Taner's Running Game (The Two Moons of Rehnor) Read online

  The Two Moons of Rehnor

  Novella Collection

  Taner's Running Game

  By

  J. Naomi Ay

  Published by Ayzenberg, Inc.

  Copyright 2012 Ayzenberg, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Cover Design by Amy Jambor

  Photo credits: [email protected] and [email protected]

  Also by

  J. Naomi Ay

  The Two Moons of Rehnor Series

  The Boy who Lit up the Sky, Book 1

  My Enemy’s Son, Book 2

  Of Blood and Angels, Book 3

  Firestone Rings, Book 4

  The Days of the Golden Moons, Book 5

  Golden's Quest, Book 6

  Metamorphosis, Book 7

  The Choice, Book 8

  Treasure Hunt, Book 9

  The Beginning, Books 1 - 3

  Mid Vita, Books 4 & 5

  Novella Collection

  Lydia's Dance

  Taner's Running Game

  Meri

  King of the Streets

  Diridan's Daughter

  Caissa's Favor

  Thad's Mistakes

  Space Doctor

  Big Red

  The Journey to Rehnor Series

  The New Planet, Book 1

  Aran's Gift, Book 2

  When I was fourteen, the Karut's attacked the city of Turko while my father was working at his office downtown. I was in school, in fact, it was my first day of high school, and I was hanging by my locker trying to impress the cheerleaders. When my mom called the first time, I didn't answer my cell because one of the girls, a senior, was actually talking to me.

  "So your name is Taner?" She asked, twirling a long strand of chestnut hair around her finger. "You made the junior varsity football team?"

  "Running back," I replied proudly although keeping my cool. I puffed out my chest and sucked in my gut. "I expect it won't be too long until I'll be moved up to varsity. The coach was very impressed with my breakaway speed."

  "I'm sure he was," she purred and leaned against my locker. "I'm very impressed by you, too, even though you're only a freshman."

  "So maybe you'd like to hang out sometime?" I slapped at the buzzing cell in my pocket.

  "Of for sure," she smiled. "I'd just love to get to know you better." She ran her tongue across her pink lipsticked mouth which sent my temperature soaring to about a thousand degrees and my heart to beating double time in my chest.

  "After school today?" I suggested now pulling out my cell so as to check my very busy calendar. "Maybe we could get some coffee? Take a walk around the park? If you're really hungry, we could get some dinner."

  "Absolutely," she said again and pressed her face up to mine. "There's just one person I need to check with first. Hey Butch?" Her voice rang out sweetly, and from the boy's bathroom down the hall, the biggest meanest son of a bitch was heading right toward me. "Butch is the senior offensive lineman on the varsity team. I really need his permission before I go out with any other guys. This is Taner, Cupcake. He wants to take me to dinner."

  "Dinner?" Butch growled, and his tiny eyes nearly popped out of his giant meaty head. He held out a massive paw and grabbed my neck. Then he made a gurgling noise in the back of his throat and lifted me up into the air. "Stay clear of my girl," he snarled. "Don't mess with my stuff. Do you get it, Tan-dork, or do I need to give you some love?" He showed me his fist, which was bigger than my face. There was no way I wanted it kissing me.

  "No love, thanks," I smiled although I choked as I spoke. "I understand you loud and clear, Butch. Please, can you let me down now?"

  "Good." He dropped me as unceremoniously as he had picked me up then wrapped his huge arm around the girl. "Shall I walk you to class, Princess?"

  "Of course, honeybun." She turned and blew me a kiss from her bright pastel lips, which sent all the other cheerleaders into spasms of laughter.

  I opened my locker and stuck in my red face while pretending there was something urgent I needed see. The cell in my pocket buzzed for the fourth time, but I wasn't going to remove my head to read it.

  "Sheesh, are you stupid?" Asked the guy with the locker above me. "Will you move so I can get to my stuff?" I was forced to back out of my locker, but thankfully by then all the cheerleaders were gone. I grabbed my things and stumbled down these foreign halls toward my first class. I was late of course and earned my first detention as I slunk to my seat in the last row. I took out my tablet and loaded up geometry smiling expectantly at the teacher, spreading my irresistible charm. Instead of lecturing on the area of triangles which the lessons plan said was today, he turned on the vid to the headline news, and we all learned what had happened in the city. When the cameras panned in and showed what remained of my father's office building, I reached for my cell in the pocket of my jeans. There were twelve missed calls and four text messages, two from my mom and the rest from my aunts.

  "Where are you going, Mr. Taner?" My teacher called loudly as I ran from the room to the hall.

  "My dad's building," I gasped and showed him the cell as if the text saying 'Come home' would explain it. The teacher put his hand on my shoulder and told me to hang on as he rang for the principal to assist. She drove me home in her speeder and sat with my mom and aunts while I stayed glued to the vid watching news reports. The building my dad had been in was completely leveled along with buildings on either side. All told twenty-seven people were killed, mostly workers in their offices although a few were innocent shoppers and one was a homeless guy on the street. Five Karuts were shot and killed by a bullet in the head and one of them turned out to be a prince which was a cause for celebration. It didn't make me any happier seeing that guy's dead and messed up body especially since he was only a few years older than me. Instead, it made me mad that he was already fighting this battle with swords, guns and bombs while I just ran up and down a field with a useless leather ball. I missed my dad already, and my blood boiled for revenge. There were three more Karut princes including the Crown Prince and I was itching to hurt them in return.

