Lehi Columbus: Restoration

Lehi Columbus

Restoration

Book 2 of The Eden Covenant

by MaryAnn Ball

Lehi Columbus: Restoration

Book 2 in The Eden Covenant series

by MaryAnn Ball

©2014 MaryAnn Ball

Published by BYCT Publishing, P.O. Box 140242, Boise, ID. 83714 www.byctpublishing.com

All rights reserved. For enquiries email info@byctpublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also by MaryAnn Ball

FICTION:

• Lehi Columbus: Reclamation – Book 1 in The Eden Covenant series

• The Eden Covenant – Book 3 in The Eden Covenant Series

NON-FICTION:

• Parenting the Millennial Child.

• Everyday Solutions to Seven Parenting Dilemmas

Lehi Columbus, Book Two

Restoration

Prologue:

I have come to learn for myself that there are unseen realms around and through the seen world. These realms are densely inhabited by disembodied, or non-corporeal beings; some are angels, some are devils, but most are the spirits of those who have passed to there from here. Our conscience awareness is only limited by our mortal bodies; these vessels of clay and mud that comprise the awareness of vast majority of our experiences and our present condition on Earth. However, the spiritual unseen realms are just as real, just as present as the world in which we spend our mortal existence.

One may ask, how can anyone claim to know of spiritual realms? How may any of us know of other realms? And I will answer: Spiritual knowledge can only be obtained by spiritual means. Any other form of experimental or scientific measure for proof of spiritual presence will utterly fail. To conclusively present to the world evidence of spiritual realms will be universally dismissed and denied. Therefore, we must conclude that sure knowledge of realms beyond the common awareness can only be obtained by personal, individual spiritual experiences. That is how I came to my own knowledge of the unseen realms; in my own room, eyes closed, mind opened and spiritually reaching for answers beyond my current understanding.

From the journal of Elder Christopher James Columbus, Sherwood, England, Christmas Day, 1901

Chapter One:

Rescue

His mind drifts in snatches, playing with old memories like a kite dancing in the breeze. Vaguely wondering where he is, a feeling of a surreal presence passes through him. Looking upward, he sees the bright sun overhead shining as a reddish haze through his closed eyelids. He is warm and comfortable as he is lulled into drowsing until he again wonders where he is. Oh yes. He remembers now. His parents have brought his sisters and him to Southern California for a vacation and the family is at the beach for the day. He is lying on the exact spot of the beach where the waves of the ocean take small licks of the soft, wet sun-heated sand beneath him.

Here at the edge, where the ocean meets the earth, the wet sand yields to the contours of his eleven-year-old body. Gently, each wave lifts him up from beneath until he is floating in its cradling embrace before releasing him back to the soft sand, only to return a few moments later to repeat the rocking motion. He has never felt so peaceful and cherished and his whole being is centered on the comforting caress of the silken waves as they build and recede around him. In the distance, he can hear water sounds, birdcalls and voices of people, but they mean nothing to him, so he pushes them far from him. And again his mind drifts until his body jerks unexpectedly.

He must have dozed off. He feels mildly annoyed as he sleepily realizes that the people that he had heard in the distant are now surrounding him. The disembodied voices shimmer in the air above him, the words floating down upon him as though the letters were rain drops, ...carry him out...need to wake him...wonder what happened.... They are intrusive and insistent, commanding that he pay attention to them as they repeat one familiar word somewhere in the air above him. He resists the intrusion until resistance is no longer possible when he is rudely awakened as strong hands lift him up.

Lehi, can you hear me? A concerned voice sounded far away at first and then suddenly it was next to his ear. The repeated word; his own name. Someone close was demanding that he sacrifice the comfortable obliviousness within his dreams and return to a less friendly world. He could hear someone moaning close by and then suddenly reality crashed into him like an unwelcome tidal wave of excruciating pain and misery, and, struggling against the weight of his human flesh, Lehi pulled himself out of his semi-conscience state and cracked open his eyes a little. Wincing as pain was manifested in several parts of his body at the same time, he realized that the moaning he had heard was coming from himself.

Squinting, Lehi looked up into Bishop Knight's eyes. Hi, Bishop. What are you doing here? he could only manage a weak, faint whisper, his throat and mouth too dry to form his words properly.

The bishop chuckled a little and brushing a few tears away from his own face he said, We've been looking for you all afternoon, my friend. Let's get you out of here.

Glancing around from where he lay on the ground, Lehi saw that he was in the midst of several of his friends from the ward. They were all looking at him with relief and grave concern. Brother Quick, a trained EMT was carefully checking Lehi's injuries and vital signs. Brian Corning brought a bottle of water to Lehi's lips and helped him drink almost half of the liquid before pulling it away.

