Preface

The world had changed. One hundred and fifty years had passed since now unknown events reduced its population from around seven billion to only a smattering of individuals. The detritus of that former civilization still existed, but how most of it worked could not be replicated. Most of what was known before was gone. People who had survived the collapse had begun to resort to superstition to explain those things not understood. The former life of reason and understanding, though not unknown to these people, was now sliding back into the dark ages. But something in this world had changed. Supernatural occurrences seemed to be on the rise and was fueling the growth of new superstitions.

1

Twilight, and a procession of men and women walked slowly into a cave at the end of a closed-end canyon in the Sierra foothills of California. The pines stood tall amongst granite boulders and the sound of running water could be heard from a babbling stream in the distance. The day never cooled as the former, Northern California, experienced the fifth day of hundred-plus heat.

The procession proceeded in both fear and wonder because the high priest of the circle had summoned them for a ceremony. These ceremonies were never the same and never came at a predictable day or time. They were always random.

Most of the people in the procession were not true believers in this cult, led by the high priest. They were stragglers and outcasts of small encampments that dotted what was left of California’s once thirty-six million-plus inhabitants. Now, though, there weren’t as many people left as there were when the frontiersmen crossed the then United States to come out west. This sudden fall of human society, which occurred over a hundred and fifty years before, had taken the lives of most who lived here and none of these people knew why. They just survived day by day knowing that to live any other way was fruitless.

Since the sun began to sink on the horizon, mysterious colored lights undulated in the sky to the northeast. A bright aurora was evident and would light the moonless sky, tonight, with writhing colors.

The procession continued into the cave and wound through its stone tunnels. Finally, it reached an opening that looked into a huge cavern with hanging stalactites and down onto a magnificent circle of crystal standing stones, some fifty to a hundred feet below. Now, though, something in the large cavern was different. Above the stones, an odd cloud twisted and roiled. There was no fire in the circle to produce the cloud and the cloud seemed to float above the circle but below the top of the cave away from the hanging stalactites. The first people in the procession stopped and gawked in fear at the sight below. One man stood at the altar, robed with his hands raised in supplication, while twenty hooded and robed people ringed the altar just inside the standing stones.

No one in the procession had ever seen a cloud over the circle before, and this wasn’t like any cloud that they had ever seen. Its pewter surface twisted into itself and sparks of light flickered on and off like fireflies blown in a swirling wind.

Several people in the procession stopped and didn’t want to proceed down the narrow pathway that led to the cavern floor. Several robed priests, who walked beside the procession, intervened, though, forcing them down.

The procession had nearly fifty people in it, both men and women, and they started the slow descent to the cavern floor. The cavern was special. It had the circle of thirteen standing stones carved from pure white crystal, the crystal altar, and at least fifty stones of the same carved crystal lined up to the right of the circle like soldiers in a parade. In holes, in the walls of the cave were skulls of the long dead stacked like apples with their mouths propped open to look like they were screaming as witnesses to the ceremonies held at the altar of the standing stones.

The cavern itself seemed to throw off its own light, though, there were several torches lighting the circle, the rest of the cave was also visible, though it should be dark. Something in the walls cast its own iridescent pale green glow.

As the procession reached the stone circle, the people in it could see that tendrils leaked from the bottom of the cloud like snakes poking their heads from holes. They seemed to peek out then would pull back inside the folds of the cloud. Several times the tendrils reached for the hooded high priest and touched the back of his head seeming to caress it.

Standing at the altar, the robed and hooded priest began to speak. His hood was pulled down to cover his face, hiding it from the crowd, and his words seemed to issue from the cavern walls, reverberating, and far more powerful than the voice of a man. Murmurs rose from the people who had reached the cavern floor, weren’t in robes, and now ringing the outside of the stone circle.

The priest raised his hands for silence. “We gather here, tonight, to bring back the old ways. In centuries long past, those who worshiped at these circles knew of secrets now lost to the world, dark secrets. Behold!” he said raising his arms to the twisting cloud. “I have brought forth that which will direct us, but it requires us to make sacrifices.”

He nodded at four robed and hooded men who turned and walked from their place in the center of the circle to the people from the procession. They approached a man who looked at them first blankly and then defiantly. The hooded men grabbed the man who tried to wrench free.

He struggled, flailing his arms, then began to object, “Let go of me! NO!” he protested.

His shouts echoed off the cavern walls and ceiling, but no one else uttered a sound. Shock clothed the faces of the people in the procession. They knew that something terrible was about to happen. They just didn’t know what.

