Waking Christmas Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Heading home should have been joyous, but crashing in an unknown part of her world was not part of her holiday plan.

  After taking her courses and mastering the talents she was born with, Minya just wants to go home and hold her family close.

  When her drop pod spins out of control and lands her in the dead zone, she doesn’t know how she is going to survive in the ice and snow. She can’t communicate with family, and she doesn’t know where she is, so following her instincts, she starts hiking for the distant hills.

  The party of strangers doesn’t say anything, they simply bring her into their underground community and help her get warm. The women smile and offer her a crown and sash of woven greenery, and the men bow and urge her down a hall where warm air hints at a comfortable place to rest.

  A man with ice-white eyes occupies the warm zone, and he offers her hospitality. Her decision will make a choice for herself and her world.

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  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Waking Christmas

  Copyright © 2018 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-4874-2270-7

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

  Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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  www.eXtasybooks.com or www.devinedestinies.com

  Waking Christmas

  Stellar Born, Book 1

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  “This is Pod One requesting permission to drop personnel.” She waited for the response. She had been incredibly lucky to get authorization to leave; now, she had to return, and the same bureaucracy loomed in front of her.

  “This is Dremarai communications. Identify the personnel.”

  “Elite Master Healer Minya Bosun, child of Elite Master D’hai Bosun and Elite Healer Myka Michaels.” She smiled. “And your third sister, Tim’ha.”

  “You can’t currently reach me, Minya. Glad you are home. Now for the formal agreement. Elite Master Healer Minya Bosun, you are cleared for arrival on Dremarai. Be warned, there are weather issues, you may end up off course. Don’t worry, we will find you.”

  She smiled. Their sister was still roaming the stars with her mate, but Minya was not one to leave home. She went, she learned, and she headed home as soon as she was qualified in her specialty of healing. She had learned a lot from her mother, but her mom had sent her to learn more.

  Knowledge was never wasted in her household, and her father had no choice but to send her off when her mother asked him. A skilled healer was an asset to their people.

  “On target, preparing to drop.”

  “See you on the ground, Minya.”

  She smiled briefly but concentrated on the targeting, “Three, two, one... drop.”

  She hit the trigger, and the unmanned vessel she was attached to released her. The slow drift of her pod was tracked by her instrument panel.

  Her propulsion unit was returning to the ship that waited outside the legal boundary of Dremarai space.

  The pod fell silently and slowly toward the planet rotating beneath her, and she closed her eyes to feel the rocks and slight turns of her conveyance.

  She had been away from home long enough to want to hug the hell out of all of her siblings and her parents.

  Minya had enjoyed learning, enjoyed her classmates and the folk she had been able to help using mechanical and talented methods. She had touched lives and had enough time to focus on what she wanted for her own future.

  It wasn’t quite fair to say that she wanted a man like her father, but she did want one who was secure enough that she could stand on her own two feet and he would have her back like her mother did.

  She grinned at her thoughts and confirmed her harness was in place. Three more minutes passed, and the ride began to get rough.

  Minya crossed her arms over her chest as she felt the atmospheric strikes against the thin hull. She was battered and knocked for what seemed like hours, but the frantic impact alert got her into her landing position.

  The pod bounced, creaked, and rolled across the surface of Dremarai. At least she knew that she would be home in a few hours. The magic of the world under her would have her family at her side the moment they figured out where she was.

  Minya groaned and flicked on her com unit. The bright lights that should have been there were dark. The pod was silent.

  “Balls.” She grunted and tried to use an external scan. Nothing.

  Minya rubbed the back of her neck and tried to think of what to do next. The pods weren’t outfitted for extensive use. They dropped and were retrieved and refitted until the next time one needed to fall from the heavens. She was pretty sure that her pod was a lost cause.

  She came to a decision and unclasped her harness, moving with a confidence she didn’t feel. She got out of her seat, and she moved with shaking limbs. She got to the door, and it didn’t respond to her command, so she checked the temperature. It was cold. There was an icy sensation on her hand when she touched the seam of the ship.

  Minya sat back in the pilot’s seat and pulled the surround down again. If there was ice outside, she was either in the mountains or at one of the poles. Balls.

  The pod was right-side up, so she had that on her side, and she was wearing her armoured suit, so she had insulation but not nearly enough. With no electronics, she had no way of getting out of the pod, so she was going to have to resort to extreme measures.

