Gods of Green Mountain Read online

  Beauty and danger…were

  they one and the same?

  When Far-Awn awoke, bleary-eyed, weak and trembling from the overlong, enforced sleep, he saw the thorny barrier had been swept away completely from the cave’s entrance.

  Spread before him in startling clarity was a world totally changed from the dry, dun-colored earth of his yesterday. A heavy covering of pale, blue white snow sparkled in the dawning light of the weak first sun. The blank and gnarled fingers of the burran trees dripped with a million sparkling icicles. As Far-Awn’s incredulous eyes jumped from here to there, he heard and saw the snapping and popping as frozen and weighted branches broke and fell to the ground, one after the other.

  Storms, many, Far-Awn had seen, and the after-math—but never such a morning view as this! So far from home. In the highlands looking down…and he was alone. So much awesome beauty and desolation his eyes beheld, enchanting him, chilling his spine with the power of what one single storm from Bay Gar could do! To him it occurred that the same world could look extraordinarily beautiful, or desperately frightening, depending on one’s vantage point. To his father, down in the lowlands, it wouldn’t be beautiful—for all those people down there, this storm was the crowning touch of disaster.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents 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.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2004 by the Vanda General Partnership

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-55458-1

  V.C. ANDREWS and VIRGINIA ANDREWS are registered trademarks of the Vanda General Partnership

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Contents

  Book One: El Sod-a-Por

  Prologue

  1. Baka the Untiring

  2. Far-Awn the Dreamer

  3. Far-Awn Goes Searching

  4. The Birthing Time

  5. The Beginning of the End

  6. The Setting of the Second Sun

  7. All Hope Gone

  8. Far-Awn Becomes a Man

  9. The Gift of the Star-Flowers

  Book Two: El Dorraine

  Prologue

  1. Far-Awn Returns

  2. The Annals of Sal-Lar

  3. Far-Awn Meets His Match

  4. In the Reign of King Ras-Far

  5. At the Ball

  6. The Courtship of Princess Sharita

  7. The Slaughter of the Bari-Barians

  8. Discord in Far-Awndra

  Book Three: The Journey

  Prologue

  1. The Challenge of the King

  2. Sharita’s Decision

  3. Dray-Gon Beseeches

  4. The Attack of the Outlaws

  5. The Journey Hardens

  6. Sharita’s Fever

  7. The Rage of Mark-Kan

  8. Into the Green Canyon

  9. At the Feet of the Gods

  Book Four: To Speak with the Gods

  Prologue

  1. The Lord God Laughs

  2. The God’s Tale

  3. Farewell to Green Mountain

  4. The Return

  5. In Defense of the Princess

  6. Dray-Gon Banished

  7. Reunited

  8. The New Laws

  9. The Royal Princes

  Epilogue

  A Message to the

  Readers

  Virginia Cleo Andrews, known to you as V.C. Andrews, died in December 1986. Among the many story ideas, completed manuscripts, and outlines was one of her most favorite, called Gods of Green Mountain. She spoke glowingly of the life-giving messages and outstanding guideposts that people currently living on this planet would find motivating. Our sister believed so strongly in this manuscript that she elicited our solemn promise that we would endeavor to see that Gods of Green Mountain would be published.

  It is a tale of a distant world she had dreamed about since she was a little girl. She revealed that often, throughout her lifetime, when she was sleeping, she could feel herself leave her body and fly away to this distant planet with the two suns. For several hours, Virginia would regale us about the birth of this planet, the evolution of the inhabitants from minute plant life to an advanced society. She described the character, the animals, the plants, the landscapes and the colors ranging from monochromatic to multifaceted brilliance. Virginia believed in reincarnation and truly felt that she had been to this planet and was looking forward to returning.

  Now thanks to Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster, this original, intriguing odyssey is being published as an eBook. We hope you enjoy this exciting adventure as much as she enjoyed writing it.

  Sincerely,

  Bill and Gene Andrews

  Book One

  El Sod-a-Por

  Prologue

  Once, in a time far removed from ours, in a place in the far reaches of our universe, there was a planet called El Dorraine, which meant “the ideal.” And so it was, or nearly so.

  It was the most favored planet under all of the suns; however this was not always the case. In its faraway dark beginnings it had been named, and properly so, El Sod-a-Por, meaning the ill-favored one—and so it had been, decidedly.

  Eons ago, two giant worlds collided in the black infinity of space, and they shattered into trillions of small pieces. The largest bit of all spun off and was captured between the gravities of two small suns. Thus it was that El Sod-a-Por came into being. And oh, but it was hot on El Sod-a-Por with the two suns to give it light and warmth! No sooner would one sun set behind the Scarlet Mountains, and the black cooling mantle of night settle down upon that heat-ravaged land, when the second sun would rise above the Green Mountain, to chase away the comforting darkness. Into the light and heat again the second sun would bring that poor, beleaguered world.

