A Story For Youth About Marriage (with Explosions)

Stories have the power to bring powerful lessons into our hearts. Stories for young adults are as popular today as ever, we’re using popular genres in young adult literature to teach the important gospel principles in the Church’s “Come Follow Me” program.

These stories can be enjoyed individually, or read for family home evenings, mutual activities, or home school programs. Discussion questions follow that you can use to extend the learning.

Title: The Aeternus Coventus Cave

Length: 20 minutes

Theme: Marriage and Family (August)

 

Matthew’s Mom and Dad walked into the kitchen side by side, groceries stacked to their nose.

“One more bag in the car,” his mom mumbled.

His dad wore Hawaiian t-shirts. His hair lost the war and was retreating. “Don’t let the car bite you” he laughed.

Matthew rolled his eyes, but admitted his dad matched his mom well, who wore a perm, t-shirts to match the nearest holiday, and shouted, “The car doesn’t have teeth, but it’ll still get you.”

The “bag” his mother mentioned: a monstrous fifty pounds of flour.

Matthew knew what would happen, but tried anyway. He heaved, huffed, and it budged.

“Want a hand?” Luke was jogging back from the gym, wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He played starting forward for the Jefferson High basketball team.

Luke grabbed the bag over one shoulder, smooched mom and dad, and left the flour on the counter. Brothers.

Luke was great – really – but Matthew was the youngest president in the history of the FAA, the future accountants of America, which had zero percent of the pizzazz of starting forward. His parents always said how they valued whatever he did. They were so proud of him, but blah blah.

That night Matthew sat pinned between Luke and his twin sisters Ruth and Naomi watching Survivor when the phone chirped.

“Matthew! Mr. Frowerland’s on the phone!” Matthew hopped up. Mr. Frowerland served as FAA advisor.

“I need you to meet me outside the gym in twenty minutes,” the voice said.

“This doesn’t sound like Mr. Frowerland.”

“Meet me.” The phone went dead.

Matthew told his parents he was going, grabbed a popsicle, and left. Jefferson took a fifteen-minute walk.

A tall man stood right outside the cone of light in front of the gym. He wore a long fur coat, weird for May. And a top hat—like Abraham Lincoln wore.

“My name is Atlizer. Matthew, I’ve chosen you for a special mission.”

“Okay, guy. You’re creepy.”

“It is an urgent situation.”

Matthew rolled his eyes and turned on his best sarcastic voice. “And I’m magic?”

“You aren’t magic,” Atlizer cocked his head confused.

“I’m leaving now.”

Matthew turned to walk back home. Seriously weird. A rush of wind rumbled past a row of lockers.

“Duck!” Atlizer yelled.

Matthew fell to the ground as a sizzling green bolt of electricity whirred over his head and struck the lockers. They wobbled, then burst open. A woman in a ragged black dress floated on a nest of twine, two dove wings springing from the sides.

“You will not stop me,” she whispered. Atlizer ran in front of Matthew and twisted his fingers. A wall of cement soared out of the parking lot, knocking the woman away.

“Run,” Atlizer told Matthew. Already his plan. Matthew ran home without so much as breathing. He would be safe at home. But when he arrived on his cul-de-sac an ambulance sat at his house.

“What happened?” Matthew asked

Luke shook his head. “I don’t know. We heard this loud wind, and mom’s face lost color, not white but gray, and she felt cold and . .  .”

Paramedics walked his mother out on a stretcher. Luke was right, but her eyes were the worst, a lumpy muddy gray.

Matthew watched in stunned silence as his father hopped into the ambulance and sped away. He stared at the driveway until Atlizer walked onto the street.

“What do you want?” Matthew said.

“The woman from the school. She did this. You can stop her.”

Atlizer pulled a permission slip for an FAA trip to New York from his pocket, “Have your dad sign, meet me at the school tomorrow.”

When Matthew met Atlizer the next day, he drove a wood-paneled station wagon at least twenty years old. Matthew climbed in.

