The Temple in the Sky - Fernando Herrera Jr (children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗

at Micay, holding her in his arms as he wiped the tears off her cheeks with his sleeve. Then, suddenly, thunder struck hard and lighting flashed across the desert sky. It began to rain, lightly at first, but quickly turned heavy. They were drenched. He stared deep into her eyes as the driblets from his forehead trailed down his cheeks and dripped onto her face. Whilst, he uttered, “Micay, you’re gonna wait right here. You understand? Wait right here.” Slowly, he began to release her as the flashing continued and the rain fell, penetrating harder with every second.
“No, please don’t leave me,” she whimpered while briskly tugging on his shoulders once again, before he could walk away.
Apaec took her delicate little hand and lead her into a small cave. “Wait here, Micay… I’m just going to take a quick peek. I have to make sure it’s him before we leave, so stay under these rocks and wait for me. You’re gonna be just fine. I promise. I’m gonna be right back,” he said firmly as he walked away from her. But Micay held onto his hand tightly, as a last attempt to keep him close. She knew that Apaec never kept his promises and worried so. It worked for a moment. The boy suddenly stopped and proceeded to walk back to her. He grasped her passionately in his arms and then embraced her tightly by the waist with his hands. Then, seized a moment to admire her beautiful face, took a deep breath, and muttered, “Micay, as long as my heart is beating, I will never let anything bad happen to you (he lied again).” The boy inclined, thereupon kissing her. The teens locked lips in a long impassioned moment of enchantment. He then took his index and middle fingers to her bottom lip that was rosy and plump, and brushed it, delicately as possible; subsequently, sliding them down by her cheek, sweeping off the excess water driblets from the rain. “I love you, Micay,” he murmured. Her gaze broadened with shock as she released a few delicate whimpers. A single tear ran down her cheek, fusing with the raindrops on her chin, as she stood on the tips of her toes resting in his arms. Apaec released her, causing her dainty body to drop an inch to the ground, and in the end, left the cave, disappearing into the darkness of the hostile storm. She watched the flashing silhouette of his dearest friend linger away into the tenebrous distance. That single kiss would be the final and treasured gift she would grasp from her beloved friend. Tragically, for years to come, it would prove to incite the haunting of her most precious memories.
Apaec escalated down the cliff at a fast pace: running, jumping, and even crawling at times. As agile as he was, he made it down quick and crept up to a heap of tall boulders where he took cover. The witches were close; he could hear their drums and their chant growing louder. About thirty feet separated him from the site, and from a small aperture between the boulders, he was able to see them. By this time, at least thirty beheaded bodies lay down supine, juxtaposed on wide flattened-stones. The ground: soiled red from the draining blood of the headless cadavers. The heads: scattered around the bloody muddle of grime. He was horrified by the brutality of the scene, so he covered his mouth promptly, silencing his whimpers. Shaking in fear, he felt a thrill run through his body as goose bumps arose on his bronze cutis. The night was cold, and although completely drenched, he felt hot. He also felt his heart beating at an enormous rate. If the rain hadn’t made him wet, his heavy perspiration would’ve done the trick. While he scanned the scene, he found exactly what he hoped wouldn’t be true: the headless body of his best friend laying on its back. Whilst, he noticed the instantly recognizable, white panther tattoo that sealed the undeniable truth; his hands still bound together behind his back; blood dripping out from the neck as the rain washed it down to the ground. If the tattoo hadn’t been enough proof of the body’s identity, about two feet away from the body, he found Khuno’s head lying on its side, eyes wide open looking directly at Apaec. He choked for a moment and covered his mouth. He couldn‘t help but gag as his eyes were filled with tears. Turning around, he sat on the ground, resting his back on the tall, flat boulder. His breath was steady, and he inhaled deeply as to sooth his internal pain; knowing he would have to deliver the undeniable truth to Micay. He regretted leaving her. Apaec had taken a good moment to calm down before he made his way back up the cliff wondering what Kusco was up to. The old man had apparently not recognized Khuno, even with the detailed description they had given him. He was not hard to miss; he was the biggest one of the pack: tall and tan, long black hair, a muscular build, the unmistakable white panther tattoo on his bicep, and yet, he did not spot him. Or maybe he had been spotted by a witch? What if he too was now in ropes, down with the rest of the prisoners? Apaec wondered. He felt guilty for not having assisted Kusco on the mission; but the old man had been stubborn, and he demanded they stay on the cliff. Now, one of his best friends was gone... forever.

