An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah Read online

  The Alex Hawk Time Travel Series

  A Door Into Time

  Lost in Kragdon-ah

  Return from Kragdon-ah

  Copyright 2020 by Shawn Inmon

  Original Artwork Copyright 2020 by Jerry Weible

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A Note to Readers

  Chapter One | Heartbroken

  Chapter Two | Spring

  Chapter Three | Traders

  Chapter Four | Rinka-ak

  Chapter Five | Godat-ta

  Chapter Six | The Plan

  Chapter Seven | Alex vs. Godat-ta

  Chapter Eight | Alex vs. the Wasta-ta

  Chapter Nine | Here But Gone

  Chapter Ten | Return to Denta-ah

  Chapter Eleven | The Discovery

  Chapter Twelve | The Binding

  Chapter Thirteen | Asleep

  Chapter Fourteen | Missing

  Chapter Fifteen | The Hunt

  Chapter Sixteen | The Battle

  Chapter Seventeen | Klipta-ak

  Chapter Eighteen | Harsh Negotiations

  Chapter Nineteen | From the Skies

  Chapter Twenty | A Plague

  Chapter Twenty-One | Zisla-ta

  Chapter Twenty-Two | Is There No End?

  Chapter Twenty-Three | Survival

  Chapter Twenty-Four | Senta-eh

  Chapter Twenty-Five | A Glimmer of Hope

  Chapter Twenty-Six | Hidden

  Chapter Twenty-Seven | The Diary of Zachary Moorcock

  Chapter Twenty-Eight | Sanda-eh

  Chapter Twenty-Nine | Three Years Later

  Chapter Thirty | Danta-ah

  Chapter Thirty-One | An Invading Army

  Chapter Thirty-Two | Draka-ak the Younger

  Chapter Thirty-Three | Return to Prata-ah

  Chapter Thirty-Four | Signal Boost

  Chapter Thirty-Five | Godat-ta Redux

  Chapter Thirty-Six | Good-bye

  Chapter Thirty-Seven | Arrival

  Chapter Thirty-Eight | Visitors

  Chapter Thirty-Nine | A Brief Future History of Earth

  Chapter Forty | Answers

  Chapter Forty-One | A Door Home

  Chapter Forty-Two | The Door Redux

  Chapter Forty-Three | Oregon

  Chapter Forty-Four | Seven Years Later

  Chapter Forty-Five | Return to the Cliffside

  Epilogue | Winten-ak

  Warrior of Kragdon-ah

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  Also by Shawn Inmon:

  A Note to Readers

  This book is primarily set many centuries in the future. That means that all spoken languages would be unrecognizable to those of us in the twenty-first century. Names—of both people and places—can be difficult when they are so unfamiliar. To make this easier, I have created a short glossary of people, places, and words that are used repeatedly throughout the book. I have tried to provide context for each of these words, especially when they are first used in this book, but if you are unsure of a word or name, I hope you will find the glossary helpful. It is in the very back of the book, and in the ebook version, is accessible through the Table of Contents.

  Chapter One

  Heartbroken

  Alex Hawk fell to his knees.

  After everything he had gone through—six years away from his daughter, fighting a war, rescuing The Chosen One—he had reached the end.

  Everything he had done since stepping through the door had been for one purpose. To return home to Amy.

  And now the door was gone.

  Alex closed his eyes and opened them again to blink through tears of frustration.

  This is the moment I feared the most. What now? There are no more schemes, no more plans, no more quests that might get me back home.

  Monda-ak, Alex’s giant dog, whined slightly at his distress and nuzzled under his arm. Alex laid his head against Monda-ak’s mighty chest and listened to his heart thumping.

  It’s all real. I’m stuck in Kragdon-ah forever.

  Alex was so focused on processing his shock and grief that he did not hear the footsteps approaching from behind.

  First one, then another gentle hand was laid upon his shoulders. He looked up to see Senta-eh and Sekun-ak. Their eyes bore into his, concern etched on their faces.

  “Are you sure this was the spot, Manda-ak?” Sekun-ak said, using Alex’s Winten-ah name.

  That’s right. Neither of you were with the party that first abducted me and took me away from the door.

  Alex reached a hand out and Senta-eh lifted him back to his feet. Monda-ak’s tail wagged uncertainly.

  Alex swallowed hard and pointed to an area thirty paces back from the rolling surf. “It was there. Right there. I stepped through the door and fell unconscious to the ground right in front of it. It was on the morning that we were gathering karak-ta eggs.”

  Alex stopped for a moment, confused. When he had stepped foot in Kragdon-ah, the warriors he had first met had been the enemy. Now, he was assimilated into the tribe, although not a full member.

  So, was it ‘we’ that were gathering karak-ta eggs, or was it ‘they’ or ‘you’?

  Alex shook his head, giving up on the distinction.

  “There was a hunt for karak-ta eggs,” he started again. “As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw the karak-ta heading right toward me. I ran and hid in a log.” Alex cast his eyes around, wondering if the hollow log he had hidden in long ago could still be there. It was not. “When I crawled out, Banda-ak and Dokken-ak were waiting for me. I ran for the door.” Alex walked to the precise spot where the door stood. He had dreamed of that location for six years. He scuffed at the rocky sand with his foot. “It was right here.”

