Alvalor 1.3

When Will woke up, he groaned. It felt as if his head had just split open. After tenderly reaching a hand up to reassure himself that his skull was still intact, he struggled to get up. Then he wished he hadn’t. A shot of pain sliced through his head, causing him to clutch at it, sit suddenly, moan again, and put his head between his knees. The dizzying pain made him gasp as he finally stood up, leaning heavily on the living room wall. The empty room in front of him looked strangely like a picture taken by a person who quickly moved the camera at the last second.

As the throbbing finally ebbed to, maybe not a whisper, but something bearable, Will remembered what had happened. Furious with his own stupidity, Will stumbled out the door and slowly began to walk. Later, when he could stand it, he sped up, running to his hideout in the woods.

Although his house was cheap, it was placed close to the mountain, where the larger, nicer houses stood looking down on the valley. Between his backyard and the foot of the mountain there was a small group of trees that Will and Pickles had long ago dubbed “The Woods.” They had spent hours exploring their woods, often pretending to be characters from Harry Potter, Animorphs and other books they loved.

He had discovered the cave behind some raspberry bushes years earlier when, tearstained and bruised, he had rushed through the plum-scented trees to get away from home. Throughout the years he and Pickles steadily filled it with a small collection of thrown away chairs, a scratched up coffee table, a battery powered lamp, and an old waist-high, musty-smelling bookcase to keep his friends on paper safe.

♦ ♦ ♦

Now, on the dirty bean bag chair, Will flipped on his lamp and reached over to the bookcase for one of his latest library books, The Septribes. As he recalled the miserable things that had happened that day, and days before that, he wanted more than ever to escape into a story – to let his mind be captured by the poetic flow of one of his favorite authors, Jessica Norton. As he read, his thumb absentmindedly rubbing the stone resting in his palm, his heart steadied to a calmer pace. Finally, for the first time that day, he could relax.

Hours later, as his eyes began to close, his mind was still in Alvalor with the seven villages: Anifon, Borzerk, Hypti, Levitus, Herbos, Oiseye, and Byklaw.

The stone tingled pleasurably in his hand.

Maybe his imagination was so practiced, so carefully tuned from years and years of constant reading. Or, perhaps the stone had played a part in it. Nevertheless, somehow, his breath slowed and became deeper and steadier as he fell asleep behind the bushes of a small family in the village of Byklaw.

♦ ♦ ♦

Napodi was bored. She threw rocks into the river, watching them splash and sink to the bottom of the clear water.

Millie and Max were playing tag on a small green hill nearby, hobbling around on their crutches in the spring sunlight. She glanced at them and felt the weight in her face lift slightly. Just looking at her adorable brother and sister seemed to make the day brighter.

As she turned to toss an exceptionally large, lumpy stone into the chuckling river, she heard Millie scream. Oh no, not again. She ran around the hill toward her little brother and sister. Eduardo Oiseye held their crutches high in the air, and Millie and Max clutched each other on the ground in front of him.

Napodi stood in front of the twins and glared at Eduardo. “Give them here,” she said through clenched teeth.

Eduardo just laughed. “And what will you do if I do not?”

♦ ♦ ♦

Behind the bushes near the river, Will woke up. He looked around in confusion from his spot on the grass. Pulling himself up to see around the bushes, he spotted a girl with brown hair and of a slight build standing in front of two little kids who were obviously twins.

In front of the girl stood a sneering boy with long red hair. He wore a leather headband with what looked like the shape of an eye sewn into the front. He held two roughly made wooden crutches as if they were the first place trophy to an Olympic event.

It would probably be wrestling, Will thought, eyeing the boy’s heavily muscled arms and thick stature.

They all were wearing very strange clothes: baggy shirts and pants made of a coarse material in different shades of brown. They each had a thick brown belt around their waist, brown bare feet, and wore light cloaks with hoods around their necks.

The girl straightened her silver cloak, and glared at the boy who sported a gold one. She seemed to be at loss of what to say. Her shoulders slumped with a defeated air. The boy’s strange golden eyes glinted with pride. He had won.

As Will looked at the twins, who had the same dark, wavy brown hair as their sister, he noticed they each had a crippled leg—the boy’s left and the girl’s right. They were now standing, holding each other up with an arm around the other’s shoulder. The little kids looked on, not with complete fear, but with a sense of dejection similar to their sister’s. This had obviously happened before.

