Resident aliens escape a lost homeworld on a quest to find the New Restingplace of the Dead. A blood feud follows them to a colony on Earth. Can they avoid assassination and reach their destination before time runs out?
In this plot-driven journey story perfect for lovers of science fiction fantasy, diverse companions protect Longists Dr. Meenins and Linda Deemer from curious close encounter seekers while they manage a shared dreamscape to bolster his memories of extraterrestrial travel. Will Dr. Meenins reconcile with his nemesis David Shanklen before time runs out?
“It was a cross between epic fantasy with the hero's journey and an epic quest and all that, with science fiction and the use of planets and grave destruction as a kind of apocalyptic story line. This was a fun ride and I was deeply sad when it was over. The best books end that way, and if you love stories like that, give Seven Beyond a chance!” --Katelyn Hensel at Reader’s Favorites
A quest novel that, in broader terms, is a cautionary tale with many tongue-in-cheek references to true human nature and injustices of contemporary society. Similar to Cloud Atlas or The Time Traveler’s Wife.
A six-wheeled imperial berlin hurtled along the mountain road. Covered driving lamps mounted on the high driver's seat cast yellow beams into the yawning night. Icy sleet cut into the driver's hands, which gripped the sodden reins. His companion's cloak flew out behind him like the black wings of Satan. Eight great horses labored, and behind them a mounted escort, their uniforms ruined by the elements, rode unruly thoroughbreds who were stamping and wheezing in the mountain air.
Inside the coach, Dr. David Christopher Meenins braced himself against sudden lurches, his muscles aching from the rough ride. The overhead filigree lamp swung back and forth. Thin-slatted blinds banged ceaselessly against the doorframe.
With a frozen expression of tolerance, Lady Drasher Elizabeth Tasgneganz tightly gripped the armrests. Her jeweled necklace resting against her aging skin, threw glints of reflected light onto her traveling cloak. Two servants, seated behind in starched uniforms, kept their heads bowed and their shoulders stiff.
Dr. Virgil Augustus Grammario sat across from Christopher Meenins, his face both blanched and ruddy. The rotund belly under a silk waistcoat bounced in a never-ending dance. The coach stopped. Christopher Meenins steadied the swinging lamp. A question came into Lady Drasher's eyes. “Perhaps the road's impassable,” Dr. Grammario suggested.
“We haven't come this far to be turned back,” Lady Drasher said. Dr. Meenins pulled the blind cord and raised the slats. He was greeted by his own reflection, deep eyes under a high cranium.
Slushy rain splattered against the window. The coachman's face, unevenly lit from the lamp he held at chest level, crowded Dr. Meenins' narrow view. Christopher released the interior lock, and the door swung open toward the jagged mountain wall. The driver, his
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greatcoat stiff and dripping, leaned into the berlin. The carpeted floor was level with his waist.
“My Lady,” he said, “we have reached the bridge. I'll just spell the horses.”
Lady Drasher nodded, and the coachman closed the wet door. Christopher saw the escort dismount. Moving around a sputtering lamp set out on the ground, the guardsmen secured feedbags on the winded horses and covered them with canvas tarps.
Unwilling to brave the elements, Dr. Grammario moved about the roomy berlin. With his back turned, he drank from a silver flask. The two servants straightened the furnishings and brewed tea. Lady Drasher applied perfume to her throat and wrists, freshening the air with the scent of lavender and rosehip.
Christopher jerked back when the coachman's underlit face loomed again at the berlin's door. The driver leaned in, his elbow on the carpet. Pleasure registered on his weathered face. Perhaps he caught the scent of perfume. “There's somebody here,” he said. “On the road by the bridge.”
“It must be someone local,” Virgil Grammario said.
“It's a woman,” the driver added. “Pregnant and in pain.”
“See to her, Sylvia,” Lady Drasher told a servant.
“But the storm!” Sylvia said. “The disease!”
“I'll go,” Christopher Meenins said. “A doctor should have a look.”
“Your reputation is well deserved, Dr. Meenins,” Lady Drasher said and reached into
her traveling bag. “Please, before you assume the risk, sip this poteen.”
“What is it?” Virgil asked. “A stimulant?”
“A barrier against infection,” Lady Drasher said. Christopher broke the vial’s fragile
top and tossed the liquid into the back of his throat, squinting at the chalky taste. He buttoned his overcoat and exited the coach.