The rest of the trip down the mountain was made as fast as Lehi's rescuers could take him, under the circumstances. He was mostly carried along the trail with his left arm draped over the shoulder of one of the men in the group. Lehi tried his best to maintain a tight control over the extent of the pain he was in, gritting his teeth against the groans that threatened to escape his lips, and he often wished mightily that he were still unconscious. When his six rescuers finally got him back to his cabin, he pleaded with them to leave him in his own home to rest and recuperate rather than take him to the little clinic in town to be checked out by the town's only physician, Dr. Skyler, or worse, to an emergency room in Boise. Seeing that he had reached the end of his endurance, his friends took pity on him and carried him into his home. Laying him on his bed, he was allowed him to sink back into a state of unconsciousness.

Lehi was aroused a little while later to stabbing pain as sure fingers prodded his ankle. Doc Skyler was sitting on the end of his bed holding the injured leg gently as he examined it. I don't think that his ankle is broken, he told the men still standing and leaning against various items of furniture in Lehi's bedroom. They stirred when Lehi's moans alerted them that he had awakened.

Lucille Burden bustled into the room carrying a thick mug that was steaming and set it down on the dresser beside the bed. She shooed all but her husband out of the room, telling them that they needed to give the good doctor some room to maneuver in the tiny bedroom. Doc checked Lehi's other injuries, and found that although various parts of his body were badly bruised and scraped, the ankle and elbow were the worst and would heal with time, although he was concerned that the lump on Lehi's head might indicate a concussion and he wondered if the bruise on his back involved a cracked rib. Doc gave Lehi a narcotic pain reliever and instructed him to take them with water and food.

Lucille helped Lehi sit up on the bed, arranging his pillows against the headboard behind him and he swallowed the pills with a full glass of water, which he drank thirstily through a straw as Lucy held the glass. When he found that he was too weak to hold the mug and feed himself, she spoon fed him a small but delicious meal of hot chicken noodle soup and homemade bread. While he ate, Lehi asked Eddie how they had found him, dismayed at how weak and pathetic he sounded.

It was Bishop Knight who insisted we check out why you weren't in church this morning, Eddie said. "All through sacrament meeting, he looked concerned, and as soon as the meeting was over, he came up to me and asked if I knew where you were. I had wondered, myself, so we came up here to your cabin and found your door open, and your truck in the driveway, but you, of course, weren't anywhere to be found. The bishop called Todd Quick on his cell and told him to bring Brian Corning, who is a natural-born tracker, and meet us at your cabin. They recruited the other two to help look for you, but it still took us almost three hours to find you. We called your name over and over, and I was beginning to think we were on the wrong track until Todd found your cell phone at the bottom of a steep incline. It was Bishop Knight who was certain that you were on the mountain somewhere and insisted that he was going to look for you until it became too dark to see. He's the one who finally found you. He spotted your boot on the side of the trail and went down into the gully where you were lying unconscious.

Eddie sat down gingerly on the bed next to Lehi's knee and patted his good leg in comfort.I don't know if you realize what a mess you were in when we came up to you; we were afraid you were dead, he said gruffly. As soon as we made certain that you were alive, Bishop Knight instantly pulled out his little canister of consecrated oil he carries on his key chain, and I helped him give you a priesthood blessing before we did anything else. You opened your eyes a few minutes later, and you can imagine how relieved we were.

Chapter Two:

The Beginning of Healing

Lehi bowed his head and shook it slowly, muttering, God told me He would take care of me, and He did. He looked up at Eddie and then through the door where he could barely make out the Bishop sitting in the living room with the other rescuers, waiting for news of his condition.

We need to get you cleaned up, dear, Lucy said, matronly, as she entered the room, carrying a basin full of sloshing water, and towels slung over her shoulder.

Lehi's must have looked horrified, because Eddie instantly took charge as he ushered Lucy from the room, saying, Why don't you let me help Lehi with this part? He shut the door firmly behind her retreating back, chuckling at her indignation about being excused from her bathing duties. Regarding his young friend he said, She's right about one thing. You do look like you could do with a wash-up. Do you want me to wash you right where you are, or do you want to try using the shower.

Lehi just gave him a pointed look and Eddie clapped his hands together and said enthusiastically, A shower it is, then!

