Free The Faarian Chronicles: Exile by Karen Harris Tully Page A

tall,
and surrounded by a… was that a moat? The huge arch of the front doors reminded
me of the Taj Mahal.
    We hovered almost above it for a moment before descending
and I could finally see that the dome in the middle was actually glass, housing
a courtyard complete with a green carpet of lawn and fully grown palm trees, no
pool to be seen though, dang it. And what had looked like a moat was nothing
more than a big trench - bone dry.
    “Let me have a word with Sunny, Ethem,” Sensei said when the
plane had performed its vertical landing in front of the huge brick structure.
“You go ahead; we’ll meet you in a few minutes.”
    “Sunny,” she began after Ethem, Teague, and Myrihn had left
the cabin. She paused, trying to find the right words, which peaked my
curiosity. She usually just said whatever she needed to say. “Sunny, you’re
going to need something now that we weren’t able to teach you very well on
Earth – how to fit in here, in our culture. We don’t have much time, so listen
up.”
    She waited until she had my complete attention again and
looked me straight in the eye, “Be tough. Remember, girls don’t cry. Not here,
not ever.” I did remember. She used to tell me that as a kid all the time. “The
most important thing to know is that you are tough. I know you. I’ve
seen it. You can handle whatever anyone throws at you. Got it?” I swallowed and
nodded, a little afraid now of what was waiting for me at the other side of
that imposing front door.
    “And second, even if you may not want to be here, you are here now. Try and make the best of it. This is your family. They’re good
people. Give them a chance, okay?”
    I nodded again, feeling very deer-in-the-headlights. Be
tough and be nice. I hoped I could handle that.
    “Okay folks, time to get going.” I hadn’t noticed that the
pilot was still there until he spoke. “I just got a message from the General
and she’s ready to be picked up. We’ll be back in about two hours. So you can
stay on the plane, or get off, but either way this cat’s gotta fly.”
    Sensei looked at me. “Do you want to stay on the plane or go
inside?”
    “Go.” I picked up my bags and hurried off the plane as the
engines fired back up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go inside, but I was positive
that it wasn’t a good idea to meet my mother for the first time on a plane. One
of us might end up testing the parachutes.

Chapter 8: Treated Like Royalty
    The heat hit me like a wall at the door and I hurried away
from the gleaming plane, thinking it was heat off the engines. It didn’t get
any cooler farther away though, and I clapped my hands over my ears as the
engines screamed, creating a sandstorm of hot grit for us to trudge through. My
earplugs were still in my pocket and my sunglasses still in my bag. I wished
I’d thought to get them out before leaving the plane. The sand and noise
settled and I got my first sense of this place: dry and dusty and unearthly
quiet.
    We were on the outside of a huge, chain-link fence that made
a dome at the top, like the Jurassic Park movie with the pterodactyls. I
hadn’t noticed it until we were up close, having been looking through it at the
building. It was suspended about a foot above the base of the trench all the
way around the building with a gate in front of us over a drawbridge. Sensei
made a big deal of making sure the gate was closed before we entered the palace
through a side door… the Kindred, I guessed they called it. I was relieved not
to have to make my entrance through that huge, ornate archway.
    We walked down a stone hallway and into an enormous
gathering hall with white marble floors and a deep, lapis blue domed ceiling
streaked with silver. Long tables ran in rows down the length of the cavernous
room, but it was entirely deserted.
    We walked down one side of the room toward the clamor of
kitchen sounds. I set my bags next to the door as we walked in to find Ethem
stirring several tall soup pots on a