  Sekun-ak and Senta-eh looked everywhere around the small cove, as though Alex might just be mistaken.

  “It is possible,” Sekun-ak said, “that it appears and disappears at regular intervals.”

  A surge of hope ran through Alex. He turned to Senta-eh. “Are any of the members of the karak-ta hunting party here with us?”

  Senta- eh did a mental inventory of who she had chosen to accompany them. “Yes.”

  “Show me,” Alex said, walking briskly back toward the group.

  “Trinda-ak.”

  A young warrior stepped forward.

  “How many karak-ta hunting parties did you go on?” Alex asked.

  The question caught the young man by surprise, and he had to stop and think. Finally, he said, “Six, I think, but it could be seven.”

  “Good,” Alex answered. “How often did you come by this area?”

  “We were always divided into two groups—the distractors and the retrievers. The distractors always ran through this area, hoping to lose the karak-ta. Being a distractor was dangerous, because if they caught up to you, they would shred the flesh off your back.” His chest puffed out slightly. “I always volunteered to be a distractor but was not always chosen. I think I went through this area five times.”

  Alex nodded, a habit he still hadn’t been able to break, even after six years in Kragdon-ah, though it meant little to nothing to the Winten-ah. “How often did you see the black door here?”

  “Always. Every time. From our first trip to retrieve the eggs, we were told that it was instant death if we got too close to it, but that just meant it was more interesting to us. We never went close to it, but we always looked at it as we ran past.”

  Alex’s shoulders sagged.

>   If it had always been there and now it’s gone, that probably means it doesn’t appear and disappear. It’s just gone.

  Sekun-ak laid a hand on Alex’s shoulders. “Let’s search the area. It may have just moved.”

  They did just that, climbing up and down the sandy dunes covered with swaying, tall shoots of grass.

  “If you find it, don’t get too close,” Senta-eh said. “Just call Manta-ak.”

  Monda-ak put his nose to the ground and sniffed industriously, as though he had some clue what he was looking for.

  Alex found a series of boulders at the water’s edge and climbed up them until he stood on top of the tallest rock. From there, he had a sweeping view of the entire area. Water, rocky sand, dunes, grass, the beginning of the hill that led into the valley and back to Winten-ah.

  Absolutely no door.

  He hopped back down to the sand and walked to Senta-eh. “I could see everywhere from up there. It’s not here.”

  Solemnly, she held his gaze. “What do you want to do?”

  What I want to do is go home. To Amy.

  “There’s nothing else to do except go back to Winten-ah.”

  Alex searched her face, wondering if he might see some slight sign of happiness that he would be staying in Kragdon-ah after all. He saw nothing but sorrow and pain for him.

  She tipped her head back and made the odd, yodeling sound that was the call of her family. “Come back,” she called to the scattered troops. “Let’s go home.”

  Home. No escaping it. Winten-ah is home.

  LIFE SETTLED INTO A set schedule for Alex and Monda-ak. They were part of every hunt, and with winter approaching, there were many of those. He still had it in his mind to make the journey to Rinta-ah again and ask the young chieftain Rinka-ak to show him where the salt deposits were, but the days moved quickly. He didn’t want to travel too far from the cliffside in the unpredictable fall weather.

  Ganku-eh had once told both him and Dan Hadaller that they would never be true members of the Winten-ah, but that had been while she was chief. Alex was already included in most councils the tribe held, but he was purposefully excluded from one that occurred shortly after they returned from looking for the door. After that Alex-less meeting was finished, Sekun-ak had sought him out and told him that the tribe had chosen to make him not an honorary member of the tribe, but an actual, full-fledged member.

  This effort was not spearheaded by Sekun-ak, who was Alex’s closest friend, but by Lanta-eh, The Chosen One, who held more influence in these things than anyone. More, even, than Sekun-ak, who was a good and fair chieftain, respected by all in the tribe.

  The ceremony took place at the mid-point between the summer and winter solstices, one of the four most important days in the Winten-ah calendar.

  Alex had never witnessed the ceremony of becoming a tribe member because no outsider had been accepted in as many generations as anyone could remember.

  The ceremony coincided with the final karak-ta egg hunt of the year, so they included a feast and the indulgence of the mind-altering egg.

  When Alex had first arrived in Winten-ah and taken a small piece of the egg, he had laid on his back for more than twelve hours and watched the formation and destruction of the universe in his mind’s eye.

  Before the egg was ingested, Sekun-ak asked Alex to stand up before the tribe.

  “Who puts this man, this Manta-ak forward?” Sekun-ak asked.

  Lanta-eh, only a few inches shorter than Alex already, though she had only seen eleven summers, stood beside him and said, “I do. I have witnessed Manta-ak through all aspects of life. Preparation and planning. Executing those plans. Taking great risks with more concern for others than for himself. He has always carried himself the way we would want any Winten-ah to do. He was not born to us, but time and again, he has proved he is more than worthy to be one of us. I am proud to welcome him as my brother.”