  "I'm going to join the Royal Guard," I told my mom, my little sister, Tina, and my aunts as we walked away from laying my father to his eternal rest. "I'm going to avenge my innocent dad's death."

  "You finish school first," Aunt Gena said.

  "And then go to the University," Aunt Mira added.

  "Then after that you can think about whether or not the Royal Guard is the appropriate choice." Mom wiped her nose with her handkerchief. "Your father wanted you to be an attorney or an accountant just like him. Too many people have fought and died for reasons no one even remembers. I won't lay you in this ground next to your dad no matter how patriotic you think you are. Now you listen to me, Taner. Don't you do anything rash. You may be taller and stronger than me, but you're still only fourteen years old."

  "I know, Mom," I muttered but I had made up my mind. I was going to join the Royal Guard with the intention of killing Karuts.

  The next week, Queen Moira and the Princess Royal, Lydia came all the way from the Capital City of Mishnah to view the devastation. We were invited to attend the memorial ceremony along with all the other bereaved families. I wore my only suit which I had just worn to my dad's funeral. It was two inches too short and I couldn't button it in front, but Mom refused to take me shopping
for a new one as without Dad's salary and only a tiny pension from his job, we had no other source of income.

  "That suit was good enough for you last week," she wept as she shuffled through the bills on Dad's desk. "It'll be good enough today, too. How am I supposed to pay for all this? How can we afford this house?" Then, she yelled at my sister to put on a clean dress and told me to go brush my hair.

  "But the Princess will see me and think I'm a fool!" I protested.

  "If you think the Princess will care a whit what you look like, then you're already a fool, Taner."

  "Yeah Taner," Tina piped up, her dress not button straight in the back. "We already know you are a fool. Why do you think the Princess would even want to look at you?"

  When we were all dressed and ready to go, Mom tossed all the bills in the trash.

  "Why'd you do that?" I asked.

  "Let them come after me," she said dragging herself to her feet. "They aren't going to put a poor widow in jail."

  The memorial service was long, and Tina was itching to get back home to her friends. Mom kept weeping and blowing her nose, and I got tired of sitting. Afterward, we queued up for a receiving line at the end of which stood the Queen and the Princess. About two hours later, we finally got a chance to meet them, and while Mom curtseyed to the Queen, Tina and I bowed to the Princess. She held out her gloved hand to me and my sister and told us both how sorry she felt.

  "It's okay," I demurred as my face turned all flushed, the warmth of the Princesses hand spreading all the way down my spine.

  "No, it's not," Tina said and sniffed dramatically. "We've lost our dad. It's definitely not okay."

  "How could it be okay," the Princess agreed, "without your beloved father? Don't be afraid to mourn. We're all young, but we still have hearts."

  "You're right," I declared now fervently gazing into her clear gray eyes and clutching her hand, refusing to let her take it away from mine.

  "I'm truly sorry for you," she said, and her red lips turned into a sad smile. "Please know my prayers and my wishes are only for the best." She pulled her hand away and turned to the woman behind me while I followed my mother convinced I was in love. Princess Lydia's face haunted me for the longest time after that. Not even the cheerleaders in the high school could begin to measure up. Lydia was more beautiful than all of them put together. Lydia had more grace and her voice, the most charm. When I tapped into my breakaway speed to run for a touchdown on the Turko Central High School junior varsity team, I did it for Lydia. When I spiked the ball, I imagined her in the bleachers cheering me on. Later, when I finally kissed a junior cheerleader behind the stands, I imagined it was Lydia's lips that I was mashing with my own.

  That year passed by in a daze after the tragedy of my dad's death. My mom barely said a word and when she did she was usually weeping. She sat around and watched reality shows on the vid while my sister dyed her hair green. Mom was too involved in "Interplanetary House Hunters" and "Good Eating Ideas" to notice Tina's piercing and tattoos. In the meantime, I muddled through school and played football or hung out with a friend. I tried to avoid returning to home until the last possible moment and then escaped as soon as I woke up. My grades suffered a bit although they weren't all that great before and Mom never noticed in either case. By the time I turned fifteen, I didn't think a university would ever take me, so I just worked on my breakaway speed and ability to play ball. I still intended to join the Guards although the war with the Karuts had ended after we decimated their country following the raids that killed my dad. I was hoping to serve the Princess, maybe even join her personal regiment. I imagined her seeing me standing tall in formation, wearing her badge proudly on my chest. She would approach me, a curious expression on her face and then suddenly she'd remember exactly who I was.

  I came home one evening after football practice to discover my mom in a state of hysterics. My aunts were there, too, and Gena was weeping while Mira was smoking a cig and shaking her head. I was afraid someone else had died, and so I ran to my sister who was sitting on her bed with earbuds stuck in.

  "What's going on now?" I yelled to which Tina rolled her charcoal lined eyes. She scratched her purple Mohawk and played with the ring in her nose.

