Sneak Peek - Dory Horde Book Three - The City of Eight
This is the official sneak peek of the third and final collection of the Dory Horde stories published for Sparkle Stories. This is the first episode of the twenty story collection that will continue on the Sparkle Stories platform in May.
David has produced nearly 1500 stories for Sparkle Stories and in this episode of the podcast, he talks a bit about the “story foraging” tool that is behind his productivity and prolific ability to write stories, articles, lessons and essays at a fast pace. It all has to do with how he listens and takes cues from his environment. This story series is testament to the story foraging process.
In this first episode of the new collection entitled “The City of Eight” we are reintroduced to the Dory family and are brought up to speed on the events that transpired over the past two years since their last adventure in Peru.
[00:58] Introduction
[04:00] A little about how Story Foraging works
[06:16] Some background on Dory Horde
[08:30] Where to get our Story Listening Tool Workshop
[10:30] The Dory Horde and the City of Eight, Episode One - The Scattering
Sneak Peek - Dory Horde Book Three - The City of Eight
Full transcript
Now Aurora was the one who stopped what she was doing and looked up. It was true that Tag had been unusually slow in responding to her messages as well. She suddenly felt a wave of worry. “Has anyone heard from Tag?” she asked the room. “Well, I reached out yesterday afternoon with a question I had about a pigment I'm studying,” said Aiko as she scooped food into Alpa's Bowl. “But it's true, I haven't heard back from him yet.” Salvador shrugged and Sesi shook her head. No, Aurora frowned and then went to look at her own phone she had stowed in the front hallway. She opened up her texts and indeed there was no response from him.
Yes, it is true. That little bit of story is indeed from the first episode of the new Dory Horde collection that is going to launch very soon over at Sparkle Stories. So these are very exciting times to be sure. Uh, for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, for the last 10 years, I have been writing and recording audio stories for children on a media platform that I co-founded with Elizabeth Sewell called Sparkle Stories. And to date, I have landed pretty close to 1500 stories for Sparkle and a few other spots. And, out of that experience, I have learned some skills and some tools that I now teach over at howtostory.org, which is our storytelling school. So one of the tools that I've developed over the years is called Story Foraging and it works a lot like foraging for mushrooms. And it's become an effective way for me to find the good stuff. To find like the most delicious stories and to find them actually quickly.
So the Dory Horde stories are great examples of how this tool works and what it can do. The stories are, they're pretty complex. And they have many layers. And the series works like a mystery with all these different narrative threads that weave together and they get tangled and then suddenly they form this magical tapestry where everything connects together elegantly in the end. And that's what we want in a mystery, right, for everything to make sense. But in the end. So this story that you're about to hear is the first of the third Dory Horde collection. Each collection 1, 2, 3, is about 20 episodes long. They're essentially audio books and each one is a mystery where the final story reveals and nearly resolves all the challenges and curiosities that have unfolded in the previous episodes.
I say nearly because there's always some lingering question that then leads to the next book, the next collection. Well this one, the third one is the final book, the final collection of stories. And it does manage to tie together all of the loose ends. All the untied questions that live not only in this third book, but the previous two as well. It is wild how this story unfolds and then it just figures itself out.
So you probably are noticing that I am describing this story as if I'm also a reader and not the guy who wrote the stories. And that's because of the way in which story foraging works. So very briefly, the tool works like this. So I set an intention before I enter into this forest of narrative, into the complexity of narrative, I set an intention. And I intend to write a story about something in particular, this or that. Or I try to answer a question or meet some need. This is how I've done all the stories over at Sparkle Stories.
And then I forget that intention. I intentionally forget the intention and then attune myself to the complexity of the forest. I listen to the sounds, I look at the sights, the colors. I smell the smells, and I notice how my body is feeling. What its response is to the environment. I use my whole body, the whole thing, to listen, not just my ears. And what happens is that this tension between that intention that I set before I entered the forest meets with the full immersion that takes place in the forest. And that tension that gets created takes me where I want to go. It helps me find the story really fast. Or the story finds me. I don't know how, which, which is the dynamic. But it doesn't take long for me to find the narrative, gather it together, and then proceed to tell it.
And this is how I have done those 1500 stories as well as all the blog posts and the workshops and building curricula and articles, et cetera. So it's okay if you're not quite following me, truly, if you're not sure what I'm talking about. But, we're just gonna start with story foraging and in a minute I'll tell you where you can learn a process on your own time and for free that will help you land this concept a little bit more authentically.
