Young Writers Society

“Trixie, what are you doing?” Trixie’s mother’s sweet sing-songy voice echoed in the room. I froze and quickly pushed the lid back onto the whisper jar. Then I grabbed a knife and frantically started to chop a flower petal on the table into bite sized cubes. Just in time. My mom, Carla, entered the kitchen right after I finished sawing through the entire cutting board.
“Um, sweetie…” My mom raised an eyebrow and looked at the flower petal and the surface it was on which were now both destroyed beyond recognition. “That was going to be dinner tonight,”
“Whoopsies! Sorry. Opps. Gotta Go!” I pushed open the rough bark door of the hollow stump I live in and took a running start before leaping into the misty air. I unfolded my perfect wings and beat them powerfully against the breeze, landing neatly on a nearby snow drop flower. Whoa! That was close. If my mother had caught me listening to the whisper jars… Closing my eyes, I let my rapid breathing gradually slow to normal. Now I could think straight.
What exactly had I heard from the whisper jar labeled 37? All I could remember was feeling nauseous and having a memory come to me from my childhood. I could still hear the jars soft, breathy, cold voice “She is more than all of you. Guard her. Do not let her leave home. She will destroy everything… everything…” Then there was a vision of my mother nodding robotically, my father staring straight ahead. But I couldn’t remember who was saying this, just like it had been fuzzed out of my memory. Since every time I think of it I get the shivers, I turned my attention to something more… happy.
I reached behind me to grasp one of my wings and pulled it forward so I could look at it. Slowly I rotated it back and forth so it could catch the light, blue tinted veins running through crystal. When it had just the right angle, it would show a kaleidoscopic of colors from fuchsia to lime. Each wing was shaped like a stretched out raindrop. And they didn’t just look amazing, they worked that way, too. I was the best flyer on the team, winning every race. My best time on the twenty inch dash was eleven seconds, and that had crushed previous records. Smiling, I remembered in 7th grade how I had won the “best wings” superlatives category at school.
I looked down from my dew drop covered perch, watching the ants thump along below me. Then I sucked in a long breath. Good thing I was up here and not down there with them, or it’d be a me shish kabob. Then I saw one of them was carrying a… scroll? How did it get that?! With my super-vision I could read the big print at the top. “Confidential: for his royal majesty the king’s eyes only,”
I’d always had a great curiosity for things. What would a royal scroll be doing with an ant and not a pixie messenger? Thinking fast, I plucked the long stamens from the flower and started to stick them together using the pollen-covered tips. Soon I had a long chain, which I lowered down until it caught the scroll. I started to pull it back up, trying not to shake it and have the scroll fall off, but in a sudden jerky motion the pollen let go and the scroll dropped into the mud. The other ants trampled it with big clumsy feet, smearing dirt all over. As soon as they were out of sight I swooped down to grab what was left of it. Squinting in the dim twilight, I could see a swirly, spidery script. I flicked a few chunks of dirt off the page to show al the writing. Fanning away a stray pollen grain that hovered next to my head, I began to read.

To his royal majesty the king,
Why hello again dear friend! It is a pleasure to talk. Is your nephew home at the time? I would so desperately love to speak with him. I will start by introducing him to potato chips. I once ate the things at a party. They are for 11 year olds, you know! I’ll be pleased if you will be ready for my visit. Stop all nonsense before I arrive! I will certainly remember to check on my dear, dear nephew every 6th of May for his birthday.
Best regards,
William E. Squirling

What was that all about? I had no idea. Eleven year olds? May 6th? Potato chips?! Maybe this was a prank letter, and that’s why it was being carried by an ant and not a messenger. But it couldn’t be. It had a feeling of being real, and I just don’t think it could be a joke. But why would Squirling write about such weird things like meeting the nephew… That was it! I had to see the nephew!
Quickly I began running in the direction of the parade of ants against every instinct I had to hide. If the ants were going to the king to deliver the letter, then his nephew must be there too! I jumped into the sky and my wings took over. Golden sun-streaked hair whipped behind me as I rocketed towards the creatures.
It turns out the palace wasn’t very far away. In about fifteen minutes I saw it, glistening with water drops sliding down cold stone. It was carved out of the side of a river rock. Each of the five pillars that surrounded it had a smooth top and a spiral staircase around it. A plummeting water fall behind it splattered the surface with spray and created a sense of power. It was daring to live so close to a life-crushing water killer.
I stood up straight and stepped carefully over to the double doors of the castle entrance. Then I knocked.
“Who’s there?” A raspy, fast voice came muffled from behind the doors. Then a few moments later an elf, who looked like he should have retired a while ago, cracked open the door. He squinted at me and then closed it again.
“Wait! I need to see the king’s nephew!”
“No one sees the wizard!”
“Umm…”
“Oh yeah, wrong story,” the elf mumbled and pushed open the door just a little. “What did you want again?”
“I need to see the king’s nephew,” I repeated, “Can I please? It’s urgent,”
The elf looked at me, puzzled, then he scratched his chin with one bony finger.
“The king doesn’t have a nephew,” he finally said.
“What! But...”
“Ga-bye” And he slammed the door in my face.
I slid down the cool, smooth door until I hit the ground. I sat there for a minute, wondering if that elf was lying or if it was true. If the king didn’t have a nephew, then it must be just a prank as I first thought. Hmm. I pulled out the scroll to look at it, searching for signs of counterfeit. But instead something else caught my eye.
The words “stop” and “every 6th” were underlined. Maybe last time Squirling had visited there had been a bad accident. And maybe Squirling always forgot the “nephews” birthday, and underlined it to remind himself about it.
But if the king really didn’t have a nephew, then the whole letter made no sense. Unless…
It was in code!
Suddenly everything clicked. “Every 6th” meant every sixth word! None of the letter mattered except every 6th word! I started to take each piece and write the new meaning on the corner.

