Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories)

CENTRAL
AVENUE
PUBLISHING
EDITION

Copyright © 2013 Molly Ringle

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This Central Avenue Publishing edition is published by arrangement with Molly Ringle.

www.centralavenuepublishing.com

First digital edition published by Central Avenue Publishing,
an imprint of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

PERSEPHONE’S ORCHARD

ISBN 978-1-926760-99-5

Published in Canada with international distribution.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: Michelle Halket

Cover Photography: Courtesy & Copyright Olga Vladimirova (Shutterstock)

PERSEPHONE’S ORCHARD

Prologue

T
HE FIRST GUNSHOT SENT
A
DRIAN
Watts’ dog, Kiri, crashing to the ground with a yelp. Ten meters ahead, in the darkness under a tree, she twitched and then lay still.

The smart thing to do would be to switch realms right away, without her. But he would never leave her.

He sprinted forward and threw himself on the grass, gathering her in his arms. He looked around the park, but the night hid his attacker. All he caught was a shadow and fast footsteps: someone taking cover behind the next tree.

As Adrian was about to dive into the spirit world with Kiri, the second shot came. The bullet tore through his back and out his front. It felt like his midsection had exploded.

Gasping and rolling onto his back, he laid his hand over his belly. The ragged wound stretched as wide as his palm. Blood soaked his T-shirt and jacket. The attacker walked over, both hands on the gun. Adrian could just make him out against the stars: medium height, muscular build. A strange shape around the eyes, and a glassy glint, suggested night vision goggles.

“If you’re mugging me,” Adrian said hoarsely, “I only have twenty dollars on me.”

“I’m not.”

“You know who I am, then?”

“Shut up.”

“I see.” Adrian gagged on the familiar metallic taste of blood, and cleared his throat. “What if I’d been some ordinary bloke, walking his dog in the park?”

“Then you’d be dead.”

Adrian touched the wound on his stomach, where the edges were already itching and trying to pull together. “Yeah. Guess I would be.”

“You will be, next time.” He sounded American, or at least that was Adrian’s best guess. The gun remained pointed at him, and Adrian had to wonder just how well he’d recover if a shot shattered his skull across the ground. Was this the kind of gun that could do that? He could barely see it in the dark, and even if he could, he wouldn’t have any idea. His life hadn’t involved such training so far, and he rather wished it would never have to.

Adrian pulled Kiri closer, curling his arm around her, gathering his strength. She didn’t move. From the feel of the blood on her neck, the shot had hit her in the head, but Adrian didn’t panic yet.

“Listen to me,” said his assailant. “You and your friends go back to your other dimension or whatever you call it, and stay there. Show up among humans again and you’re dead. Understood?”

“We
are
human.” Not important at the moment really, but Adrian’s offended pride couldn’t let the slur stand.

“Shut up. Go away, never come back, never make any more like yourselves, or you’re all dead.”

“Sorry. I don’t make promises to people who shoot dogs.” Adrian’s strength and focus recovered just enough to let him reach for the other realm. He slipped into it, bringing Kiri with him.

His attacker vanished. The city lights winked out, giving way to a sky full of stars. The grass turned into moist dirt scattered with leaves. The park’s landscaping disappeared; a patchy forest of tall trees now stood around Adrian and Kiri. Some kind of monkeys or apes whooped and chattered in the branches.

Adrian rolled onto his side, wincing. Kiri twitched again and whimpered. Her breathing grew steadier.

“It’s all right, girl. Just rest a bit.” He stroked her ears. “We weren’t going to die without getting to meet Sophie, were we? No. We wouldn’t do that. We’ll be okay.” He lay looking at the stars, his pain receding with each breath.

Chapter One

D
ON’T START CRYING
,
S
OPHIE
D
ARROW
repeated to herself as she stared into the small, empty closet in her new dorm room. True, her parents and little brother had just driven away, heading back to Washington, leaving her here at Oregon State University for her first term of college. And yes, her boyfriend was beginning college in a different city and her best friend in an even farther city. So, indeed, Sophie was all alone now, alone to a degree she’d never experienced before; and she knew nobody here, and missed her family and friends so much it felt like a fresh wound in her chest. And meanwhile, of course, panic was rapidly overtaking her at the idea of facing life as a university student.

But surely the other freshmen in the dorm suffered the same problems, and
they
didn’t sound like they were about to cry. They laughed and chatted out in the hall, just past her open door, unfolding their life stories to each other with glee as if this was the best vacation they’d ever taken.

What was wrong with her?