The rain had stopped for the moment. A too-close moon backlit rolling clouds that raced east as if to escape the region. The granite mountains looked impenetrable. Below the
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deep cliff, a smooth-faced glacier reflected intermittent moonlight as if unwilling to receive any warming foreign influence.
The doctor hunched his shoulders and walked with the driver to the bridge where howling wind tortured the unnatural expanse of steel and iron. The coachman gestured with an arm over his head. Christopher joined him near the embankment and hastily knelt down by a trembling figure in a wet cloak and ruined slippers. She turned her icy blue eyes to him, vacant in the moonlight, deeply set behind high cheekbones and a broad forehead. She appeared otherworldly, deposited there as though banished from the company of her own kind.
And she was pregnant, in her seventh month. Christopher ascertained that her pain was occasioned by a fall and a swollen ankle. He lifted the wayfayer and carried her back to the berlin. He saw the faces of Sylvia and Virgil peering together from the window.
Christopher spoke to the coachman. “Get underway quickly. There’s little time.” He placed the gray figure onto the berlin’s carpet before he climbed in after her. “But she cannot be in here!” Sylvia protested. “We will all die!”
“You shall not die today except by my hand,” Lady Drasher said.
Christopher put his overcoat around the poor woman's shoulders, tugging lightly at her cloak. She lowered her eyes and turned away, struggling out of her thin rags.
Christopher handed the dripping laundry to the second servant. She stepped back, unwilling to chance the contact. Christopher opened the berlin's door and tossed the pile out onto the ground. He saw that the horse guard officers were mounted again, awaiting the coachman’s signal. The horses were guided across the bridge before they took up a high- stepping pace into the deep night.
Christopher helped the pregnant woman into his seat, but nearly fell when the coach lurched forward. “Give her some of your clothes,” Lady Drasher told Sylvia. “Unless your body oils might infect her.” With a sour face Sylvia searched through drawers of the storage cases for some second-hand garments.
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“Perhaps a drop of the same poteen for our guest,” Christopher suggested. Lady Drasher produced another ampule. Christopher pretended to drink for instruction and held out the brittle vial. The woman looked around at their faces. She extended her hand from under his coat. Christopher Meenins caught his breath in staring disbelief. On her index finger was the extra joint that only Longist Thespians had.
“What is your name?” he whispered.
“I am Linda, second-right chair to the Redeemer.”
“We can call you Linda Deemer for now,” he returned. “How may I serve you?”
“I visit per the Redeemer's instructions to serve you.”
He whispered, barely breathing, “I'm remembered?”
“You knew David, who shared the words of the Father of the Dead.”
“Those words exist in our Book of Ancients. Anyone may share them.”
“I look forward to learning more.”
Dr. Meenins moved to the seat next to Dr. Grammario and stared out the coach
window. ‘David,’ he thought. David Shanklen, his patient and mentor. Christopher remembered the Blossom County Home and his visits to David Shanklen's padded cell in the asylum's isolation ward. Or had it really even existed?
He traveled now to the only place where the Longists might return. He had dragged unsuspecting Grammario and uncaring Drasher into the night, compelled by his dying hope.
Down the steep mountain slope they descended. The horses labored against the coach's weight, gingerly picking their way along the rocky path. Inside, Linda Deemer dozed in her seat. Dr. Meenins settled into deep reverie.
“Dante tells us,” Lady Drasher said, as though continuing on with an old subject, “Dante tells us there's a dark forest in the middle of one's life.”
Dr. Meenins struggled to couple her linear words into a meaningful sentence. What was that? What was she saying?
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“You don't see the forest on the horizon,” she said. “You’re in it, and then you're on the other side. Then perhaps, Dr. Meenins, once we’re out of the woods, so to speak, you will allow yourself some credit for good work.”
“Dr. Meenins was once a seeker of pleasure,” Dr. Grammario said. “And a scientist of the first water.”
“And what caused you to repudiate pleasure?” Lady Drasher asked.
He sighed, hoping their talk would cease. “Pleasure turns to pain.”
“Moderation prolongs the ecstasy before release,” Virgil claimed, his eyes partly closed
and the fingers of one hand arched near his rosebud mouth.
“One day you awake,” Christopher said, “and realize your kudos have not transformed
you into something more.” He stared out the coach window. “The time fades without a whisper of memory.”
“And this young lady in her unfortunate condition,” Lady Drasher asked. “You have a connection with her?”
“I knew her people.”
