Aerisian Refrain, page 1
part #1 of Beyond the Sunset Series
Sarah Ashwood
Aerisian Refrain
Copyright © Sarah Ashwood
Editing by J & J Editing and Marketing Services
Cover art by Stephanie Burdine at Agape Author Services
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Excepting brief review quotes, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the copyright holder. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, real events, locations, or organizations is purely coincidental.
To all of my nieces, with a special mention of Annie because of her name—
“Here’s to strong women.
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we raise them.”
—Author Unknown
Contents
Prophecy of the Artan
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part II
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part III
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Author’s Note
Bio
Prophecy of the Artan
She is of our world and beyond. From another place, another time, she will come. She carries the burden of tomorrow, and her true essence will be birthed with the moon and the dawn. The Singing Stones once more will sing, and she shall unite those long hated with those who long have feared them. Unity with the everlasting will heal her soul, lifting the eternal from rejection and fear. She will be untouched by man and untainted by The Evil. In her will be met all the Powers of Good, and with them shall she defeat The Evil. The Dark Powers she shall overcome by becoming, yet not. Bound to the past, the bond will be broken that she may pass through the vales of shadow and despair to walk forevermore in the light. Wars may rage, kingdoms rise and fall, and monarchs topple, but the Artan will defend her people. Aerisia by her strength will be kept, and in her time peace will prosper.
Part I
“Come, Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― W.B. Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire
Chapter 1
Cheers
Waiting in the darkened wings off the makeshift stage in the middle of Orlando City Stadium, a soccer stadium in downtown Orlando, Florida, I felt my skin prickle in the sluggish breeze that stirred the heavy evening air. Moisture filled the atmosphere, but rain hadn’t been promised by the weather forecasters, only humidity and more humidity. My makeup team hovered around me, blotting the perspiration from my face, neck, and arms before reapplying a fresh layer of paint and powder—stage makeup. Another girl stole a moment to ruffle the layers of my short, black hair, making sure I was ready for tonight’s closing number.
“We’re back on in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…” announced Gil, my band manager, ticking off the seconds with his fingers.
I nodded, waving an arm to scatter the makeup team. As they dashed off, I reached for my favorite guitar, leaning against a nearby stage prop. I slung the strap over my shoulder and secured it, the strap I’d inherited from my father. He’d sometimes played in the past, and the strap was hand-embroidered with Cherokee emblems and symbols. I always felt connected to him when I wore it.
“Ready, Annie?”
This from Greg, a backup singer.
“Ready.”
“It’s show time!” Gil announced. “Let’s give ‘em a good one.”
Surrounded by bandmates, flanked by backup singers and dancers, I left the shadows, jogging up the short flight of stairs and out onto the stage in the center of the field. The dizzying cheers of a crowd over twenty-five thousand strong washed over me like a wave. The flashing lights of cameras and phones and spotlights momentarily blinded me, but I kept smiling and waving my free arm, knowing my image could be seen on the huge projectors overhead. My band took their positions and began to play. It was the final encore for tonight, and the last event in my southern tour. After a few weeks off to rest and regroup, we were headed to the Northwestern United States, travelling from one corner of the nation to the other. Fans had packed the Orlando stadium tonight, wanting a good show. I hoped I’d given it to them. Their reaction hadn’t disappointed. It never did. Now, it was my turn not to disappoint with my third and final encore.
Positioning my guitar, I joined in with my band, strumming along with the introduction before stepping up to the mike. As Greg, Holly, Taylor, and Deanne approached their mikes, I opened my mouth and started to sing. The already buzzing crowd roared. Electric energy filled the sluggish heavy air, chasing away the moisture, the humidity. Or so it felt to me. People were dancing in the aisles, dancing in front of their seats. I felt my body swaying to the rhythm as I played and sang. Tonight’s performance had felt especially powerful. The crowd was alive, fiery and on fire. The beat was a pulsing, breathing thing sweeping every human heart in that audience into the melody pouring out of my soul. They were straining towards me from the stands, bending to the power of my song.
We played the first two verses. Then came the bridge. Handing off my guitar, I merged into the line of backup dancers and released the music another way, in cadence with the other swaying bodies, shifting shadows, and pounding feet on stage. The cheers grew even louder. I was grinning, although I was dripping sweat that would ruin my makeup team’s artwork. The heat and humidity didn’t matter. I was alive, my spirit thrilling to the cadence that moved my body.