The four robed priests brought the man to the altar and laid him over it, face up, with each of the robed men firmly holding his arms and legs. The hooded high priest approached.

“It wishes to cross,” the high priest whispered, but everyone could hear his words. “It wishes to be.”

“NO!” the man on the altar cried.

The high priest pulled back his hood. The throng gasped at the change in his face. His eyes glowed green and his face was a jaundice, pail orange, but every vein beneath his skin softly glowed the same shade of green as his eyes. The cloud began to spark.

“I wish to cross,” the priest said, but this time his voice changed. It was deeper and hollow as if something spoke through him.

He brandished a short thin knife, the kind used to filet fish. It was razor sharp and tapered to a needle point. The man on the altar jerked and writhed, held fast by the four priests. The faces of the people watching showed shock and disbelief. They glanced around at the skulls of the long dead stacked into the holes in the walls around the circle and knew why they screamed.

The priest slipped the knife under the shirt of the man on the altar, slicing it open to reveal his chest. Sweat poured from the man’s face and his eyes were wide with fear. The cloud seemed more agitated and it expanded and contracted. The smell of ozone filled the air as if a storm was about to erupt inside the cave.

The high priest slowly raised the knife, gazing into the boiling cloud above. He held the knife high. The man stretched across the altar recoiled from the sight of the priest. His eye’s widened knowing that in the next second the knife would plunge into his chest.

Those same tendrils, like thin funnel clouds, leaked again, from the cloud’s underside and attached to the high priest’s knife which was high over his head. The robed men holding the man on the altar glanced up as the high priest stood and seemed to be frozen. His eyes glowed more brightly and the veins in his face pulsated. The man to be sacrificed looked over at the frozen priest. The knife fell from his hand and the priest collapsed in a heap. The four hooded men let go of their hold on the man on the altar and stepped back. The man on the altar wasted no time and slipped to the floor and ran from the center of the circle. The cloud expanded and the tendrils whipped and latched onto the four hooded priest who had held the man to be sacrificed. Their hoods flew back and all of their eyes glowed. The man to be sacrificed on the altar ran up the path towards the cave entrance. The cloud quickly grew and tendrils shot out in all directions. Some of the procession looked on enthralled, but most turned to run. The cloud expanded further. The man from the altar reached the top of the cavern just ahead of the expanding cloud, and ran from the out-of-control scene.

On the cavern floor, the cloud expanded further until no one left on the floor of the cave could be seen from above and no one else seemed to be able to escape. The man to be sacrificed ran, not looking back and put as much distance between himself and the cavern as he could. When he got what he thought was a safe distance, he stopped, and turned to see the entrance of the cave glowing in the distance. He bent, placing his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath. No one else had left the cave. He turned and ran away as fast as his legs would take him. The sky above undulated energetically with a brilliant red and purple aurora which blocked out the stars. Fear pushed the man to put as much distance between himself and the cave as his body would allow. He would run until he dropped.

2

My name is Dennis Olsen and I haven’t written in over a hundred and fifty years, so I might be a bit rusty. My first journal was written to chronicle the fall of mankind when our world went from nearly seven billion people to, well, who knows how many, but I would guess that from observing my region, there could only be a smattering of humans left. My story began long ago, but my memory of the events is as clear as if it had happened yesterday.

I want to stop for just a minute to introduce you to a “Law.” More than anything, I feel that it controlled a series of events that brought about the collapse of humanity as the dominate species on this planet and reduced us back to mere residents.

The Law is: The Law of Unintended Consequences. The bottom line of this law is that an event, no matter how benign, can bring about devastating consequences.

Now, I’ll start with my age. I am over one hundred and eighty years old, though, I don’t look over forty. I will explain more about this later when the, “how” it happened, shows up at the time it occurred and our entire group stopped aging with the help of my, “witch,” wife, Shannon. She is, to say the least, special.

 

“Writing again, Dennis?” Shannon asked walking into our bedroom.

I turned startled. I hadn’t heard Shannon’s approach. “Yeah, well, I’ve had this compulsion to update the journal ever since Charlie returned it to me. I think I’m going to rewrite it.”

She was dressed in thin shorts and a light top that allowed the outline of her taught body to show through, made from material that we found during a recent trip to Sacramento. She had let her light brown hair grow to her shoulders, a bit longer than usual and her green eyes did what they usually did to me, stir deep attraction that always took me aback.

