ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy) Read online

  Trilogy exploring

  Normal - Paranormal - Supernormal

  ALEC

  Alexander Trilogy Book One

  Originally published in part as The Princess

  Followed by:

  Alexander

  and

  Sacha—The Way Back

  A novel by

  Stan I.S. Law

  INHOUSEPRESS, MONTREAL, CANADA

  SECOND EDITION

  Copyright © Stanislaw Kapuscinski 1997, eBook 2010, Second edition 2013

  http://www.stanlaw.ca

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or b y any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by

  INHOUSEPRESS

  http://inhousepress.ca

  Kindle Edition 2013

  Parts of the book was originally published under the title The Princess.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, titles, places and incidents are either the

  products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Second Edition.

  1. Alec

  2. Princess Sandra

  3. The School

  4. The Castle

  5. Hello Again

  6. The Far Country

  7. Home

  8. Home Again

  9. The Parents

  10. The Next Step

  11. The Enigma

  12. Zooming In

  13. Machu Picchu?

  14. More Questions

  15. The Enigma Gets Worse

  16. The Abyss Revisited

  17. Lake Champlain

  18. Alicia

  19. The Gale

  20. You Called?

  21. Coffee

  22. The Last Sail of Summer

  23. The School Again

  24. Once More, My Love

  25. The Whirlwind

  26. The Middle Ground

  27. The Missing Link

  28. Princess Susanna

  29. The Final Step

  Epilogue

  Alexander

  Foreword

  Second Edition.

  From the author,

  In September 2010 part of this book had been published under the title The Princess. It received quite decent reviews but some of my readers claimed that it was principally suited to a younger audience. This was true, of course. It was a story about Coming-of-Age. Although, at the time, I thought that the parents of young Alec would also find it interesting.

  Since, I’d decided to make it part of a Trilogy.

  With that in mind, I had to covert The Princess to a novel suitable for “mature audiences”. The result is Alec, a novel that incorporates all of The Princess, but also adds elements that might be of greater interest for adult literary palate. It became more than just a Coming-of-Age story. The Trilogy, already available in ebook form, consists of:

  ALEC + ALEXANDER + SACHA

  That last name is Russian diminutive that is also derived from the name Alexander. Thus we have three generations of Alecs, or Alexanders, sharing with you their, I’m sure you’ll agree, very unusual experiences. Briefly their stories deal with Normal, Paranormal, and Supernormal events. I hope you’ll enjoy them all.

  To whet your appetite, here are some of the reviews of the original version, which is retained in full:

  “…The cosmic merging of Alec and Sandra is exceptional writing, even for this author from whom we can always expect the extraordinary...”

  [Kate Jones, writer/editor, USA]

  “…In many ways, this is a tale for us all, both young and old. It is a coming-of-age story high on life and hormones! It is a tale that breaks barriers and helps readers to realize that life's perspective is what we make it; we form our own realities...”

  [T.D. Hollowell, author]

  This is a story that contrives to blend normal and paranormal into a single reality.

  [B. Happach, Publisher, Canada]

  I trust you’ll forgive this little subterfuge and enjoy my usual attempt to blend the three realities into a story that will tickle your mind as well as your heart. As I am sure you’ll agree it is an extraordinary journey a boy takes within and without.

  Stan I.S. Law.

  1

  Alec

  “Once upon a time, a long, long time into the future, there lived a Princess. How can she live in the future? It is as easy as living in the past. To tell you the truth, she really lives in the Present. Only in the Present—though most people seem to prefer living in the past. I don’t know why. I suppose they live in their memories. When you do nothing much, you don’t create new memories, so you have to live in the past. But not the Princess. She has so much to do that a lot of what she does spills into the future.”

  Alec was sitting by the window, seemingly paying little attention. His mother was getting used to it. What mother wasn’t? Perhaps Alec was getting too old for this? Not just this sort of book, but even for having his mother read to him. Alicia was reading aloud, in an attempt to inspire her son to read more books. Lately his interests have been limited to beating everyone at tennis. That’s it. She had no idea what subject might excite him, but, she reasoned, there was no harm in trying. She cleared her throat to get his attention.

  “But Mother,” he stifled a yawn, “this is for children!”

  At thirteen he considered himself very adult. She chose to ignore that.

  “The story I am about to tell you,” she continued, “all happened a long, long time ago, and it continues a long, long time into the future.”

  Alec’s attention wondered off on a tangent. His mother’s voice receded and then merged with the drone of a bee buzzing just outside the window. His imagination took over.

  He pretended he was that bee. He almost felt the tiny wings flapping ceaselessly on his shoulder blades.

  “Sometimes it all seems like a dream,” he mused, “at other times it feels as real as the pink Christmas flowers on my windowsill.”

  This happened more and more often lately. His mother would read to him, and his mind would take over and spin his own story. She was getting worried about him. Didn’t they call it attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? ADHD or something? Only Alec wasn’t hyperactive. If anything he could sit for hours, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

  Perhaps I ought to see a doctor, she mused?

