Okay, I posted my first chapter on YWS, and I knew something ws lacking. Luckily, I have my peeps on YWS to tell what I was missing. I did as they said and added more emotion, more depth, more detail, and more length. Tear this apart! Tell me what you think, and don't be afraid to hurt my feelings. I'm not easily offended ^.^
YWS doesn't want to co-operate and won't let me indent/center my text...please ignore that. Sorry it's so long, I understand if you don't finish it. =P
Review away!!
This is the story of me, Alex Lioh. I’m a fourteen year-old girl who just moved from Florida to North Dakota. We couldn’t afford our home with just the money my mom was making from her full-time job, and dad got laid off, so we moved to Virginia and bought a small house in the middle of nowhere, cowering in front of lofty trees. 2 years later, my dad died in a car accident, and it took me and my mom a long time to cope with it. Since then, I had been saving up my money for years, hoping to be able to help our small family (if you consider 2 people a family at all) when it was needed. My dad, Gregory Lioh, had life work that was very private, but he would sometimes tell me about it.
“Alex,” he would tell me in a hushed whisper inside his secluded study. “There’s a secret country that only I, and those who live in it know about. And now, so do you.”
“What’s it called? Where’s it at? Can we go there?” I would shout excitedly as a little girl.
“Calm down, Alexandra!” he would chuckle. (I didn't go by Alex, then.) “It’s called Ranna, it’s fairly north and a long way out. Maybe someday you and I could visit. Oh to visit Ranna again…” he trailed off, not finishing his sentence.
In the preceding years of then, my dad would draw maps to Ranna, and its neighboring countries. He would write down many facts about the landscaping, history and weather. He had species profiles on all sorts of creatures I had never heard about. He was almost completely finished with them when he died.
* * *
I quietly stepped into my dad’s old office. It was upsetting to be in here after so many years that we had been in here together. I wasn’t sure if mom knew about this room, so I was very careful not to make much noise. I walked up the three narrow steps and looked around the room. Everything was exactly the same. The several bookcases were stacked high, and were dusty. I fumbled for the light switch on the wood-paneled walls. When the light came on, a feeling of loss came over me. I could just picture when I was little: I would sit on the floor eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, while dad sat behind his desk typing papers and drawing maps. I looked up at the old quark board behind his desk. It had maps, papers with information on people, and old, black and white pictures of strange creatures I’d never heard of.
I unpinned all of the papers and pictures, and tucked them into the black messenger bag that hung freely off my shoulder. I pulled open a drawer in his desk. Empty. I fumbled around the bottom of the drawer, found the small little string I was looking for, and pulled. The bottom of the drawer opened and revealed a small compartment with several trinkets in it. When I was little I had seen dad pull the string several times, and open his secret spot. I pulled out a cardboard box. It was black with intricate gold designs of vines and a single crescent moon in silver. I opened the box and set the lid on the desk. Putting my free hand in, I pulled out a large roll of money. Attached to it was a post-it note that said “Flight Money for three.” Dad must have been planning to take us to Ranna someday. I tucked the money into a zipper pocket in my bag.
I dug through the box some more and pulled out a necklace. It had an onyx gem in the middle with peridot vines running along the sides. It was beautiful. I tucked my hands behind my head and clasped the necklace together. It hung loosely off my neck. I continued to rummage through the box. I found a picture of my family when I was 8; the year dad died. Tears started to form in my eyes… I really missed him. I kissed the picture and put it with the papers in the bag. The rest of the stuff didn’t seem useful to me. It was mostly junk (pools of thread, old screws, etc.)
I pulled open another drawer. It was full of paper. The papers were dated by year, and they went as far back as 1996. Dad had been working on this a long time. I went to the papers from 6 years ago. The latest paper was a map. It was fully detailed of the town in Ranna, but the further south it went, the less detailed it got, until finally, there was nothing there. I put the paper into my bag. I grabbed all of the species profiles and other maps and put them in my bag as well.
