Synopsis:
Thirteen-year-old Charis Parks has five days to save mankind. What she thought was mere mythology has become her reality … she alone must reverse the curse of Pandora’s Jar. If Charis is to fulfill her destiny, she has to face her fears against the darker forces of Hades and the blood-thirsty Erinyes Sisters who help him. Together with the gods and her best friend Gabe, Charis takes a fantastic journey to Pandora’s Jar where she must release the only spirit that remains trapped inside – the spirit of Hope. Or else …
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Excerpt:
STRANGE DREAMS AND
WINGED THINGS
THE DREAMS INTERRUPTING Charis’s sleep were pretty much
the same every night. For the past couple of weeks, as soon as she
closed her eyes they’d begin. She found herself standing in a great,
golden room, so big that every sound she made echoed and bounced
off the walls. When the dreams first started, she’d yell “Hey” or
“Anybody there?” just because she got a kick out of hearing it over
and over again. Now, she couldn’t wait to get this part of the dream
over with to see if maybe, just maybe, she could finally get to the
dream’s end.
Eventually, her feet—pointed and with her nails painted a soft
blue—would float above the smooth, marble surface beneath them
as she drifted down the familiar hall. Floods of opaque, yellow light
came from everywhere, including her own skin, and filled the halls
of what Charis had come to believe was a palace or museum of some
sort. She’d squint her eyes as she studied her illuminated hands,
arms, and feet, intrigued.
Charis would continue floating down the wide corridor toward
somewhere she suspected was important. On the way, she’d stop to
admire the paintings that decorated the shining walls. They were
unlike anything she’d ever seen in real life. These paintings were
animated and absolutely alive with color and movement; each
brushstroke contained a measure of magic. From within beautiful
gilded frames, the crashing waves of the ocean sprayed the girl with
salt water, roaring lions in caves startled her as she drifted by, and
instruments played music from invisible hands that she danced to
with an equally invisible partner.
Charis loved all of the paintings, but her favorites were the
portraits. The proud man with the curly hair man was the most
handsome fellow Charis had ever seen, but she didn’t blush until she
happened upon the kissing lovers whose passion she found
shocking. And, even though she knew none of this was real, Charis’s
eyes welled with tears gazing upon the wounded warrior staring
helplessly back at her from a bloodied battlefield. These were just a
few of the many curious portraits lining the walls.
As Charis watched, the men and women in the pictures attempted
to talk with her. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand a word
they said. For all of their babble, they may as well have been the
bleating sheep or singing birds from the other paintings. Still, they
did their best to communicate. What, Charis couldn’t tell. Some
threw her flowers and danced and bowed in her presence as though
she were a god or they her royal subjects. Others, characters of the
darker sort, hissed at her and yelled what Charis guessed were curses.
She didn’t like them.
It wasn’t long before all of the portraits yelled together and got
louder and louder until Charis couldn’t take it anymore. “Calm
down,” she’d say, but they just kept right on yelling and making her
nervous. It was usually then—with her hands over her ears to mute
the noise—that Charis woke up, tired, groggy, and a little confused,
just like this morning.
With the memory of her dream still clinging to her lashes like oil,
Charis opened her brown eyes. She untangled herself from her bed
sheets and rolled onto her back, determined to remember more of
the dream this time. Snapshots of beautiful faces and bright, flooding
light drifted just beyond her remembrance and vanished before she
could see any of it clearly. It was so real, but she just couldn’t grab it
and it drove her nuts. She hated starting mornings with such
frustration. Here lately, it had been every morning.
Forget it. She kicked away her covers and stretched her lanky
body across the bed, yawning.
“Charis?” Mona called from the bottom of the stairs. “You up?”
“Yes, Mom,” she answered, her voice full of morning gravel.
“Well, you’d better get a move on, sweetie. You know you have
that test today, so give yourself time for breakfast, okay?”
“M’kay.”
God, it’s going to be a long day, Charis thought. A sleepless night
was bad enough, but there was Mr. Porter’s algebra test too. She and
Gabe had studied for hours over popcorn and Gatorade. Now that
the day of the test was here, she wondered if they’d studied enough
and she regretted all of the Facebooking they’d done in between. Her
current status? Nervous.
“Too late now,” she sighed.