They drove for hours, before climbing a mountain. They turned onto a narrow dirt driveway, and across a narrow bridge. A large gothic mansion appeared. Atlizer helped Matthew into a small bedroom.

The room had a bed, a closet with empty hangers, and nothing else. The walls were white. Not off-white. White-white.

“Don’t unpack,” Atlizer said, “We shouldn’t be here for long. I’m preparing you for your trip.”

Matthew was glad he wouldn’t have to stay long. “Why don’t you go?”

“Go where?”

“Good point. I don’t know.”

“The woman who attacked stole a mirror called the Aeternus Coventus. The mirror controls the light in the world. She stole the light from your mother. Her name is Anne.”

“Luke could go,” Matthew countered.

“Luke will have his own journey. Get unpacked. We’ll talk more tonight.”

Matthew stepped out into the hall. A girl, his age, sat on a couch at the end of the hall.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Matthew asked. She didn’t look up. She had an Xbox controller in her hand, and Halo on the TV.

“Emma.”

“Do you have a journey too?” Matthew asked.

“This is where I live.”

She wasn’t friendly. “You, uh, you live here with Atlizer?”

“My dad.”

He walked back to his barren bedroom to wait for dinner. Given the exorbitant home and eccentric host, Matthew expected an elaborate meal. Mac and cheese.

“I have bad news,” Atlizer announced, “I cannot locate the Aeternus Coventus. But I’ve made alternate arrangements.”

Emma, sitting at the end of the table, huffed her disapproval.

Atlizer continued, “This is the pars partis,” he pulled out a simple black stone—a white arrow engraved on top. “If you follow the arrow, it will point the way for your journey. Do not go in a different direction.”

“So if you gave me the pars partis, I could go on the trip?” Emma snorted.

“The matter is closed,” Atlizer said with a thud.

Matthew grabbed for the pars partis. Heavy and smooth as glass.

“Rest,” Atlizer said, “You will leave tomorrow.”

The next morning Atlizer fed Matthew a hearty breakfast, Lucky Charms.

Matthew waited with a well-supplied backpack in the tiled entryway. A chandelier, three stories up, hung above. The pars partis pointed straight out the door.

Matthew waited for Atlizer’s last minute instructions, before leaving to find a magic mirror from a crazy floating woman, to save his mom.

Emma ran in. “Matthew, I want you to take me,” she said.

“You don’t like me.”

“I can be useful” Emma twisted her fingers. Sparkling strikes of electricity sizzled. She shot them across the room like Anne had. Matthew stared slack-jawed. “My dad said it’s your journey, so you should get to choose.”

It was his journey. Fire power would be useful. Matthew managed to nod.

Atlizer tried to object, when he arrived. Matthew insisted, though, and Atlizer gave in. He wished them well. Matthew and Emma walked out the door.

Matthew kept the pars partis out. They crossed the thin bridge. Matthew looked back, and the house disappeared.

“We’re on our own,” Emma said, “The house moves every time a traveler leaves.”

There was nowhere to turn back.

About lunch time, the pars partis pointed into the woods. Strange. “Let’s go this way,” he told Emma. A sudden wind. A figure dressed in ragged black robes like Anne, but masculine, brutish, and slow ambled toward Matthew. Dust floated off the clay creature.

“What is that?” Matthew screamed.

“It’s a demonus. It works with Anne,” Emma said.

“Well do something.”

Emma turned. The demonus struck a tree with its fist, which fell toward the pair. Emma began working up a spark.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Matthew ran in the direction the pars partis pointed behind a large stone. Emma’s spark grew. She shot it right at the demonus’ cloak. It caught flame.

The pars partis pointed back the other way. Matthew ran, catching the demonus’ attention. It swung its bulky arms. The arrow on the pars partis zig zagged, Matthew followed it running out-of-the-way of one crashing fist then the other.

Emma sprung out of the way, aimed a second spark several feet away from the demonus, and let it fly. The trunk of a tree splintered, conking the demonus on the head. The crude figure collapsed into the ground and disintegrated.

“It’s real now,” Emma hollered!