“Huh,” she said.

It wasn’t a condemnation, exactly, but I had the feeling that she felt that I was wasting my time. “Okay, so why, the huh?” I asked.

“Well,” she said hesitatingly and with some care for my feelings. “What’s the point?”

“Fair question,” I responded. “I don’t exactly know. I have spent a bit of time rereading my old journal, and, well, I’ve felt compelled to rewrite parts of it. I was remembering back to when I started writing it, before we had to run, and I enjoyed the effort. Maybe I’m doing it for fun, or therapy. I don’t know.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Shannon said placating me.

“What would really make me happy is if you slipped out of those clothes and crawled into bed with me,” I suggested with a wry grin.

“Ahh, so you think I could distract you from your important writing?” she said sarcastically.

“Don’t know, but we could give it a try.”

“Humm, well, I have some things to do right now, but maybe later?”

“In that case, I’ll go back to my important writing.”

She smiled and walked from the room.

I had promised to mend the fence where we keep a few cows and I had planned to do that today, but I got involved in writing and it slipped my mind. I think she was reminding me, in her way, that the fence also needed my attention.

I reviewed my old manuscript for another half hour, got up and wandered out of the bedroom to fix the fence.

I passed by Radha, who was sitting on a chair by our fire in the front room. We all lived in a farmhouse on a ranch away from any city north of what was once Sacramento. It was one story, large with a wrap-around porch, surrounded by pasture land and gardens and painted white, but the paint was now faded and chipping because we couldn’t find paint anymore.

Radha was tall and looked like an Irish dancer with long legs and a sleek body. She had auburn hair and dark green eyes the color of rough emeralds with gold striations. She could seduce you with a look.

She glanced up at me from sewing a rip in a shirt.

I smiled at her.

“Hello, Dennis,” she said.

“Hi, Radha.”

“Couldn’t talk Shannon into bed?” she asked wryly.

“You heard that, huh?”

“You must be losing your touch.”

My son, Bryan, was sitting in another chair away from the fire, reading a book.

He looked up at me also and said, “I,” which meant hi.

He is a special needs person and because of his problems, doesn’t have much speech. He mostly communicates with sign language. When this adventure began, he was five, but now was full grown, slightly balding, and in need of help for most of his daily requirements, but he is probably the sweetest human to ever step foot on this planet and a joy to be around.

“Hi, sweetie boy,” I said to Bryan.

Radha’s partner, Amy, walked in as we were talking and said, “Hi, Dennis.”

“Hi,” I said.

Amy still looked like a teenager with dark brown wavy hair and the bluest of eyes, though, she was the same age as Radha, Shannon and myself. Her features were elven with a small nose, rosy lips and large eyes framed in dark lashes. She sat down on the arm of Bryan’s chair and put her hand on his shoulder. People tend to want to touch Bryan. They automatically hug him or seem to need to be in some kind of physical contact with him. He’s a magnet for attention.

Amy smiled at me and asked, “Having romantic troubles with Shannon?”

“How did you hear that?” I asked. “Were you both listening at our bedroom door?”

Amy said, “No, we heard it in our heads.”

“You know, you guys listening inside each other’s heads is kind of eerie.”

“Just eerie?” Radha asked.

“And disconcerting,” I admitted.

Radha asked, “So, Dennis, have you gotten used to us slipping into Shannon’s head when you take her to bed?”

“I’ve had more time to get used to that with Amy catching a ride during our private time for the last hundred and fifty years, so, I don’t much think about it anymore.” I looked at Amy and grinned.

Amy blushed and stuttered, “I… well… It was pleasant.”

I laughed.

How the three of them became so tangled happened two years ago, on a trip to the old city of Sacramento. Shannon, Radha and Amy can all leave their bodies and ‘travel.’ They merged to attempt to get information that we needed in order to find out why Shannon had a compulsion to go to the city. Their merging didn’t find the answers that they sought, but it did something else… There you go with the unintended consequences, again. Their minds became so connected that they all live in each other’s heads nearly all the time, now. They know what the other is thinking, experiencing, feeling and seeing. If I’m making love to Shannon, I know that they may be involved in some way, but I don’t always know to what degree and they thankfully don’t tell me. If Amy and Radha are having a private moment, Shannon always seems knows and sometimes becomes uncomfortably aroused. I have to admit, that I’ve benefited from that more than once.

“I need to get to the fence,” I said walking from the room.

