Return to Exile (Volume 1) (The Hunter Chronicles, Band 1) - Hardcover

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E.J. Patten was born Arizona and grew up with a love of stories, thanks to his parents’ ownership of a video store. He received a BA in Media Arts and an MBA from Brigham Young University, and he lives with his wife and three children on a small hill overlooking a large lake in a Utah town.

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Return to Exile

CHAPTER 1

A Trap, Like a Good Story

A good trap is like a good story: hidden and leading toward one inevitable conclusion,” muttered Sky, checking his vines with a practiced delectation.

He dropped to the ground to get a closer look, his dirty black hair dragging through the dirt.

“Rule number two,” whispered Sky, brushing leaves over the vine, trying to make the pattern look random. “A good trap, like a good story, has to arise naturally from the environment. It has to be seamless. If the prey suspects what’s coming, they’ll bolt.”

Standing but still partially crouched, Sky shimmied behind the closest tree. He peeked out, surveying the forest for signs of life. Traces of fading sunlight slipped through the canopy above, moving across the earth like matadors with threadbare capes teasing and taunting the night onward. And the night—stupid thing that it was—kept taking the bait.

Just like Sky.

His stomach growled at the thought of bait. He’d eat some right now if he had any. The problem was, he’d already eaten it. He pressed his back against the tree, holding his stomach.

Didn’t his uncle know there were child labor laws to protect kids from this kind of thing? He must have set up a bazillion traps today, and still nothing. He was only eleven, for crying out loud! No, not eleven—twelve, actually. It was his birthday, after all, and an awful one at that. And yet nobody seemed to care. He’d been wandering the woods all day, hungry, alone, and with nothing to look forward to, except for yet another horrible move.

He was getting tired of it. He pulled out his yo-yo and practiced a few tricks: pinwheel, double or nothing, rock the baby. Just as he was slipping into a Ferris wheel, he heard it—

SNAP. “AARGH!”

He flipped his yo-yo into his pocket and raced west toward the sound.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!” He ran into the broad clearing and saw Uncle Phineas hanging by his ankle on the clearing’s edge. “HA! Goulash for you!”

His uncle smiled down at him.

“Yes, yes, well played. I get goulash for your birthday party tonight, and you get leftover pizza. Bully for you. Now, if you wouldn’t mind cutting me down?” said Phineas.

Sky walked toward the tree that served as the linchpin of the trap, laughing. “You mess with the best, you hang like Aunt Tess.”

“That was your great-great-aunt Tess, and she wasn’t hung. She was drawn and quartered,” said Phineas.

“Same dif,” said Sky, searching through the jumble of vines to find the primary link.

“Only in that your bowels void in both situations. Though I assure you one is much messier than the other,” said Phineas.

“Really? Which one?”

“I’ll leave that for your overactive imagination to puzzle out,” said Phineas as he swung back and forth, back and forth.

“That’s the third rule of trap building, right? A trap,” said Sky, trying to imitate his uncle’s not-quite-British I’ve-been-in-America-too-long accent. (Clear throat.) “A trap, like a good story, needs to hint at greater things without revealing them until the prey is snared.”

“Spot on, though your imitation could use some work,” said Phineas.

“You can add vocal coaching to my curriculum right after botany,” said Sky, “since you seem intent on boring me to death.”

Sky found the main vine and started tracing it through the jumble. This was a particularly complex trap that used all the fundamentals of trap building: direct and misdirect, attract and repel, lure and snare—all the things his uncle had taught him over the years.

“Botany could well save your life one day, you know,” said Phineas, “if you’d only read all the books I gave you and not just the ones you like.”

“Pshaw,” said Sky. “If the day ever comes that I need botany, I’ll eat the goulash—a whole pot of it.”

“I don’t think goulash is healthy for a body in the throws of rigor mortis…. Actually, I think goulash may cause rigor mortis, but if you promise to eat it, I’ll see to it that you have some in your hour of need,” Phineas replied. “It might make a good side dish to your words.”

“Ha, ha. Eat my words. I get it. It’s a word puzzle, like an acrostic or an anagram, but not as clever,” said Sky sarcastically as he gave up on the vine he’d been working on and started tracing another.

Phineas smiled. “It was very clever of you, Sky, using a triple trolley—or the troll snatcher, as Sir Alexander Drake used to call it before he was brutally murdered.”

“You don’t have to call it the ‘troll snatcher,’ Uncle Phineas; I’m twelve now, all grown up. I know there are no trolls to snatch,” said Sky.

“Which reminds me . . . ,” said Phineas, wiggling around like a prize marlin. A small wrapped box fell from his tattered frock coat. “Happy birthday.”

Sky let go of the vine he’d been playing with and crossed the open space between them to pick up the box.

“Well, go on! Open it!” said Phineas, smiling down at him, his strange monocle fastidiously clinging to his face despite all the laws of physics. He’d worn the monocle for as long as Sky could remember. It was dark, strange and thick, like a jeweler’s monocle, with retractable hooks that fit over the nose and ear.

Sky shook the box.

“But . . . aren’t you going to be at my party tonight?” asked Sky, suddenly worried.

“Of course. I know I haven’t been around as much of late, but I’ve never missed it before, have I?” replied Phineas. Sky felt measurably better. He couldn’t imagine a party without Phineas.

“I’m giving this to you now because this is one gift best given in private,” Phineas supplied, answering Sky’s next question before he could ask it. “Well, go on!”

Grinning, Sky ripped off the wrapping paper and opened the box. Inside he found an antique pocket watch, similar in style to the monocle his uncle wore, but lighter, sort of grayish.

“Your watch?” said Sky, surprised. He flipped it open, watching as the numerous dials ticked and the moon made its way around the edge like a peddler looking for a place to push his wares. Phineas had tried to show him how to read it once, but he’d never figured it out.

After a moment the dials settled down and the moon took its place in the night, full and heavy—just like the moon overhead. “It’s amazing! Thank you.”

“She’s old, but she keeps good time,” said Phineas. “The great monster hunter Solomon Rose and I once argued over whether or not the moon ran by her or the other way around. You share a birthday with him, you know, both born under the Hunter’s Moon.”

“Solomon Rose? The greatest monster hunter of all time? Died more than four hundred years ago—and you claim he argued with you over this watch? I find that hard to...