What followed was another measure of excruciating endurance for Lehi. Eddie helped him remove his torn, filthy clothes and then put a chair in his shower for him to use while he washed himself off the best he could. When he was dressed again in a loose pair of pajamas that must have been in Eddie's closet for twenty years or so, he felt much better. By the time Lehi returned to his bed, the pain killers were finally doing their job and Dr. Skyler further cleaned his wounds and bandaged them, putting steri-strips on the cut above Lehi's eye. He was concerned about the deep bruise on Lehi's lower back, but Lucy handed him a little vial of essential oil that she claimed would help heal it. Saying nothing, the doctor looked a little skeptical but rubbed a few drops of oil on the wound anyway, just to appease Lucy, and then placed a tight wrap around Lehi's chest just in case there was a rib fracture. Lucy took the oil from Dr. Skyler and gently rubbed a little of the fragrant oil on Lehi's elbow, and ankle and then lifting his foot, carefully shoved an upholstered bolster under his leg to keep the injured ankle elevated.

When Dr. Skyler and Lucy finished all of their ministrations, Lehi laid back against the pillows and sighed with relief. He just wanted to sink down in his bed and sleep for a year, but the good doctor advised the group still at the cabin that someone should stay with him and check on him every other hour in case Lehi had suffered a concussion. Eddie agreed to stay in the living room through the night, along with Todd Quick who immediately offered his services as well. Throughout the night, the regular routine of applications of ice to Lehi's ankle and elbow, as well as the administration at specified intervals of the potent pain killers that the doctor had left for him, made the hours drag by. When the gray morning light finally appeared at Lehi's bedroom with, he awoke feeling groggy yet grateful to be in his own bed, his aches and pains pronounced, but manageable.

The next three days were a blur of haziness induced by the heavy-duty painkillers, sleepiness and unfamiliar activity for Lehi. On Monday afternoon, Lucille drove him into Eagle to see an orthopedic surgeon Dr. Skyler referred him to, who took X-rays of his ankle, chest and elbow. To his relief, the ankle was as Dr. Skyler had diagnosed: a severe sprain with several torn and stretched ligaments. But there was a crack in one of the ribs in his back and his right elbow had a small fracture right in the joint, and so he ended up with his chest tightly bandaged, an ace bandage and sling on his right arm and another ace bandage on his right ankle all the way down his foot to his toes. He was ordered to stay off of his foot, and keep it elevated for at least two weeks.

Unable to straighten his right arm in its sling, crutches were difficult to manage, so Lucille rented a little knee walker for him to use when he absolutely needed to move. He fell asleep on the way back to Garden Valley and didn't awaken until the car was turned off. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to see that Lucy had stopped in front of her house instead of taking him back to the cabin.

After she explained that it would be much easier to care for Lehi in her own home rather than making several trips up to the cabin every day, he reluctantly agreed to abide by Lucy's arrangements, and she made him as comfortable as possible in her guest bedroom. That lasted all of two days. When Eddie arrived home on Wednesday evening, Lehi begged Eddie to drive him back to his cabin. Much to the dismay of Lucy, who was enjoying being the mom to a needy young man, Lehi was taken home again after dinner. He sat on his trusty couch, his foot resting on the old ottoman, and breathed a sigh of relief in the familiar peace and quiet of his own cabin.

Later, upon inspection of the contents of his fridge, Lehi was astonished to find that it was well-stocked with several meals. Apparently the sisters in his ward had been busily breaking into his cabin and depositing food for him during the time he had been a guest of the Burdens. They continued to provide for him, and he soon found that he had enough food for several weeks for several people. The ward's generosity and care of him was overwhelming, and he concluded that if to feed someone was equivalent to loving them, he certainly felt well-loved and would soon be unable to fit into any of his clothes.

Lehi had stopped taking the prescription pain relievers when he got home, relying on the less potent over-the-counter analgesics instead, and various essential oils and supplements that Lucy had provided for him. Though they didn't quite relieve all the pain, they didn't give him the drugged-out feeling that he had fled from more than a year before. His mind once again began to feel clear, and the ache in his ankle and elbow kept him awake enough that he could spend his time in between visits from his ward family members and work buddies really pondering the events in his visions.

Lehi learned to leave his front door open so that whoever came up the lane to his cabin could call to him through the screened door. From his perch on the couch, he invited each guest in, shooed the cats off of the other chairs in the living room and bid his visitors to sit and chat. Answering the same questions over and over, he carefully reassured each concerned friend that he was mending quickly and all was well with him.

By Friday, the number of people coming up to visit Lehi had dwindled and, as it turned out, Bishop Knight was the only visitor at his screened door on Friday afternoon. He let himself in the front door after being acknowledged by Lehi and sat in the easy chair. After catching up on Lehi's condition, He asked how Lehi's parents were doing, and Lehi reported that his