King: It is time to start chips. At eleven be ready. Nonsense certainly dear May William.

The first two sentences made sense, but I couldn’t understand the third. Wait a minute! The underlined “stop” meant stop translating! So the last sentences were just there to hide the clue. I took out the last sentence.

King: It is time to start chips. At eleven be ready.

Start chips? What was Squirling talking about?
Wait a second! Whatever they were planning to do was going to happen at eleven o’clock tonight! And I still had no idea what this was about.
Suddenly I got dizzy and fell to the ground. Slowly my head dropped into the mushy soil and I began to dream. The dreams were vivid and alive. I could hear and see every detail about it. My brain swirled until it came to an image of the king and someone else fighting. I knew one was the king; I had seen his face in my school history textbook many times. The other person had a thin head and short black hair. A thin curly mustache twisted across his lip. Short black wings popped out of his robe. Squinty eyes hid under a scarlet turban as he glared at something I hadn’t noticed before. There was a baby in the corner of the room and…my mom?! My mom was holding the baby!
The sneering man looked at the fat king with a smirk.
“This is an impossible task! We should just dispose of the child,”
“No!” My mom shook in the corner of the room, clutching the baby tightly. Then I realized…the baby must be me! I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so unless…
Twig Man cocked his head in her direction, eyes open and angry. This was enough to almost choke her.
“But we can’t just kill it, Squirling. Maybe we can sell it,” the thick, foggy voice of the king echoed. So the Twig Man was Squirling! I shuddered just from having the letter in my pocket, which I knew he had touched.
“While its skull’s too thick to put a chip into. It’s the only one in the city who doesn’t have one. If we can’t control it, it might…” Squirling trailed off, peering at me with disgust. “Do things,”
“Carla, take the baby to the prison rooms where she can wait until she’s older. You can have her back when she’s eight years old. But you’ll have to pay us for her at that time, since you’re the only one who will buy her.” The king chuckled. All he really cared about was making money off of me.
My mom nodded robotically. A little too robotically.
I woke up sweating from the nightmare I knew had been real.
Slowly the gears in my brain started to turn and piece things together. Squirling and the king had implanted chips in everyone’s brains when they were born, so that they could control every pixie in the city. I’m not sure exactly how evil brains work, but I’m guessing they wanted something like “world domination” because it usually has to do with something like that. My head was too thick so they couldn’t just drill straight through it to put the chip in. So, I didn’t have a chip. That’s why there was that voice from the whisper jar, the one that said to guard me at home, that I would destroy everything. That’s why I had been ”adopted” at eight years old, why everyone I knew at school and at home thought of me as weird. I always thought the people around me seemed kind of dull and boring, but I never thought it was because of this. It was all kind of… heart-breaking.
What would the chips do when they turned on tonight at eleven o’clock? Would everyone be forced to fight and take over the city with riots and destruction? Something worse? I didn’t want to wait and find out. But what could I do in just three hours to save so many innocent pixies? It was already eight o’clock and I had left the house just two hours ago. So much had changed in those two hours that I didn’t even know how to begin. The feeling of emptiness that was inside me was numbing. I sat there blankly, staring into the darkening sky.
All of a sudden I slapped a hand across my face. I had to get up. I had to do something. What to do? I had no idea. But I wasn’t going to let my city crumble if I had a chance to save it.
My logic-o-meter said I had a 99% percent chance of dying and 1% chance of saving the city. But, you never know.
Maybe today was my lucky day.

Hi Cammie,
So I'm just going to start off with a few nit-picks, 'kay?

Trixie’s mother’s sweet sing-songy voice echoed in the room. I froze and quickly pushed the lid back onto the whisper jar. Then I grabbed a knife and frantically started to chop a flower petal on the table into bite sized cubes.

