another step.

  Little Bill pulled the bat close to his own face; then he thrust it forward, forcefully. Matt gasped at the sound it made as it connected with his friend’s forehead. It was a thud, which was expected, but underneath the thud was a sickening, wet sound, like a large stone dropped onto a rain-soaked lawn. Matt watched John’s head fling back and connect to the brick wall behind him. Another thud, more like a smack, shot out of the alley.