Z-III
The Treasure to End All Treasures

Jasper ran out to the garden to meet with Daisy, who was already kneeling beside the chest.
“Daisy, wait for me!” Jasper yelled out, as he ran to her.
“It fits! The key fits perfectly!” she responded.
“Wow… Open it! Hurry!” he ordered excitedly.
“Ok, here we go…”
She tried turning the key clockwise first but it was impossible to turn, so she turned it counterclockwise then. It rattled and clicked. The chest popped its top open with a spring. Cool air that smelled like alloy arose from the chest and onto their faces. A little bag of brown paper sat atop. It was tied shut with a thin red cord. She took it by the top and uncovered an opened envelope that lay underneath it. Inside of the envelope was a sheet of India paper gone opaque-yellow by age. It had beautiful calligraphic writing on it. She handed the bag over to Jasper and proceeded to read the writing. Written with on the paper were verses of black ink that had been meticulously, skillfully, and beautifully transcribed with great penmanship:

Distaff Gist

A daunted artist erst observed and felt
The silken cutis and skimpy soma,
Inhaled the spellbinding lush aroma
And thus forth fathomed that it nymph is svelte.
His amort soul swooned then in utter melt,
Whilst the tongue unhinged his vicious stoma;
Ne’er could glamour like da Vinci’s Mona,
Equate to the effervescence he dealt
By a bacchanal of ten butterflies
Which whirled about scrupulous loins of might.
But he had done so once and twice and thrice,
Till befit addicted by poison spice.
Passion, soar, did not bide, he had to fight
A tyrant fiend with gist as cold as ice.

A cordial heart was breached erst long ago.
It did so whilst a tyrant fiend attacked
With a postiche bow and acute arrow.
Thenceforth he fled and precious things he packed.

He sailed afar forthwith attempts to act
To hide his soul, the essence of his plight.
So bumpy storms he swept, the boat he tacked,
Past the wind, towards the clam shores to respite.

Upon the sand he fell to sooth his might;
Supine, his eyes were filled with rays of gold;
Saw the sky of blue and the clouds of white,
Mystic realms that spoke, mystic lands of old.

Yet precious things forgotten wept within:
An unkept heart… sorrow did… henceforth brim.

“Well, that’s draggy. Doesn’t make any sense. The words are silly. What in the world is… dissstaff… g-gist? And what’s in the bag? Open it!”
Jasper untangled the red cord and opened the little bag. He peeked inside, then put his hand in and picked out a yellow seed.
“Seeds? Now why in the world would anybody bury seeds inside a chest? What good would that do? You cannot plant a tree inside a metal chest! This is nonsense!” declared Daisy. She was baffled.
“They look like apple seeds but yellow” Jasper said.
He put the bag on the grass and went back to the chest.
“What else is in there? he asked.
“There’s only some books and these little containers of this weird stuff.”
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
“I dunno. Looks like… liquid metal.”
“No treasure. It was too good to be true. This was all probably my granpa’s stuff,” he said, looking at the ground in disappointment. He dropped one of the seeds to the grass and crushed it with his foot.
“But why did he bury all this stuff? These books aren’t even in English and they’re all hand written.” Daisy said while flipping through the pages one of the books.
“Well, now what?”
“You tell me,” she replied.
“I’m just gonna give it to mom.”

Though the children had been utterly disappointed by the ostensibly futile contents of the chest, the reality was that the items found in that mysterious chest were in fact a treasure: the treasure to end all treasures, practically: a treasure so precious and so fragile, that if used under the right noesis, the very essence of the macrocosm could be tampered with. In the wrong hands, the grandest of all evils could be unearthed.
They placed the items back inside and closed the chest as it was before, then ran into the house searching for Meredith. However, she had gone to the neighbor’s with the girls, probably to gossip about other neighbors. James was gone for the day—out for a day of golf. So the only other people besides Jasper and Daisy were Jeffery, who was cleaning up the kitchen, and a robust African maid, who was mending something upstairs. Therefore, Jasper took the chest to his room and set it upon a drawer. The children forgot all bout it and took to other games for the remainder of the day. The day eventually expired and Daisy went home. Jasper then went to bed.
The morning after Jasper had to pack his stuff to leave the town to the suburbs: the setting of his real home. He had forgotten the chest on the drawer. He mentioned something about it to his parents on the drive home but they were always very apathetic about things their son had to say. Consequently, the chest went unnoticed by them for years. Jeffery had found it that same morning, thought nothing of it, and simply placed it in Jasper’s closet. So months and months went by, and they amounted to years, and the years eventually amounted to Jasper’s seventeenth birthday.

It was on the nice, tepid twenty-second of April, back at the mansion in Bramwell—the garden to be precise, that Meredith had arranged a cute birthday party for him. The lucullan garden was vast, labyrinthic, floridly colorful, and shaded by a galore of neat and grand trees. Scattered about the garden, exquisitely arbitrarily, were Romanesque, human statues, many white benches, cute fountains, and at the center of it all, an enormous fountain. Since it was early summer, Jasper was out of school for the next couple of months. He didn’t have many friends, and the few he did had not attended for unknown reasons, so most of the guests were actually Meredith’s friends. Some of