When I walked outside, I glanced around for Shannon. She said that she had things to do, but I didn’t know what those things were. I couldn’t see her, so I got a few long straight boards, my hammer and a few long nails, and dragged them to the broken fence.

3

The day was hot. It was full summer and the sun beat down oppressively on my shirtless back. A mild breeze bent the long grass that was beginning to brown around the fence. I wiped my brow and held a fence slat into place with my left hand while I nailed with my right. Though it had been more than a hundred and fifty years since any nails had been manufactured, there was still an abundance of them to be found. When billions of people die all at once, it leaves an enormous amount of stuff just laying around.

I thought about my manuscript and planned what I might write next. I thought about all the things that we had taken for granted back before the fall of mankind, too numerous to list, but a lot of things had survived and were still in common use. Anything plastic seemed to hold up reasonably well, most hand tools like the hammer that I was swinging and saws. Structures made of wood or make shifted with stainless steel or aluminum were seen in most of the villages that we visited. The world was still, however, without electricity, though, and the reason for that escaped the perception of most of the surviving humans. We had been invaded by aliens, but not the ray gun toting type. These were simple creatures that, as far as we could tell, had no malice towards us. We called them Shadow Creatures because my special needs child, Bryan, saw them first and named them in his way. They were let into our world by a machine, built here, but inspired from elsewhere. The Shadow Creatures had voracious appetites for the power that we produced and they single handedly brought down every power plant on earth in less than several weeks. Astonishing. I had already chronicled that in my first journal, but I thought that I would expand on them in my new hand written addition.

When I first wrote this journal, I had a laptop computer, and spell check. Now, I had paper, pencils and an old Random House Webster’s dictionary, fourth edition, scrounged from a friend of Charlie’s named Froggy, who perished at the hands of other creatures who also invaded our world.

Allowing my mind to wander, has slowed my fence mending. I need to get back to work. I held the last wood slat in place, then hammered two stout nails through it, fixing it firmly. From the corner of my vision, I could see Shannon walking out of the horse barn. She looked contemplative and I could tell that she had something on her mind. I finished my job and caught up to her as she headed for the house. She smiled as I approached, but it quickly faded and she looked away.

“What is it?” I asked.

She smiled again, and said, “I’m fine, Dennis.”

We continued quietly onto the porch and she stopped and didn’t face me. I stepped up beside her and looked at her as she gazed out onto our ranch. We had lived here off and on for a very long time, though, we also had other homes speckled around us for about a twenty to thirty-mile radius, but this is where we mostly called home. Time has a way of sneaking by you, especially when you barely age.

The breeze blew her thin shirt against her body and I felt a stirring. She glanced in my direction, half smiled, then turned away. I could tell that something was bothering her.

I asked, “What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve been thinking about Lizbeth and Evan, lately. We haven’t seen them in nearly a year.”

Evan is our son and Lizbeth is the daughter of our friends, Brandon and Mara, but I think of her as my own daughter.

“Are you worried?”

“I’m always worried.”

“Nomad Land isn’t that far. Do you want to go there?”

Nomad Land is where Evan lives. It’s a couple of day’s journey from us, by the Sacramento river, north of the old city of Sacramento, which was once the thriving capitol of California.

“No,” she said but sounded unsure.

“Is that all?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“I’ve been feeling that pull.”

This is code for Shannon. It means that she has been having the urge to travel which is a euphemism for ‘leave her body.’ What it really means is that Shannon senses trouble. When this happens, she is pulled out of her body to a place that will eventually have some baring on her life. When she first developed this gift, she had no control and would be unceremoniously pulled away from her body, regardless of what she was doing, but now she can control leaving, but not the urge. She developed this ability long ago and it has always been a reliable barometer for trouble ahead. Amy and Radha also have this gift, but not as refined as Shannon’s and they always rely on Shannon to know for sure if something is up. They both walked out of the house and joined us on the porch.

Amy said to Shannon, “You feel it, too?”

“Yes,” Shannon said.

“I’ve been noticing it for the last three days,” Radha said.

“That’s about right,” Shannon agreed.

“Any idea what’s up?” Radha asked.

Shannon said, “No, not yet, but I’m worried about Evan and Lizbeth.”

Amy asked, “Should we try to travel?”

Radha said, “Let’s talk about it later.”

Shannon said, “Yeah.”

Shannon turned then, and walked inside followed by Amy and Radha. I walked in, also, with chills running up and down my spine. When Shannon becomes worried, we all pay attention, and something was definitely spooking her.

