Taylor Davis and the Flame of Findul (Taylor Davis, 1) Read online

  Taylor Davis and the Flame of Findul

  Published by Michelle Isenhoff at Smashwords

  Cpyright 2013 by Michelle Isenhoff

  Cover image by D. Robert Pease of walkingstickbooks.com.

  All rights reserved.

  ******

  Smashwords License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share the book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  For Taylor,

  who makes every day an adventure.

  Table of Contents

  Lesson #1: It Can Happen to a Guy from Jersey

  Lesson #2: Pirates Sometimes Hang Out in Family Trees

  Lesson #3: Cobras Are Not Lapdogs

  Lesson #4: Angel Choir Dropouts Have Serious Identity Issues

  Lesson #5: Beware of Cabbies with Killer Tempers

  Lesson #6: Guardian Angels Don’t Always Excel at Physical Combat

  Lesson #7: Sightseeing Is More Fun at High Speeds

  Lesson #8: Pink Aprons Shouldn’t Come in Size 3X

  Lesson #9: Always Carry a Flashlight in Church Basements

  Lesson #10: Three-Wheeled Cat Cages Are Just as Uncomfortable as They Look

  Lesson #11: And I Thought Archives Were Boring

  Lesson #12: Angels and Karaoke Don’t Mix

  Lesson #13: Even Line Dancing Is Preferable to the Tyburn Jig

  Lesson #14: You Can’t Catch a Troll with a Squirrel Trap

  Lesson #15: Chariots Are a Sizzlin’ Ride

  Lesson #16: Sightseeing Is Even More Fun Without Gravity

  Lesson #17: Cold Cut Sandwiches Create an Unsuccessful Diversion

  Lesson #18: Seatbelts Should Be Mandatory in Open Air Chariots

  Lesson #19: Bungee Jumping without a Bungee Makes for a Rough Day

  Lesson #20: Sometimes a Guy Just Wants to Go Home

  Lesson #21: Consorting with Angels Puts You on Hades’ Most Wanted List

  Lesson #22: Attracting Monsters Is a Surefire Way Not to Get the Girl

  Lesson #23: Camping Calls for Industrial-Strength Toys

  Lesson #24: Fishing with Aircraft Cable Reels in the Big Ones

  Lesson #25: Hellfire Comes in Keen-Eyed Packages

  Lesson #26: Jules Verne Wasn’t Far Off the Mark

  Lesson #27: Arrogance Can Lead to Serious Burns

  Lesson #28: Happily Ever After Is for Fairy Tales

  Sneak Preview: Taylor Davis and the Clash of Kingdoms

  About the Author

  Emblazon

  Titles by Michelle Isenhoff

  Episode 1

  Lesson #1

  It Can Happen to a Guy from Jersey

  Sometimes life gooses you when you’re not looking. You might be happily coasting through days in a little New Jersey suburb, dreaming about Jennifer Williams and making plans to see the new movie showing uptown when—bam!—everything changes in an instant. Your family moves overseas and suddenly you’re hacking at water demons with a four-foot blade.

  You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? You think I have an overactive imagination. That’s what I thought at first, too. I figured I’d downed too many late-night pepperoni pizzas, watched too many low-budget cable movies, taken too many tumbles down the steps. But there’s a whole world out there you can’t see, you can’t explain. I guess I can’t prove it to you except to tell my story.

  Mom’s always telling me there’s value in writing things down. She even bought me a journal with a pattern of dog prints and fire hydrants on the cover. I vowed to never, ever crack it open. But when something happens that changes your life forever—that changes who you are—it’s probably worth recording. I don’t want to forget the lessons I learned, either. Who knows? Maybe you’ll learn something, too. Life, they say, is the greatest teacher. It’s certainly unpredictable.

  I never thought it would be a cheeseburger that nearly got me killed.

  It wasn’t even a particularly appetizing cheeseburger, just the last squashed and greasy disc hunkering in the corner of the warming pan in the cafeteria at Zander National Academy. But as the waffles bore a striking resemblance to the bulletin board on the wall behind them, I went with it.

  I was late to lunch. Being the new guy at school, I hated the eyes that followed me wherever I went, so I waited till most of the eighth grade class was engaged in their meal before braving the lunch line. Just as I reached for the prize, my hand was brushed aside and my meal snatched away. “Hey!”

  “You snooze, you lose, American.”

  The words were directed at me by a brown, leering female face hovering a good six inches above my own. That was the problem with middle school, even in another country. Just when you thought a growth spurt had kicked in, some girl the size of a giraffe put you back in your place.

  “I was going to eat that!” I protested.

  “It’s processed. Full of sodium and saturated fats,” she replied. “I’m doing you a favor.”

  “It’ll kill you, too.”

  “I’m a professional.”

  The girl was pretty in a haughty sort of way. Her limbs were long and athletic, her curly hair cropped close to her head. She looked like an African queen ordering around some lowlife servant. Sadly enough, that lowlife was me.

  She placed the burger on her tray with a smug smile, having no idea she’d just stepped into the line of fire.