They reached the bottom of the mountain by the late afternoon. The cool mountain weather gave way to a stinging desert heat. Summer. He shared one of the water bottles with Emma. The pars partis pointed straight out into the flat sandy land.

“Thanks for your help back there,” Matthew muttered.

“Couldn’t have done it without you. You’re pretty handy with your rock.”

The hot day turned into hot night. The two water bottles Matthew brought ran dry.

“Should we stop for the night?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know,” Matthew said, “Pars partis says forward.” The night grew dark. Matthew only moved forward by staring at the pars partis’ stark white arrow. The arrow spun around until it turned into a circle.

“We should stop.”

Matthew and Emma lay down, unrolled their sleeping bags, and dropped into immediate sleep. The next morning, Matthew shook off the tired from his eyes, before grabbing the pars partis from his pocket. Still no arrow.

They made camp a few yards from a magnificent blue lake. Deer drank on the far side. Matthew filled up their bottles. He gulped one then refilled.

Emma woke up minutes later. They washed up, made breakfast, and the pars partis’ arrow reappeared.

Matthew noticed the pars partis felt heavier. It strained his arms to hold it out for long.

The morning grew brighter, but stopped before it was fully illuminated. Day after day they walked into the desert. Noon was now only as bright as dusk. Each night Matthew’s arms ached from holding the heavier and heavier pars partis.

On one wearying day Emma asked, “Will we ever find the Aeternus Coventus?”

“Pars partis says we’re going the right way, but . . . Do people come back from your dad’s journeys?”

“Sometimes.”

“So why did you come?”

“I’d never been on a journey before.” The dry desert scratched at Emma’s voice.

“But why this one? Why with me?”

“I was ready.”

They’d been traveling for ten days. They ate half-rations of their food, but those wouldn’t last long.

A mesa, jutting up from the desert floor cast a weak shadow. Though the days were darker, the desert heat penetrated. The shadow beckoned welcome relief.

The pars partis pointed to the heart of the shadow. Matthew’s arm strained under the stone’s now outlandish weight. He laughed. The flour sack. He could lift it now.

Emma pointed toward the ledge of the mesa. A gorilla-like demonus rolled an SUV sized boulder to the lip of the sheer cliff wall. A single nudge would send it crushing down to the ground below.

If Emma and Matthew continued in this direction they would walk right beneath the demonus’ trap. The pars partis continued to point right along the mesa wall.

Does it not know about the trap? Matthew kept his eye on the boulder. The pars partis proved so reliable to this point Matthew stepped forward, but tepidly.

He looked at the pars partis again—same direction. As Matthew prepared to take his next step the boulder slipped off the edge sailing at Matthew and Emma. The pars partis pointed right toward the boulder.

Matthew grabbed Emma’s wrist and leapt in the opposite direction. They skidded into the gritty desert sand. The earth quaked. Fragments from the boulder rained onto Matthew’s face. Matthew turned around and ran, Emma close behind.

Matthew grabbed the pars partis from his pocket, but the face of the black stone sat empty. Matthew stopped confused.

From around the corner lumbered an oversized demonus. Emma flicked sparks into its face, giving them cover to duck past the demonus’ swinging arms.

Without any trees in sight, though, Matthew wasn’t sure how shooting sparks at a giant pile of clay would help much more

Matthew never met a demonus in an open space before. Though it ambled slowly, its oversized steps were still faster than Matthew at full speed. One blunt whip of air after the next told Matthew the demonus’ swinging fists grew closer with each bound.

In the forest, the pars partis had Matthew zig zag, so he tried again. Left, right he ran but didn’t make any headway. After an acute turn, the demonus picked up his log-like arm and clotheslined Emma.

Matthew lurched for her, but the demonus swatted him out of the way, scooped up Emma, and bounded out of sight.

Matthew dusted himself off and ran. He ran until his feet burned, then ran more. But catching up with a tireless creature wouldn’t happen. He collapsed into a pile of heaving exhaustion.

When Matthew had enough energy to stand back up, he looked down again at the pars partis. Still black.

