Young Writers Society

Prologue

The wind in the trees blew hard as the entire forest was shaken by the storm. The rain came pounding down upon my head, leaving my black hair sodden and dripping. I shivered, and my white unicorn, Twilight, being the foolish creature that he is, danced around a bit.

I gave him a scornful look. Normally, I would have found his shenanigans endearing, but this was clearly not the time for dancing, and I was clearly not in the mood. I was in the forest for reasons too horrible to say. Well, not horribly horrible, but horrible enough for me.

I new that I technically wasn’t supposed to be here. It was storming, it was cold, it was dark, and for god’s sake, Twilight would not stop dancing! But which god? Which god, I ask you, as beliefs had become things that I could no longer trust.

Beliefs and once-thoughts now held no meaning for me.

Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to be here, and, in all honesty, I didn’t really want to be here. But I needed to get away. From what? Everything; all of it.

I wasn’t usually one to run away. I was the kind of person who faced things head-on. But that didn’t matter. I was already here, and that was that. So what do I do now? I couldn’t just hide; that would be childish. But I couldn’t go back; that would be a folly. Oh, what to do, what to do?

I could wait. Until when? Until he found me. He who? He. Him. The One. The one who made my head swim and my stomach turn and my heart skip a beat. Only one beat? I don’t know. Maybe two? Three? Who cares?

I did. I cared. As pathetic as it was, I cared. It was stupid of me to think that he cared, however. It had been ridiculous of me to believe that he loved me as much as I loved him. But as I had said, I knew no meanings for beliefs. And he would never love me like I loved him. Never. Why should he? He was perfect, and sweet, witty and intelligent. I was… Well, I was me. He was too good for me.

I sighed and fingered the wet goose bumps on my arm, feeling the cold raised skin on my pale limb. Goose bumps. I had goose bumps. Great, now I was diseased.

Wait, what? Goose bumps weren’t a disease!

I sighed again, more forcefully this time. It was obvious. I was in love. Love was making be loopy, and I loved it.

Chapter 1

I fingered the place on the coffee table where I had carved my initials when I was younger. C.D. Callista Dragontamer. That’s me, that’s my name. Callista was Greek for beautiful. Beautiful Dragontamer. Curse my parents. Curse their souls to the darkest regions of Hades’ pits.

Because it was completely contrary to who and what I was. First, I wasn’t Greek. Who ever heard of a Greek half-elf? Not me, that’s for sure. And I wasn’t even from the same world on which Greece was located. This world was in an alternate universe. This was the classic Earth fairytale, with its goblins and its dwarves, and various other creatures, but modern. Here, there were no princesses and kingdoms. Our world was actually semi-realistic.

Second, I was not beautiful, no matter what everyone told me. Actually, most called me pretty, or adorable, but all pretty much had the same connotation. I was ordinary, nothing more than mediocre-looking, and maybe a little less. I was of an average height, and I was slightly pudgier than I probably should have been. I had thick black hair, and dark eyes to match. Common. Ordinary and common.

Third, I was not a dragon tamer. I’d never even seen a dragon, and I was almost positive that they had disappeared from this part of the world. And I couldn’t even tame a circus worm, but that’s completely irrelevant to this.

So that was me, sitting on the rough shag carpet by the coffee table, thinking about such nonsense as my name and whatnot. I liked to think. I liked to wonder and ponder. It was a joy knowing that if I’ve got nothing else, at least I’ve got my mind. My head was my home. I lived in it. Does that sound weird? Good. It should.

I had conversations with myself. If you don’t talk to yourself, and if you don’t ask yourself the questions that need to be asked, then you’ll never realize how stupid and petty you really are.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Back to the shag carpet and coffee table. I fiddled with a stray piece of yarn sticking out from the edge of the carpet and stared out the window. That’s when I saw them. The evil, sadistic garden gnomes that my mother had bought and put in our front yard a few summers ago. Mom was crazy. No one liked garden gnomes, especially the kind that worshipped Satan and had been sent back up from the ninth circle of hell! Their huge grins freaked me out. So still, plastered onto their ugly clay faces, as if they actually expected to fool anyone. It was a little masochistic how day in and day out, they would sit outside no matter what the weather was, still smiling away. But what they didn’t know was that I knew that they were evil. I knew the true motives of the garden gnomes!