So let's get back to Dory Horde for a moment. This opening story presumes that you know about these characters and what's happening. It's the third book, remember? So let me just tell you just a couple easy things that would make understanding this story a little bit easier before you dive into this. So this entire series is a story about a family and it's a family that is trying to figure out and heal something old.
Solomon Dory, the children, the Dory Horde is the children. The children's grandfather made some choices a long, long time ago when he was young that yielded him incredible power and a lot of money. And this, these riches and this power was kind of passed on to his children and then his grandchildren. And now the Dory Horde, these children, these five children basically have superpowers. But they want to use these powers to set history right. They want to heal this old wrong, the wrong being how he got the power. So we all have versions of this, right? We can relate to this. We have things that we have inherited that are great powers and also they can be a problem. They can show up as a curse for us. It's part of our process on the planet to carve our way while sorting through family past, what we've inherited. And without saying too much, the answer to doing this, the thing that helps us heal our past and to reconcile our family history is to pay attention to it, to see the whole thing, warts and all. The good and the bad. And once you see the whole thing, I believe you will know what to do.
So story foraging. Story foraging is one of the 12 Tools of Telling and Attending that I teach. This is the tool belt that everyone who talks really needs. And a great first step is to go over to howtostory.org and look for the Story Listening Tool Workshop that is for sale now. Now I'm assuming that you have already done the free Hidden Forces in your Voice mini-course, right? So either of those two will give you a really fun starting place for your conscious storytelling path. So go over to the website, take the free course on finding fairies in your voice, if you haven't already. What, fairies? Yes, fairies. And then you'll want to grab the Story Listening course where you can learn to read the room, attend your listener, find your center, and then speak from an authentic place about something that is important to you.
So one other thing before we get to the story, just a few seconds, please take a moment, give us a review. It makes a huge difference. So if you like these episodes, do the five star rating thing, write something nice about us, and hopefully it will give us the chance to find more people who need these skills. So thank you for helping us. And here is the story.
Sparkle Stories and the Dory Horde
The Dory Horde and the City of Eight, Episode One - The Scattering
Aurora Dory, the mother of the five uniquely gifted children known as the Dory Horde, sat at the dining room table organizing several piles of paperwork. She and Aiko, the woman who once worked with Aurora's mother, were about to sort through all the business of holding such a large household. Aiko, and her husband Salvador, were both archeological researchers and in the last two years had meshed so fully with the Dory family that they were viewed as part of one big family together. The three adults, Aurora, Aiko and Salvador worked together with the cooking, the cleaning, parenting, as well as their own research and financial work. It was a lot, but when everyone helped pitch in, things went smoothly, if not joyfully. It was a good life they shared together and Aurora was grateful. As Aurora sat at the table, she paused from her organizing to notice something remarkable.
It was quiet. Yes, she could faintly hear her youngest child, Sesi, now nine years old, sitting in the living room giggling and chatting away in Arabic on a video call with her grandmother, Aurora's mother Maria. She could also make out the faint thud of her youngest son, Coach, practicing dunking the basketball outside on a recently constructed basketball half court. Though Coach was 12 years old and five foot five inches tall, he had a vertical jump of 42 inches, which gave him just enough height to dunk. And she knew that whenever he was feeling out of sorts, he liked to practice dunking. Aurora could tell from the thudding that this night Coach was definitely feeling out of sorts. Aurora looked above towards the bedrooms to see if she could hear her middle daughter Tahoe, but she could not. She imagined her sensitive and solitary 15 year old was very likely in her room doodling in her notebook or possibly chatting on the phone with her great uncle Alfie.
He was an artist who lived in Nazca, a small city to the northeast of their home on Otorongo Island in Peru. Uncle Alfie had become a kind of mentor to Tahoe since she had expressed an interest in drawing and painting. This thought made Aurora smile as she continued stacking papers. She liked this connection her children had with her mother and uncle. But she also felt a little wistful in that moment for the days when everyone was crowded together in the kitchen talking and sharing what they were thinking and doing or wanted to do. In that moment she even missed the arguing between Coach and Tahoe and Colum and well, everyone. She knew this was something that parents faced as their children got older, but there were times when she felt a special appreciation for earlier days. Then Aurora could hear the slow approach of Aiko as she made her way down the spiral staircase to the main level.
