Young Writers Society

Sarah hated that stupid prince and his stupid gloves and his stupid cat. It was his fault Hund was dead, and she would never forgive him for killing her only friend. Hund hadn’t meant to kill the cat or chew up the stupid prince’s gloves so bad. Hund was just a puppy, and the Mayor had told her that he needed to chew on things and chase smaller animals for when he got to be really big and grown up. The Mayor had told Sarah that she was the best person in the town with animals, and that’s why he was giving her Hund because he knew she would raise him to be the biggest and bestest hunting dog in the kingdom.
But now Hund would never grow up to be the biggest or the bestest because he was dead, and the stupid prince killed him. But nobody would believe her, not even Mommy. They all said that he had just eaten something bad, and that was what killed him, but Sarah knew better.
Hund had been very smart. He knew not to eat bad things. She made sure he knew. Hund would never’ve eaten something bad on his own. Someone had to have made him eat it, and that someone had to have been the prince. He was the only one who didn’t like Hund in the entire town, and he had thrown a tantrum after he found his cat and his gloves all chewed up and screamed for Hund to be killed.
The Mayor saved Hund, though. He told the prince that Hund was still young and in training, but that the dead cat proved that he was such a good hunter already, he would become the best hunting hound in all the kingdom, and that Hund would be a gift to the prince once he was grown up. Sarah didn’t like that – the Mayor gave Hund to her – but it shut the prince up and he told his guards to let Hund live, and that was the important bit. But then he told the Mayor that if anything else got chewed up, he would kill Hund no matter what, so the Mayor helped her bring Hund home and tie him up in the yard, just out of reach of the chickens.
Sarah felt really bad about tying Hund up there. He loved chasing the chickens, but the rope was too short to let him, and she could hear him start to whine with frustration when she went inside for dinner. But at least Hund would be safe, and the Mayor promised her that she could let Hund run free again once the prince and friends had left.
But when Sarah went out into the yard to give Hund some bits of carrots she had snuck from her dinner, he was gone. He had chewed right through the rope.
Sarah had dropped the carrot bits and run after him, calling his name. When he didn’t come right away like he always did, Sarah knew, just knew, that the prince had gotten to him first, but she didn’t want to believe that Hund was dead so she kept searching and calling until long after sunset.
She had been so tired and ready to give up when she heard Hund whine from between the Baker’s and the Butcher’s shops, and she started crying when she saw how much pain he was in, but made herself stop and got Hund home and did everything she could to nurse him, but it wasn’t enough. He died just before sunrise.
Sarah had cried and cried, and when she heard that the prince was sick, she was glad and hoped that he would die too, but when she told Mommy that, Mommy slapped her and yelled that she should never, ever say or even think something like that again, and all Sarah could think was that Mommy loved the stupid prince who hadn’t even visited town until two days ago more than her.
So Sarah had run away and cried some more in her secret hiding place. But now she was all out of tears, so she curled up in a tight ball and settled for feeling sorry for herself.
“Well, what have we here?”
Sarah froze and held her breath. She did not know that voice. She looked up slowly, hoping her hair hid her eyes, and found the Black Man looking down at her, though she could not see his expression since half of his face was covered in a black scarf. She quickly buried her face back in her knees and hoped he would go away.
Mommy had told her to stay away from the Black Man. No one knew where he came from. No one knew why he was in town. No one knew his name, even. Mommy had said he was “bad news” and dangerous and that Sarah should run away from him if he ever tried to talk to her, but he never had. All he ever did was stand around and watch everyone with his dark eyes. But Sarah was too tired to run after all her crying, so she sat there, curled up in the tightest ball she had ever curled into, and hoped the Black Man would leave.
But he didn’t. Instead he chuckled and said, “Ah, yes. I remember you: the shy one. Did the other children pick on you again?”
Sarah tensed even more. How did he know about that, and why did he care?
She heard the Black Man sigh. Cloth rustled, and then she could feel his warm breath on her hair as he knelt down in front of her. “I know how difficult it is to grow up without a father.”
Sarah’s head shot up at this, and she glared into his eyes, so blue they seemed black, with all her might. “How could you know?”
She could hear the sad smile in his voice as he answered, “My father died when I was very young. So, did they tease you about being fatherless again?”
Sarah sniffled, then slowly shook her head, looking away from his eyes to look at his outfit. It was very strange and all black, and she wondered why he wore it. It made him look different, and Sarah knew how much it hurt to be different.
The Black man sat back on his heels and looked at her. After a while, he asked, “Then why were you crying?”
Sarah thought about it. She didn’t know the Black Man, and Mommy had told her to stay away from him, but Mommy had hit her, and Mommy hadn’t listened about Hund, and the Black Man was listening to her now…
So Sarah told him everything about how the prince had killed Hund and how everyone she had told, including the Mayor, hadn’t believed her, and how Mommy loved the prince more than her. And the Black Man listened, and at the end of everything, he looked straight into Sarah’s eyes and told her, “You have not had it easy. However, rather than hide away and cry about matters, why not do something about them?”
“But what can I do?” Sarah sniffled, the tears she had thought she had run out of coming back to prickle at the corners of her eyes. “Nobody listens to me.”
“I listen to you,” said the Black Man, which made Sarah feel a little bit better, “and I would help you.”
“How?” asked Sarah, her heart beginning to beat faster, though she wasn’t sure why.
“You tell me: what is it that you wish to do?”
Sarah thought it over. Decided. But before she told the Black Man, there was one thing she needed to know. “What’s your name?”
The Black Man blinked once, slowly, before he replied, “You may call me Creyr.”
“Creyr…” Sarah let the name roll off her tongue and found that she liked it. It tasted of death, stale but sweet, which was exactly what she wanted.
So she told Creyr, and he listened, and when she was done, he told her, “I will make it so.”