Yes, I know. I have issues.

I let out an exasperated sigh and pushed myself off of the carpet. Out the door I went, to get rid of the gnomes, once and for all.

“Now, look here, Mr. Gnome,” I shouted at one, “just because you keep smiling at me, and everyone else for that matter, doesn’t mean that you’re not evil!”

With that, I threw the cursing garden gnome (seriously, he was swearing at me) at the street, where he shattered into large chunks of clay and evil.

“Well, what have we here?” came a voice from my left.

I turned, and there was William, the next door neighbor. He was an elf, pointy ears hidden under sandy brown hair.

I didn’t really know my neighbors very well. They kept to themselves mostly, and I was fine with that. I knew William, however, because he had once accidentally bumped into me when I was walking through the forest. He was nice enough, but rather shy.

I blushed, chuckling a little at my own oddness, and sauntered over to him. “Hi,” I said, giving him a sheepish smile.

“Hello there,” he said, doing his best to keep a straight face, although it was no secret that he was having quite a bit of trouble. I guess poker faces weren’t really his strong point.

“So you probably saw that little episode, huh?

He nodded, and then we both burst out laughing.

“What have you got against garden gnomes?” he asked between spurts of laughter, his dark green eyes lighting up in amusement.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault,” I insisted. “The stupid little clay thing was cursing at me!”

William chuckled softly. “How dare he?”

“I know!”

“What if I told you I was part gnome?”

“Well, then, I wouldn’t believe you,” I told him truthfully.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because gnomes are short and stocky with little red hats, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve never heard of or seen a gnome with pointy ears.”

“Part gnome,” he reminded me.

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little stupid. Part gnome. How could I have missed that? “Well, I still wouldn’t have believed you. And if I did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we?”

He grinned and shook his head, probably at my idiocy. “Well, don’t let me stop your quest to destroy all garden gnomes. But, really, Callista, why do you hate them?”

I shrugged. “When you’re positive that something worships Satan, you do what you have to do.”

William chortled. “Well, go on, then. Sorry I distracted you.”

I laughed and said, “Okay, then. Bye.” I gave a small wave and turned back towards my house.

“Bye,” I heard him call after me softly.

For some reason, I thought about turning back, but didn’t. Instead, I strode over to my front door and went in. I sat back down on the carpet, resting my chin on the dark mahogany stained coffee table.

He had actually talked to me, was the first thought that entered my head. The quiet elf next door had talked to me.

I touched the tip of my ear, the one with the point on it, which was my habit when something had disconcerted me. I was puzzled that the shy elf boy would talk to me. We had never had a complete conversation, and I was pretty sure that I hadn’t seen him have one with anyone else. So why had he talked to me? What made me so special?

I walked over to the round mirror hanging from the wall. Looking in, I saw myself. I was a girl (duh) with black hair that fell in waves down to my shoulder blades. My eyes were dark brown, almost black. Two slightly bushy and uneven eyebrows sat above them. Small nose with one side bigger than the other. Small ears, too. Ridiculously long neck. I was nothing special. The girl in the mirror wasn’t gorgeous, wasn’t elegant or dazzling. She was just normal, and a little scraggly. There were millions of girls like that in the world. I was just another one of them. The girl that looked back at me held no awe-inspiring charms. It was no different from any other time I looked at myself in the mirror. All in all, it was actually a little disappointing.

I heard the door open, and I didn’t even have to turn around to know that it was my best friend, Iris, who had just walked in.

“Hey,” she greeted me, just like always.

“Hey,” I replied, again, just like always.

“So, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I retorted.

“Okay, let me rephrase that,” she said. “Why the heck are you looking at yourself?”