Sophie drew a deep breath, blinked three or four times, and knelt to unpack her shoes into the closet.

All she had to do was get her stuff moved in properly, make this little room feel like home. Then her spirits would recover.

As if this could ever be home, her lonely mind lamented. Home was the drafty farmhouse in Carnation, Washington, out on the highway, the family produce stand set up at the roadside. Home was her room on the second floor, a tattered and colorful oval rug on the uneven hardwood planks, her bed with extra comforters piled up against the chilly nights. Home was Liam, her little brother making a clattering racket on his skateboard in the cracked driveway. Home was sleepovers with Tabitha—now far away in Seattle—or, lately, cozy movie nights with Jacob. Home was Mom and Dad and the dogs, and not having to procure her own food and share a room with a girl she’d never met.

Kneeling on the floor, pulling the packing tape off a box of clothes, Sophie stopped and closed her eyes.
Don’t start crying.

At that point her father’s words came back to her.
Don’t start crying. Start doing.

He said it whenever she threw a frustration fit about homework, or a fight with Liam, or someone bullying Tabitha or herself. “Do something to fix it, and if you can’t, then do something else to make your life better. Tell you what, crying isn’t going to fix it.”

Sophie took another deep breath, in and out, and wiped her eyes. Line up the shoes. There. Already did something. Now, perhaps, to take a picture of how ridiculously tiny her closet was, and send it to Tabitha, who probably had a more glamorous dorm room, since she was at an arts college.

But as Sophie got out her phone, someone wandered into her room, babbling in a foreign language on a cell phone.

Sophie rose to her feet to stare at him, regarding him as both an intruder and a welcome distraction.

He lowered the phone beneath his chin long enough to tell her, in heavily accented words, “I am sorry. This phone, it is like crap. I get signal only here.”

Then he was shouting into the phone again and gesticulating at his invisible acquaintance.

“No problem,” Sophie said, though he couldn’t have noticed, what with his tirade.

Her homesickness subsided a bit as she looked upon this new perspective. She couldn’t imagine studying in an entirely different country, where they didn’t even speak your native language. Poor guy.

She sat on her still-bare mattress, between a box of books and a stack of clothes on hangers, and studied him. His dark brown hair was thick and curly, fluffing out around his head to near-Afro levels. Sophie could do that to her hair if she wished—she had genuine African heritage on her dad’s side. But this boy looked more Mediterranean. Maybe that was Italian he was speaking?

Sophie reached back to scratch her neck, and found her hair was escaping from its clip, tendrils sticking to her skin. The September weather here in Corvallis, Oregon, was turning out hotter and more humid than the university brochures had advertised, and the dorms lacked air conditioning. After carrying all those boxes up two flights of stairs, Sophie was sweaty and sticky.

The boy’s tan skin gleamed at the temples with sweat too, as did the triangle of sparsely-haired chest above his shirt. He was tall and fit, with a perfect complexion, and possessed a certain beauty with that symmetrical face and thick hair. And a foreign accent was usually a plus. But those clothes—
oh, honey
, she thought, adopting her best friend Tabitha’s favorite condescending phrase.

His shirt was striped purple and orange, and a white drawstring zigzagged up its V-neck. His red jeans clung like tights to his body. Golden leather sandals rounded out the ensemble. Seriously, golden, as if he had spray-painted them. Even Sophie didn’t own any footwear so sparkly.

When the boy swung away from her, still arguing in Croatian or Russian or whatever it was, Sophie surreptitiously snapped a photo of him with her own cell. Setting the phone on her lap, she added a message for Tabitha.

Room just got invaded by this guy, shouting on cell in foreign language. Welcome to college.

She sent the text to Tabitha, up in Seattle, and thumbed through her other messages for a minute.

Her little brother Liam had just texted her, presumably from the car,
Mom is txting some1, wtf?
, which sent her stomach into an uneasy dip. She had her suspicions about their mom’s leisure activities lately, and whom she might be texting.

Meanwhile, Sophie’s boyfriend Jacob had told her:
I miss you :(
at which she sighed sadly.

A text bounced in from Tabitha, in response to the photo:
Hi, the Eurotrash club called. They want their clothes back.

Sophie grinned, but felt bad for making fun of the nice clueless visitor. Just then, the guy told the other speaker something that sounded like “Okay” and some kind of goodbye, and switched off his phone. She set hers down too.

He pushed aside her box of books and sat with a sigh beside her, resting his head in both hands. He smelled like a thrift store, as if he had just today purchased that outfit at one.