Aiko was in her sixties, and though she tended to move slowly, she was also very strong and graceful. “Oh, you are way ahead of me,” Aiko said with a smile, looking at the piles. “Hmm” said Aurora smiling back, “I wouldn't consider this ahead. This big pile is for Colum’s school.” Colum, her eldest daughter, was now living on a small island in the Caribbean, enrolled in an international school for gifted high school students called the Island Technical Institute for Young Engineers. Since their travels around the Americas on trains and buses and ships, and more recently by planes and once on a helicopter Colum had become fascinated by navigational systems and propulsion. Aurora didn't fully understand what her daughter Colum was learning at the institute, but she did know that her 17 year old was happy there. “How about I work on the island paperwork” said Aiko as she sat down “and you start the visa extension for Tag. Visas frustrate me.”
Tag, Aurora's eldest child,was now 19 years old and lived on what seemed like the other side of the planet in Alexandria, Egypt. He was studying mineralogy with his second cousin Bennu at the university where she taught and he had now become a specialized research assistant. The Dory Horde had met Bennu during their last adventure around Machu Picchu a year and a half ago. And Tag had immediately become interested in Bennu’s world. It turned out that Tag's unique skills for sensing metals and minerals were certainly an asset with Bennu's particular specialty, studying the paints used in ancient cultures. But it turned out that his academic rigor and wild curiosity were even more valuable than his power. Recently, Aurora had noticed that all her children used their inherited powers far less than they used to. These remarkable powers had been accidentally acquired by her father, Solomon, then passed along to Aurora and her two brothers, ultimately trickling down to the next generation of Aurora's five children and her nephew Alistair.
These powers, superpowers really, were unique and manifested in spectacular skills and abilities that could impact the entire world. Tag could feel metals and minerals so deeply that he could identify and find them anywhere. And not only could he feel them, he could even manipulate some of them in certain circumstances, creating reactions or stabilizing volatile minerals. His sister Colum had the directional accuracy of a homing pigeon. She could always tell where she was and where she needed to go. This extended into her decision making. She always seemed to know exactly what to do in any given situation. Tahoe, the next sister in the family, was able to hear messages from people far away, usually family members, but sometimes others. And at the height of her powers, she could even perceive pictures of the past and the future. Coach, the younger brother, could move like any animal he chose. He could run like a gazelle. He could climb like a mountain goat, swim like a dolphin and leap like a leopard.
And this gave him the ability to perform incredible athletic feats. And then Sesi, the youngest girl of the five, could understand and speak any language, including the language of some animals. There were even times when she knew not only the language but its stories. They were all still a little unclear about how this worked. But sometimes Sesi could simply recite a story that she had never heard before, as if it were a part of the language and its vocabulary. Their cousin Alistair also had powers, but in contrast, his didn't seem to benefit anyone but him. He seemed to be able to take energy from other people simply by being near them. And unfortunately he had used that power to harm the Dory Horde more than once. They did not get along very well with Alistair and the last time they saw him, he was angry with them and wanted nothing more to do with the whole family. And truthfully, many of the members of the Dory family were okay with that.
Aurora didn't know where Alistair was or how strong his powers were these days and she reflected that it was probably for the best. However, the question still nagged her, especially because she had noticed recently that something had changed with her own children. She wasn't sure about Tag and Colum, but she was aware of the shift in her children at home. She knew that Tahoe had consciously chosen not to use her powers of remote connection and communication anymore. She preferred to use her telephone or computer to talk to friends or family members who lived far away. She was now focused on learning about art and making beautiful images. Coach still used his powers with sports, but lately had chosen not to compete or even play anything competitive with others. He found that his athletic skills were actually a barrier to making friends and now he had a group of friends that he loved. He chose to do things they enjoyed, like playing role-playing games and doing fun science experiments.
Sesi certainly used her power of knowing all languages, but now chose only to speak one language, Arabic. This was what Sesi’s grandmother and great-uncle spoke and she thought it was the most beautiful language of all. So even though most of the family did not understand her often, she spoke Arabic to everyone whether they knew what she was saying or not. Luckily, Aurora knew just enough to usually know what her daughter was trying to say. And Tahoe continued to know what her sister was saying, even if she didn't understand Arabic very well. She just knew her sister.
Aurora sighed and looked at the rest of the unsorted pile of paperwork. She smiled up at Aiko who had immediately begun to fill out one of the pages from Colum’s school. She was so grateful to have Aiko and Salvador in her life and so enjoyed their days together. They had been through quite a bit together and this community they had formed on Otorongo Island was now precious to her. Aurora took up the next piece of paper from the pile and frowned. It had to do with her father's estate.