The bridge died away. With a final spin, I stepped up to the microphone to finish the song. My voice soared on the final note, and I put all of my energy, all of my heart, all of the power inside my body and soul and mind into it. The crowd was yelling as if they felt that power and responded to it. A rush of sheer adrenaline started at my toes and swelled through my core, spiking at the top of my head, my upraised hand. The screaming was hysterical. Despite multiple loudspeakers and a stellar sound system, I could barely hear my own voice over the shouts.
This was it. The power in the song, the power in my voice, was indescribable. I’d never had a bad concert, never had a dull crowd, but this—this was another level entirely. The rush and the adrenaline spike were ten times what they’d ever been. It felt like lightning sizzled from my voice, striking the stadium around me.
Maybe it did, because there was a blinding flash of light. Lightning. Real lightning. The weather forecast had been wrong. Clouds that hadn’t been there before had suddenly rushed in overhead. They broke apart, releasing a torrent of rain. Thunder boomed, but even that didn’t stop the crowd or its noise. I ran off stage to the sounds of their cheers, cheers which rang in my ears long after the concert was over and I was back in my hotel suite, showered and changed and tucked into bed for the night. Cheers which echoed in my dreams…
Until they were choked off by a sudden, mysterious presence.
Chapter 2
Voice Unheard
“So, just to clarify, when you have these dreams, you feel like you’re somewhere you don’t want to be. You’re trapped. You’re shouting for help, but no one can hear you. Correct?”
Glancing up from her notes, my therapist pushed her glasses further up her nose with a forefinger, but I still felt as if she was peering at me over the black rims like a teacher waiting for an answer on a pop quiz.
I cleared my throat softly. “Yes. Yes, that’s pretty much it.”
“I see.”
She glanced again at her notes, and silence fell. I resisted the urge to squirm in my seat. Instead, I crossed my legs, giving my skirt a gentle tug to drape the hemline over my knees, then folded my hands in my lap.
Poise, Annie, poise.
I could hear Stella, my agent, rasping it at me. In the beginning of my career, that had been her main tip.
Poise, Annie, poise. Never let them see you upset. Never let them see you mad or throwing a fit. Never let them see you drunk, or stumbling out of a bar, or making out in public—not unless you’re in a very committed relationship. Be careful how you get in and out of a car. Don’t want the bad press other stars got when they slipped up? Then keep it together. The paparazzi will be after you—there’s no stopping that—but don’t give them anything to use against you. Be smart. Be collected. Be cool. Poise, Annie. Don’t forget it.
I’d been at this for years now. Her lessons were well ingrained. I was naturally reserved anyway, but all her teaching, her training, and her recounting of other celebrities’ most embarrassing moments that had flooded the press for weeks at a time had turned me into an introvert off stage. But a cool, calm, collected one, or so I was told. Usually, it was an act. I got nervous in certain situations, like this. I just knew how to hide it.
“Why do you think that is?”
Carla, Dr. Weathers, my $800 an hour therapist, broke the silence, pulling my focus back to her.
“Pardon me?”
She shifted in her seat, laying her notes in her lap, angling her head thoughtfully.
“I said, Annie, why do you think that is? Why do you think you’re having these dreams?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said, smoothing my skirt again. “To be honest, that’s why I’m here. If the dreams weren’t reoccurring, I wouldn’t be here. If I knew what they meant, I wouldn’t be here. My manager suggested you, and I was kinda at the end of my rope, so I came.”
“They bother you a great deal.”
“Yes.”
I hated to admit it, but yes, they did.
They’d begun about three months ago, the night of my concert in Orlando. First, it was as if a presence was creeping about the edge of my dreams, hushing the echoes of a cheering crowd. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the presence was. Whether it was male or female—whether it was even human. That went on a few weeks. Then, the dream changed. The presence grew stronger, more invasive. Then it was not only reaching out to me, it was touching me. The touch terrified me. Not because it was slimy or icky or cold, but because it was cunning. It wanted something from me, but I never could figure out what that was. The dreams continued to change, morphing over time as the presence strengthened.