“She has sought your company. For what reason?”
“Perhaps she’s been put out,” he said.
Much later the coach and escort stopped again to rest the horses. The soldiers found an
alcove in the mountain and built a small fire to heat a thick stew of aging meat wrapped in bread paste. Lady Drasher with her shivering servants promenaded around the clearing. Her decorated cloak dragged on the soggy ground behind their path. Christopher saw her send Sylvia to invite Linda Deemer into the early morning air.
Near a ruined rail that banked a short section of the road, Dr. Meenins stood smoking with Dr. Grammario. He saw Linda step down from the lighted coach, wearing his greatcoat over the servant's clothes and floppy galoshes. Her hair streaming down her back, Linda joined the promenade. Lady Drasher's diamonds flashed shards of reflected light. Christopher
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felt certain she had a few questions for Linda, determined to draw meaning from these events.
Dr. Grammario joined the officers and asked questions about the stew in lieu of begging a taste. Showy plumes of egret feathers on their shakos dried in the morning air. The statuesque men tolerated Virgil's probing and judged his clothes. They looked to each other for the agreed signal to extend a wooden bowl of stew. They turned their backs while Virgil gobbled their offering, since his entreaty did not include a return gift.
Dr. Meenins joined Linda Deemer near the draft horses. So tall was she, that her head extended four inches above his. “Can you return?” he gently asked.
“I have returned,” she said.
“I mean, can you leave here?”
“I'm second-right chair. My place is secure.”
“Take me with you,” he shamelessly begged.
“My destiny and yours are not the same.”
“Then all is lost?” He looked at the snowcapped peaks. “I feel temporal.”
“Seventy years or seven hundred. Only harmony counts. You have added to our
structure,” Linda Deemer stepped toward the horses hitched in a double row of four.
“Be careful,” Dr. Meenins cautioned.
“There's no danger.”
Linda put her hand on the lead horse's leg. While she stroked the second horse's
muzzle, the driver joined her, sucking his teeth and staring into her face. “Are these your animals?” Linda asked.
“My Lady Tasgneganz maintains an extensive stable.”
“The other four are blanched with fear. You keep the strong horses on the inside.” “So they don't drive us over the cliff.”
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The second horse tossed his head, his mane flashing across Linda's shoulder. “Enough talk, huh, my critic,” Linda said. She stroked his neck and asked the driver, “Doesn't your companion want to stretch his legs?”
The coachman glanced up at the empty driver's seat. After a moment he claimed, “I'm my own man,” and returned to the horseguards’ fire.
Linda gave Dr. Meenins a quiet smile, walking with him to the ancient rail. The morning sun hovered, a quickly cooling orb behind the white and gray sky. Below was the reflecting glacier that inched down the fjord to warmer terrain. “So this is the world you prefer,” she teased. “I can see why you're so committed to the concrete.”
“We must go,” Dr. Meenins claimed. “There is little time.”
Lady Drasher entered the berlin first, followed by the others in orderly fashion. Virgil Grammario scrambled inside last, flushed with the unreasonable fear of being left behind. Once seated, he crossed his stocky legs, his silk trousers wrinkled and stained, and glared at Lady Drasher's implacable face.
The lonely berlin and escort set foot upon a denuded plateau. The horses trotted all morning across the permafrost. Inside, Lady Drasher extended to Linda Deemer a hand- painted tin with layers of white and dark confections in ruffled wrappers. Linda smiled at her benefactress and selected a treasure of chocolate and caramel delight. Lady Drasher stowed the stiff box without thought of her other guests.
“And now we should have a story,” she suggested. “A fanciful tale that will transport us to another time. Full of simile and metaphor, a broad-shouldered allegory elastic enough to convey some great truth in our lives.”
“Tell us about David Shanklen,” Virgil Grammario suggested.
Dr. Meenins saw Linda stiffen and glance his way. “After all,” Virgil added, “it's because of David that we undertook this journey. When exactly did the ecstasy begin? At what point were you able to reach out?”
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“Don't be tedious,” Lady Drasher said. “A fanciful tale I requested, none of this business. Very well, if I must begin, I select this one for our edification.”
Dr. Grammario took a pinch of snuff and wiggled deeper into his tight seat. Linda Deemer smiled at Dr. Meenins, perhaps delighted with the prospect of riding secure and warm, a womb within a womb, while the old woman's voice washed over them with ancient tales of great deeds and lost love.