Though Colum and Tag’s departures were both enormous changes, the biggest change was that her father Solomon, (the one responsible for their powers and ultimately the reason they now lived in Peru), the great archeologist Solomon Dory had died almost a year ago now. It was a strange experience because the entire family had thought he had died three years previously. They had all traveled to the Yukon Territories in Canada and learned that Solomon Dory was not only fabulously rich, but that his fortune had been built essentially through stealing treasures from indigenous communities all over the Americas. Solomon, like Tag, had been able to sense metals, and he had used that power to find gold and silver and then even more valuable precious metals on traditional lands. The rest of the Dorys had not known this until they had read his legal will and they had learned about his crimes as well as his desire to make amends and return the wealth to these indigenous communities.
The Dory Horde had done their best to help and when the adventure was complete and the Dory children had solved the great puzzle of Solomon's life's work, it had turned out that he was actually quite alive. And that it had all been a kind of benevolent trick to get them to help him. So he was full of surprises.
Solomon had encouraged Aurora and the Dory Hde to move to Otorongo Island in Peru where they all had a second and even more transformative adventure in the Inca ruins around Machu Picchu. Essentially by using their remarkable powers, they had been able to rescue Aurora's mother, Solomon's wife, from a spiritual world that existed outside of time. Or it was something like that. Aurora to this day, still didn't understand what had happened, where her mother had been or how her children had been able to bring her back. But there was no denying that she was so happy to see her mother again. So Aurora had thought she had lost both of her parents, only to find out that neither of them had actually died. But a year ago, everything changed when Solomon, her father, died in their Otorongo home. She knew her father's passing was real. She was by his side holding his hand when he took his final breath. It was beautiful and sad and very real.
She missed him so. The next year passed and now it seemed to her that everyone was scattered in different places. Tag was in Egypt, Colum was on a Caribbean Island. Her mother Maria had been staying with Aurora's older brother, Apollo and his wife Diana in Canada. Maria had connected with Apollo and Diana at Solomon's funeral, and Maria was enjoying getting to know her son again. Aurora and Apollo's other brother, Aeon, had not come to the funeral and no one had heard from him for some time. But they all knew that Aeon was not at all happy about how things had unfolded in the will when Solomon died the first time. It was a big complicated and very powerful family and all agreed that maybe it was best that they each occupied a different part of the world. Aurora sighed again and was about to move onto the next paper in her stack when the stillness and silence were suddenly interrupted by her younger son Coach.
“Mom, Tag won't answer my texts” he called as he slammed the door to the side entrance “and I need his help. Hi Aiko. Mom, will you ask Tahoe to do her thing and send him a message?” “That is between you and Tahoe,” said Aurora with a smile. She was glad Coach had come inside and joined her even though it was because he wanted something from her. “She never does it anymore” said Coach with a frown and then he marched to the refrigerator and pulled out the rice milk. “Salvador will have dinner ready in a half an hour,” said Aiko as she looked up from her paperwork to see him unpeeling some bananas and slicing a mango. “Just a quick smoothie”, he said as he continued to toss fruit and various protein powders into the blender. “It’s just, Javier and Carlos are both so good at science and love talking about cool stuff they can do like blowing things up. Little things, don't worry, and I'm trying to understand what they're talking about, but it's hard. I just want Tag to explain stuff about the chemicals they're using, but he won't.”
“Hmm, blowing things up doesn't sound safe to me. But as far as Tag is concerned, your brother has a lot of responsibilities now and is very busy with his work” said Aurora, who had also found that Tag had been quiet lately. “And besides it's the middle of the night in Egypt right now.” Coach growled disappointingly. “I just wish I had Tahoe's power. I can't believe she stopped using it.” “Oh, I'll get the rice going,” said Salvador as he entered the kitchen. “And Coach, you are right on time to help peel the potatoes.” Salvador then took up the peeler and handed it to Coach who was about to take his first sip of smoothie. Salvador winked before heading into the pantry, Aurora smiled at Coach who briefly looked frustrated before getting to work on the potatoes.
A moment later, Alpa the dog that Coach had made friends with on the trails of Machu Picchu came trotting in and went straight to Aiko. Aiko and Alpa now had a special connection, and though Coach still played with the dog every day, it was Aiko who happily did most of Alpa's caretaking. “Are you ready for your dinner, Alpa?” she asked standing up from the table to get some food for him. Soon afterward, Sesi entered the kitchen and reported in Arabic her conversation with Tehta, which is what she called Maria the children's grandmother. Aurora tried to translate what Sesi was saying to the others. “Uh, so yeh Tehta … your grandmother is cold?” “No," said Tahoe, who called from the stairs. Tahoe was always able to tell what Sesi was saying, even when her sister was silent. It wasn't so much her understanding of Arabic, but more of her understanding of her sister. She approached with her notebook and sat down at the kitchen counter. “Sesi said that Maria was dealing with the cold with long walks in the mountains, right? Oh, and I think Sesi said that Maria saw a bear.”
