After he punches his brother, eight-year-old Lincoln is banished to a wooden staircase for a time-out. As he sits on the step, Lincoln stares at a deer woven into an old rug at his feet. Suddenly, he begins to feel dizzy as he realizes what he is seeing. The deer has come to life. An arrow whizzes by his head, and Lincoln finds himself transported from the step to a wet jungle. As a shot rings out, the deer drops to the ground; two boys run to its side-thrilled with their victory. Frightened and unsure where he is, Lincoln begins following the boys as they carry the deer back to their village. All Lincoln wants to do is find a way to return to his family, but he has no idea what awaits him. The Kirubu people have been waiting for him to come and set their village free. As Lincoln encounters the great Squamata, an evil monster who has been asleep at the bottom of a river, he must find a way to put Squamata back to sleep-before the monster can unleash its power on the Kirubu people and Lincoln can return home.

Into the Land of Nede

By J. GILCHRIST

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 J. Gilchrist
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-5432-8

Chapter One

Time out

"Uugh!" I thought to myself, as I plopped down on the bottom step of the stairway. I was having another time out.

I don't understand why I cannot get better control of myself. My Mom is right. I am eight years old and I need to start to learn that I cannot punch my younger brother every time that he messes up my stuff. A rage boils inside and I ignore what is happening until I cannot take it any longer. The top blows off my pot and I completely lose control.

My thoughts come too quickly and I get frustrated because I am not able to get the words out quick enough. My reaction is just a release of my frustration. I need to have structure. There has to be a point. I don't play just to play. I have a plan.

My brother is not like me. He just does stuff with no purpose. He gets in my way. The rage boils right out of my hand as I thrust my fist toward him, trying to make him stop. I know it's wrong but I don't even seem aware of what is happening until it is too late.

I could hear Mom in the other room, tending to the damage that I did to my brother's face when I punched him. I actually didn't mean to punch him in the face. I aimed for his back and he turned right into my fist and got a real pop, right in the cheek.

I could hear Mom speak to Franklin in the next room.

"Now put your head like this on the pillow and hold the ice. I am going to check on Lincoln." My brother let out a final sniff as Mom's slippers came sliding across the floor toward me.

"What were you thinking?" Mom asked calmly, as she sat down next to me.

I stared at the wall across the hall and didn't move.

"Lincoln," Mom's voice sounded tired. "What were you thinking? What happened?"

Well now, I really didn't have to answer because she was asking two questions and I was confused about which one I should answer first.

"Lincoln?" she tried again, angry, this time. "What's going on?"

Suddenly I felt the words just flying out of my mouth.

"Well, he bashed my guys that I had set up and knocked them all down and he didn't even say sorry, then he laughed and thought it was funny." I blurted this out quickly and held my breath waiting for a response from the Almighty Lawmaker, also known as Mom.

"Is that the way that we are supposed to handle things, Lincoln?"

"No, Mom," I answered, completely defeated because it didn't matter that he had started it, only that I had responded incorrectly. I quickly remembered to add. "Can I go say sorry?"

"Your brother is knocked pretty hard. He is on the couch with the icepack. I am going to go sit with him and you, my son, are going to sit here for your time out and think about what you could've done differently. Think about how you might use your words and not your fists to explain yourself." Mom leaned over and kissed me on the side of the forehead, and then she got up and went around the corner. I heard the whoosh of the cushion as she sat on the couch next to Franklin.

I was eight years old and in second grade. My brother was six years old and in Kindergarten. I was always getting in trouble for retaliating against my brother when he acted up. He started it, I was just reacting to him but he never got in trouble.

Franklin actually seemed to enjoy watching me set my stuff up and just when I got ready to actually play, he would come and knock it down. He had been doing it since he was born. Well, actually, he had not been doing it since he was born but, since I could remember he always messed with my stuff when he was tired and looking for attention.

I usually got sent to this step twice a day on school days. On the weekends, I could visit the time out step as many as five times, especially if it was raining and I was not able to go out to play.

Franklin and I really liked each other but we were just trying to find out where we belonged in relation to one another. Mom let us work it out most of the time without interfering.

It was Mom's job to take care of us and she was always within ear shot of what we were doing. I knew Mom really loved us. She spent a lot of time really playing with us. I didn't know any other mom that spent as much time with my friends.

Dad worked and traveled. I didn't really know what he did. He spent a lot of time reading about history and he was a big fan of some early Americans which is why I was Lincoln and my brother was Franklin. At night, my Dad could be found in his office after dinner, with books spread out all over the place and papers falling all over the floor. Mom hardly ever came in to the office when Dad was working because she said she didn't understand how he was getting anything done amidst all the mess that he was making.