Will’s temper began to rise as he understood what he was seeing. He absolutely hated bullies. Remembering the hours of quiet tears he had spent through nights not many years ago, and recognizing the feeling of overwhelming helplessness that came with defeat, Will stood up from behind the bushes.

♦ ♦ ♦

Napodi heard a sharp intake of breath come from Millie and Max and turned to see what they and Eduardo were staring at. There, standing behind some bushes next to the river, was a boy.

He had messy black hair that came down his ears halfway, and striking blue eyes. He wasn’t very tall, but had a stocky figure, square shoulders. He was a kind of stubborn handsome, despite that on the right half of his face there was a large, ugly purple bruise.

The boy wore exceptionally odd clothes. His pants were a loose blue material Napodi had never seen before, and he wore a red, short sleeved tunic with the words Periwinkle Jr. High Seagulls! printed across the front. The boy glared at Eduardo, who glowered right back.

“And who are you?” The Oiseye raised an eyebrow.

“My name is none of your business,” the stranger replied in a slow but steady voice. “but if you don’t give those kids back their crutches, I’ll make it my business.”

♦ ♦ ♦

As Will stepped out from behind the bushes, the girl looked oddly at his shoes. He ignored her and looked meaningfully at the boy with red hair. The boy scowled and threw the crutches down near his own feet.

“Why do you not make me?” he sneered, raising his fists.

Will rolled his eyes. The bully could have at least come up with a more creative comeback. He stuck his stone in his pocket, then casually formed the ready stance. He waited for the boy to make his move.

He suddenly threw his fist at Will’s face. Will cleanly dodged it, hitting the boy’s arm sideways with his left arm. He threw a kick with his right heel. The breath was forced out of the red-haired boy’s lungs. He doubled over, holding his stomach.

Seizing his chance, Will grabbed the little wooden crutches and handed them back to the girl with brown hair.

She met his eyes with wonder and gratefulness glowing in her face, and with a start, he realized her eyes were a soft brown speckled with green. He averted his gaze, not quite knowing why he was embarrassed, and glanced back at the bully. He had scrambled up and started to run away, still bent over, favoring his lower abdomen. As he looked back and glared, Will had a strange feeling he would see the red headed boy again.

♦ ♦ ♦

Napodi was in awe. The boy in strange clothes had not only just beaten Eduardo Oiseye, the bully from the nearest village who hadn’t given up picking on her and her siblings for years, but he had done it protecting her. After resigning to the fact that the averted eyes from the rest of the city wouldn’t help her in past situations, she had grown used to the light bruisings—they were never very big, anyway.

When she turned to hand the crutches back to their owners, she found they had already hobbled over to the boy, leaning on each other for support. Excitement and admiration shone in their eyes.

“What is your name?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Can you teach me?”

“How come you wear such strange clothes?” They both bounced up and down eagerly. Anger turned into amusement as the boy started to smile, and then winced as it pulled his bruise.

“What happened to your face?” Millie and Max said bluntly at the same time.

Finally, the boy had a chance to speak. “Um, my name’s Will….” A look of dawning came over his face. He slowly looked around him, taking in everything as if he’d never seen it before. Napodi glanced around with him, wondering what he was looking at. She inspected their small cabin with a few trees in the front yard, the many more cabins down the dirt road, the bakery, the weaver’s hut, the shepherds’ sheep pen, the river and their little hill on one side of the road, and the woods on the other.

None of this looked out of the ordinary to Napodi, so she looked questionably back at the boy, Will. She started with alarm as she noticed he had become suddenly pale.

“Do you need to sit down or something? You do not look very well,” she said uncertainly, still unsure whether this apparition would disappear.

“Yeah…” he said, still looking around with a confused look on his face. “I don’t feel too hot. Something really weird is going on…” He looked at her strangely.

“What’s your name?” he asked hesitantly.

“Oh, of course,” She flushed. “I am Napodi Byklaw.” She gestured to the twins. “And this is Millita and Maxicor. We call them Millie and Max. They are my little brother and sister.”

“And this is Thunder. He is my crutchie!” added Max.

Not wanting to be left out, Millie held out her crutch. “My crutchie is prettier! Her name is Rosie!”

“Okay.” Amusement flashed again in his eyes as Will turned back to Napodi. “One more question:

Where the heck am I?”

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And thus ends chapter one. (finally!) This is where a lot of my sophomore voice comes into play. Help!

--Anna