A Hidden Sanctuary
“Open you eyes, love.” Jake’s voice, weak and yet so strong, rang in my head. “We’ve made it.”
I struggled towards coherence. Could we really have made it? Are we really here? The sanctuary…could it possibly be real?
I opened my eyes slowly, peeking through my lashes as if I were to be playing dead. It was nothing like what I had imagined, but it was still so completely beautiful. My eyes opened further, and I saw Jake’s figure beside me, his hands around mind. The breath caught in my throat, and my eyes stung with tears. I gasped and struggled to my feet. Jake’s arms were quickly around my waist, supporting my breaking body.
“Jake…we-we’re here…” My voice trailed off, and my world went black.
A Hidden Sanctuary, written by yours truly. The first version of the book was written in a small, flimsy, fifty cent notebook. I remember it well. I took it with me everywhere; to my eighth grade classes, in the car with me as I went shopping, and even to sleepovers.
I had been a very quiet girl throughout elementary and middle school (hard to believe, I know). I was often stuck in books (manga, to be exact). Readying was my escape from the world, a fantasy that no one could ever take away from me. I hung around with a group of friends, and talked among them. They all probably thought I was completely normal, always just thinking about my life and what was happening at that certain point in time. In truth, my thoughts were always wandering away. My body was with my friends, but my mind was gone; off in a world that people couldn’t even fathom.
Witches, vampires, werewolves, other dimensions, and me at the center of all the action. Sometimes I couldn’t keep aware of my surroundings. I would get so lost and caught up in games that ran through my head, that I could be so close to believing everything. Of course, I always knew that I couldn’t believe in such fantasies. No matter how much I loved it, there was a fine line, and I knew better than to cross it.
September 14, 2004. It’s only a date, and it’s only a story. Prior to this date, I had been reading the Sweep series by Cate Teirnan. Fourteen books and a novel. I was addicted to the series, and read each book at least five times. To most, the book series is just a collection of flimsy, five dollar books, but they’re so much more to me. The story line has been stuck in my head all these years, I can even recall dreams I had of the main character: Morgan, Hunter, and Cal. It’s silly how much I had gotten involved with the book, but the thoughts led to others. It caused a new game to start in my head, and it all started with just designing one character:
Name: Toki Zanza Blood Type: 0
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Ocean Blue
Height: 5’ 4”
Age: 15 Birthday: August 3
Hobbies: hanging out with best friends (Kim and T), making plans for road trips, and studying Wicca
Family: Lives with dad, who’s engaged to a woman named Jade, who is currently pregnant with a baby. Her mom died when she was five.
From there, the journeys began. Toki was a very mischievous little girl. Also, she was very shy, and her friends--Kim Warner and Tamara (T) Bishop--loved her very much. Her self-esteem was low, but she didn’t let it bother her much. She wasn’t always very sure of herself, but she pulled through with the motherliness Kim had towards her, and the strength that T helped to support her with.
The date comes back. September 14, 2004, my hand grasped a pencil, and that pencil found a little blue notebook with eighty pages with horizontal blue lines running across it. The scent of incense was heavy in the air as I began writing down, the images heavy in my mind. The words were thick on my tongue, even though I was writing. I could feel my tongue moving with speech, talking as my fingers wrote, just as it is happening now. It was as if my tongue controlled the pencil, and not my hand.
As I wrote, my body wasn’t my own. With the scents I was smelling, the sensations I was feeling, and the emotions encasing my mind, I couldn’t possibly have still been Angela Kobe, the thirteen-year-old girl sitting alone in her room. No, I had become the fifteen-year-old witch-to-be Toki Zanza. I know longer lived in Norwood, Minnesota; I had, in fact, traveled miles away to a place that--I was sure-- wasn’t real. Milton, New York.
I wrote as often as I could. I got so into the story, that I really didn’t want to do much else. I drew my characters, the images suffocating my mind to the point that I could tell you every mark upon their flesh. I thought up plots, even though I never made an outline, and I began typing it as the pages in my notebook began filling up. The first version, typed with 14 font size, single spaced, ended up being eighty-nine pages. Truly not a long piece, but I readily started on a sequel, loving every single character in my book. Of course, the “bad guy” was promptly deleted, a new conflict rising to the surface.