Franklin and I sometimes colored at the little table in the office while Dad worked. Dad printed the coolest coloring pages for us of Indians and jungles and mythical creatures. He would find them on the computer and then take a break from his work to tell us stories about the people and their lives.

So, here I sat, again, with my butt on the hard wooden step and my feet on the rug that ran up the hallway. I rolled the rug up, kicking at the edge. I leaned back but, the step hit my spine in a most uncomfortable spot. I sat up, but, I was too tired and my muscles ached. So, finally, I hunched myself over my knees with my toes tucked under the edge of the rug.

I never really looked closely at the rug before. I had occasionally played with my Matchbox cars on the rug because the border around it made a good road. The afternoon sun shone in a big rectangle through the window in the ceiling. For the first time I really noticed the rug.

A lot of faded colors bled into each other in the worn rug. I knew it was an old rug. My Dad had the rug in his house when he was growing up. Apparently, Grandpa, (who I never met,) acquired it when he was in South America. When I asked if acquired meant bought, my Dad said, "No, not in this case." Dad gave me a look which let me know that there would not be any more to the story of the rug.

As I looked at the orange, green, pink and gold pop out of the dark blue background of the rug, I began to notice all of the shapes. Golden bundles of what looked like sticks tied together. Strange figures wore masks on their heads to make them look like they were part man and part animal. Two opposing trees stretched out in the center of the rug with branches full of strange flowers or fruits. Along the border, a snake-like creature worked its way around the entire rug. There were spiders, snakes, fruit trees, monkeys, and deer.

I stared down at a golden brown deer painted on the rug, I began to feel dizzy. The deer came to life and began moving through the trees.

Chapter Two

East of Nede

I watched the deer as it ran through the trees. I heard something whiz right by my head and realized, I was not sitting on the step at the bottom of the stairs but standing in the leafy, wet, jungle.

It had been an arrow that whizzed by my head. A single shot connected with the running deer and the deer dropped with a thump. Two boys ran by me and stopped at the place where the deer fell.

Just a moment ago, the sun had been shining through the skylights above me in the safety of my house. Now, frightened and looking to the sky I could hardly see through the dense forest above. At some spots the sun rays broke through the leafy canopy and shone on the dirt path that I stood next to. Had I been standing just a few inches farther onto the path, the boys chasing the deer would've trampled me. Actually, had I arrived at this place a moment later, the arrow that went whizzing by would've hit me.

The two boys seemed my age but skillfully and expertly tackled their task. I was watching from where I stepped out onto the dirt path that ran through the forest. Both boys had knives in their hands and quickly sliced and tore at the skin of the deer. Then they worked on the low growing shrubs. I watched as one boy cut the branches off and cut a long stick. The other boy quickly wove together some vines and the two of them used the braided vines to tie the deer to the stick. They picked up either end and continued along the path, carrying the dead deer.

I didn't hesitate for even a second, but began following them at a safe distance. Part of me wanted to call out to them but I was slowly becoming aware that I was a long way from the safety of my time out seat. I walked carefully, trying not to step on a stick that would crack and alert my unaware guides.

Taking notice of my surroundings, I carefully followed what would eventually become my dinner. The packed dirt of the path through the woods is well traveled and well kept. I could walk without catching my jeans or bare arms on any of the low lying shrubs. Everything seemed green and moist. It was not raining but maybe I just missed a storm. Some of the leaves even dripped.

The air was heavy, like it is during the summer break when it gets really hot. Mom calls it the three H's, Hazy, Hot and Humid. The air smelled clean and sweet, like it does after a thunderstorm when we go outside looking for rainbows. Here you could hardly see through the canopy of the trees to the sky. There would be no rainbow to be found.

Weird sounds echoed. I was used to birds in the yard but, this sounded very different. It wasn't the soft sing of the yard birds but a demanding squawk and screech that continued to echo through the air.

Not long after I had been following my hope of getting out of this forest, I sensed something moving in the leaves above me. I thought briefly about snakes but, this thing was dark and seemed to be swinging.

Suddenly, on the path in front of me a black monkey, about the size of my brother swung down on a low lying branch and jumped on to the path. As quick as I saw it, the monkey scurried into some underbrush and silently disappeared.

I walked carefully around the spot where the monkey exited the path, remembering from the zoo that monkeys can be disgusting and enjoy tormenting people with their bad habits.

Strange birds flew threw the canopy of trees. There was an underlying growth that was about as tall as I was, and then there was a space occupied by just the trunks of trees which opened into a huge leafy canopy above. The sounds echoed above, but below where I stepped, the sounds absorbed in the bushes.

