Young Writers Society

The first thing you hear is the music. You open your eyes and realize you're in some sort of library. But it's no ordinary library. It looks to be a grandiose Victorian manor straight out of an Agatha Christie novel.

You realize you're on a plush velvet sofa, only one of many in this room. There's with an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, an elegant carpet that must have cost a fortune. There's a crackling fireplace and most importantly, more books than anyone could ever read in a lifetime. And you're not the only one. There are others here, about as confused as you are.

There's a piano beside what looks to be floor to ceiling windows, except the curtains are shut. It seems to be sunny outside. You don't know this yet, but if you try to open them, you won't be able to. They're frozen in place like stone. There's a double door that seems to lead outward, but if you try that, you'll realized that's locked too.

What about all of the books? What's in them? if you look more closely, you'll realize that that the books have no titles on their spines. No author. But that's for later...

You have more pressing questions on your mind. Why are you here? Who brought you? How do you get out? What about everyone else who's here too? Where is that music coming from?

The first thing that seemed off to Esther was the music. The song seemed like something her grandfather and Marcia would listen too, except this song was kind of nice, and they would never be caught dead listening to something that was actually good.

She was dressed in acid wash jeans and her Grateful Dead t-shirt. Her chipped nails were painted black, and was barefoot. Exactly show she remembered dressing when she'd come home from another pointless class and had fallen asleep watching Cheers, which was kind of a dumb show but it was cute. She was missing her jacket and her red Doc Martens. Of course, she'd taken both off when she'd come home. Had she been kidnapped? Surely, she wouldn't have slept straight through such a thing.

Her first thought when seeing where she was was that she was undressed, but she didn't care. This had to be some kind of lucid dream, but if it was, why would she dream about a place like this? The most boring square place she could imagine. They seemed to be in a home, probably Ronald Reagan's summer home or something. It was way too nice. Esther looked up, realizing there were books all around her.

What she going to do with books? She sighed, hearing a fire crackling. She figured she could stand by it for a minute to get warm while she figured out what to do. Then she realized, she wasn't alone.

This was familiar.

The sights, not the music that came right before I saw them. I hadn't exactly been in one of these kinds of places on my own before, but I had seen my fair share of them when I had been with Lucy. Places like these - usually older and more decrepit - had a tendency to haunted.

This place wasn't really giving off the haunted vibes right now.

I glanced around at it.

Everything in the room was richer than anything I had ever owned, and I was sure that applied to the countless books, too. The books were just a backdrop to everything else. I didn't care about whatever their contents said, even though I knew Nathaniel would be glad to have some place to do some research.

Cubbins would have, too. But that was a long time ago, and I was starting to lose hope that I'd even get a chance to bug him.

Nostalgia and despair aside, I wasn't alone. There was a girl in this place, too. From the way she was just standing around, I had a sneaking suspicion that she was as lost as I was about all of this. Asking her for answers wouldn't really get me anywhere. I had been in situations like this before. Sometimes the easiest thing to do was not ask questions, and just hope you stumbled onto a way out by accident.

I got to my feet and gave her a casual wave.

"Hey," I said. I was itching to use some of my powers - that was what I had been doing before I ended up here - but I knew I wouldn't get a chance to for awhile.

Good dragons in the heavens above, it was happening again.

He was in some lucid dream, but this time, it was in some grand palace library, and someone was playing strange, tinny music, and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

He wasn’t sure what was more alarming upon waking: seeing he was in his plain clothes or that he was not alone.

It wasn’t customary for a soldier to be out of armor while on duty, and lucid dream or not, he felt very naked without his sword at his side and a layer of metal between him and the civilians he could see wandering around the place. This was another bad dream, and he could tell already. The teenagers were wearing strange clothes and looked like they were from some other world, and some other time. What had he done to bring this curse upon himself? He saw enough nightmares in his real life. He didn’t need new ones in the night.

But this time, he was going to stay calm. He had no reason to fear a library, and this would all end eventually when he woke up. He’d just have to wait it out.

He got up slowly from the sofa he’d been laid on and looked out at the others, pausing to watch for a moment before turning to one of the bookshelves, (mostly) pretending to browse.

Okay, this will be fun


--




At first I think I'm dreaming.

The library I'm in is absolutely gigantic. I've never been in a space as huge and far-reaching...yet one that hems me in. Though trees and bushes and flowers tower over me, the way the breezes and voices travel make me think I am everywhere and free.

Faint music hums, its melody dipping up and down, and I look around for the source. But no one's playing a harp or lute. Instead, I see some people I think are human. They're enormous too, and I catch a glimpse of their weirdly rounded ears.

They're glancing at each other a little surreptitiously, like strangers do, though they haven't noticed me yet. One of them is examining a tall structure...a human-sized bookshelf. Though I can tell he's not really looking from the way his eyes keep darting back to the other two.

I blink several times, willing myself to wake up. I definitely do not want to stay till the dream turns into a nightmare. But nothing happens, and the truth that this is real, improbability and all, and the realization that I can't stay huddled on this giant cushion forever sinks in.

I take a deep breath and flit up from the couch. Time for me to stop wondering and actually find out what's happened to me and why.

Esther assessed who else was in the room. An older man with a beard. A younger one who was quite handsome. He had approached her with a "hey".