I moved over to one of the towering bookshelves. I didn’t know where to start, so I pulled a random book from the top shelf. It was a green, hard-cover book, but the title was too diminished to read. I flipped open to the middle page. There was an old, sepia picture taped to it. Scrawled below the picture were the words “Zerk J. Morris.” The man in the picture was younger, maybe 18 or 19, he had straight black hair, and his eyes were so bright they were white in the picture. He had what looked like a navy uniform, but it wasn’t formal enough. I looked at the date, but it was too faded to see. Flipping through the pages, I realized the book had died away too much to read any of it. The only things legible were names below more sepia images. I put it back on the shelf and chose another book; a blue one this time. The front of the book had no title, so I opened to the first page. It was a map. I looked up to a map taped on the wall. It matched the one in the book, so the one in the book must be a map of the diminutive desert. I stuffed the book into my bag.
I walked over to the 3-paneled window that overlooked the woods behind my house. I remember running around in the yard, dad tossing a ball to me and me kicking it back. I remembered sitting on the ground eating a sandwich while ants busily crawled past us. I remembered everything.
I moved to the desk again. Reaching under the bottom, I pulled off the key that was taped to the wood. I went to the very bottom drawer, stuck the key into the slot, and turned it. The drawer jumped open with a click. I pulled the drawer all the way open and found pictures, and loads of them. There were weird creatures, big mountains below clear skies, old and rickety buildings. I grabbed all the pictures and put them with the papers in my bag. When I was examining the map and some of the papers with it, I noticed it looked like the bright, sunny, and warm country was in Prospect Creek. I didn’t see how this was possible, because Prospect Creek is the coldest city in Alaska, but I trusted my dad.
I walked back to the door and looked at the mirror behind it. Next to it was a picture of my dad when he was around my age. Oh, I looked so much like him. We shared the same, petite features, and the same smile. I had the matching bright, green eyes, the pale, ivory skin, and the straight, black hair. We were so much alike.
* * *
“Y’all have a great time! “Vanessa’s mom, Lauren, told me in her thick country accent. She was one of those people that you just can’t help but love being around, and I often thought of her as another mom. Lauren thought she was sending us to summer camp in Florida from the airport, as did my mom. Vanessa was like a mastermind on the computer, so she was able to print out official-looking, legit forms.
“We will.” I said back, feeling guilt in the pit of my stomach. I had told Vanessa all about my father’s work, because I knew I could trust her.
"You can't tell anybody this," I had told her as we huddled under our "fort" made of bedposts and blankets.
"I won't, I promise." She had said, leaning in for the juicy secret.
I leaned in and whispered in her ear, "My daddy knows of a secret place, a country. He's been there, and he's going to take us some day."
We’d dreamt of going to Ranna and meeting all sorts of creatures. I put together the money I found in dad’s study, plus the money I had been saving, and brought it with me to the airport.
“I hope y’all have a great time,” Lauren said.
“We will,” Vanessa said with a smile.
“Do you have enough money to buy your tickets? And do you have enough clothes?” She asked.
Pulling Vanessa by the hand, I said, “I’m pretty sure. We’ll go buy our tickets now, ok?”
She was about to object, but we scurried away before she could say anything.
We got to the counter, and purchased 2 two-way tickets to Prospect Creek. I shoved them in our bags, and walked back to where Lauren was waiting.
“It’s too bad your mom couldn’t come to see you take off, Alex,” Lauren told me, seeming to let our hastiness slide.
“It’s alright,” I assured her. “Mom had to go to that job interview.”
This was true. My mom had a job interview to go to and wouldn’t be able to make it to see the plane take off, which was actually good. It made one less person to lie to.
I heard the sound system announce our plane was boarding.
“NOW BOARDING FOR FLIGHT 29, NOW BOARDING FOR FLIGHT 29.”
“Okay, we have to go, Mom. Florida’s waiting. I love you.” Vanessa said.
“Love you too, sweetie.”
She sounded so sad… I hated adding lying to the list of things she would be upset about.
We went through the gate, and had our heavy hiking bags -which held dehydrated food packets, water, blankets, heavy jackets, extra hats, coats, and socks, scarves, clothes, and other living necessities- checked, and then boarded the plane.