  “It all depends on what mood Alec’s in…” she told his father that evening. She was close to tears. She thought she was losing her son.

  Alex Baldwin Sr. was, in some respects, a fairly old-fashioned man. He was at a loss for words. Actually, he was thinking of his son’s hormones, which were probably demanding their rightful recognition, but there was no elegant way to sharing his suspicions with his wife.

  “It also depends on a great many other things…” Alex Senior replied.

  But Alec Junior didn’t know about great many things, until a long, long time into the future.

  When Alec was a little boy, of two or three, both his and his father’s names were Alec. Alec with a ‘c’ on the end. Alicia referred to them as Senior and Junior. Yet confusion persisted. By the time Alec was four, his father changed his name to Alex, with an ‘x’ on the end. Actually it was Alicia who had changed it. Alex Senior didn’t mind. After all, it was closer to Alexander the Great than Alec could ever be. Nevertheless, the Senior and Junior qualifiers re
mained for some time. Just to make sure. On occasion.

  Alexander, which the Baldwins liked to abbreviate to Alec, run in the family for six generations. He and Alicia were not about to give it up just to save some confusion.

  ***

  One autumn day Alec woke up feeling rather queasy. His temperature was running a little high, and his mother, worried as most mothers usually are, told him to stay home. For most boys this would be a reason to be happy, but Alec liked his school. Perhaps not every subject, but on that day they were to have Geography, and Alec always managed to imagine that he was traveling to the places they were studying.

  It first happened when the prim Miss Brunt, the geography teacher, was showing them a map of Peru. The large map had colorful photographs on each side, depicting people from a bygone era. On the slopes of a mountain that looked like cascading terraces, there were men and women and children all surrounded by strange animals she called llamas and alpacas.

  Alec’s mind was already beginning to wonder.

  He thought Miss Brunt must be an old maid. She was probably mangled and hung up to dry, and then ironed into a crisp condition.

  He saw himself turning the wheel of a clothes’ wringer with Miss. Brunt coming out, thin and proper, at the other end.

  Poor Miss Brunt, he thought. Shall I look like that if I never get married? At the same time the thought of getting married had left him as fast as it had come. Girls were not something Alec liked to think about. They were almost yuck. They giggled too much.

  And yet…

  Miss Brunt explained to the boys and girls that, although these were photographs of paintings, people still dressed in these same clothes, even more beautiful than a springtime rainbow. There were reds and crimsons, and rich blues and oranges and sunny yellows. They, Miss Brunt said, wove all their cloths themselves. Above the people on the green terraces, there rose a big stone wall upon which stood a man dressed in even more splendid attire. He was taller than the others, and he looked down on the men and women below him with a kindly smile. He must have been some kind of a king or ruler.

  And suddenly Alec was an Inca prince, dressed in princely regalia, in colorful clothes spiced with gold thread. He stood next to the king and with him looked kindly upon his people from the top of the wall. He smiled down, and as the men and women approached, he distributed gold nuggets to them that he had collected on his many travels.

  “Alec!” Miss Brunt’s voice was even louder than the laughter of his people.

  “Yes, Miss Brunt?”

  “Are you paying attention?” she asked sternly. But not too sternly. Alec was her star geography pupil, even though his attention seemed to wander at times. “You are paying attention,” she affirmed for her own satisfaction.

  “Yes, Miss Brunt!” Alec agreed even as he handed another gold nugget to a youngster about his own age reaching up on his toes. “Would you like one, too?” he asked Miss Burnt quietly.

  Luckily, Miss Brunt was already explaining how to make wool from Vicunas.

  That same evening, on returning home, Alec read up all he could on the Inca Empire in the Encyclopedia. His dreams that night were filled with soaring mountains, their crags disappearing in mysterious mists while their bases seemed lost in deep, even more mysterious ravines. He pondered their mysteries while he traveled on a narrow mountain path, a stony trail high in the sky. Behind him, his people followed with a number of llamas carrying his tent, food and water.

  He was only ten when he’d started having such visions. By the time he was twelve, he’d sat on the thrones of the Egyptian Pharaohs and the Czars of Russia. He’d slept in a Cossack tent in the middle of the Mongolian desert. He’d shared hot, sweet goat milk in cozy yurts surrounded by the inaccessible and forbidding Afghan mountains. He’d also crossed the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian oceans in a variety of ships, the powerful square-riggers, their sails billowing in the steady easterlies. Once, he almost died from lack of water on a raft that had strayed from the trade routes into the treacherous doldrums.

  Later, or it could have been earlier, he’d lost track of time, he’d reached the North and the South Poles on foot, skis and sled. He’d climbed Everest and K2 in the perilous reaches towering over Kashmir. He’d sat at the feet of gurus in a somber Buddhist monastery, listening to the secret chant of Aum.