“Shut up,” I said, turning back to my mirror. I had to do something about that permanent pink flush on my face. I mean, seriously. That could not be healthy.

“Because you know we can’t worry about appearances,” she went on.

Back when Iris and I were little, we had gone to town and we saw this one lady who was blonde and skinny and all that. There was a puddle and she had stopped to see her reflection in it. The puddle was on the street and the lady was on the sidewalk. So she was standing there, smoothing down her hair and admiring her reflection, or whatever it is that pretty people do when they look at themselves. Then this one person on a bike comes riding along and he goes right into the puddle, splashing the lady’s dress. Of course, this made her pretty ticked off, and no wonder, since that was an expensive-looking dress. So the lady starts shaking her fist and swearing at the poor guy. Ever since then, Iris and I had made a pact never to worry about our appearances. We thought that it would make is vain and callous, just like that lady.

I sighed. “You know that elf kid next door?”

“William?” Iris asked, perplexed.

“Yeah.”

Iris nodded and looked at me curiously. “What about him?”

“So I had another one of my run-ins with the sadistic garden gnomes,” I said, causing Iris to snicker. I rolled my eyes and went on. “And so William saw and he talked to me. And you know he never talks to anyone. So I was trying to figure out if something about me was different enough to trigger this change in behavior.”

I looked over at Iris, and was met by that all too familiar mischievous glint in her violet-hued eyes. She was part pixie and countless other races that I hadn’t bothered to remember. But she said that in all the ways that really mattered, she was a full-blood pixie. And it showed. Like most pixies, Iris was a die-hard troublemaker. She almost never got caught. But when she did, all it took was one look at her eyes — large, glowing purple orbs deep-set in her small face — and she was free.

“What?” I demanded, after a long period of the classic Iris Look.

“Do you like him?” she inquired unexpectedly. I swear, I didn’t know where she came up with these ideas of hers.

“Like him like how?”

“You know.”

I considered this. When Iris said “you know,” well, usually you didn’t. “I like him as a person. As a friend? Maybe. As more? No. Not yet, at least. I mean, come on Iris. I don’t even know him, and now you expect me to like him. Be realistic.”

Iris nodded, a small half-smile on her face that said that clearly she knew something that I didn’t. “But you do like him,” she persisted. “It’s precisely because he doesn’t talk, because he’s quiet and shy and reticent, and he chose you to finally open up to. It’s perfectly normal that you would like him now.

“Your sense of logic and reasoning astounds me, Iris. You are like, so wise.” Sarcasm dripped from my tone.

Iris did her half-smile thing again and rolled her eyes. “Think about it,” she said simply, then left.

Chapter 2

I thought about it. I really thought about it. That was the problem with liking to think. Sometimes you think a little too much. It was ridiculous. The whole aspect of me liking William, someone I had barely spoken too, was just ludicrous. But then again, most things in life are.

I began to observe William. Not in a stalker-like way; that would be creepy. I just saw what I could.

I noticed that every morning at six-thirty he would get up and feed what was in his stables. There were two horses — a silver mare and a pure black stallion. He also had a golden pegasus. He fed them oats and the occasional apple, sometimes even throwing an apple to my own white unicorn, Twilight.

I grew into the habit of watching him every morning through my window. I was a little fascinated by the quiet manner in which he carried out this task. Most guys would have made a big scene, all noisy and boisterous. Not William. He was as quiet and gentle as anyone could ever be.

After a while, I finally got up the nerve to go outside while he was. I got up earlier than him so that I could be there when he came. Otherwise, it would be weird. But wasn’t it already weird? Because I just don’t know.

I was brushing Twilight’s mane when I heard the creak of door hinges. I turned around, feigning surprise.

William looked surprised as well. Obviously, he hadn’t expected me to be here. But then again, I really hadn’t expected myself to be here until just a few minutes ago.

He raised a hand in greeting, then went off to feed his animals.

“Hello, William,” I said, smiling at him.

“Hi, Callista,” he replied. “Kill any garden gnomes this morning?”

I laughed. “Nope, not today.”