4

Nomad Land

 

 

Evan and Rebekah walked from the Sacramento river dripping wet. They were north of the old city, on a breezeless day in the valley in late summer. They sat on their clothes to dry off on the sizzling river bank and gazed at nearly every person in the Central Nomad village in the water. No one wore anything to bathe in Nomad Land. Swim suits were none-existent in this new world and people lived a life that was closer to the tribes that inhabited the rain forests of the Amazon, than they did to modern people of the long past twentieth century. Even the elders took to the water, today, most of whom were close to sixty and not all in good health. Evan and Rebekah sat and gazed upon a sea of skin.

In the few minutes that they sat, sweat began to gather on their brows.

“Let’s go find some shade,” Evan said. He was six foot with broad shoulders, a washboard stomach, light brown hair to his shoulders and eyes the color of the sky.

Rebekah nodded and they stood and picked up their clothes, brushing off the sand and dust.

“I want to wash my clothes, first,” Rebekah said starting back to the river.

Rebekah was blond with shoulder length hair and a completely tanned body. By this time of the summer, most people spent much of the hot days in the river and everyone, including the children, were completely tanned.

She slipped on her soft moccasin shoes and waded back into the cool water, up to her thighs and began rinsing her clothes. As she washed each piece, she put them on to keep her cool.

“That’s a good idea,” Evan said from the bank and then he did the same.

As Evan stepped back into the river, Lizbeth walked from the trees and into the water fully dressed.

She was also blond being the product of two very fair parents, Brandon and Mara, but she streaked her hair with colors that she could find like beet juice, which turned portions of her hair a kind of red purple.

“God, I’m hot,” she said as she passed Evan washing his clothes.

Lizbeth and Evan had grown up together. Evan’s parents were Dennis and Shannon and he and Lizbeth were both over a hundred and fifty years old, but both looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Rebekah had been adopted after the death of her father, by Charlie, who lived a few miles to the west, and she was probably eighteen, but few people knew their exact age.

Evan and Lizbeth had a complicated relationship. They grew up together and were childhood, best friends. Then they reached the age where the opposite sex became interesting for adult reasons, so they had become lovers, but that didn’t work for long. They’re relationship, at least for now, was more like brother and sister, and seemed more natural for them. Lizbeth, though, despite not being with Evan romantically, still considered Evan to be hers and was not adjusting well to his love for Rebekah.

The three of them lived together with Rebekah’s pet wolf, Bear, in a small hut made of wood, animal hides and steel that had been left when an older man and his wife passed away. Their camp was larger than most, at the edge of the Nomad encampments because they each had a horse and the horses needed more space. Most of the Nomad’s hovels were placed close together.

Lizbeth walked from the water while Evan and Rebekah finished dressing. Lizbeth stood dripping with her hands on her hips watching Rebekah pull her top over her head. The three then walked back towards their camp, winding through the small paths that separated one family’s campsite from the next.

Each site was different from the next. Some used materials picked up or borrowed from friends, while others used natural timbers and skins in the American Indian style. Still others, like Evan, Rebekah and Lizbeth used a mixture of each.

As they trudged back to their camp, they saw three horses with riders walking slowly down from the grassy fields that bordered Nomad Land. As the horsemen passed, they stared at the campsites, giving the impression that they weren’t trustworthy. The strangers stared at the women, some of whom were alone or tending to children while their mates were away hunting or gathering.

Evan, Lizbeth and Rebekah stopped and watched as they approached. As they came close, Evan could see that they were heavily armed with machetes, knives and bows. They wore thick scraped hide breeks and buckskin tops. In general, when strangers entered this village of the Central Nomads, they were always received warmly with waves and words of greeting, but Evan, Lizbeth and Rebekah were not raised in this place and tended to look upon strangers with suspicion.

Evan leaned into Rebekah and Lizbeth and said, “I don’t like the look of these guys.”

The two girls nodded.

The first rider stopped and gazed down at Evan, regarding him, then turned to Lizbeth and Rebekah giving them both a look that spoke of his inner thoughts about how he would like to spend some time with them. They both instinctually stepped back, while Evan stepped forward.

The rider nodded warily at Evan and said, “I’m looking for a place to water the horses. They’re parched.”

Evan said, “You’re not far from the river. Continue down this path and you’ll end up there.”

“What is this place?” the rider asked.

“It’s called Nomad Land,” Evan said shortly, then he added, “It’s a good and peaceful place.”