This got Coach's attention and he was about to ask questions about Maria's bear encounter when he recalled his primary business. “I need to talk to Tag,” he said. “Can you ask him a question for me? He's not answering my texts.” “Coach, it doesn't work that way. You know that,” Tahoe said with a frustrated sigh. She often thought that Coach didn't really understand her or really any of the others because he seemed to be so focused on his own thing. “Well, can you at least check in on him and figure out why he won't text me back?” said Coach with a frown. “I've texted him like five times.” “Well, I'm having the same problem with Colum” said Tahoe defensively. “I have some things that I have to do for school and I need her advice and she keeps telling me to figure it out on my own, but I can't. She's just so good at deciding stuff. I need her help. I just wish she was here.” “That is totally different," said Coach. “You just don't like what Colum is saying to you. And by the way, she's right. You really should figure it out. You depend on her too much. But my thing's different. Tag isn't even answering my texts. The last time I heard from him was yesterday morning.”
Now Aurora was the one who stopped what she was doing and looked up. It was true that Tag had been unusually slow in responding to her messages as well. She suddenly felt a wave of worry. Has anyone heard from Tag? She asked the room. “Well, I reached out yesterday afternoon with a question I had about a pigment I'm studying,” said Aiko as she scooped food into Alpa's bowl. “But it's true, I haven't heard back from him yet.” Salvador shrugged and Sesi shook her head no. Aurora frowned and then went to look at her own phone she had stowed in the front hallway. She opened up her texts and indeed there was no response from him. “Hmm” she said, as she returned. “Well, I don't think we should wake up Bennu, it's 2:00 AM in Alexandria. I mean, it's only been a day and he could be working in a place with no cell reception. A dig somewhere maybe, but it would be good to know.”
Then all eyes slowly moved to Tahoe, who frowned slightly and looked around the room. “Yes. Okay, fine,” she said with resistance. “It's just that I can't really do it like I used to. I don't know why, but it doesn't work like before. It's like my powers have gotten weaker or something.” “Actually, it's the same with me”, said Coach, cocking his head. “I could barely dunk today. It was weird. I'm definitely slower.” Aurora blinked a few times and looked at Aiko and then at Salvador. Aiko cocked her head and nodded slightly to indicate that she also had noticed this. Salvador frowned and thought. The three adults were ready to unite forces to get to the bottom of this. Aurora took a breath in and then looked back at Tahoe. “Well, would you mind trying?” she asked, raising her eyebrows “Just to see what happens.” Tahoe nodded slightly and sighed, then everyone got quiet as she closed her eyes, tilted her head slightly and tried to sense her oldest brother.
This was always the tricky part because she needed to be focused exclusively on Tag. Sometimes his face, sometimes his voice, or even the way he stood or moved his hands. She smiled slightly and she was able to tap into his energy, his Tag-ness, and then she immediately frowned as she sensed something very strange. She got the feeling that he was in a dark room or rather a hallway. It was very dark and lit only with the flashlight he was carrying. And as he walked down this hallway, or kind of corridor, she was able to see things written on the walls. Little drawings that were slightly familiar to her. Simple drawings of people with big eyes sitting or standing and decorated rooms. And then she realized these were drawings she had seen from pictures Tag had sent of burial tombs in ancient Egypt. She could tell that he was now in a tomb.
This was surprising enough but then she felt a deep sense of dread as she realized that he was not alone. She got the sensation that someone was in the tomb with him and she did not like this feeling. This shot waves of fear up and down her back. She opened her eyes and began to breathe deeply. “What is it?” asked Aurora, now concerned at the look on Tahoe's face. “What did you see?” “Tag is in an underground hallway” answered Tahoe hesitantly. “Like some sort of dugout tunnel corridor, like from the pictures Tag sent us from ancient Egyptian tombs. He was walking along with a flashlight.” “Was there buried treasure?” asked Coach with wide eyes. “Did he find a treasure?” “I don't think so,” said Tahoe before taking another deep breath. “But he wasn't alone. There was someone else with him, and I think he might be in danger.”
This has been an original story from Sparkle Stories of sparklestories.com. Copyright 2023, all rights reserved. We hope you enjoyed it.
The How to Story theme music was produced by Javon Phelps, the story music by Angus Sewell McCann. And today's story was edited by the production team over at Sparkle Stories. How to Story Podcast is produced by me, David Sewell McCann, and Marjorie Shik. We'll catch you next week.