We were quiet most of the plane ride. I fell asleep about 2 hours into the flight, but I kept waking up because of turbulence. Once arriving in Alaska, we left the airport by cab to a big, empty field. At least, I think it was a field. I couldn’t tell, because of the thick ice that covered it. We stepped out of the cab, paid the driver, and he drove off. We went out into the cold, barren field, careful not to slip on the snow and ice beneath us. There wasn’t anything there. There weren’t any mountains or trails; just snow and ice. We walked far as the map would take us, and a little further. We walked for what felt like hours, and it very well may have been, but we still had not found the warm, sunny country my dad had told me so much about. My ears were numb from the stinging cold, and my legs felt like gelatin. We walked for several more hours, and still, nothing.
“Maybe… maybe my dad was wrong… maybe there is no Ranna,” I said quietly.
Vanessa paused a moment. “There has to be. We’ve come way too far to turn back now.”
“No, face it. There’s no Ranna. My dad was wrong.”
“There’s got to be. We came all this way.”
“No, come on. Let’s go back to the airport and head home...” I turned around in the other direction.
Suddenly, there was a craaack noise coming from beneath our feet.
“What was that…?” Vanessa asked in a frightened whisper, stopping in her tracks.
“Don’t move,” was all I responded with. We watched as the ice beneath us cracked where we had been standing. It slowly spread beside our feet and kept on going ahead of us until we couldn’t see where it was going anymore. The ice creaked and groaned, but it didn’t move. The break started to spider, spreading vein-like cracks all about the ice.
“What do we do?” Vanessa whispered, careful not to move and jostle the ice, but before I could respond, the ice we were standing on collapsed, and we were falling.
We fell, and we fell fast. I was expecting to fall into the water and die a slow death of hypothermia, but I was very wrong. If anything it was the opposite! As we fell it got warmer and hotter, and hotter, until finally –thud. We landed at the bottom of a mountain. We stood up and looked around. I craned my neck up and looked at the sky. There was no evidence that we had just fallen from an impossible vortex in the sky. It was clear and sunny, a couple birds flitting here and there. We were on a sandy terrain, at the base of a mountain. It was really strange, because at the bottom of the mountain was a sandy plot of land, a little higher up and it had mud and mossy rocks. Even higher, there were trees and shrubs, and at the highest, was a snowy mountain top. The reason this was strange was because it was more of a hill than a mountain, and the topography changed quickly.
Vanessa took out all the maps, handed them to me, and watched as I studied each of them closely. After a minute I finally found it.
“This is it!” I shouted excitedly.
“This is it? We’re here? We’re in Ranna?!” Vanessa asked hopefully.
“Well, no we’re not in Ranna, but we’re in the Diminutive Desert, which is right below Ranna!”
“Oh, that’s great! How far till town?”
I examined the map intensely again. “Hmm… a long way, but there should be some animals called no ones? No- Noones,”- I struggled over the name - “that will give us a ride.”
When we reached the Noones, we saw huge, burly creatures. They were the size of an elephant, and had fur in various shades of brown. They had a mane of some sort; it went around their short necks resting on their shoulders. Their faces were shaped somewhat cat like, but their expressions were far too human. When we walked closer, we were baffled to find them talking amongst themselves. My father had never mentioned anything about them talking before! One was in the middle of a sentence when it noticed us.
“Hello… who are you?” he asked in a deep, husky voice.
“I’m Alex, and this is Vanessa.”
“And what brings you our neck of the woods?”
The other Noones had started to slowly direct their attention on us.
“Um, well, my dad studied Ranna a lot, but he … passed away a couple years ago. I felt like this was the only thing I had left of him, and it meant so much more just to be able see and experience everything he had told me about.”
“Well, that is very touching. Can I help you with anything?”
“We would like a ride, if you don’t mind..,” Vanessa asked quietly.
“But, of course! Grab my tail.” He instructed us.
We grabbed onto the creature’s bulky tail and he pulled it up and set us gently onto his back. We traveled at a slow pace, the large creature slightly bouncing with each step, but it was interesting to learn about Noones and other creatures in Ranna, and the humans as well. Obe was very old, but very wise. Finally, we stopped outside of a forest.
“This is as far as I can take you, young travelers,” Obe said serenely.
“That’s okay, Obe. We can walk from here.” I responded.
“Farewell, children.” And with that, he set us on the ground and changed direction.
Tear it apart!
-Rach