  I was glowering at her, reaching for a prewrapped hoagie that could have come from a vending machine sometime in the twentieth century, when the floor split open right in front of me. With a scream, the girl and the cheeseburger plunged into darkness.

  My own shout fizzled in my throat. Frantically, I scanned for help, but the lunch ladies were all gabbing in the back of the kitchen, their shift almost over. Not one of them looked like a fit candidate to go spelunking in the newly opened chasm. Speechless, I could only stand there gaping like an idiot.

  Then the floor dissolved beneath me.

  I tumbled through blackness thick enough to tar roads with, waiting for the crash that would signal my end, but it never came. Vaguely, I became aware of absolute stillness. I was resting on something lumpy and damp, my stomach clenched with nausea. Light was trying to pierce my tightly pinched eyes.

  “Well, bless me buckles!” said a male voice that sounded, for lack of a better word, hairy. “I netted for bass and pulled in a tropical fish.”

  “What do you want?”

  With an amazing effort of will, I pried open my eyes. The girl was already on her feet, crouched like a distance runner waiting for the start gun. The cheeseburger lay on the ground, forgotten.

  “Where’s the lad?”

  My eyes searched out the speaker. I had fallen into some sort of giant sinkhole, dim and dank, and I couldn’t see him right away. The ground was broken shale that supported a mat of spongy moss. Rocky walls stretched high above my head. I looked up, expecting to see a scowling lunch lady or two, but only blue sky peered back at me.

  “Where’s the lad?” the voice asked again, more impatient this time.

  I spotted the speaker half hidden behind a rocky outcropping. He was a mass of rags and hair. I recoiled before I realized he couldn’t see me any more clearly than I could see him.

  “What lad?” The girl sounded as scornful as ever. I had to give her credit. She
had guts.

  “The lad! The lad!” the voice raged. “The filthy little bilge rat!”

  The speaker stepped out into the open. My first impression proved correct. His mass of tangled beard and hair made an Old English sheepdog look clean cut. The tatters of some ancient uniform hung off him, and even from twenty feet away I could tell he hadn’t bathed in a really long time. “The knave with the cheeseburger!”

  “Oh, him.” Her opinion of me obviously hadn’t risen in the last five minutes. “What do you want him for?”

  “That would be none of your business, wench.”

  The man started pacing. He had an unnatural gait, sort of a rolling, limping, off-centered stroll, like a drunken golf cart that had a really bad encounter with a speed bump. As he paced, he muttered to himself, “I’ll keelhaul the little devil…hornswaggled out of four hundred years…the whole blessed world…”

  All this time the girl had been standing in a Wonder Woman stance, prepared to fight her way out. She looked like she could manage it, too. I was pretty ashamed to realize I’d been cowering behind her.

  Well, she wasn’t the only one who could defend herself. I might not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I hadn’t played Mercutio in last year’s stage production of Romeo and Juliet for nothing. I grabbed a stout stick from the ground behind me and vaulted into an offensive stance, my “sword” balanced before me. Unfortunately, I whacked myself on the head in the process.

  The girl and the man both stumbled backward in surprise. I recovered and pressed my advantage, rushing the old geezer with smooth, strong strokes. I didn’t want to hurt him, just give us time to get away.

  “Run!” I yelled to the girl.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t have a map. Just go! I’ll follow you!”

  She sprinted off while I thrust my stick at the man’s chest. He teetered backward and I was pounding behind the girl in a moment. We didn’t get far. The sinkhole was only about a hundred yards across. We screeched to a halt at the base of the cliff, panting heavily. Sheer black rock rose all around us.

  The girl turned to me accusingly. “What do we do now, smarty?”

  I glared at her. Like it was my fault we got sucked through the school floor and spit out God-knows-where. “Start looking for a way out.”

  We felt our way around to the right, moving quickly. The walls were so bare, so perpendicular, that we couldn’t even find a finger hold. And every step was circling us around, leading us back to where we began.

  I could see the old fellow striding toward us casually, almost gleefully, as if he knew he’d catch us eventually. As if he knew there was absolutely no way we could escape him.

  We redoubled our efforts, jogging faster, scanning the unbroken wall. “There has to be a way,” I wailed, my voice cracking in my agitation. “We got in, didn’t we?”

  The girl gave a sudden squeal of victory. “In here!” She disappeared into a narrow cleft. I don’t know how she ever spotted it.

  I glanced back at the hairy man. His look of satisfaction had morphed into sheer terror. He shouted something at me and broke into a hobbling run, but I didn’t stay to hear the particulars. If he didn’t want me to go this way, this was exactly the direction I wanted to take.

  The cleft widened into a narrow canyon. Sunlight actually reached the ground here and carpeted it with short, springy grass. The breeze playing between the rock walls smelled fresher, sweet even. The girl and I moved as one mind, racing across the open space, tearing past a tree that rose out of the valley floor. The tree was gigantic—old and gnarly and heavily laden with fruit—but we didn’t have time to stop and admire it. We jogged on to the farthest reach of the valley.

