PROLOGUE

I should not have let him go without me. Chessie Durand stood with her Collie in front of the waterfall that hid the stargate at her mother’s farm on Earth Three. In her mind, she focused on her Chosen One, willing him to materialize from behind the cascading water and greet her with a cocky smile.

As the days had lengthened into weeks since he transported through the stargate to the Penumbral Dimension, Chessie’s concern about Peter increased. I cannot reach him telepathically as easily. His emotions seem as shadowed as the dimension itself.

At the base of the waterfall, a pond formed that joined a stream flowing along the edge of a meadow.

Flowing away like the days of our lives? Chessie wondered. She drew a long, deep breath and squared her shoulders. I am going to the Penumbral Dimension.

Again, she refocused her thoughts on Peter, receiving an image of a full moon spilling across the waters of a lake surrounded by dark green foliage with white flowers glowing in reflected moonlight.

Placing her hand on Chap’s furry head, together they materialized in that beautiful scene. As the swirl of sparkling mist dissipated, the stunned expressions of several Outlier guards became obvious.

“You’re the One.” A bearded warrior held his sword at the ready. Not threatening, but watchful.

“Peter calls me his Chosen One, and I’ve come to take him home.”

“I mean you’re the One of Legends who travels in the light of the merkaba.”

At Chessie’s puzzled expression, the Outlier expanded his explanation. “There is a legend on Earth Five of a Special One who travels in the light of the merkaba who will become the Queen of her people. ‘Her power will be mightier than any in this dimension,’ the legend says. Little wonder The Committee on Earth Five wanted you banished or under their control. They are afraid of your power.”

“She could be very useful to us.” A burly guard with a perpetual scowl stepped toward Chessie and the merkaba’s shield activated. When he hit the shield, he froze in step, sword upraised.

“So it is true.” The first Outlier barely glanced at the now frozen guard but remained at a respectful distance from Chessie. “And you can travel to this dimension without waiting for an eclipse.”

Chessie didn’t confirm or deny his statement, but remained silent, waiting for the request she knew was to come.

“We would ask your assistance in setting up a base in another dimension from where we can return Earth Five to its original mission of peaceful evolution.”

“Where is Peter Stravel?”

“He is safe, though feeling the effects of a nearly constant barrage of shocks designed to wear him down physically and emotionally.”

“I will go to him first, then I will hear your proposal.”

The guard seemed about to object, then reconsidered when he glanced once more at his frozen cohort. “I will take you there.”

Chessie and Chap followed the Outlier down a winding stone pathway past houses with perpetually glowing lights to fend off the twilight of this dimension. When the guard opened the door to one of the houses, Chessie stepped inside.

Her adopted brother, RT, rose immediately when Chessie entered the room where Peter lay strapped to a table of sorts. Kelby, his friend from a lesser developed dimension, was slower to rise, but obviously glad to see her. The arm with Peter’s computer implant was bared to the elbow as a man stood poised beside him with a large knife.

“What is going on?” Chessie silently commanded the merkaba to shield Peter but it failed to do so, causing her great frustration. So she was left with only her wits in this situation?

“How did you get here?” After a brief scowl at the guards behind her, the man with the knife redirected his attention to Chessie.

“I wished to be here.”

“The Chosen One.” The man glanced at Peter and lowered the knife. “Your options are open once again, my son.”

Groggy, Peter worked to focus his gaze on Chessie.

“Why did you not contact me?” Chessie knelt beside Peter as Chap and the black Collie who had been stationed beside Peter sniffed each other.

“We have been trying to turn the tide of fear on Earth Five,” the older man explained. “While some progress has been made, the cost to Peter has been high. We have run out of time. To save Peter’s life, the computer implant must be neutralized.”

“The merkaba will protect you,” Chessie stated. “If you simply believe in our love.”

“I will not endanger you.”

“But you will not trust me either?”

“The meteor shower approaches Earth Five.” One of the Outliers tracked movements on a holographic screen.

“Why is that important?” Chessie asked.

“Even a small meteor–say, sixty feet across–that doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere can cause massive destruction, landing with the force of twenty nuclear bombs.”