The past few nights had been the most terrifying yet. The presence consumed me without pain, binding me without rope or chains or fetters, simply by power alone. I was isolated in a dark place that reeked of power. It was suffocating me, pressing in on me. I felt like my head might explode. I wasn’t gagged, but every time I opened my mouth to shout for help, no sound came out. My vocal chords simply didn’t work. I was screaming. I was screaming with all my might, but not the slightest sound came out.
For someone who made their living with their voice, that was a terrifying nightmare. So terrifying that I would wake up soaked in sweat, trembling, shaking all over. I had a difficult time going back to sleep. When the dreams wouldn’t stop, I began avoiding sleep. I’d had to shove back my Northwestern tour dates due to sheer fatigue, which was never good for business. Something like that always winds up blasted across social media, with rumors running amok. My manager, my agent, my assistants, my friends—such as they were—were all worried about me. Worried that if this problem wasn’t resolved soon, I was going to slip up, and the media would catch it. I’d spent years maintaining a scandal-free career. Or as scandal-free as a career could be when every word I spoke, each outfit I wore, and even whether I took my own dog for a walk or carried out my garbage was photographed and splashed all over the internet.
“They bother you so much you can’t sleep,” Dr. Weathers was saying, “but you refused to try any sleep aids? There are non-habit-forming ones, you know.”
“I know.”
She looked at me as if waiting for more. It wasn’t in my nature to spill my guts. I hated being here. I hated having to talk about my private life, my private thoughts, my private demons, but I needed help.
Seated next to me on the rich leather couch, Gil, my band manager and longtime friend, reached out to give my hand a gentle squeeze.
“It’s okay, Annie,” he said quietly.
Bolstered, I looked my therapist in the eye and went on.
“I don’t take medication. Ever, for anything, if I can help it. Not even aspirin for a headache. My mother was—she was a junkie. I was only a kid, but I remember the fights she and my dad used to get into before she left. She died alone on the streets, you know. Heroin overdose. I remember…”
I stopped, scrubbing slick palms on my skirt.
“You’re afraid you’ve inherited this weakness from your mother?”
“Something like that,” I all but whispered.
Gil shifted closer. His presence was the only thing keeping me on that couch.
“What about your father?”
“Daddy never touched anything. He saw what it did to my mom. Oh, he’d have a couple beers every now and then, but he didn’t drink-drink. I guess I took after him.”
“I see,” Carla said again. “Then I suppose anti-depressants are out of the question?”
That irritated me a little. “I’m not depressed, I’m having reoccurring freakish dreams, and I’m scared,” I snapped.
Carla’s carefully penciled brows lifted, and Gil stepped in, leaning across me to address her.
“It’s a sore subject,” he mouthed.
“I heard that,” I said, giving him a sour look.
He smiled and winked. I ignored him.
“When I say anti-depressants, I’m really using it as an umbrella term. There are medications meant to ease anxiety, for example. Perhaps one of those might help you.”
Pressing my lips into a thin line, I shook my head.
“I see,” the therapist repeated. It was starting to get on my nerves.
“Let’s talk about your voice,” she said, switching the subject. “In your dreams, you say you are trying to shout or scream for help, but your voice won’t cooperate. What do you think that means?”
How would I know? If I knew, I wouldn’t be here!
I kept the thought quiet, but mentally I was throwing my hands in the air.
Maybe she could see I was getting exasperated.
“Do you suppose,” she asked, leaning towards me, bracing herself with a forearm across her knee, “that this is your subconscious protesting the way your career has been handled? For instance, is there something you would like to say, but you’ve been advised to keep mum? Are there songs you want to sing that it’s recommended you not sing? Would you like to change your image, perhaps? Do you feel you’re being repressed?”
I just looked at her, uncertain how to answer. When my career first began, it was suggested I maintain that down-home, wholesome, girl-next-door persona. That hadn’t been hard, though. I was who I was—I’d simply wanted to sing. All the bright lights, rubbing elbows with the stars, performing to crowds of thousands, world tours, meeting world leaders…of course it had been intoxicating in the beginning, but the glitter wore off quickly. In the end, there was only one thing driving me: music, and an inborn, undying passion for it.