  The canyon gradually narrowed until once again it was nothing more than a thin fissure twisting between walls of unmovable rock. We pushed on, squeezing through the tight passage, hoping it might widen into another valley. Or a shopping mall. Or the schoolyard. No such luck. The thud of restless water soon echoed through the passage and we stumbled into a sandy-floored room carved by crashing waves. The end of our chasm looked out across a vast panorama of ocean.

  We were trapped.

  “I guess we go back and face the psychotic caveman,” the girl said glumly.

  “Guess so.”

  Our options did seem particularly limited, but we lingered in the chamber for several minutes, neither of us willing to admit defeat.

  “I sure wish I had let you have that cheeseburger,” she grumbled.

  I probably would have felt the same, but at least I knew admitting it out loud wasn’t the best way to make friends and influence people. “So I could face the creep by myself? Thank you so much.”

  “Hey, I didn’t sign up to be your bodyguard.”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I bristled. “I’m a highly trained swordsman.”

  She laughed. “Is that what you call that thing you were doing with the stick?”

  I felt my face tighten. “It was better than your plan. What was it again? Talking him to death?”

  I spun on my heel and left her standing alone at the edge of the sea. Unfortunately, there was no place to go. She caught me after a dozen paces. “Maybe we didn’t get off to the best start,” she admitted, falling into step beside me.

  “Is that an apology?”

  “No. I just figure if we’re going to die together, maybe we should introduce ourselves.”

  “You first,” I mumbled, fairly certain that eminent death was not the best basis on which to start a friendship.

  “All right. I’m Elena Cartahena.”

  I glanced at her suspiciously. “Right. Your parents rhymed your names?”

  She pulled herself up to her full height, which was a lot higher than me. “I am Elena Camila Valasques Cartahena. It does not rhyme.”

  I’m sure my face looked doubtful. “You don’t look very Hispanic.”

  “On my dad’s side. His father was Spanish. His mother was descended from slaves,” she announced proudly.

  Now that I studied her more closely, however, I could see her skin wasn’t as dark as I first thought. And her features were very fine. It was her long, thin build and closely cropped curls that made her appear so fiercely African.

  I shrugged. “I’m Taylor Davis.” After hers, my name sounded rather commonplace.

  Elena stopped abruptly and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

  I took a deep breath and caught the odor right away. It was sort of a tangy, fruity smell. My stomach snarled. Thanks to the fault line in the cafeteria floor, both of us had missed lunch. “It’s coming from that tree.”

  The old giant loomed on the valley floor not two hundred yards away, its branches drooping like an old man straining under the weight of a heavy burden. We covered the distance at a trot. In moments we each held a fruit the size of an apple with creamy blue-tinged skin. They were soft, warm, ripe. I closed my eyes and breathed in the fragrance.

  “Belay that! Do not eat unless you have a death wish.”

  The hairy guy stood right behind us. He carried a broadsword, one of those heavy, two-handed jobs. It gleamed with a faint reddish hue. And it was poised in the air above us.

  ****

  I suppose this would be a good time to explain how I ended up in such a pickle. You see, I’m the last of three children. My siblings don’t really come into this story, but you should probably know they’re both perfect. Jessica attends law school at the University of Michigan where she’s never earned less than an A, and Bobby skipped his first year of college to compete in motocross. He’s always being featured in those extreme sports magazines. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked to get his autograph…

  How’s a kid supposed to compete with that? I’m sure there’s a natural law against having three superstars in one family. They’ve condemned me to life as a nobody. Not a prospect I’m doing cartwheels over, I assure you.

  Maybe that’s how I got into the performing ar
ts. Growing up, I was always pretending to be someone cooler than I am. Mom says I’m a natural actor and I’ll wind up with an Academy Award someday. Guess that would stand up next to my siblings’ accomplishments, but it’ll never happen. Mom has a vivid imagination—she writes children’s books. She still uses the name Sarah Gail Jones, even though that hasn’t been her real name since she married my dad. She says it has a certain ring to it and gives her more credibility than Sarah Davis.

  All that still doesn’t explain how I got into this mess. Or why I’m the only blond in a family of brunettes. Or why I possess all the grace and athleticism of a five-footed beagle. Those would be my dad’s fault. (At least two out of three—I don’t know where the beagle footedness comes from.) Dad looks like he just got off the boat from Scandinavia. We share the same blond hair and ice-blue eyes. He’s a bigwig in an international tourism company. When they needed someone to manage a brand new resort in the Dominican Republic, they sent my dad—and a few cases of sunblock.

  So on a windy April day, Mom and I packed up everything we owned and put it in storage. Then we moved away from the only home I had ever known. A few days later I started at Zander National Academy, fell through the cafeteria floor, and ended up at the point of a broadsword somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.

  Lesson #2

  Pirates Sometimes Hang Out in Family Trees

  “What exactly are you planning to do with that sword?” Elena asked cautiously.

  “Salvaging the biggest wreck you ever heard tell of,” came the man’s gruff reply. “Come along. Smartly now, I haven’t got all day. I summoned you for a reason.”

  “You summoned us?” Elena exclaimed.

  He scowled. “Not you, wench. You blundered in on your own.”

  So that left… “Me? You wanted me? Hey, wait a second. You opened that gulf in the floor?” Okay, mine was not the most nimble mind in the valley.