“That’s hard to wrap my mind around.”

“Though Earth Five has stationed satellites to nudge the trajectory of most meteors away from their world, this cluster is so numerous not all the meteors can be repelled.”

“Serves them right.” The anger of another Outlier brought agreement from several in the room.

“Ah, but the big unknown is this Penumbral Dimension is still energetically linked to Earth Five. How will we be affected when the meteors strike our former home planet?”

“I’m going to the stargate,” the angry guard stated. “Perhaps the meteors will shake loose the transport and we can escape this hellhole. Who is with me?”

A number of the more vocal and militant Outliers accompanied their cohort to hustle out of the building.

As the blips of the tracking screen echoed in the silent room, Chessie stared into Peter’s eyes. “I can transport you and a few others out now but can’t guarantee how many.”

“I will stand with my family.”

 ~ * ~

“Those I was told were dead had actually been banished here.” Peter drew in a deep, though still shaky, breath. “Meet my father, Emerson. My mother, Freyja. And my brother, Aadyn.”

As Chessie nodded to each of Peter’s family members, questions buzzed in her mind. Were these people really who they claimed to be? She could pick out no obvious familial similarities, but perhaps living in different dimensions erased what might otherwise be obvious.

Chap nudged her hand. What they say is true.

“There are also children here, Chessie. Ones who were not allowed on Earth Five. Banished for not following the process of births. The population has grown so much this dimension is starting to have food shortages because of the difficulty of growing food in constant shadow. If power to the lighted greenhouses goes down, it can destroy entire crops. We have to help.”

Chessie’s first selfish thought was to transport Peter back to safety where he could regain his strength. But the same instincts that led her to travel the dimensions with her Collie to rescue endangered animals insisted she help these people.

As Peter fumbled for Chessie’s hand, she grasped his and held tightly.

“The meteor shower has reached Earth Five,” the tracker announced.

“How many hits?” Emerson frowned.

“Hard to tell right now, but it looks bad.”

Images on the screen revealed huge, billowing clouds of smoke and debris on the surface of Earth Five that did indeed obscure accurate assessment of the damage.

Those gathered watched in stunned silence. In spite of their callous exile by The Committee on Earth Five, they still seemed connected in some way to that dimension and emotionally affected by the destruction of the place they once called home.

As earthquakes began trembling beneath them, one of the Outliers who knew of Chessie’s legend, spoke up. “Tis the connection with Earth Five. What affects them also affects our world. We face the same destruction that is happening on Earth Five.”

“You can save us.” Peter’s father faced Chessie. “Take the children first.”

“How many people?”

Emerson shrugged. “Probably several hundred.”

“There’s not enough space at the farm on Earth Three,” Chessie said.

Then Kelby spoke up. “We can go to Celtic Zero. We should be able to grow many crops in the fertile soils by the river in the Forbidden Paradise.”

“We need to move quickly,” Emerson said. “Some of the children will be terrified. It will not be easy to convince them to come with us.”

Shadow and I will find the children, Chap said.

Once again, near panic at the thought of losing her beautiful Collie clutched at Chessie’s throat. But serving others was his mission–why he had been able to return as an angel in a physical body.

Not knowing the extent of the merkaba’s powers, Chessie didn’t want to lose anyone in transport. “Do you have vehicles of some kind we can use to transport groups of people?”

“Most of our vehicles are not large enough to hold many people–perhaps a dozen at a time.”

“Commandeer the vehicles you can,” Emerson stated. “And whatever else might be useful in our new destination. Remember that children and other people take priority over possessions.”

Kelby transported with the first group to get people settled in the old city on Celtic Zero while Chessie, Peter, and his father organized vehicles one after another to send others as quickly as possible.

With her telepathic connection to Chap, Chessie saw him and the black Collie racing and dodging around and jumping over cracks opening in the earth as the quakes continued to rumble with increasing intensity, loosing volcanic lava flows. Amid the heat and chaos, the Outliers urged the children escorted by Chap and Shadow into waiting vehicles with two or three adults.

