The Secret of Zormna Clendar by Julie Steimle (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

“An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered”

–G.K. Chesterson—

Somewhere on the outskirts of Pennington Heights there is a hill. Though it was officially called Star Watching Hill, everyone called it Make-out Hill as that was the best place for a romantic…whatever. Of course, because of this, the majority of the people who frequented that hill did not have their eyes on the skies most of the time. Which is perhaps why no one noticed that one of the falling stars in the Leonid shower that Friday night had leveled off about a mile over the trees then lowered into the forest.

No one saw it leave either.

Further in, Pennington Forest also had a lot of campgrounds. Some had space enough for a Winnebago to park. Then there were the campgrounds you had to hike to. Getting there was equal to an epic journey into Mordor, as some put it. They also had bad cell reception… which is why few ventured that far into Pennington Forest, even on the weekends. Which is also why when Zormna Clendar first arrived, no one noticed.

She stood alone in one of the campsites next to a damp campfire pit, feeling the evening moisture collect on her face, clothes, and hair. It was not something she was used to. None of it was.

She had never gone camping before.

She had never really been alone before, except as a latch-key kid in an apartment a very long time ago.

Zormna stared mournfully at the stars overhead, watching as the meteors fell. The night animals—crickets and creeping things—which had been silent after the rush of noise that had disturbed their habitat, began to sing again. And she shivered.

It was damp. And it grew damper with spring dew the longer she stood there.

But Zormna did not want to move. Her eyes remained on the sky.

After something like a half hour, she drew in a deep breath and heavily sighed. It took every ounce of her strength to take her eyes off the stars and focus them on the dark woods around her. And it took more strength to put one foot in front of the other to go into the forest path. Through dense foliage—tripping on roots and rocks and uneven ground for a long, arduous while—she eventually made her way to the edge of town. By that time, most of the stargazers on Make-out Hill were already gone.

This is where she hesitated.

Civilization.

That meant dealing with people very different than those she had grown up with.

But she didn’t have much of a choice. What was done was done. She was there, and there was no going back.

So, as to not draw attention to herself, Zormna surveyed the couples on the hill, and continued down faster. The twosomes that remained there were too wrapped up in the euphoria of the evening to notice her anyway.

She slipped twice on the wet grass as she descended to the dirt road, and landed a third time in a shallow mud puddle. It hurt. Rubbing her backside, Zormna cursed under her breath.

Looking up at the sky again, likely to curse that too, she heaved another breath for strength and got up. She clutched her few belongings to her chest. All of it fit inside a medium-sized cloth travel bag. When she finally reached asphalt where houses stood and streetlights shone light on the scenery, she extracted from her pocket a folded scrap of paper containing important information. Then she searched for a street sign.

She unfolded the paper.

“O…Skavi!” The writing was unintelligible, soaked in mud, the ink had smeared. It was one brownish, blackish-blue blob. And in the bad light, there was no way she could make any of it out.

 “Tch!” She crumpled the note, resisting the urge to swear again.  

Her eyes lifted to the curb where a car was parked. She peered to the houses beyond it, then the trees, shrubs and lawn…the flowerbeds, all deepening with shadows in the darkness.

Laughter drifted from Make-out Hill.

Looking back quickly, she spotted a pair of lovers trotting down the muddy slope side by side, still kissing. They hardly looked around themselves to notice she was there. She retreated towards the shadows behind a squared hedge where she waited until they passed. The lovers got into the car, started the engine, and took off into the road.

She was alone again.

Once more, Zormna lifted her eyes to the signpost at the end of the road, staring at it forlornly. The dark around her had deepened. And she could tell from the night sounds that it was getting late.

And colder.

She sneezed.

That was when the feeling of total abandonment overwhelmed her. And though she hated crying, tears blurred her vision.

What was she to do now?

Zormna stared at the sign, unmoved, for quite a while. Then, wiping away the damp from her face with the back of her hand, she closed her eyes. Breathing in, breathing out…Zormna Clendar drew up her shoulders, heaved in another breath and put one foot in front of the other.

*

Saturday morning.

Jennifer McLenna trotted from the side kitchen door down the concrete steps to the weather-cracked cement of the family’s driveway. Her usual weekend jog was practically a religious ritual. Trotting towards the black pavement as the sun was just rising over the nearby mountains, she tossed her reddish ponytail off the back of her neck and grinned to herself. Her thoughts floated through the plans for the day.

Have a good run. Go home. Shower. Then maybe later she’d go to the mall or call her boyfriend, Kevin. They could meet up that evening for a date. Her parents had not let her go out with him that Friday to watch the meteor shower—paranoid to the extreme, as usual.  

Running down familiar streets with all too familiar names, Jennifer went into autopilot. Past Mr. Harker’s perfectly trimmed lawn matching hedge with unnaturally sharp edges, Mrs. Nelson’s geraniums that were just blooming while her tulips were starting to lose flower, while Tommy Whitaker rode by on his bicycle, tossing rolled up issues of the Daily Lamplight—Pennington’s local newspaper. She hurried past Mrs. Parken’s back window where the woman was spying on her neighbors as always. The woman was dressed in her pink bathrobe, sipping her coffee.