  Just to be on the safe side, she buckled in her harness again, reached down, and pulled the handle that yanked the cable that triggered the shaped explosives. The door blew out, and the icy air rushed in.

  She unbuckled her harness, put on her gloves, and got out of her chair. She had just terminally air-conditioned the pod.

  Minya left the pod, and she gasped at the icy air. Her heart sank; it wasn’t one of the mountain ranges near her home. She had been blown to the end of the world.

  “Dammit.” Her mother’s language was useful when you wanted to express displeasure. Her own use of the Terran phrases had made a few of her classmates laugh. They had one parent from the same world, so they understood her perfectly.

  She tucked her arms close to her body and tried to reach out to find her family. There was nothing. The magic that had tied her to them her entire life was suddenly gone.

  “Well, I am here, and they will find me. I am sure of it.”

  She nodded, looked around at the white and icy landscape, and decided to head out to the distant hills. There was a curl in the air that might be steam or smoke. It was steady, so she focused on that one abnormality and took her first steps into the unknown.

  The crunch of the snow under her feet became an echo for her heartbeat. There was no use calling herself an idiot. She was supposed to be home with friends and family by now. The irony of dying on her homeworld wasn’t lost on her. She had travelled the stars and was going to die where any members of her family could transport to her in a matter of minutes.

  Her frost-covered lashes must be blocking her vision. She saw a dark line of something on the ice, and it was coming toward her rather quickly.

  She kept walking toward the curl of smoke that didn’t appear to be getting any closer. It had been two hours of hiking so far, and she guessed she was going to end as a frozen statue in the dead zone of Dremarai.

  Minya kept walking, and the dark line got closer and larger. She heard barking and kept plodding forward.

  When the group of men and dogs surrounded her, she simply walked past them, sure that her mind was creating this bit of hope out of desperation.

  “Stranger, come with us, or you will die,” one of the men spoke.

  Her jaw was locked from tension, so she continued to walk.

  Hands gripped her arms, and she was bodily lifted and set onto a covered sled. She was wrapped in furs, and the men turned back the way they had come with their large, fluffy canines pulling the sleds.

  She kept herself awake, but it took superhuman effort. Her body felt temperature like her mother’s. She wasn’t nearly as sturdy as a native-born Dremarai. Her internal thermostat was a lot hotter, so when she lost body heat, it really had an impact.

  Minya went through the stages of hypothermia in her mind. She could still survive if she could get a slow
and gentle warming from the inside out.

  The haunches of the dogs were distracting, so she burrowed into the bedding that she was wrapped in and pulled it over her head, reciting the location spell that would get her family to her.

  Feeling threatened on her world was a strange feeling, so she brushed it aside. She would be threatened when something warranted it. Right now, she needed to focus on her body shaking and trying to get itself warm. It was definitely peculiar to triage her own needs first.

  When the sled stopped, she peeped out and stared up at jagged and deadly crystals hanging from the cavern’s ceiling. The scrape of doors closing behind them ceased the flow of cold air in an instant. The room they were in was comfortable and warm in a minute or two.

  The men took care of the dogs first, and then, one pried her out of her cocoon. “Come, stranger.”

  She tried to stand up, but her muscles had been rigid for too long. She had the strength of a boiled bean.

  “How long were you out there?”

  “Two hours before I first saw you and half an hour after that.” She accepted his help when he lifted her out of the sled and kept her up with an arm around her waist.

  She was walked into an inner cavern, and that is when she saw her first djinn females. The women murmured and clucked to her, taking her temperature with a hand to the forehead, and then, they started plying her with tea.

  Sitting and sipping tea when the women wouldn’t speak to her was very peculiar. She was the guest, so to speak, so they were obligated to greet her, and no one had even tried.

  This was a very peculiar society. Not like any of the Dremarai people she had known during her lifetime.

  She took another cup of hot tea, and her hands shook violently. It took focus, but she got the tea to her lips, and she drank it.

  She started a violent round of the shakes, and she deflected all attempts to give her more tea until the shaking stopped.

  When she was stable, she reached out with her cup and accepted a refill.

  It took her over an hour to regain her even body temperature. When she slid the blanket from her shoulders, the women got excited. Out of nowhere, they produced a crown of dark green leaves with white berries and a sash made of spiked leaves and red berries.

  She blinked and was at a loss of what to do next. The women smiled and ushered her to the back of the area they had been inhabiting. Minya went along and followed them to a cavern that had the elevated humidity of a bath.

  Since no one was talking to her, a bath was right up her alley.