She scratched her head, her fingers becoming lost in mess of her
sandy curls, and rolled out of bed for a shower. Standing beneath the
warm water, Charis decided not to freak out about the test and ran
through formulas in her head instead. You’ve got this. It’s just like
breathing she thought while filling her lungs with shower steam.
When she was done, she drip-dropped her way to the sink and
squeezed the water from her hair. It drew back into its clumsy
spirals before she even finished.
Charis stared intensely into the steamy mirror before lifting her
finger to write ‘prepared’ in the moisture on the glass. She added a
question mark as an afterthought but quickly erased it. Bad luck. She
stepped back to read her work, satisfied, and watched it slowly
disappear before heading to her room to dress.
Charis threw on some jeans and her favorite sweater and went
downstairs for breakfast. Her parents were talking and having coffee
at the kitchen table, solving the world’s problems. Charis’s parents
met in college. Their romance was fairly typical, except that Evan
was white and Mona was black. It wasn’t a big deal to them, but it
was to their families. Fortunately for the couple, love prevailed and
their families got over it, mostly. Aunt Diane was still a holdout at
family gatherings but no one really cared that much. She was weird
about a lot of things, and had too many cats anyway.
“Morning, Sunny,” Evan said looking up from his laptop, his
blue eyes shining at her. He was such a morning person. “You ready?”
Charis hugged him around his neck and hoped she’d smell like
his cologne all day. She loved her daddy.
“I’m always ready, Dad. You know that!”
She sounded more confident than she felt. Charis grabbed a
cereal bowl while her mom got the milk from the fridge.
“Mr. Porter said this will be the hardest test so far, but I think I
got it. Me and Gabe …”
“Gabe and I,” corrected Mona, raising one perfectly arched
eyebrow.
“Gabe and I studied really hard for this one. It’s like 50% of our
grade or something like that.”
“You just be sure algebra is the only thing Gabe is studying,”
Evan responded.
Charis rolled her eyes. “Daaaad, it’s not like that.”
“I’ve seen the way that boy acts when he’s over here … all left
feet. It’s a wonder he can dribble a basketball without falling over
himself.”
Evan got up from the kitchen table for more coffee. He gave his
best Gabe impression as he poured his second cup.
“’Uh, h~h~hello Mr. Mr. Parks. How was your d~d~day, Mr. Mr.
Parks?’” Evan laughed. “He’s over here so much I’m going to start
claiming that kid on my income taxes.”
Charis had to admit it. Whenever Gabe was near her dad the boy
couldn’t seem to get his words out. It wasn’t like he was the coolest kid
in school or anything, but he was downright goofy around her father.
Charis first met Gabe in the third grade. They sat next to each
other in Mrs. Cole’s class. It started off badly between them on the
very first day. There was a cursive writing test and, in short, Charis’s
was a mess, and Gabe’s a work of elementary school art.
“Charis, look at Gabe’s handwriting,” Mrs. Cole beamed standing
over the two of them. “Isn’t it just beautiful? You should try to write
like that. I’m sure Gabe will help you. Won’t you Gabe?”
Gabe puffed out his scrawny chest and smiled down at Charis.
Her face burned red with a mix of embarrassment, anger, and jealousy.
She could plainly see that Gabe’s writing was better than hers and
didn’t need Mrs. Cole or Gabe to point out the obvious. Charis looked
at Gabe’s buck-toothed grin, swallowed her pride, and mumbled,
“Good job Gabe.” His pompous, jerky smirk melted away, and with
his own face now a bright red, Gabe offered to help Charis if she
wanted. They formed a truce and from then on they were best buds.
When Gabe’s mom took off and his parents divorced last year,
he started hanging out more at Charis’s house for the company. His
own home was too quiet and sad and full of cardboard-tasting frozen
dinners. He and Charis did homework or played Xbox together while
he and Mr. Parks fought over the last fried chicken leg.
Evan continued, “For someone as tall and skinny as he is, that
boy manages to eat up everything in this house. I don’t know where
it all goes …”
Charis and her mom both shook their heads. They’d heard it all
before.
“Where’s Presley?” Charis asked her mom, hoping to change the
subject.
“He left early this morning. Driving lessons.” Mona said it like
she was narrating one of those old black and white horror movies
where the bad guys wore thick white makeup and slicked back hair
and the women stood around screaming instead of running.