Since this is Trixie's POV you wouldn't say her mother, but my mother, and I would say into, not in, otherwise her mother would already be in the room and Trixie wouldn't be so startled. I would also say "froze before quickly pushing the lid" otherwise it sounds like she's still frozen when she pushed the lid.

Then I grabbed a knife and frantically started to chop a flower petal on the table into bite sized cubes. Just in time. My mom, Carla, entered the kitchen right after I finished sawing through the entire cutting board.

This just leads for an odd visual, first she's chopping and then she's sawing with the knife?

It was daring to live so close to a life-crushing water killer.

This just sounds like the water fall is a "water-killer" I would reword it:)

Carla, take the baby to the prison rooms where she can wait until she’s older

Wait isn't the right word to use in this situation, unless you say the men are waiting until she grows older then it's ok.


So all-in-all I think you have a really good start. It gave me the impression of Disney's Tinkerbell, but I'm not sure if that's what you were going for. I liked the early part of the story after she left her home, it seemed very pixie-like and imaginative, but then when she got to the palace it seemed a bit rushed. She was also almost too smart. Simply understanding the code and the chips and her childhood. I would go into slightly a little more detail.
I really enjoyed reading it though and if you post more let me know and I'll read it for sure:)
~Dakota Knight

Just to say, like DakotaK pointed out, the first part was confusing. I think it is good.

Hello there Cammie!
I'm here as requested...let's get crackin', shall we!?

“Trixie, what are you doing?” Trixie’s mother’s sweet sing-songy voice echoed in the room. I froze and quickly pushed the lid back onto the whisper jar. Then I grabbed a knife and frantically started to chop a flower petal on the table into bite sized cubes. Just in time. My mom, Carla, entered the kitchen right after I finished sawing through the entire cutting board.

As my fellow reviewers have pointed out, this paragraph is a little awkward. I won't repeat any of what they said. What I want to point out is the structure of the paragraph. Since the part in red is not Trixie's speech, or the words were not uttered by Trixie, the part I highlighted should be it's own paragraph.

“Um, sweetie…” My mom raised an eyebrow and looked at the flower petal and the surface it was on which were now both destroyed beyond recognition. “That was going to be dinner tonight,”

Again, with this paragraph. If you want to keep it like this, instead of 'My mom', just use 'She', instead. Once is starts being about the narrator, start a new paragraph. I hope you understand what I'm trying to point out. Then the other factor to consider is the sentence as a whole. It's just too long. Break it up and rewrite it; befriend the comma and the full stop! Another one of your friends is 'said'. As soon as a character says something, especially for the first time, you should point it out. So below is what I think this bit should sound like:

“Um, sweetie…” My mom said, raising an eyebrow. She was looking at the flower petal and the surface it was on. They were both destroyed beyond recognition. She continued. “That was going to be dinner tonight,”

What exactly had I heard from the whisper jar labeled 37? All I could remember was feeling nauseous and having a memory come to me from my childhood.

Remember, you're telling me a story, so leave the questions to the reader (me). I'm not saying it's a crime, but I don't recommend it.

Overall: The major problem I had with this story is that you failed a little bit at painting a visual of the characters in my head. Since this is about a pixie, I would have liked to see more description of it. The mom and dad, the habitat, the climate, the surroundings. When I was reading this, I could only picture Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, which is not a good thing because I want to picture Trixie in my head. I'm not saying that you were completely hopeless in that department, no at all:

I reached behind me to grasp one of my wings and pulled it forward so I could look at it. Slowly I rotated it back and forth so it could catch the light, blue tinted veins running through crystal. When it had just the right angle, it would show a kaleidoscopic of colors from fuchsia to lime. Each wing was shaped like a stretched out raindrop.

Now this I loved, especially the part I highlighted in blue . So much imagery! I wish there was more of that.
Another aspect I want to touch on is your storytelling. There is no problem with the angle you took, but most of the time I felt like you assumed I knew all about this character and where they come from. It's like you were continuing where you left off, hence the limited descriptions. Tell me a story and don't leave anything out.
Your grammar is not there yet, but it wasn't at all that bad. The thing I feel you should mostly concentrate on is the structure of your sentences and your punctuation.

Away from the negatives, I really appreciate the storyline. You were very creative in that aspect. Your writing style as well, I like. With more practice, since you're a poet, in the prose field you're sure to write the best stories because you have quite the imagination

So I hope I could help out a little.

keep writing and good luck!

I think this is a great story. I loved the description of her wings... you made them sound so magical and beautiful. I really love your use of language and style Cammie.

I think the story is very nice. I started to wonder why she had had that nightmare... what had happened. Did the pixie always have flashbacks? And what are in the labeled jars? I have many more questions... and the way you left the story there could be a part 2 (which would be interesting). I am eager to see what you write next!

Deanie x