  "Lydia's getting married," she said spitting because of the tongue ring between her teeth.

  "The Princess? Who's she marrying? She's only sixteen years old. She's too young for that kind of commitment."

  "Tell the King that." Tina shrugged and turned her attention back to her tunes, "Since he's the one that arranged for her to marry the Karut Crown Prince."

  "Karut?" I ran to my own room and vid. I sat stunned on my bed watching the news as they announced that the Princess Lydia would be married next week to Sorkan of Karuptani. "Oh man," I muttered to the dog who really didn't care as long as I scratched her belly. "Why would they ever do that? The guy's a Saint-less, heathen infidel and Mishnah's mortal enemy and now poor Lydia's going to be stuck with him forever."

  "It's a tragedy!" my mom screamed from the living room.

  "A travesty," Aunt Gena wept.

  "A crime against the good people of the Saint," Aunt Mira added.

  The King came on the vid and read an announcement where he explained about the treaty with the Karuts.

  "Lydia and Sorkan's son shall be designated as my heir and he shall be declared the same by the King of Karupatani. Never again shall the people of Rehnor war against each other. Forever more may we together live in peace. We shall be as one nation under a man whose heart shall belong to all and whose head shall bear the crown of this entire planet."

  "What about Prince Akan?" Tina mused sticking her head in my room.

  "I guess he's lost his crown and throne to a baby who isn't born."

  "Sucks for him," Tina shrugged.

  "And maybe the rest of us, too, after all the Karuts are Saint-less heathen infidels."

  "Are they? That Prince dude's pretty hot. I wouldn't mind getting stuck with him myself."

  "What do you know about that kind of thing? You're only twelve!"

  "Apparently, I know a lot more than you, Taner." She laughed and shut my door. I flipped off the news broadcast and went outside to toss a ball. At the park, I tried to talk to the other guys and ask them what they thought about Lydia's fate.

  "Who cares?" a dude remarked. "Politics are so drool. We've got better things to do than worry about who's going to be king."

  "Did you watch the vid last night? Did you see Who's Got Talent?" The guy tossed me the ball, so I ran toward the goal.

  "No, but I watched Extreme Eating and the guy there roasted some bugs." Another dude tackled me, and I fumbled the ball.

  "Way cool," all the guys applauded either the tackle or the show. I tried not to worry about the future anymore. Who was Lydia to me anyway? Just a princess I once met. To her I was as important as the bug the Extreme Eating guy swallowed.

  The next week, we all sat on the living room sofa and watch the wedding of the Princess as it was broadcast live on the vid. Lydia was more beautiful than ever before in a sparkling white dress and a veil with a million pearls. Prince Sorkan stood next to her decked out in a fancy uniform although something about his face looked kind of green.

  "That's because he's drunk," Mom sneered.

  "And probably stoned on drugs, too," Aunt Gena said.

  "But Blessed Saint, that man is hot!" Aunt Mira cried and blew out a puff of smoke. After the ceremony, the bridal couple stood on the balcony and waved to the people cheering from below.

  "What a farce," Mom said and lit her own cigarette.

  "Maybe in this day and age we'd be better off without a king," Gena suggested bringing a six pack from the fridge.

  "I wish I was twenty years younger and had a prettier face," Mira sighed. "Hey pass me the pretzels, girls, and a can of that beer."

  I left the house then and headed to the park, but for some reason my mind was stuck on Lydia and the Prince. I hoped he was kind to her. I hoped s
he would love him at least a little and I hoped their son would be good for us all and not turn out to be another infidel instead.

  Seven months later, in the middle of the summer, on the first day of August when it was sweltering hot, I was sitting at the beach in my shades and my swim shorts talking up some babes who were on the blanket next to me. They were slathering lotion on each other's backs, so I offered to assist if they would put some on mine. My request was met with giggles and painful expressions, especially when their boyfriends returned from the snack bar.

  "Is that skinny dude bothering you?" a guy who looked like Butch asked a blonde. I knew it wasn't Butch as he'd finished school a year ago and joined the Royal Guard wherein he was deployed to a base near the western sea. This guy might have been his brother, but I wasn't going to hang around to find that out, so I grabbed my towel and headed for the dock. I jumped in the water which was blissfully cold and just what I needed to cool down my overheated skin. When I came back up to the surface, Tina was sitting on the dock, a Popsicle in one hand, a cig in the other. She was wearing a blue polka-dotted bikini that matched her blue dreadlocks and showed off her navel ring.

  "Hey Taner," she called. "Take a look up in the sky." She pointed at the two moons shining there.

  "It's the Day of the Golden Moons," I said while hanging off the swim ladder. "I saw it this morning before we left the house. So what? It happens every month. Didn't you learn about it in sixth grade science? It's when the moon's orbit crosses the sun and the sunlight light reflects off their surfaces into our sky."

  "I know, Tan-dork," she scoffed. "I got an A in that class unlike you. I was pointing at that other light, the one that looks like a comet. Do you see that thing that's streaking through the sky?"

  I climbed up the ladder and grabbed my towel and then stood there staring at the sky with all the other kids.