Silently praying for the safety of all of them, Chessie called on the power of the merkaba again and again to transport people to Celtic Zero.

As the lava flows closed in on the building that served as their small island of safety, Chap and Shadow returned with Emerson and the little girl he had rescued from under a bridge.

She is the last child, Chap said.

Emerson climbed aboard a vehicle with the child as a crack opened in the earth beside the building, allowing lava to ooze to the surface. “Let us go! Everyone get in!”

As Chessie called on the merkaba’s power one more time, they disappeared in a huge billow of smoke as the Penumbral Dimension imploded.

CHAPTER ONE

The little girl huddled under the bridge, trying to shut out the voices calling for her and the barking of dogs coming closer.

Terrified, she crept deeper into the shadows, squeezing her eyes closed and covering her ears with hands stained brown by the mud that surrounded the shelter she had called home since she arrived in this shadowy world.

She reflexively jumped when something cold and wet touched her cheek. Then the gentle lick of a dog’s tongue swept along her jaw. Soft fur touched her bare arm as the dog barked.

“There you are, my little Bridget.” The big man known as Emerson swept her up in his arms and ran, two Collie dogs close beside them. Beneath their feet, the earth rumbled and spewed fire like some huge, angry beast. Buildings crumbled all around them as trees exploded in bursts of flame.

Over the big man’s shoulder, the little girl watched the bridge that had been her refuge heave upward before the angry black and red river of lava swallowed it, determined to destroy everything in its path.

Fearing they would both be devoured, the little girl once again squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could.

Emerson shouted, “Let us go! Everyone get in!”

Tingles quivered through the little girl’s body, accompanied by a silence deeper than she had known even when she huddled in the shadows under the bridge.

Then all stopped, including the tingling in her body.

When she cautiously opened her eyes to see if she was dead, she saw broad-leafed trees and brightly colored flowers.

And light.

Like the sun that only appeared on the Penumbral Dimension at times the others called eclipses, when a handful of lucky ones could escape that shadowy darkness.

Still held protectively in the big man’s arms, a crowd of other people the little girl recognized from the Penumbral Dimension climbed slowly out of vehicles, stunned and quiet. Mostly children like her and teenagers, with a smaller number of adults who had been kind to her.

Strangers walked among the stunned refugees to offer comfort, as did dozens of dogs like the Collie who found her under the bridge. All with thick, soft fur in sable, black, white and various combinations of those colors offering doggie kisses and tail wags to welcome the two-leggeds to this new world.

“Come, there is shelter in this old city.” One of the strangers among them pointed toward several large stone buildings nearby.

The group moved cautiously through the lush greenery in that direction, often looking at the sky. Perhaps expecting, as the little girl did, for shadows to reclaim the land as happened after the far-too-brief eclipses in the darkened land from which they had narrowly escaped.

“It’s a castle!” People whispered in awe as they paused outside a multi-storied stone building with towers guarding each corner and a huge dome in the central building. On the front steps lay an old dog, as gray as the stone of the castle. He raised his head to watch the humans enter, but made no sound.

As the big man named Emerson entered the castle and set the little girl on her feet, fear clutched in her belly, yet she was drawn to the beauty of this great room. Up, up, up–nearly as high as the sky above her, arched white columns rose in carved shapes as intriguing as the frost painted on the trees when the icy weather came to the Penumbral Dimension.

A table stretched nearly the entire length of the room, and the little girl wondered if there was enough food in this world to fill the table. Her tummy rumbled, a reminder she hadn’t eaten for–well, she couldn’t rightly remember.

The adults and teenagers among them quickly organized to gather food and wood for fires to ward off the chill of the coming evening. Water to drink seemed pure and plentiful.

As darkness crept across the land, they huddled together around the fires. The old dog who had been on the steps ambled inside and laid down by one of the fires, put his head on his paws and soon was snoring gently. However, fearful murmurs whispered among the refugees as they wondered if the light would return or if darkness would linger forever as it did in the Penumbral Dimension.

A man named Peter and others who had been to this land before did their best to reassure the newcomers the light would come with the dawn. However, many refugees kept a weary watchfulness until daybreak moved across the landscape once again. Only then did they relax into slumber.