Even though I had started a sequel, the first wasn’t thrown carelessly to the side. No, I printed all eighty-nine pages off, put them in page protectors, complete with a hand-drawn cover page, and an art gallery in the back. I had even made a dedication page. My first story. I had been so proud, so very happy. It was like a high to me. To have completed a story (even as short as mine was) filled me with so much enthusiasm that I couldn’t get enough of it. A Hidden Sanctuary: True Form seemed to have written itself in no time. Some new characters were added, and everyone had grown up a year. I was more experienced for this one, and it ended up being longer (even though I hadn’t yet started using a smaller font size. Silly kids.) With one-hundred and five pages, I felt even more accomplished with this one.
Toki and her hidden sanctuary opened so many doors for me. I made the sequel into a book form, just like the first, and put in updated pictures of my beloved characters that began feeling more like my children.
However, I took a break from A Hidden Sanctuary. I began other series, not many standing out in my mind, but interesting. Keys was another series that I became fond of, even though I never did finish it. I made it into little books as well, printing it off four chapters at a time, and making drawn covers for each chapter beginning. Toki was still with me, and I couldn’t keep her from my mind for too long. Her story wasn’t finished. No, it couldn’t be finished until her life was completely over. I knew that I had to continue it to her adult life, and I knew I had to revisit the first story of her.
Upon reading it, I found that I left much to be desired. It was childish, and I asked myself why I was so proud of how it was written. It had been about a year since I had written it, and I sat down at the computer, reading and thinking. Then the words started flowing once more, just as they had been with the pencil and paper.
I rewrote it a second time, and then continued on to the sequel. After revising those two, I began writing a third book. I never have come up with a name for that book, but I printed it off in sections, only getting to part three before I looked at the first book again.
Toki’s changed because of the revisions. She’s become a girl that blushes easily, but says what she wants. She understands much more, and knows even less. She a confusing girl, but I know her so well. She sees things in ways that people feel the need to question. She contradicts herself, but is able to explain why she did so. She’s always been intelligent, but she’s become wise in the years that I’ve changed her. New conflicts have come up, and the storyline has become complicated, just like life. I’ve revised A Hidden Sanctuary four times completely. I started the fifth revision in 2006, ending on page one-hundred and forty-nine, with it unfinished. In 2007, I started the sixth, and am currently on page fifteen, already thinking of a seventh revision.
My first story has gotten jumbled up in the mess of other thoughts I had and wrote down, but all those will never replace the story that enlightened my dreams. A Hidden Sanctuary, though childish at first, opened up mind, my mouth, and allowed me to show myself to the world. I was able to get my thoughts out, and I could finally be with my friends; body and mind.
A Hidden Sanctuary will never die. I’m going to keep writing it, revising it, and drawing it. One day, everyone is going to see it on the book shelves in all stores that sell books of any kind. Someone will crack open the hard cover book, the title raised and smooth to the touch. The cover will have delicate, pale hands reaching out, the star just barely out of reach, and the pages…when eyes meet the pages, the black text with fill their mind with images as the words describe. Everyone will see, feel, and hear just as I had when I was writing. One day, everyone will know the story of Toki Zanza…
“The leaves crunching underfoot, the sound of a heartbeat, the taste of berries, the scent of another body, and the feeling of warmth from another being.
These sensations…I know that I’m dreaming, but everything is just so real, so vivid. I feel death lurking around the corners. Am I really safe here? Can I truly survive in this place?
The heartbeat races, the taste of berries turns into blood, the scent of another is familiar and I’m afraid, the warmth is only a false sense of hope that he’ll stop one day. The leaves…I long for the leaves of autumn, the cold breeze that encases me like I remember from my mother. She’s never coming back…my father will never leave me alone…and I’ll always live in this false happiness, burrowing this sorrow deep inside my soul so that I’ll never think of it again…
* * * *”
A Hidden Sanctuary. Coming soon to a bookshelf near you ^.~
