Alaysia

Shraddha Patel

Description

Alaysia can only be accessed through portals, and it lies between several worlds. It is the nexus among them. A threat to Alaysia means a threat to Earth. In the first half of the book, the main characters from Earth - Kriya, a recent engineering graduate; linguistics professor Graham; and Ivo - have to travel through portals to Alaysia. Upon arriving, they realise that they are part of a greater prophecy involving Alaysia, a land that is ruled by Liam, and a planet called Epsilon.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528955416
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Alaysia
Shraddha Patel
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-07-31
Alaysia About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen
About the Author

Shraddha Patel has a BA and MPA from NYU and is enrolled at the NYU Stern Executive MBA program, Class of 2021. Ms. Patel has spent many years in both the financial and government sectors.
Dedication
To my mother
Copyright Information ©
Shraddha Patel (2019)
The right of Shraddha Patel to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788783415 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788783422 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528955416 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter One
The wind rattled through the ravine, as Kriya tried to retrace where she heard his calls last. But she found nothing but empty air playing with the sand and leaves. They were both only ten years old at the time. And now looking back, she felt the poignancy of that moment still overshadowed everything else. Even in her early twenties, she kept reliving that day in her dreams and sometimes even when wide awake as flashbacks. Despite everything in her life being well placed, she was always propelled back. It was a constant reminder that the chapter was still unfinished.
Kriya was an engineer and she walked to work from her nearby studio apartment. It was a few blocks each way. She didn’t like to drive and so even though she had to pay a little more for the apartment than she bargained for, it was well worth it. The layout was simple. There were hardwood floors and a well-placed kitchen. She liked the neighborhood. She enjoyed grabbing fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products that were being sold in the open-air markets each day. Most days, Kriya worked late by choice more than anything else—late enough so that she could see the stars at night. They navigated her home and comforted her when nothing else did. Their remoteness and ubiquitous steadiness wrapped around her in ways that nothing else ever did. Yet, Liam’s disappearance like the glaring North Star was a constant reminder of why her life was still incomplete.
That day was like any other day, except school had let out early. Liam and Kriya were happiest on those days. They silently took that to mean another day that they could spend building their secret tower in the woods without interruptions. They had been working on it all spring long and now it was almost rolling into summer.
Both ate lunches that their mothers prepared for them and met around 2:00 pm at their usual meeting spot. Halfway down the abandoned house across the corn fields stood Liam with his bicycle. Kriya had hers too. His was better, made for riding in the woods. Everything of his was better. Even his laugh, Kriya thought. Liam was like that. His family was like that. Perfect. Kriya thought. His house was spotless. His mother, Sarah, always kind and immaculately dressed. His father, Michael, was always proper and thoughtful.
Kriya remembered that there seemed to be a silent current of happiness as soon as one walked into his home that ran all the way through it like the Gulf Stream does in the ocean. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it—and it guided you through. And every day the fresh aromas of lemon and lilac filled the house as soon as Kriya stepped onto the porch.
Kriya’s home was the opposite. They lived fairly close to each other on the same street in that small Indiana town. But that is where the similarities ended. Kriya’s mother and father never got along. And Kriya was always helping her mother with all the chores from a very young age. Her father never did anything. She also never spoke to her parents much. Her mother was always busy, and her father never liked to be bothered. Kriya was a mistake to them or so she felt. They were always distant. She didn’t understand why they disliked every moment of being together with her. It was as if she was a forced albatross that they had to wear around their necks.
It was apparently not because of their marriage and ascorbic societal rules that they tried so heavily to comply with. So, Kriya spent most of her days at Liam’s house or in the woods with him. They grew up together. They first met in the sandbox when she was 2 years old in the daycare center and since then they were inseparable. Or at least that was what she was told. She was a tomboy and he was the boy that all the girls liked from age five on. He had sandy colored hair and bright, inquisitive, light blue colored eyes.
They had raced down to the stream behind the corn fields leading to the woods. The woods had become a bit sparse from some of the storms that had passed by. And there was a cleared bike trail from all the students who used the woods as a shortcut to get to school. She could almost see through the entire woods from the stream. The trees were very spaced out and tall, leaving the forest floor full of sweet pine needles and dried leaves. There weren’t even that many rocks, large or small around. It was smooth enough for her to ride her bike without worrying about accidentally hitting a tree. Besides, she was good at maneuvering.
Perhaps that was what was so strange about his disappearance. Where could he have possibly gone? He was there one minute and gone the next. The rescue teams and neighborhood searchers spent days combing the perimeter for him. But he was gone. And Kriya spent days upon days, weeks upon weeks interrogated by the police, the parents, students, teachers, you name it. Then a cloud of doubt fell on her, as the townspeople began to gossip about Kriya. From then on, people kept their distance from Kriya, despite however irrational they knew their actions to be. They would say, “Be careful you might go missing too if you are around Kriya.”
Soon, Kriya began to prefer the silence and the eschewing over the blanketed whispers and strange looks from strangers. At first, she liked the silence because she needed to grieve that she had lost her best friend, but then because she realized that she was the brunt of all the stories being passed around in town. People turned on the surviving victim pretty quickly, especially when there were no valid explanations. They first didn’t say much at all. Then they questioned everything and soon, Kriya was guilty just because she went into the woods with Liam or because she was left standing alone as a ten-year-old crying and sobbing. She had no idea how she had gotten the bump on her head and why only his bike remained beside hers when she regained consciousness. Since then, her only goal was to leave town and never look back. The police questioned her, at the urging of the townspeople, but eventually realized that she really didn’t know what happened to Liam.
And now many years later, Kriya did just that: she left the town and never went back for years. She had just finished her final year of college and landed her first job. She had studied engineering. She specifically decided on metallurgical engineering. Why? Maybe because she knew all her classes would be filled with guys for the most part. Or maybe because she knew it was a profession that she could have that was mostly behind the scenes.
Kriya realized from early on that the guys were always nicer for some reason in her classes, especially since the disappearance story followed her into college as well. They didn’t blame her as much as the women did. The problem with going to a state school where half of her school also chose to go there, is that the same old cliques were there and the same rumors—now just mixed with a larger crowd. How annoying , she thought, to be so far away and yet nowhere removed . Always looking backwards, instead of forwards in time and otherwise. She was the only woman in most of her classes that final year of college. It seemed women trickled out each year for whatever reason. Some got married, others changed majors. Maybe it was the math requirements? Who knows…but Kriya enjoyed calculus and contemplated even becoming a math major, but then decided to stick to engineering. She needed a real profession as her father always told her. Math was too abstract. Engineering on the other hand was defined and precise—and an actual job title.
Kriya turned out to be thin, 5’6’’ with pointed features now, sharp cheekbones and a finely pointed nose that she covered with her horn-rimmed glasses that she actually did not need. She just wore them because they were one more layer of protection between the world and her. Her eyesight was perfect. But the glasses provided one more mask that hid her thoughts. They were a great deterrent to all those who tried to pierce her open silence. She had tan skin, which was a sharp contrast to her parents’ pale visages. Her black hair rolled down past her delicate shoulders and her deep brown eyes now scarred with undeniable pain, yearned for something more. Much more. But what? Sometimes she felt as though she did not belong to either her family or the world around her.
Kriya felt the answers lied in those woods as much as she didn’t wa