  And oh, but it was cold upon El Sod-a-Por at the top and bottom poles! It was a sphere constantly spinning, blazing hot in the bulging middle; freezing cold at the receding, opposite poles. So perfectly was the world balanced between the two suns, no ray of light or warmth was ever allowed to penetrate into the icy darkness of either pole. Both were places of eternal night.

  Only on the narrow borderlands between the two extremities could green life survive, under the Gods of Green Mountain. Even there the sizzling hot or numbing cold would sweep in and shrivel the tender, young growing plants. Nevertheless, somehow through the years, some life did persist despite all the obstacles hurled upon it, and resilient, determined, hardy life it was. When the people came—and eventually they did—it took them billions of years to evolve from stationary rooted plants into ambulatory men. They were short, thick people—sturdy as tree trunks, as obstinate, resilient and tenacious as the plant stock from which they had sprung.

  To those harassed people, it seemed that nature’s elements waged a relentless, merciless, perpetual battle to stamp them out. Down into the deep bowels of their earth they were forced to dig to find water, and clever were the ways in which they devised means to bring it to the surface, and irrigate the parched land. Though it rained often on the borderlands between the too hot and the too cold, it was never a gentle, drizzling, soothing and nourishing rain. Oh, no! Sweet and gentle rain
was never to be expected. Torrents of driving water hurled down on their land. A drenching downpour accompanied by swirling winds to rip and tear. And when the rain, the winds, were over, the water disappeared as quickly as it had come. Swallowed up thirstily by the cracks and crevices, seeping down through the many orifices in the hard top crust. Down into the dark inner-earth.

  There were those, many, who argued that beneath this same hard crust was indeed the place where life would be easier. But the majority dissented. Thoughts of life in the dark caves, the cold burrows and tunnels, was abhorrent to them, the lovers of light and sun.

  Their strange land, dominated by two suns, refrigerated at either end, steaming hot in the middle, created through the play of extreme temperatures, acting one on the other, narrow rims between the two climates, rocky lands of crystals of iridescent and radiant beauty. They didn’t notice. The struggle to maintain existence was too backbreaking, muscle-aching, mind-fatiguing to appreciate what good they might have seen, or found. Theirs was labor that never ended. Never even lessened, no matter how much was accomplished during the long working hours. They were people of one occupation, one profession, one avocation…to raise food, to plant it, to make an effort at harvesting, to keep alive, to endure. To survive. That was it.

  1

  Baka the Untiring

  On the very edge of the upper temperature zone, nearer the cold side than the hot, lived the most industrious, the most diligent farmer of them all. He was called Baka. When the citizens of that land became aware of just what type of man Baka was, they called him Baka Valente, meaning Baka the Untiring. And in most ways, Baka was, indeed, untiring.

  Baka’s farm was the largest and most productive. His herds and flocks of animals the hardiest, and seemingly the cleverest at finding forage, whereas the flocks of others could find little, or sometimes none. Baka’s house was also the largest, the finest. It was molded of the soft inner-earth, then after shaping, and after hours of baking in the hot scorching suns, the mud became rock hard. It was then covered with the strong, tough puhlet hides to keep the driving waters from softening and washing the house down into mud again.

  A baby puhlet was called a puka. They came into their doomed short existence all rosy pink and bare, and so tiny they could be cupped in a human palm. In seven days they would double in size, and would be covered with a fluffy yellow-green fuzz that was not quite feathers, and not quite hair. As a puka grew older, the fuzz gradually turned into thick, silvery, smoke-blue fur. This was the very color all inhabitants of that planet wore. Fortunately for them, its neutral color went well with their pale citron complexions and fiery red hair and deep purple eyes. Once the pukas reached the smoky fur stage, they matured quickly. As they had to. As all life on El Sod-a-Por had to.

  Baka had need of his large fine home, for he had twelve sons and one daughter. His good wife, Lee-La, was strong enough, and willing enough, to give him thirteen more children, if need be. She knew—Baka knew, all Sod-a-Porians knew—that at any moment the storms could take a child or two or even all. That was the way of it. One day you thought you had it all secure, the next, everything was gone.

  Every crop had to be shielded from the frying winds. Rows and rows of fires had to be made to protect the crops when the cold came. Be it hot, or be it cold, both extremes knew exactly the most vulnerable time of any seed they planted—and that was when the storms were certain to visit! Though either extremity brought some measure of disaster, of grief and loss, it was as nothing as compared to the times when both hot and cold winds raced in and collided! Then the air would swirl and twirl, spinning faster and faster, until hundreds of wind funnels touched down on the ground, taking all that was before them. Fields of grain, houses, fences, windshields, storage bins, animals, barns, and families. For those that survived, hiding in the underground caverns, all would have to be started over from the beginning.