  Chapter Two

  The lack of audible communication was confusing. Minya was pretty good about listening with all of her senses, but she just couldn’t hear the men and women that filled the caverns around her.

  The sounds of movement and rustling faded as she walked down the long corridor. The warmth was enticing, and when she was walking in the dim light of lichen far above, that is when she heard the first notes of a song with no words.

  Minya paused and looked back the way she came. There was nothing and no one, but the music persisted. She touched the wall, and that was when she realized that the song was playing in her own mind.

  There was a flicker of recognition. She had heard about telepathic songs before, but the exact reasoning for it escaped her.

  She kept walking, and the song didn’t get louder or softer with each step. The light ahead of her was a far different story. The glow above her gradually became unnecessary as the soft white light in the cavern ahead of her illuminated her down to her feet. Minya continued forward until she stopped in the room that was glowing through a ceiling of polished ice.

  “It is like I was expected.” Her voice echoed quietly, but it dissipated down the halls that led off the chamber.

  There was a table, two chairs, and dried food set out with ewers of what was water on close inspection.

  A look around didn’t bring up anything other than four new tunnels and a privacy alcove. If she were going to sleep, it would have to be on the stone of the cavern.

  “Not that I should be sleeping.” Speaking aloud in the echoing cavern was a comforting mechanism. If the locals wouldn’t get her to her people, she was going to have to find a way out. Making great strides wasn’t her normal behaviour.

  A wave of tremors ran through her, and she rode the spasm out until she could walk to the table. The food was familiar even in its dry state. She wanted nothing more than to be able to summon food from home like everyone else did. With a deep sigh, she started to chew her way through a strip of dried fruit, and she followed it up with water.

  She started yawning, and the music continued in her head as she slumped forward.

  Grunting, she straightened and walked to the wall, settling up against it before sliding down into a low crouch. It was a comfortable position to be in normally, but she shifted a bit to get the sash out of the way before she was able to go into a light doze.

  She was in a dark room with music swelling around her and a large heat source in the centre.

  “Is someone here?”

  “Yes. Are you for me?”

  “Um, I don’t know. What are you waiting for?”

  “A child of Gaia. Dremarai has promised me a place to wait until a daughter of Gaia arrives.”

  “I am not quite what you are looking for. My mother is a daughter of Gaia.”

  He snorted. “Close enough.”

  “What are you?”

  “A son of Drai.”

  She paused. “Why are you here?”

  “This world is full of power, but I wanted silence. Dremarai pulled the magic from this place and gave me what I needed.”

  That explained the dead zone. “What about the djinn living here?”

  “They came to me a thousand years ago and asked to live in my silence. I agreed, and when there are strangers who match my criteria, they bring them to me.”

  “What do you do with them?”

  “I look for my mate, and if I do not find her, they are returned to the snow and escorted to the nearest settlement.”

  Mate hunt. That did explain the ritual and the greenery.

  She thought about it and asked, “What is your name?”

  “I am the Drai elemental, Yuul. What is your name?”

  “Elite Master Healer Minya Bosun, child of Elite Master D’hai Bosun and Elite Healer Myka Michaels. You may address me as Minya.”

  “You are of the Dremarai elite caste?”

  “I am.”

  “I thought that they were not allowing folk from off-world to rest on this world.”

  “That regulation was suspended when the population began to dip. My mother volunteered to come here and to learn the ways of the Dremarai, but she and my father got along, so she was enticed to remain.” Also, her mother had locked into the energy system that allowed her to use the transformational magic of the world.

  “You speak well for being silent.” His mental voice was amused.

  “Thank you, I have practiced.”

  There was a heavy pause between them, and she kept a focus on the energy pattern that her body could see. It shifted, and she waited.

  “Where are you, Minya Bosun? Normally, the strangers have stumbled down one of the tunnels by now.”

  “I am resting, waiting, letting my body recover from almost freezing.”

  “When you are done resting, make your way down the tunnel. I will help you regain your equilibrium.”

  “That is very generous of you.”

  “I have enjoyed our short conversation, and I wish to continue it.”

  She chuckled and slowly moved her consciousness into a spreading wave that inhabited her body fully once again.

  Minya flexed and shifted her limbs before she stood up again. The rush of blood to her head and extremities kept her toasty warm as she looked around for the tunnel that housed her host.

  The music still played in her head, and she moved past the tunnels, seeking the one that would lead to her host.

  She took a step down one, and a sheet of ice blocked her path.