"Hi," Esther replied. "So, take it you're just as clueless as me." Esther took a deep breath and gazed around the room. "This is some place." She caught the older man's attention now, the one browsing the books.

"I'm Esther, and this is..." She blanked, realizing she didn't know the younger man's name.
She figured he could introduce himself.

While she waited for a response, she walked over to the window. The main thing that crossed her mind was how nice the carpet felt against her bare feet. It felt like walking on a cloud. "Let's get some sun in here, yeah?" She said. But there was one problem. The curtains wouldn't open. She tried, pulling with all of her might, but they simply wouldn't budge.

Before she could process, she was distracted by what at first appeared to be a fly. "Shoo! Shoo!" She said. On a reflex, she caught it.

It wasn't a fly. It was a little woman. A... fairy? Like Tinkerbell. She opened up her hand. The fairy was pretty. She wouldn't hurt.

"Hello there," Esther said. This was some dream. "I'm sorry, I thought you were a fly."

I was going to introduce myself, but then the girl got distracted by the bug she had just caught. I crossed my arms and frowned. That was rude. And that was coming from me, too.

But then she started talking about it like it wasn't a bug.

I joined her by the window and peered down at her hand.

She was holding a girl in her hands. The girl was weirdly small - almost as big as one of those imp things that Nathaniel summoned the other day, but somehow was even smaller.

Either this girl had a really weird power, or I was dealing with someone from another world.

I mulled over the options.

Power-wise, turning into a fairy wouldn't really be out of the question - Eddie could turn into an adult, after all, so there wasn't really any logic behind how our powers worked.

On the other hand, I was traveling with people who knew how to summon demons, one of my closest friends was training to be a superhero on another world, and I helped a girl and a boy who lived on the same world as merpeople get back to life. A fairy from another world really wouldn't be a long stretch.

"I'm Skull," I offered - not really sure who I was offering it to.

Eh, it didn't matter. Everyone could hear me.

Queenie awoke with a pounding headache and a sinking feeling in her gut. Something was wrong.

She was laying down on a couch. She didn't even remember falling asleep. She counted her weapons, the ones she could feel. Gun tucked into the back of her jeans, knife strapped to her calf hidden under her pants, a round of throwing knives built in between the layers of her boots, and the little container of Briar's favorite paralyzing agent disguised as a hairpin. At least she knew she wasn't kidnapped by anyone with any competence.

She sat up slowly. Relaxed. Painting a not-entirely-false confused expression on her face, she looked around. The music, the couch, the books all around made this place feel like her father's office. Maybe that was why the hairs on the back of her neck wouldn't lay flat.

The others were as confused as she was, so she'd deal with them later. Getting to her feet, she went to the windows and tried to open them. No luck. A cursory glance told her the books were fake, and when she tried the door, that was locked too.

The others had noticed her by now, but she didn't pay them any mind as she knelt to examine the lock on the door. Just a regular lock. Nothing fancy. At least, not that she could see.

She plucked a couple of bobby pins from her hair and bent them into lockpicks. Maybe it wasn't the wisest choice to start picking locks before she even got the names of the people she was trapped with, but it wasn't like it was hard to explain knowing how to pick locks. Any moron with a wifi connection and a paperclip could figure it out.

Carter's attention was drawn in a few different directions. One, at the books on the shelves. None of them had titles or authors listed on their spines. They were all blank. Two, at the young girl and boy whose attentions were now on a small winged creature in the girl's hands.

Odd.

But what won over was the girl running around the room checking the exits. She failed to open the curtains, and apparently the door was locked because she was resorting to lock-picking. At least someone around here seemed sane, looking for an escape first before resorting to idle conversation and introductions.

Curiously, he walked over, leaning on the door as she started to pick at it with a hairpin. There weren't any other exits he could see apart from the large curtain-covered window and the door, so he figured he'd just check to see what she found out.

"Were the curtains too heavy to move?" he asked.

The girl - the newcomer, not the one with a fairy in her hands - was trying to pick the locks on the library doors. And while I was sure there were some very good reasons for knowing how to pick locks, I couldn't help but be a little intrigued. That was something I knew how to do, and I only knew how to do it because of where I had grown up.

So where had she grown up?

Queenie glanced up at the guy. Tall, fairly muscular, either handy in a fight or one of those gym buffs who looked pretty but couldn't beat a toddler with a year of training. That assessment was done before he'd had the chance to speak, and when he did, she bristled.

She gave a sarcastic smile, "How about you go try to move them yourself before you go calling me weak." She gave a once-over to the guy who was giving her an odd look from where the others were gathered around a freaky little doll and went back to work.

"No," Esther said. "I can't move them. At all."

The fairy was still in her hand, so she set her down on a nearby bookshelf. Looked over at the pretty girl with the curly blonde hair who was trying to unlock the door.

Esther tried opening the curtains again for good measure. Nothing.

"Are we stuck in here?" Esther asked. "You'd have thought I'd remember being kidnapped."

I flutter off the shelf, trying to catch my breath. It had been most definitely shocking when one of the humans - her name was Esther - had curled her fingers around me. She had been gentle, but still. Startling.

I see the others trying to open the curtains, unlock the door. My gaze drifts over to a huge black object. Its lid seems to be open, revealing a fascinating line of tiny rods attached to taut strings. I fly over to the other side and see a series of black and white tiles.

I alight on the tip of a white tile. It bends under my weight and a high, clear note fills the air.