When the little girl woke, she was still surrounded by the furry warmth of the dogs who had slept among the children. The adults and older teens among those transported to this wondrous place had gathered more fruits, berries, nuts and roots for food.

As the day warmed, the fires burned down to coals which could be fed later that evening.

Some spoke eagerly of an expected transport that would come from a place called Earth Three to bring more food and supplies they would need to set up a new settlement here.

However, anticipation turned to alarm as one of the dogs, Chap, picked up a disturbance. Incoming through the stargate!

~ * ~

Peter’s heart sank as a pod car arrived first with a dozen children and women from the farm on Earth Three. When another woman arrived with a dog and her four puppies, he figured there had been big trouble. The three men who stumbled through the stargate chasing them confirmed his fears.

Before he could act, Chessie’s adopted brother, RT, and his friend, Kelby, confronted the nasty-looking men. Knives were drawn and the fight narrowed to RT and the stepfather, Bennie, who had threatened and abused him and his dog for years.

When RT got the upper hand and could have snapped Bennie’s neck, he spared the man’s life and walked away. Several among those gathered took Bennie and his cohorts to a secure room in the castle.

A harrowing escape from an imploding dimension and a knife fight that could have ended in blood and death. Not exactly the bright and shining beginning to a better world Peter had envisioned most of his life.

As the refugees from the Penumbral Dimension huddled around the fires once again, the women and children who arrived in the pod car told how the three men had attacked the farm that morning. Several on Earth Three were injured, but healed quickly thanks to the shamanic abilities of Chessie’s grandmother.

If Chessie had been there…Peter didn’t want to think about that possibility. But perhaps she could have prevented the injuries with the power of the merkaba. However, if she hadn’t transported to the Penumbral Dimension, hundreds of lives there could have been lost.

As the children snuggled down with the dogs around the fires and fell asleep, Peter envisioned those children a short time in the future. They would be settled in cozy beds in this castle with rooms decorated to reflect their personalities and interests. The dogs would still lay beside them at night and romp with them during the day.

That was for the future. Tonight’s reality was taking a census of who had arrived in this new land. From just the short time he had reunited with his father, Peter knew Emerson would have made note of these numbers as he moved among the sleeping children and others who talked in small groups.

“How many people were transported?” Peter asked.

“Five hundred and two,” Emerson answered.

“Any injuries?”

“A few minor burns and some bruises that can be treated with medicinal herbs found while we searched for food. The biggest challenge may be the emotional shock of such a sudden change. But our people are resilient.”

Peter nodded thoughtfully. “What was the total number of people in the Penumbral Dimension?”

“Hard to say for sure. We knew those of us who banded together to help take care of the children and all of us made it out.” Emerson paused and shook his head sadly. “Over the years, we tried to include all who came, but couldn’t keep track of exiles who simply wanted to disappear. Many were too angry or too hopeless at being banished from what was supposed to be a perfect world. With the only chance to escape being the twenty-minute or so length of an eclipse–well, that seemed to make them more hopeless.”

I moved among the two-leggeds who fled to the distant regions, Shadow said. Most seemed just waiting to die, and many did. Those who still lived didn’t even try to escape when the lava flows came.

“What of the angry ones who rushed the stargates when the meteor strikes began?” Peter asked.

The devastation that rocked the Penumbral Dimension affected the stargates in unknown ways. Those in transport may have been…mutated is perhaps the best human word, as their molecules were mixed with others trying to transport and with elements such as lava and stone that breached the stargates.

“Where were they transported to?”

Unknown. All the functions of the stargates were affected, including destinations.

“So they could be out there…somewhere…in some form?”

That’s the best information I have right now.

“Are there survivors from Earth Five?”

That knowledge will come when it is time.

“Some outside the domed cities survived similar meteor strikes years ago,” Emerson said. “Your mother and I tried to help those people before you were born. That was not popular with The Committee, who saw the survivors as mutants carrying disease. I believe that was the real reason we were exiled. Our unauthorized pregnancy with your younger brother was simply a convenient excuse. Exceptions to the birth laws were made in a number of cases, especially for those in critical positions such as doctors like your mother.”