Jennifer tried to keep off the street, of course. Often her older brother’s friends zoomed by in the back of Alex Streigle’s truck, aching to pester her. She looked left then right before crossing two-lane Oak Street to the red brick four-story building that was Pennington High School. The track was open for use on weekends.

In a jog over the grass, she hopped the curb, taking the foot-trod path to the low fence. Dew coated most of the lawn. It made the concrete a little slick. With her eye on the top bar of the low chain link fence, Jennifer sped up. And her grin spread. She had the guts. It was now time for the glory. Today would be the day she would clear that fence in one fantastic leap. She had seen Phoebe Hills do it, and Jennifer was better at hurdles than she was. No chickening out. One clean jump.

Ten yards.

Her eyes scanned the parking lot to make sure it was free of cars.

Five yards.

No one was on the track. Good. She had it all to herself.

Three yards.

But someone was on the bleachers.

Jennifer skidded to a stop.

Her body slapped into the chain link. The metal rattled with a shaking clang. Blown it!

Lifting her eyes up, Jennifer peered at the person in the stands with disgust. At that distance, all Jennifer could see was the peach shade of the person’s clothes, topped by a fiery crop of goldish-colored hair. A child maybe? Whoever it was didn’t look that large.

Well, Jennifer thought, she did come to jog, even though her solitude was spoiled.

She walked to the open gate in the low fence and broke back into a trot towards the school track. One eye remained on the watcher in the stands. And that person was watching her. Jennifer could feel it. It was unnerving, in fact. Annoying, really. She hated people watching her sweat. Basically she was afraid they would see saw fat jiggle on her gut.

And so she jogged in the opposite direction.

Maybe that person would get the hint and leave.

It was a false hope. As Jennifer rounded the oval dirt path for the first lap, she lifted her head to get another look at the person sitting on their stadium steps, mentally planning what she had to do. Perhaps it was someone she knew. A classmate early for a track meet perhaps? She could nod, make polite small talk, then forget about it later.

When Jennifer eventually circled the track, she looked up.

In the morning light, the sun haloed around this onlooker’s mop of gold and strawberry curls. For a second, Jennifer thought she was staring at Aphrodite herself.

And that’s when Jennifer tripped.

It was so embarrassing. But Jennifer caught her feet fast enough and continued to jog on. But her face grew as hot as the sun, and not from exertion.

Yet she blinked up at the person in the stands, taking in what had made her trip. A girl. Broad almond eyes, rich green and blinking under reddish-gold eyelashes. Bow-shaped lips pursed together in a thinking line—pensive. Porcelain skin. With hair curling like the flames of the sun itself, including long solar flare-like strands hanging in front of her ears. It was no one she knew. The girl was too stunning—just the kind of girl Jennifer automatically hated.

The strange girl had a weird haircut, Jennifer decided. And she continued jogging. And the girl really wasn’t that pretty. Her face was a little too angular. And too pale. She could be a vampire. And her chin—it was one of those butt-chins with the cleft in the center. Yeah, Jennifer thought peevishly. And perhaps she was just waiting for Jennifer to bow at her feet, thinking she was all that.

Fixing her eyes on the track, Jennifer continued on, contemplating for the slightest of moments to forget her exercise for the day and go home.

At least she tried to.

The blonde rose from her seat, revealing that she was hardly taller than Jennifer’s eleven-year-old brother Andrew. Five feet, maybe. And the girl descended the stadium steps on thin, well-formed legs, which Jennifer envied. In fact, the girl’s shape was perfectly balanced. It was sickening actually how impeccably pieced together this girl was. This girl was built with all femininity—not like a super model with those extra-long thin legs and chest, but balanced with a bust that fit her hips, waist and derriere. If her older brother had been there, he would have said the girl was an ultra hottie with a body.

Ugh. She definitely was too beautiful.

Jennifer glanced back to the gate again. Jogging in front of such a girl watching her imperfect, flawed, grotesquely immature body was not the way she wanted to start the day. One lap was sufficient. She could make up for it later once the freak of nature was gone.

Rounding the track, Jennifer attempted to make a clean pass. Unfortunately, the blonde had stepped down to the track in a manner to get her attention. Then the girl stepped in her way.

Jennifer veered to the right to go by.

“Excuse me,” the girl called after Jennifer. Her voice lilted like a fairy from a fantasy movie. Perfect. “Excuse me, but could you stop and help me for a moment?”

Oh crap. What did Miss Perfect want?

Up close, Miss Perfect had this plaintive, almost lost-puppy look to her nearly Asian-yet-green eyes. Her accent was definitely not American English. Australian maybe? There was an exotic quality to it.

And that made Jennifer curious. So she slowed down, catching her breath. “What do you want?”

With a prim