  Hardly ever did Baka permit himself to think of how many beginnings he had made, of how much he had lost. If he had all the children he had sired, he might have fifty. If he had all the sod houses he had built, maybe a hundred. God knows! He didn’t keep records. He ploughed on, planning for today, tomorrow, and maybe there was a time in the future when he could sit down and think of how to devise a way to secure all that was his—make it permanently his.

  He looked around at the family his third wife had given him, very proud. Twelve sons still alive. That was a feat in itself. One small daughter was left, Bret-Lee, just as industrious as any of her brothers. Side by side she had worked with her mother since the age of three: cooking, cleaning, spinning, weaving, and sewing the dull gray cloth into clothes. Besides a hundred and one other chores she did willingly and well. For the children of El Sod-a-Por, the carefree easy days of childhood were short indeed.

  As successful and admired as he was, Baka had one annoying itch that he just couldn’t scratch! That dissatisfaction was his youngest son, Far-Awn the shepherd. While his older brothers toiled endlessly in the fields, or industriously burrowed in the depths of the cavernous inner-earth, making every moment of the day count for something, Far-Awn could be counted on to find a way to shirk his share of the daily chores. At least it seemed to Baka that way, and his elder brothers as well. The boy had absolutely no sense of duty, of obligation and responsibility! That a son of his could be lazy smoldered in Baka’s brain like a pot of stew always on the stove. Many were the times when Baka would miss his youngest, and after long searching, he would find Far-Awn in some recessed, isolated place, just lying on his back, idly staring up at the violet-blue sky and the drifting long clouds.

  Fool! “What’s wrong with you, boy?” Baka railed each time, then thoroughly reprimanded him for being lazy, careless, indifferent, irresponsible—didn’t he know there was work to do? Didn’t he know everyone had to pull his own weight—there were no freeloaders!

  “I was thinking,” Far-Awn replied, apparently indifferent to his father’s wrath. “Look at those rocks over there…the colors in them…look how it stains the earth…look at the clothes we wear. Dull gray. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow use that color to brighten up our clothes?”

  “Idiot!” Baka shouted. “What difference does it make what color our clothes are! They keep us warm when it’s cold, and protect us from the suns! What else is needed of clothing?”

  “Nothing, I suppose,” answered Far-Awn, subdued into thinking his notions were foolish. Colored clothes or not, it was still a dreary, hateful place he had been born into. Work, work, work, from morning until night. Grab a quick sleep before another day of work began. Surely there could be something more. There wasn’t even time to look at the glorious day dawnings, or sun-downings, not if he would live the way his father and family dictated…

  Then he smiled at his father, charmingly apologetic. “What is it you want me to do?”

  To Baka, that smile was the most infuriating thing of all—even more so than Far-Awn’s stupid question! What was there to smile about? Was that all that boy thought about, colors? When everywhere there was work to do, and it didn’t require any thinking—it was there, always—waiting, plain to see without thought, without orders. Knowing how to work was bred into them, like the red hair that grew on their heads…you accepted it, just as you accepted the color of your skin, green! He looked again at his son, half-pityingly…for Far-Awn’s skin was a pale creamy color, not even tinged with green…and his hair was strange, red-gold, not brick red like everybody else’s…

  On another day, he went searching for his youngest, strangest, and most unpredictable son. And as was to be expected, he was again sprawled in the shade, on his back, hands tucked beneath his head.

  “There’s soap to be made, and grain to be harvested, and hams to be smoked…yet there you lie, flat on your back,” Baka began with heavy sarcasm. “Am I interrupting some heavy thinking?”

  “No, Father. I was dreaming!”

  As if that were possible—dreaming with the eyes open! Imagine. Not once in al
l Baka’s life had he dreamed with his eyes wide open, in daylight. Dreams came seldom to him even in his sleep—except for those blissful few times when he had enough to overeat. But those dreams were terrifying experiences. Certainly nothing a boy would go searching for, and smile when he found them.

  Baka said with all the patience he could muster, and he was not by nature a patient man, “Son, I am making an effort to understand you. So, if you are sick, then tell me where it hurts, and I’ll do what I can to help. But if you are well, and are just lying here resting, so you can ‘think’ while the rest of us break our backs working, including your small sister—then, by the gods, I’ll have the hide from your back!”

  Very quickly Far-Awn jumped to his feet. “That’s it, Father—that’s what I was dreaming about. A way for all of us to live without breaking our backs, working from morning until night, too tired to enjoy ourselves, growing old before our time.”

  Dumbfounded, Baka stared at his son. Blasphemy! What other way was there than work? Oh, he was sick! Sick in the head! Sorrow washed through him. Of course, this explained all the boy’s oddness, the way he sometimes laughed. Nobody laughed—except this fool son of his—and at the most unexpected, embarrassing times, letting the neighbors, complete strangers, hear and see him.