Just then, a full-grown wolf loped into the camp area with a red sash wrapped around its neck. It was a huge, savage looking beast, with brown and black, silver tipped fur and pure white eyes. It ran up to Rebekah and put both its paws onto her shoulders.

She smiled broadly at the beast and said, “Bear! I was wondering where you were.”

The wolf licked her vigorously and nuzzled her face with his large maw which was filled with lethal teeth. She had tied the red sash onto its neck so the people of the village would know that he was her wolf and wouldn’t kill it in fear. Rebekah had adopted the wolf as a puppy when Rebekah killed its mother as the mother wolf attempted to attack Rebekah’s father, Charlie.

The strangers looked on in wonder and had a new respect for the young blond girl who could tame a wolf.

Bear was an impressive specimen having been raised by Rebekah since it was a puppy. It had always had an overabundance of food and it grew larger than most wolves. Its white eyes gave it an other-worldly appearance.

The man on the horse nodded and then continued towards the river.

As they left, Lizbeth commented, “Trouble.”

Rebekah said, “Maybe they’re just passing through and will be gone after their horses have a drink.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Evan said.

“I think that they’re interested in more than water for their horses,” Lizbeth said.

Dust rose from the stranger’s horses hooves as they disappeared out of sight.

5

Night fell over Nomad Land. An energetic aurora pulsated to the east, and as the night lengthened, it spread to cover half of the night’s sky. No breeze blew and though the sun was down, the night remained stiflingly hot.

People gathered at a communal fire in a clearing close to the Sacramento River. On night’s like these, people unable to sleep would build a large fire and gather to tell stories and hear of news from anyone who had traveled away from the village. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere. People laughed and some sang. A few had musical instruments and they played in a corner of the clearing surrounded by others enjoying the sounds with some dancing.

Lizbeth, Evan and Rebekah wandered into the clearing. Logs were stretched around the fire and also spotted throughout. Some of the people sat in groups with friends or mingled away from the fire. It lit the clearing, but was hot and the heat was not welcomed on this night by most of the gathered villagers.

The three strangers, who passed Evan on their way in, sat together, surrounded by several of the village’s elders. The strangers were eating a meal shared by several of the Nomad families who had come to the clearing.

Evan saw the strangers talking to the elders and he left Rebekah and Lizbeth to see what they had to say. All three of the strangers had on leather and hide clothes that gave them the look of soldiers or mercenaries. They had long beards and hair square cut to their shoulders. They had not removed their weapons and their attitude was aggressive.

One of the Elders, Elaine, stood between two others, Jim and Helen. Evan could hear as she asked, “You said that these people were just north of here?”

“Yep,” one of the three strangers said shortly.

Another of the strangers said, “There was a group of robed people living in a canyon that we rode through. Something was wrong with these people. They weren’t right in the head,” he finished pointing to his own head.

The first stranger said, “They tried to get us to stay. They said that they were, “The people of the secret.” I asked, What secret? They said that they couldn’t tell me and I said, see ya later.”

The second stranger said, “If we weren’t armed, we think they would have tried to make us stay, but by the look of us, I think they thought it might be too costly.”

All three strangers laughed quietly, then the first stranger said, “And they were right.”

After hearing the story, Evan walked back to Lizbeth and Rebekah. He said, “That’s weird.”

“What?” Rebekah asked.

“Those guys were telling a story about meeting a group of robed people to the north.”

“They sound like Yarwin’s group,” Lizbeth said.

“I don’t think so,” Evan remarked.

Yarwin was high priest of a group of robed people who lived in the old city of Sacramento. He died a couple of years ago, and now no one has had any contact with the group. They worshiped at an old fountain in the center of the city which they said was a type of stone circle. They said that stone circles were places of power where our universe came into contact with other universes and in that case, they were right.

Rebekah asked, “Might they have been talking about the Northern Nomads?”

Evan said, “I don’t think so. This group sounded to be farther north and strange. I don’t think the Northern Nomads have begun wearing robes. They told these guys that they were ‘the People of the Secret,’ whatever that means. He also said that ‘they weren’t right in the head’.”

Rebekah said, “I’m not so sure that the strangers are so right in the head, either.”

“Yeah,” Evan said. “They gave the elders the impression that they better not mess with them.”

Two of the strangers got up and walked over to where Evan was standing.

They looked past him like he didn’t exist and said to Lizbeth and Rebekah. “You want to come and eat with us.”