  As time went on, his visions had become more and more real. He not only imagined the places he saw, he actually felt the cold air of the high mountains, he smelled the stale miasma of the subterranean caves, he tasted the thick black tea on the deck of original two-masted dahabeahs with their lanyard supporting their triangular sails, drifting majestically on the slow-moving waters of the Nile. He once woke up with bites from a scorpion he suffered crossing the Sahara on foot, only to find a tiny spider looking down on him from the ceiling.

  Two weeks before his thirteenth birthday, his mother had taken him to see a doctor. Not a real doctor. A Ph.D., not an MD, she thought, not a psychiatrist; just a psychologist who, she’s been told, specialized in children. He didn’t deal with deranged minds. He just nudged them a little, now and then. He steered them in the right direction. She had no choice. Last week she had to call Alec’s name five times before he came back from wherever he was in his imagination. It was just too much, she told her husband.

  “Just too much,” she repeated, herself drawing close to a nervous breakdown.

  And now the nurse held to door for her and Alec to the doctor’s office. Frankly, it didn’t look like an office. More like a comfortable living room. Only a large mahogany desk in the corner suggested that, perhaps, some work took place here, on occasion.

  “Do sit down, Mrs. Baldwin!”

  Doctor Schmidthousen made a dive to offer Mrs. Baldwin a deeply upholstered armchair. She smiled in return.

  The balding doctor displayed two rows of immaculately whitened protruding teeth, which instantly reminded Alec of some rabbits he saw last summer.

  “Ah, eh, you too, young man…” he waved his arm at Alec who, for reasons he couldn’t identify, took an instant dislike to him.

  Mrs. Baldwin was a very attractive woman; slim, but not too slim, with all the right curves in all the right places. She kept her blond hair pinned up in a flamboyant knot atop her skull, reminiscent of Nefertiti. Or so her husband thought. She suspected that Alex Senior has long been in love with the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. She also thanked her lucky stars that Nefertiti has been dead for more than 3300 years.

  She looked up at the good doctor with plea in her eyes.

  What a pity she brought this brat with her, the doctor mused. He was about to send Alec to get some ice cream and suggest that Mrs. Baldwin might be more comfortable stretching out on the settee, but thought better of it. He remembered that he already had a case pending at the local magistrate for paying too much attention to one of his patients. Too much attention? You cannot pay too much attention to patient’s comfort, he’d assured the judge.

  “It’s my job to make sure my patients are fully relaxed,” he’d stated defensively at the preliminary hearing.

  “On a settee with their clothes off, Dr. Schmidthousen?” asked the prosecuting attorney.

  “It was a very hot day,” the doctor pleaded. “Very, very hot day…” He tried hard to remember just how hot Mrs. What’s-her-name was on that day.

  “His mind seems to wander off to far away places,” Alec’s mother began.

  “What… what was that? Ah, yes. Your son was wondering… Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable on the settee?”

  “I came here about my son, doctor,” Mrs. Baldwin murmured.

  “Your… ah, what? It really was a very hot day…”

  Only then the doctor remembered that the lady in question hadn’t been his patient. She was a mother worried about her son… It’s a small world, he thought.

  Alicia Baldwin opened her mouth to say something, and changed her mind. Instead she shrugged, took Alec by the
arm, and made for the door. It seemed to her, that the doctor was drifting into a reality of his own at least as much as her son. The blind leading the blind?

  She wondered what sort of a bill she’d get for the consultation.

  Late last year, on his thirteenth birthday, suddenly, most of Alec’s imaginary trips had stopped. His father had given him a computer with a connection to the Internet. For a while the world opened its secrets to Alec, but… it wasn’t the same. There was too much information. Alec knew too much, and places sort of became real on their own. Too real to visit in his daydreams. With his curiosity sated, overwhelmed, his imagination could not spring wings.

  Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin relaxed. Alec was normal. A little obnoxious, temperamental, late for meals, but well, what thirteen-year-old wasn’t?

  For almost a month Alec did not ‘travel’. Neither in his sleep nor in his daydreams. Instead, he grew restless, almost annoyed. Surely, he could not have seen all the places and moments of history. He was only thirteen, after all. There must be others. What other places would fire his mind, his desire, strongly enough to take him there? Even for a while.

  Alec withdrew into himself.

  His father tried hard to draw him into his own interests. Soccer, rugby, cricket… no, not baseball or Canadian football; well, not if any of the other sports were available. His father was born in Harlow, just North of London. Yes, UK, not Ontario. In Harlow he’d played rugger, which they called rugby on this side of the Atlantic, not some Canadian perversion of it.

  His only son wasn’t responding.

  “He’s a dreamer, just like you…” Alicia reminded him.

  Indeed, Alex Senior had been a dreamer before he’d met his wife. Then, Nefertiti notwithstanding, his dreams had come true.