Chapter 2
When I safely reach
the house, I quietly tip toe past my parents’ bedroom and head upstairs into
mine. When I reach my room, I grab the
black backpack and look inside. I have two
sets of outfits to change into if I need to, pants and a coat in case it gets
cold, and one pair of shoes and two socks.
I grab my solar powered flashlight and then my pocket knife. I remember my father’s stories of the hedges:
that the Queen had to block off a large section because of dangerous monsters,
and that many of her soldiers had never come back. So there’s bound to be a bow and arrow or
some other weapon left there, right? I’m
sure I can handle a few dead bodies.
So after I grab my
tools, I look around my bedroom. Not too
much here. I decide to grab my calendar
as well, since it covers two years. I
pick up my pen and stuff it in as well, along with a few extras. There’s nothing else I really need, so I
sneak back down into the kitchen. I raid
the fridge and cabinets, picking out items that won’t be noticed or missed,
such as a few apples and dried fruit, plus some crackers. I plan to hunt for my own food, but this will
help me get past the first two days while I find some food and weapons.
Field guides! That’s all I need. I sneak back upstairs into my room and look
at the shelf of all things Emedee. There
are bird field guides, mushroom ones, mammal ones, any kind of field guides you
could possibly think of. I decide on the
mushroom one first, since in the Briarwood Forest is a perfect place for
mushrooms to grow in. I pick out a few
plant guides too, and then a few newer animal ones, plus one older one. I also grab the asps book. Hey, I’ve heard stories of them in the
Hedges! At last, I reach for the big
guide of all field guides. This thing
must way at least a hundred pounds, or at least as much as Colby. But as I drag the bag downstairs, I think of
how much it will help, and I head into the living room closet and pull out my
sleeping bag. It has all the
constellations in the night sky. I got
it for my eleventh birthday from Awesome, but now I’m sixteen. How time flies.
I put my sleeping bag
down and tip toe to the door to my parents’ bedroom. I can hear them snoring, but in other words
sleeping peacefully.
“Goodbye,” I whisper
softly. I creep back into the living
room and sling my bag over my shoulder.
The book makes it weigh a ton! I
take one last look around. There were so
many memories here… so many…
“You did it! You really did it, Abert!” My mother
cries. I sneak down the stairs and peer
into my father’s laboratory. My mother
is in there as well, hugging him while he grasps a small test tube.
“Careful, Su-an! I don’t want to drop it!” Father cries.
“Oh, right,” Mother
says, releasing her grip on her husband.
Father gently sets the test tube down.
He lets out a sigh of relief to see it safely on the lab table, safe
from harm’s way. He picks up a stack of
notebook paper, and squats under the table.
He presses his finger against a brick in the wall, and then releases it,
and the brick pops out. He slides the
paper into the hole in the wall, then slides the brick back in. No matter how hard I squint my eyes, I can’t
see anything that reveals the brick’s secret.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Nine bricks away from the table leg on the
left. I count the bricks from the
left table leg over. Father never moves
things around in the lab. I mean, what
idiot would do that? Especially a person
with a brick that opens into a secret storage area!
“I still can’t believe
it,” Father says. Suddenly a look of
worry floods over Mother’s face.
“Oh my gosh,” she says
suddenly. Father looks at her.
“What?” he asks. When Mother says nothing, her hand pressed to
her mouth, Father walks up and gently shakes her. Mother shakes her head and removes her hand
from her face. Her mouth is still wide
open.
“What about Emedee?”
She asks.
“What about her?”
Father asks, confused. I jump at the
recognition of my name. What about me? “What about our family? Our den?”
“What do you
mean? Nothing’s going to change!” Father
insists. Mother just shakes her head.
“No, not nothing! She-she’s watching…”
“She can’t hear
us! There are no cameras in the lab!” At first, I thought Mother is talking about
me. But the part about the camera… I realize
they’re talking about Queen Agapanthus.
Bit of a background: In the year
3500, Earth had evolved like mad. The
animals records had shown were all developed.
For one, they were much larger.
If the wolves were tame, we could ride them. Ponies were the size of full-grown
horses. Don’t get me started on the
spiders. But of course, humans had grown
much too. Just not as much as the other
inhabitants of our planet.
So humans were slowly
dying because of not being able to adapt to these new changes. But one day, they formed four different
civilizations: the Sanctuary, Sunstone Vale, Rainbow Valley, and the Crystal
Clouds. The Sanctuary was led by a lady
named Queen Agapanthus. She was
welcoming in sweet to new people joining, and loved by all the citizens. But she was mostly loved for her invention of
the Barrier.
As I said before, the new
animals were a danger to the humans. But
the Barrier could solve it all. No one
knows what it’s made of, but it is an invisible wall that prevents anyone from
going further than it, under it, or over it.
Nothing can get in the claimed land, and nothing can get out.
So as I was saying,
with the barrier surrounding their land, the humans were protected. But tensions arose between the four
civilizations. Sunstone Vale joined the
Sanctuary, Rainbow Valley with the Crystal Clouds. They used the Queen’s barrier invention to
separate themselves from each other. And
one day, the Crystal Clouds vanished.
They just vanished. Without the
Crystal Clouds, Rainbow Valley couldn’t survive. They moved far away, into a different
land. But that was just the majority of
them. A few stayed behind, determined to
survive.
As time passed, 3500
turned into 5000, where I am now. The
Queen passed down the thrown many times, and we’re with Queen Agapanthus the
100th or something like that.
Somewhere passed 50 the Agapanthuses became cruel to their people,
craving power. The Queen, as we say for
short when talking about her in a good tone, established strict laws. She, as we call her when we’re talking with a
bad vibe, even put cameras up everywhere, monitoring our every move. The barriers became larger and thicker to
prevent people from ever venturing away.
But not all
people.
You see, my father is
a scientist. And one day he gave me a
list to use to shop for some things I can’t even pronounce he needed. It was quite a few years ago, and I guess I
was about 12. There was a new shop
called Trinkets and Tools, and Father wanted me to see if it was any good. I argued, for how would I know what was good
in a tool shop when I’m more interested in watching my foot step in
thorns? But he convinced me to go
anyway. So I walked down to the shop,
and entered. A boy my age greeted me.
“Hi, welcome to my
father’s shop, Trinkets and Tools. What
do you need?” the little blond boy asked.
“How should I possibly
know?! My dad gave me this stupid list
filled with a bunch of names I can’t even pronounce! He’s a scientist, but he’s not smart enough
to figure out that I’d rather watch thorns grow!” I replied, half joking half serious. The boy burst out laughing.
“Hey, that’s cool,”
the boy said. “My father’s a scientist,
and I’m his apprentice. I can make quite
a few neat things.” The boy held up a
hammer and tossed it in the air, attempting to catch it. Instead it hit his face. He blinked twice and I laughed.
“So you can make a few
things but you can’t catch a hammer,” I said, laughing.
“So, we have a few
things in common. We’re both related to
scientists, and we’re comedians. Name’s
Colby,” he said.
“Emedee,” I replied.
“Cool name,” he said. I smiled.
“Thanks,” I began to walk out the door.
“Wait! What about the list?” Colby yelled as I walked
out.
“Oh, right,” I said.
No comments:
Post a Comment