Onwards to Part 2

Is this the format for one of those contests? I've got it on my watchlist but I dont think Ill submit it anything. As for the story itself its really well written.
Also the way you put the characters thoughts about

Hund being the bestest

was really neat, it showed the girl was young. Keep adding to this; I want to see what your twist is( if it was for the contest).

Aaahhh, I'll do this later. *sends memo to self*

I love it, by the way.

:c I'll get to reviewing this...just wish you'd give me more time for once. Didn't think a relationship would be this one-sided. Ugh. So tired of this.

Kyllorac! I don't believe we've been properly introduced.

This is a cute start to a story, but there are some issues that I think would be worth pointing out. I'll skim over the praise, for now - you can fill it in yourself in the areas that I did not critique. I believe 'liking' your piece will suffice.

While I admire the fact that you chose to portray the protagonist as a child (It's refreshing, as too many works on YWS follow teenagers. Granted, it can be a bit difficult, but you did a good job.), there are a few blips here and there regarding this quality. Firstly, I found it difficult, at first, to grasp that Sarah was as young as you suggest she is. One could detect that she was young, but only until she uses "Mommy" instead of "Mother" or whatever else an older child would've referred to her mom as can one actually be sure that the girl is, in fact, quite young.

It is true that a reader need not know how young or old a character is right from the start. It would be just as well - better, in many cases - to establish it over time, utilizing interactions, deeds, vocabulary, etc. It is not necessary, and even a bit rudimentary, to state flat-out the age of a character.

I bring this up because I feel that you could have done a better job in grounding how old (or, rather, young) Sarah is. It seems like the only method you rely on to get this across is using words like "Mommy" or "bestest" or simply fitting as many "and"'s as you can into a sentence during an emotional scene. While I understand that this is a bit of a short space to use a different technique, it's difficult for me to perceive exactly what it was you intended Sarah's youth to embody other than an excuse to use preschool vocabulary.

Moving on. I'm really not sure what time period you intended this to be in. The fact that the characters exist in a kingdom, that Sarah's mother slapped her, and that Hund was intended to be a hunting dog (the "bestest in the kingdom," apparently), causes me to lean towards medieval, or at least quite old, times. However, the language completely contradicts this. It's all good and dandy if you want this to have taken place in the past, but you're going to have to make it a tad bit more believable.

I find it hard to believe, also, that a little girl would actually want to kill someone based only on a hunch that that person killed their pet - a hunch with little logical foundation. Children her age will lose their temper, of course, but this seems unusually extreme. Either Sarah is going to be diagnosed as mentally handicapped, or there're some tweaks that you're going to have to make.

As of now, this seemed somewhat...predictable. Based on this chapter, I envision the umbrella storyline as something like:

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lost her temper because she thought someone killed her dog. So she had a tantrum and told some stranger to go kill the suspect. Eventually, however, she got over it and regretted, in one form or another, wanting to kill the suspect. So the moral, kids, is to forgive, and not to seek revenge.

Yadda yadda. And that's an incredibly easy moral to attain. So unless you attribute a little bit of originality to this, it could end up going nowhere.

I think that's about all I have to say. Hope this was helpful.

-Kafka

Hey there!

Gonna join the crowd and say that I was happy and refreshed to get a story from the perspective of such a young girl. Loved the narrative attention you paid to her youth in the word choice (bestest), sentence structure, (No one knew where he came from. No one knew why he was in town. No one knew his name, even.) and choice of detail (her description of the Black Man.) Made the voice distinctive and kept up the pace, which in turn extended my attention span.

This would be the part where I transition into discussing the content, but I haven't read the entire thing yet, so I'll just hold off on that until the next parts. For now, I'll say that in from my perspective the piece started off very strong with the direct introduction of the conflict at hand-- Hund's dead, Sarah's sad, Sarah thinks the Prince did it. It's concise, so the reader can pick up on what they're meant to be caring about quickly, and I believed Sarah's little-girl anguish. I wasn't particularly WTFed by her saying that she hoped the prince died too-- I bought that as in-character, the kind of exclamation lots of small kids make.

It gets a little muddier later in the piece. The biggest jerk was here:

She had been so tired and ready to give up when she heard Hund whine from between the Baker’s and the Butcher’s shops, and she started crying when she saw how much pain he was in, but made herself stop and got Hund home and did everything she could to nurse him, but it wasn’t enough. He died just before sunrise.

Hund's death is pretty much the reason for this story's existence in the reader's eyes, and clearly very important to Sarah, so I was thrown by how little narrative attention the act itself got. Especially because we get a play-by-play of Sarah finding him missing. I would suggest either condensing that entire flashback into the cliff-notes like the quoted paragraph, or swapping the two pacings. Hund's death can be told in detail, and the stuff leading up can be shorthanded.

Similarly, I thought the characterization of Sarah being friendless/picked on was a little heavy-handed. I couldn't read it between the lines of the narrative, despite her intimate point of view, but the lines devoted to it are easy to pick out:

she would never forgive him for killing her only friend.

and

Did the other children pick on you again?”

Sarah tensed even more. How did he know about that, and why did he care?

Should those two instances be picked out of the piece, I would have no idea Sarah was friendless sans Hund and picked on. I wanted to see a little more of her pain in the prose: she couldn't deal with Hund's death, because Hund wasn't there to console her. She dwells on how much lonelier things will be now that Hund is gone. Etc.

Additionally, more of that would make it easier for the reader to buy the fact that she's pushing so hard for the prince's death, since my reader's-perspective guess is that that is what she whispered in the Black Man's ear.

Hoping to get to the next parts soon. Thank you for the read!

Quasi