“Really?” he shouted, “What did you want me to do? Kill myself under the boulder?” the pars partis remained blank. “I was trying to save our skin! I’ve listened to everything else you’ve ever told me! Work!” But it didn’t. Matthew took the pars partis and threw it skipping across the desert floor.

A gathering of trees at the horizon line lie in the same general direction the pars partis pointing earlier in the day.

Matthew headed toward the trees to make camp for the night. As he passed the pars partis, he tossed it into his pocket. But it weighed no more than a pebble.

The forest sat further away than Matthew guessed. He arrived long after dark. When Matthew awoke the next morning, he obviously had chosen camp poorly. No water anywhere in sight. No idea where to go next. The dim morning light prevented him from seeing far ahead.

“Emma,” he asked. She was gone. His throat stung with thirst. But he thought about how he ignored the pars partis. It pointed into the falling boulder, right? He needed to turn around, didn’t he?

But the more he thought, the more he wondered. If he followed directions, they might have missed it. Maybe he missed something. He didn’t listen. Now Emma was captured. He sat thirsty. Hungry. Clueless.

He should have followed. He would do anything to find Emma, rescue the Aeternus Coventus, and return home to heal his mom. As Matthew’s determination rose, weight gallunked into his pocket.

He pulled out the pars partis with its tedious weight, but also with an arrow pointing straight toward the mesa.

The pars partis’ arrow never wavered. Matthew didn’t make it back in one day, but early the next morning he arrived at the base of the mesa.

Matthew only made out rough shadows in the dark, but the boulder still lay where he first abandoned course. The pars partis made a sudden right turn into an indentation in the mesa wall. The pars partis never led him astray. It now directed him deeper into the crevice, which turned into a cave.

Flickering torches lined the wall. At the end of a long passage, Matthew saw the uncertain light illuminate the face of a demonus.

Matthew hoped the pars partis would point him far away from the demonus. But it pointed forward. Matthew stepped forward. The demonus trundled toward Matthew. The pars partis spun indicating he should stop.

He laid the stone down and waited for the demonus. Matthew pulled back a fist and crushed the oncoming creature. Clods of dirt scattered down the cave.

The demonus swung its arms toward Matthew, but Matthew punched again, striking the swinging arm at the elbow. The demonus’ arm fell off, disintegrating to dust as it fell to the ground.

With a few more swings, Matthew incapacitated the off-balance demonus. Matthew picked the pars partis back up from the ground.

At the end of the passage was a dark room, Matthew shouted, the echo indicated an open cavernous space.

Matthew dangled his left foot. Matthew jerked it back. The bottom of the cavern fell out into an unseen hole. Matthew saw dim light on the other side of the cavern as though it led into another lit passageway, but he had no idea how to get there.

In the darkness, Matthew couldn’t make out the shape of the arrow. He rubbed the engraved shape of the arrow. Left. Matthew took a step left. Caressed the pars partis. Left again. Pars partis. The arrow turned.

Matthew took a step out where six feet to the right sank a gaping hole, but his foot found ground. Matthew continued the pattern feeling the shape of the arrow, taking a single step.

The pars partis took him forward, left, right, back. There would have been no way Matthew could have traversed the cave without the help of the pars partis.

Doorways lined both sides of the passageway on the far side of the cavern. On a raised stone platform near the center of the first room sat a meticulously crafted full length mirror. The pars partis insisted he return to the hall.

The next opening also had a mirror. Not as tall, but jewels encrusted its edges. The pars partis’ arrow wobbled, as though it didn’t care which direction Matthew chose.

Matthew returned into the main passage. Room after room held mirrors. Beautiful, plain, tall, short. The pars partis led Matthew away from some rooms, but there were many others where the pars partis didn’t care.

The mirror in a room near the end of the hall caught Matthew’s attention. The pars partis didn’t object. It wasn’t the most beautiful, but he had a special fondness for it.

Shimmering white metal swirled around the hexagon mirror in flowery loops. Matthew stepped into the cave. A stone wall dropped behind him. Was he stuck? But across the room, three pathways led out.