Presley was Charis’s older brother. He would be sixteen years
old in a few weeks and driving was all he could talk about. His
excitement was a departure from his usual cool. Previous attempts
by Evan and Mona to teach Presley how to drive always ended up
with swearing and promises to never, ever give him the keys again.
So, for the sake of the family, they decided to put him in driving
school. Presley was glad to go. Either way, Charis couldn’t wait for
her brother to get his driver’s license. Two words: personal chauffeur.
Charis put her bowl in the dishwasher and grabbed her backpack
to leave. Gabe would be there any minute for their walk to school.
“Ugh” she said as she swung the bulging pink bag over her
shoulders.
Mona looked at her with concern. “What’s wrong, babe?”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you … my birthmark, it’s been itching
again. It’s just a little tender, that’s all.”
“Charis, now you know I’ve asked you to tell me if …”
“I know, I know.” She winced as she adjusted the backpack on
her shoulders.
When Charis was born the first thing the doctor said was, “Look,
you have yourselves a little angel.” It wasn’t because she was so cute
(though her mom and dad certainly thought so); it was because of
the small birthmark between her shoulder blades. It was shaped,
nearly perfectly, like a little pair of pale wings. As she stretched and
grew, so did her wings. Through the years doctors assured her
parents it was nothing to worry about. However, they advised them
to keep an eye on it just the same. And so they did. They also mused
about the fact that their cherub-faced baby girl had wings.
Charis may have been as cute as an angel, but she didn’t always
behave like one. Ever since she was a child, the girl had been just a
little headstrong. At least that’s what her parents called it. It was
more complicated than that to Charis. She just wanted to know the
reasons why, perhaps a bit more than most kids.
By the time she was five years old, it was clear to her parents
that they could take nothing for granted with their girl. Whether it
was deciding on what clothes to wear, or explaining what motivated
God to flood the very earth he created, Charis needed to know why.
Why? Why? Why? If they couldn’t answer her, then she demanded
that her teachers did. If they couldn’t, then her pastor, or librarian, or
the neighbor up the street. It could go on forever. This troubled Charis’s
parents who mistook her questions for something more than just
curiosity. So, instead of entertaining their daughter with angelic tales
about winged creatures such as herself, they told her cautionary
ones. A favorite was the Greek myth of Icarus.
Outfitted with new wings made of wax and feathers, Icarus
ignored his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun during
their escape from the island of Crete. Enthralled by the adventure
and lured by his own curiosity, Icarus didn’t listen to his father and
flew higher and higher until the sun’s heat melted the wax on his
feathers and destroyed his wings. The curious boy tumbled from the
sky and into the sea where he drowned.
When Charis was slow to listen to her parents’ instructions and
behaved irresponsibly like Icarus during his flight toward the sun,
Evan and Mona would say things like, “You’re getting awfully sunny
there, Charis.” Those warnings were issued so often that Sunny
eventually became Charis’s nickname. To the surprise of her parents,
Charis’s constant questioning lessened as she matured, but that was
mostly due to peer pressure. Her friends found it annoying too and
didn’t hesitate to say so.
“I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Nuu.” Mona said.
“No, Mom. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay, I promise,” Charis
replied as the doorbell announcing Gabe rang.
“Gabe is here,” Evan sang as he jingled his keys, preparing to leave.
Keys!
Charis ran upstairs to get the unusual trinket she had found in
her backpack. It was a beautiful crystal fairy-like thing that glowed
in jewel tones in just the right light. She noticed it at the bottom of
her backpack Sunday while doing her homework. I bet Gabe put you
in there, didn’t he? she thought as she traced the grooves of its etched
wings with her fingernails. The doll had long hair and a tiny sword
that hung from its waist. Charis ended up attaching it to a key ring
and claimed it as her own.
“There you are,” she said picking it up from the nightstand and
clipping it to her jeans.
Ding-dong.
“Coming!”
Charis charged down the stairs and ran into the kitchen to kiss
her mom and dad goodbye before sliding across the wood floors
toward the front door. When she opened it, there was Gabe, all left
feet and goofy, just like her dad said.
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Buy Charis: Journey to Pandora’s Jar
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