Peter gazed once more over those cuddled with the dogs in the great hall. Some sprawled in exhausted sleep. Others wiggled in restlessness. “So Chessie saved all the children?”

“Every one we knew of. One-hundred-eighty-nine aged nine or under. Two-hundred-twelve aged ten through nineteen. The remaining hundred and one are two decades or older.”

“Most of the adults are women.”

“Women who had to become tough to survive existence in the Penumbral Dimension,” Emerson said. “Yet they cared enough to risk their lives to save the children.”

Peter nodded. “Seems fitting those who are strong, courageous and compassionate are being given a chance to build something better here on Celtic Zero.”

Emerson stared at his older son. “You are wise for one so young.”

A boyish grin claimed Peter’s face as he gazed across the great hall and spotted Chessie making her way toward him. “Seems to come from a source outside me.”

“Go with your Chosen One and sleep for a while, my son. We will have much to do when the dawn comes.”

~ * ~

Emerson watched Peter and Chessie greet each other as if they had been together for many lifetimes. Their energies seemed to meld together, taking on a glow brighter than either had alone.

Over the twenty-some years since he and his wife, Freyja, had been exiled to the Penumbral Dimension, Emerson had worried about Peter. Though his old friend, Orion, promised to mentor the boy, Emerson developed doubts about this man’s motives. Someone had betrayed them to the collective consciousness on Earth Five. Was Orion that person?

As they struggled for survival in the shadowy dimension of their exile, other babies arrived. Sometimes accompanied by a parent. Other times with a guardian who disappeared shortly after arrival. Some of the infants also disappeared mysteriously during the same eclipse when they arrived. Others might not have noticed amid the chaotic attempts of exiles to escape, but Emerson carefully watched all events in the Penumbral Dimension.

The shadowy dimension was being used for something more than a dumping ground for those who ran afoul of Earth Five’s rules.

Emerson and Freyja knew something more was going on, but there didn’t seem to be a set pattern of the babies and, later, the school-aged kids who arrived, so the mystery remained unsolved.

Emerson sought out his wife, still circulating among the refugees to comfort them.

“You should get some rest.”

Freyja turned weary eyes to Emerson. “And you also.”

Emerson slipped an arm around Freyja’s shoulders. “Rather like our arrival in the Penumbral Dimension but in reverse, isn’t it? Light instead of dark. Hope instead of a sense of doom.”

“And perhaps babies won’t die but will live rich, full lives.”

“You saved so many of them, my love. You and the other women who nursed their own babies as well as ones who arrived without mothers.”

“Yet it is the ones we lost who haunt me.”

“Our new world will be a living memorial to them. The teachings of our survival school will now be used to build a better world. These young people are strong and creative. They helped build the greenhouses, tapped into geothermal energy for heat and lighting. Used recycled gray water. Scrounged and recycled and repurposed.”

“Well, that certainly resulted in some very interesting looking vehicles, that’s for sure.” Freyja and Emerson laughed together as they sought a place to rest for a few hours.

As they settled near one of the fires, Chessie brought them a blanket and draped it over their shoulders.

“Thank you, dear,” Freyja said. Chessie smiled in return.

As his wife leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes, Emerson’s mind continued to worry. Without clandestine access to the technology on Earth Five, would this world be a step backward?

But they were safe. A huge difference from the existence they had known for the past two decades. An existence that always seemed fragile somehow, as if one disaster could collapse all they had worked to build. Still, the way that disaster arrived in the form of meteors striking Earth Five surprised Emerson, as did their salvation embodied in a legend come to life. Chessie, the One who traveled in the light of the merkaba, and the Chosen One of the son Emerson and Freyja had been forced to leave behind.

He wondered what other surprises awaited as they shaped a new life here on Celtic Zero. Building that better life in a semi-tropical land should be effortless compared to the challenges they had faced in the Penumbral Dimension. In many ways, it seemed they only had to expand paradise and remember enough experiences not to screw it up.