ISBN: 978-1-936558-24-7 * eISBN: 978-1-936558-25-4 * Paperback $6.95 * E-book $1.49 * Publication: September 6, 2011
I have always been fascinated with The Moment When Everything Changed, both in the fiction I read and in my life and the lives of those around me. Each of us experiences at least a handful of these. They are the before-and-after junctures of our lives, the events that delineate the way we were from the way we are.
When I began to contemplate a story to follow my novel Blue, I realized that there was a critical piece of the backstory that I hadn’t addressed in the novel. When Blue begins, everything has already changed (though it decidedly changes again as the story plays out). For the novella Until Again, I decided to go back to a critical juncture in the lives of the three main characters.
For Chris Astor, this is a weekend he never imagined – the weekend when his marriage will end and he’ll be separated from his daughter Becky. At the insistence of his soon-to-be ex, Chris has not mentioned the coming divorce to Becky. However, that doesn’t mean that Becky is unaware that things are not the way they once were:
“Dad?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Chris’s heart tightened. He and Polly had agreed to talk to Becky on Sunday. As much as he hated playing by Polly’s rules, he’d done so to keep things at least moderately civil. More to the point, though, he knew he felt completely ill-equipped to express to Becky what he was feeling without doing her damage. How could he tell her that her mother was forcing the divorce on him? What would that do to Becky’s feelings about Polly? How could he explain that he’d stopped loving his wife years ago but never would have made this move because he couldn’t bear the thought of not coming home to his daughter every night?
“Everything is going to be fine, Beck. You’d know it if I didn’t believe that, right?”
There was a pause of at least five seconds before Becky answered. “Yeah, I would, Dad.” If she was trying to sound convincing, she wasn’t doing a good job of it. Did his own attempt at reassurance sound as weak?
Becky expelled a deep breath, but she didn’t say anything. He thought she was going to force him to confront this issue, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to be evasive.
Finally, though, she started their Tamarisk story, and Chris relaxed.
At least to the degree he ever relaxed anymore.
Becky, who has always been unusually sensitive to her father’s emotions, is feeling an increasing sense of foreboding and an equally escalating sense of frustration. She knows her parents are hiding something from her, but she has been unable to secure either information or assurance. This has even affected what has to this point been an unalloyed joy in her life, the creation of their bedtime story fantasy world Tamarisk:
“I thought I was telling the story now.” Becky threw an angry look at her father. This seemed to hurt his feelings.
“But you always tell me it’s important to be consistent,” he said. “I’m just making sure. Hey, babe, is everything all right? You seem really distracted.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t be distracted if you told me what was going on around here!”
Dad looked like she’d slapped him. “Babe, everything is going to be okay.”
“That’s what you keep saying, but.... Look, I think I just want to cut things short tonight, okay?”
Dad shifted his body to face her more directly. “Yeah, sure, if that’s what you want. How do you want to end it? Do you want to do something fast with the queen and her staff?”
“No, let’s just wipe that story. Go back to where you were. Where were you?”
“The king had just stopped speaking with Miea. They’d just said, ‘Until again.’”
Becky pictured the king and Miea speaking while she was away at college. The king and Miea talked. Really talked.
“Yeah, until again. That’s a good way to end it.” Becky moved quickly to get under her sheets instead of hanging back with her dad for a minute after they were finished. He got off the bed and came around to kiss her on the forehead.
“You sure you’re okay, babe?” he said.
When did I say I was okay, Dad? “We can talk about this if you want,” Becky said, surprised by the sharpness in her voice. “But only if you’re willing to let me know what’s happening.”
“Babe ...” Dad placed a hand on top of her head, and for a second she thought he was going to sit on the edge of the bed and get into it with her.
Instead, he kissed her on the forehead again.
“You’ve got school tomorrow,” he said before turning to go.
At the same time, in Tamarisk, a world that unbeknownst to Chris and Becky has taken on a life of its own, trouble is brewing with the aggressive nation to the south. To stave off war, the king and queen of Tamarisk have decided to embark on a diplomatic mission, something that concerns their college-age daughter Miea greatly:
Miea sat in front of the elaborately framed screen on her dorm-room desk. Her father had given it to her before she left for university this semester, and it was easily the most ornate thing she had with her. When she protested that she was perfectly happy with the phone the school provided, he offered one of his signature understanding smiles and said, “I want to look my best when I’m talking to you.” The first time they spoke on the phone, Miea dropped the pen she’d been absentmindedly playing with, and when she leaned forward to get it, her forehead touched the screen. When she leaned back, she saw that her father had touched his forehead to his side of the screen as well, and they laughed for a good minute about it and subsequently started all of their talks that way.
Neither were laughing now, though. For the past ten minutes, Dad been telling Miea about the council meeting that had led to the decision to send a Tamariskian diplomatic delegation – led by her father and mother – to the land of the Thorns. Tamarisk and Gunnthorn, the kingdom to the south, had experienced nonstop tensions for so long that no one could remember how they began. Occasionally, the tensions erupted into something hotter, and this was one of those times. There had been moments in the past few years where it seemed that relations might actually improve. Now, though, this bitter turn made the circumstances between the kingdoms seem as dire as Miea had ever known.
“Do you really think this is the best idea?” she said, wishing her father couldn’t see her face so he wouldn’t have any idea how concerned she was. “Diplomacy seems so futile with them.”
He moved a bit closer to the screen. “Diplomacy with the Thorns is an option we need to exhaust,” he said, sounding much more like the person the rest of Tamarisk knew as the king and much less like the man who used to sing her to sleep and could chortle in her presence at the silliest thing.
Miea gestured with her left hand. “Why can’t you send diplomats, then? Why do the king and queen need make this trip – and why by car?”
Her father closed his eyes and then opened them slowly, the action he always used to indicate she was getting overly exercised. “The prime minister has expressed some willingness to discuss a treaty, and you know very well that he won’t do anything of the sort with anyone other than your mother and me. As far as the motorcade is concerned, we decided that this was a good time to show our faces in the southern territories. You know that the people there feel less connected to Tamarisk City than I would like them to feel. We need to remind them that they’re valued and cherished citizens of our kingdom.”
Miea frowned. “Well, at least you’ll accomplish something on this trip.”
Her father seemed genuinely confused by this statement. “That’s awfully pessimistic, Miea.”
The air felt heavier to Miea. “I’m not saying it to be pessimistic. I’m saying it because I don’t want to pretend that I think the Thorns are capable of compromising. And because I’m worried. It’s been a long time since Tamarisk was involved in a war.”
These stories converge, in a most unusual way, leading to climactic events that presage the story to come in Blue. Returning to these characters and their tale was a deeply rewarding experience for me. I can only hope that those who read Until Again will feel even a little bit of what I felt while writing it.
“If you have read Blue, then reading Until Again is a necessity. This short novella gives you more insight on how these endearing people lived and loved in Blue. If you haven't read Blue yet, then both of these books should be in your TBR pile!”
– Confessions of a Real Librarian
“If you have read Blue by author Lou Aronica and loved the magical world of Tamarisk and missed Chris, Becky and Princess Miea then you are in for a treat.”
“If you have not read Blue, you don’t want to miss it and you should not miss Until Again either. Another fantastic book by Lou Aronica as he finishes this chapter in the lives of Chris and Becky.”
“Cannot recommend these books too much. Best recommendation I can give? I was sorry when I hit ‘The End.’”
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