  Sekun-ak’s gaze swept across the gathered population of Winten-ah. Everyone was present except the guards in the trees on the edge of the forest. “Does anyone want to speak out against Manta-ak? Speak now!”

  No one’s going to speak out against me now. Not after I’ve rescued the tribe’s Chosen One and led us to victory in war. But I remember a time, brother, when that opposition would have been led by you.

  The only sound in the huge room was the crackling of the fire.

  “Manta-ak. Come to me.”

  Alex stepped forward. Sekun-ak put both hands on his shoulders and said, “Now and always, you are my brother.”

  One by one, every man, woman, and child in the tribe—even those too elderly to walk on their own—stood in front of Alex and did exactly the same.

  Senta-eh, who Alex felt so much for, smiled gently at him as she welcomed him as her brother. In the intervening months since the failed trip back to the twenty-first century, he had flitted around the edges of moving toward more of a relationship with her, but had not accomplished much. Both he and she were accomplished warriors who knew no fear in battle, yet were frozen in other areas of their lives.

  Will I ever find a way to be more than a brother to you?

  Alex hadn’t known what to expect, or what he would feel when this moment arrived. But, now that it was here, and he was a full-fledged Winten-ah, his heart swelled.

  I may not ever return to the twenty-first century and I may never see Amy again, but I know now I have a home, and a family.

  As soon as the last of Alex’s new brothers and sisters had welcomed him to the tribe, the drumming and singing started, led by Sekun-ak and Lanta-eh.

  The cooks proudly carried the karak-ta shell out to the crowd and offered the first bite to the tribe’s newest member.

  Alex was no novice to the experience now. He knew how much to take to expand his senses without losing himself in the vastness of the universe.

  He plucked a medium-sized morsel of egg out of the shell, placed it delicately in his mouth and let it slide down his throat without chewing.

  Perhaps he took more of the egg than he had intended. Or, perhaps the vision that came upon him had been sitting in his brain, seeking a release.

  Whatever the case, Alex closed his eyes, and was lost to it.

  Just like the first time he had tried the hallucinogenic egg, he was gone for many hours. The next time he opened his eyes, there was light coming from the east. During the night, someone had brought a pallet and laid him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  The fire was out and only one person was still in the room with him. It was Lanta-eh, and she was smiling.

  “Where have you been, Manta-ak?” She asked the question as though she may already know the answer.

  “I saw people. Visitors from away.” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “I—” he paused, grasping to hold onto the vision that had visited him. “It is going away now, disappearing.”

  The young girl laid a cool hand against his forehead. “Don’t struggle against it. When you need it, it will be with you.”

  Alex nodded and slipped back off into sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Spring

  The rains of late winter turned to the rains of early spring. There was little discernible difference between the two with the exception that freezing temperatures became more rare. The rains and occasional bursts of sunshine encouraged the incredible plant life of Kragdon-ah to flourish. Small green berries promised the approaching warmer weather. The many poisonous plants put out their deadly barbs.

  At a council meeting one evening, Sekun-ak put forth the idea that it was time for the first karak-ta egg hunt of the season and asked for volunteers for the party.

  Typically, the karak-ta egg hunts were the province of the youngest men—the warriors and hunters in training. They were often the fastest and most-sure footed members of the tribe. That ensured that unless disaster struck in the form of a stumble and fall, they could disturb the leathery-winged beasts in their nests on top of the rocks and live to tell about
it. While the birds chased after the brave boys who taunted them, the others would swoop in and rob the nests.

  They had it down to a science, albeit a dangerous one. Over the generations, they had also learned how many eggs they could steal without lowering the population of the birds too much.

  That was how it normally worked—a cadre of young athletes supplemented by a handful of older hunters and warriors who ensured safe passage across the open plain that was the domain of the giant dire wolves.

  These were not normal times. Almost a full generation of children and teens were killed during the invasion of the Lasta-ah when they had kidnapped Lanta-eh. That had been three years ago, so the babies born since then were still only toddlers. It would be another ten summer solstices before the eldest of them were even close to ready to lead the hunt.

  That meant that older warriors—those who had fought with Alex in the invasion of Denta-ah—were the only option. Those men and women were not old by any definition, but they were many seasons away from playing the climbing and running games the adolescents did, which prepared them so perfectly to be egg hunters. The likelihood of at least one or two of them slipping on the rocks and being torn apart by the karak-ta was high.

  But, without the karak-ta eggs, the Winten-ah would have nothing to trade for the goods the other tribes in the area made.

  And so, Sekun-ak stood in front of the assembled tribe and said, “Who will go on the first karak-ta hunt of the year? If you were a member of the final hunting party last year, let’s give others a chance to volunteer.”

  Sekun-ak always had more volunteers than he needed, no matter how dangerous the mission. This time, those volunteers included Alex Hawk. When Senta-eh saw Alex stand, she did as well.

  Sekun-ak chose eight of the young men and women who volunteered, then four of the more experienced warriors, as well as both Alex and Senta-eh.

  When the meeting was dismissed, the Winten-ah chief called both of them over.

  Smiling, Sekun-ak said, “This is a hunt for the youngest and swiftest among us.”