I carefully watched that I did not get too far from the guides that I was following and good thing because up ahead, the path became two. Had I not been watching carefully, I would not have seen that I should follow to the left. As I walked by, the path to the right looked exactly the same as the one that I was heading down. I stopped and looked behind me. The path behind me looked exactly the same too and I wondered if I should've somehow been marking where I entered this forest and marking my path, so that I could return.

I began focusing closely on my forest guides. The two boys had made no indication that they knew I was following them as they easily carried the deer along the path. I had to follow closely because every time I left too much space, I had a hard time seeing them through the undergrowth. They both looked quite similar except that one was a little bit taller than the other, just like Franklin and me. Neither of them had anything resembling clothes on but each had a string of some sort around their waste from which hung some piece of leather.

I thought of the deer that they carried and understood that they probably made the clothes they wore. That's cool. I looked down at my jeans and t-shirt and didn't even know what animal the fabric came from.

Both boys had shiny, black, shoulder length hair. Some colored things, like beads, bounced in each boy's hair and part of it was braided in little rows, away from the face. I could not distinguish any features about their face because they always walked away from me. A dark, tattoo wrapped around each of their left arms. I loved those. I got one when we were on a pirate cruise in Cape Cod but it began to fade and Mom nearly scrubbed the skin off my arm with the tattoo before church the following Sunday.

Presently, the boys sped up and I had a hard time keeping up with them. I ran hard. A shadow slithered across the path in front of me and I jumped. In the air, over the moving shadow, I looked down and saw the triangular head of a large black and brown snake.

Yuck! If there was anything I hated, it was snakes!

Ahead, the boys began running. I too had to run to keep up and I was at my top speed, running hard, when I ran out of the woods, right in to a clearing which was obviously, the destination.

The boys who had guided me out of the woods stood on either side of the path where I ran out. The dropped deer lay at the side, still on the carrying stick. Strangely, many people stood around, looking at me as though they anticipated my arrival.

"Welcome," said the taller of the brothers. "I am Maad. This is Blea. We're so glad you have come."

What is going on? How did I get here? Is this real?

"I am Lincoln. Where am I?" I responded

More people crowded around and I stood encircled with the forest at my back and at least a hundred people in front of me. That horrible feeling began to return to my stomach. The same feeling of uncertainty I felt when I was sitting on the time-out step at home.

Maad spoke, "You are east of Nede. You will need to see our chief; he is the keeper of Nede. We will take you to rest while you wait to meet with him."

The two boys stepped toward me and stretched their arms out for me to come. Slowly, I turned toward the crowd. Everyone had dark eyes and black hair. Everyone's skin was smooth and dark like the people at the beach but here, I saw bulging muscle, not bulging fat.

I began walking behind Maad and Blea. As they walked through the crowd, the people began to step back allowing us through. A small child, Franklin's size, reached out and grabbed my t-shirt. Instantly, I felt zapped -like some energy had just left me and the child fell to the ground as if he had received a jolt of electricity. This had happened to my Dad one day when he was replacing a light fixture in my playroom. Apparently, he had touched the screwdriver to the wire that had real, live, electric juice running through it. He yelled, (words I was not supposed to use) and went off to the garage to shut the power off.

I felt strange. As though something was growing in me and I felt sorry because I knew that I had somehow hurt the child. Just a minute ago, when Maad said I would rest while I waited, I was not tired. Somehow, now, I was completely out of energy.

Through the crowd of people, I looked back, feeling slightly comforted that some people reached to help the child. We walked to huts. Walking by one hut, I saw the way the grasses weaved together. Oddly, I hadn't seen any of the grass that they had used to build with in my travel, so far. Huge bundles of the grass lay in piles around the exterior of the huts. I flashed back to my time-out as I was sitting examining the rug. The rug had deer and monkeys and bundles of grass, just like this world I found myself in.

We walked through the outer ring of huts and into an inner opening and another row of huts set up like city streets. We walked again through an alley between the huts and came to another row of the same huts. The boys took me to the left and into one of the huts which was larger than the first we had seen.

"You're right on time." Maad said as he held back the grass door in front of the entrance.

"On time? For what?" I asked, suddenly concerned about what this tribal Indian community might do to a young boy that had no protection. I had read stories about strange customs of people and I quickly dismissed the thought that they would want to eat me since they had just captured that beautiful deer.

"The Father Chiefs always predict the coming of the others and they are always right. We are so lucky to have been the one's to find you. Our family will be rewarded. You have given us great honor." As Maad spoke these words, Blea stood silent.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Into the Land of Nedeby J. GILCHRIST Copyright © 2010 by J. Gilchrist. Excerpted by permission.
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