Matthew lifted the weighty mirror into his hands. One path looked flat and straight. The next had a stream with stones and vines to go across—it looked fun. The last looked rocky. Matthew returned to the pars partis.

The pars partis had completed its mission. It led him to the Aeternus Coventus. But the pars partis had proven to be a trusty guide, so Matthew sought its advice.

It pointed toward the rocky path. He followed. In a few hundred yards, the path led out of the cave back into the dim desert sun—a single tree in site.

Beneath it, Emma lay on the ground. He rushed to her side. Her eyes barely opened.

“Emma!” Matthew yelled, “Emma, are you okay?”

“You found me.” A faint smile slid across her face.

“And I found the Aeternus Coventus. I found it! We did it!” Matthew lifted the mirror to Emma’s face.

She reached out to grab the mirror. As she touched it, a billow of light filled the mirror. Emma gasped a deep breath, her eyes opening wide.

“I feel,” she panted, “wonderful.” Matthew handed her the other side of the mirror so she could get closer, but when his hand left, the light stopped. “You need to touch it too!” she said.

Matthew reached out. Sure enough the light returned. Emma peered into the mirror drinking in the light. Within a few moments her strength, and the daylight, returned.

“We need to go back.” Matthew announced. Emma returned to her feet. They each took the Aeternus Coventus in one hand, sharing the weight. As they walked, the desert sun regained its powerful light. A rush of wind.

Anne rocketed down from the sky on her winged platform of twine, working up a powerful spark of electricity in her hand. She hurled the lightning ball toward Matthew and Emma.

They leapt in opposite directions, leaving the Aeternus Coventus in the middle. Matthew picked himself up. He crawled toward the mirror, and grabbed it in one hand.

Anne’s hand rose up ready to strike with another powerful attack.

“Grab it!” Matthew begged Emma. She wiped the dirt off her face, and lunged for the mirror.

When her fingers skimmed the edges of the mirror, a blinding beam of light burst toward Anne.

When the light receded, only the twine nest remained. Matthew and Emma, Aeternus Coventus in hand, stepped onto the device. It rose into the air, then took off at incredible speed over the desert, the forest, and the mountain, before letting them down at Jefferson Memorial Hospital.

“Come with me,” Matthew asked Emma. They rushed into the hospital, up to the room of Matthew’s mother.

“Matthew?” she said, “Matthew, you’re back.”

“We’re here to make you better.” Matthew and Emma, together, lifted the mirror until Matthew’s mom saw her face. Color swept up through her skin and hair, bringing life back into her eyes. Matthew’s mom smiled—all the celebrating they had time for.

Matthew and Emma raced back to their twine chariot. It rocketed back into the sky, resting them at the porch of Atlizer’s home.

They walked in the front door. Atlizer rushed them. “Matthew, my boy! You did it,” he cried, taking Matthew’s face into his hands. “And Emma,” he turned, “I am so proud of you.”

“I came to bring you the Aeternus Coventus,” Matthew offered holding the mirror out to Atlizer.

“No,” Atlizer waved his hand, “Not for me. It’s yours.”

“But my adventure is over. I rescued it. I’m done.”

“No, Matthew,” Atlizer said, “The Aeternus Coventus is your adventure!”

Discussion Questions

 

Matthew says his parents are well-suited for each other. How did his parent’s example prepare him for his journey?

When Matthew and Emma leave Atlizer’s house, the house disappears so he can’t return. How is that similar to our own journeys? How is it different?

When Matthew and Emma meet the first demonus, how did they work together to defeat the demonus? How do husbands and wives work together to overcome their problems together?

Matthew is able to get where he’s going by following the pars partis. What gives us direction in our life in similar ways?

 

-The pars partis growing heavier. Defeating the demonus with his strength.

-Not leading him astray

-Having to go back to where he got off track before he can continue

-What did he have to do to get it to work again

-The pars partis doesn’t care.

-Following the pars partis after finding the right one.

-Choosing the hard path

-Could only get the mirror to work by both touching it.

-Aeternus Coventus means eternal covenant, what did Atlizer mean at the end by saying it was his journey.