He nodded and returned to feeding the pegasus that I’d seen earlier.

I walked over to the fence dividing his yard from mine. “What’s its name?” I asked, indicating the pegasus.

“Butterscotch. She’s my mother’s.” He pointed at Twilight. “And what’s your unicorn’s name?”

“Twilight.”

“He’s white and you named him Twilight?”

“It’s supposed to be ironic, see? He’s white, so it’s funnier and more creative to name him something dark, like Twilight, rather than something light like ice or frost.”

“Nice.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Didn’t I just say it was?”

I smiled at him again, and he smiled back. This was getting to be a teensy bit awkward, but we had already begun talking, and I was not going to be the one to end it.

Surprising me, William said, “So you finally decided to come talk to me, huh?”

“What?” I said, confused.

“Don’t think I haven’t seen you watching me through your window every day,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as I tried not to blush.

He laughed and poked me in the arm. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

I climbed over the fence and jumped down next to him. He smiled and gestured for me to follow him.

He led me into the forest behind his house. I couldn’t fathom where he was leading me, so the answer nearly took my breath away.

It was a lake. More of a small pond, actually, but in my mind I saw it as a lake. It was already frozen over, as was every stream and waterfall leading into it. The sun’s rays bounced off of the ice, casting little rainbows and prisms of color along its surface. Every rock, every bare tree and dead plant was placed as if with the skill of an artist. A squirrel chattered here, a cardinal chirped there. The wind shifted, adding nature’s music to the scene.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever beheld in all of my thirteen years.

“Almost doesn’t seem real, does it?” William whispered softly, coming to stand beside me.

I shook my head, still mesmerized.

“This is what I do every morning, after I feed the animals,” he continued. “I come here. It helps me to collect my thoughts, to make sense of all the clutter inside my head. I don’t think anyone else knows about it.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

He smiled knowingly. “It seems to me as if you have a lot to make sense of.”

“Well,” said Iris after I told her what had happened. “It seems to me that he likes you.”

“Not that way,” I insisted, shaking my head.

Before I knew it, Iris was exploding at me. “Yes that way!” she shouted. “He showed you his secret place! Secret! People don’t show secret places to just anybody. They have to trust them first. He likes you, Callista! Realize it, accept it, and just get over it.”

I flinched. Iris almost never yelled like that. Either she was extremely pissed off, or she was just chocolate deprived. I was leaning towards the former.

I let Iris seethe in peace. Whenever she got angry, it was best just to let her cool down and avoid arguing, which would put us both in an even worse mood.

After a while, she looked up and said, “Sorry, Cal. I got a little worked up there.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Suddenly, Iris smiled. I knew her enough for that smile to make me fear for my life. “What are you thinking?” I demanded warily.

“Come,” she commanded and walked out the door.

I followed her straight to William’s house and was immediately filled with a sense of dread.

“Holy crap, Iris, what are you doing?”

She smiled evilly, and her purple eyes glinted with what could only be described as malevolence. I literally had a picture of her in my brain with devil-horns and one of those weird tail things. “You’ll see,” she said ominously.

William was tending to his animals in his backyard when we walked over to him. He looked up and smiled at us. I did notice how his eyes lingered on me longer than they had on Iris. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. “Hello.”

“Hi, William,” Iris said. She had to crane her neck to look at him, since her short pixie-self only came up to about his hip.

I simply stood there, grinning like an idiot, as I desperately tried to keep from strangling Iris.

“What’re you doing?” she asked him in her seriously-there-is-no-way-I’m-up-to-something voice.

“I’m feeding my animals,” he said slowly, like it was so obvious, which, you know, it kind of was. “Like people, they have to be fed at least three times a day.”

“That’s fascinating,” Iris said, continuing with her bad charade. “Cal, isn’t that just so fascinating?”

“Yeah,” I said, barely keeping the growl out of my voice. So freaking fascinating, I thought bitterly. It was so obvious what she was trying to do. She was flirting with him, and badly at that. If I liked him, I’d be throwing a jealous, rage-induced hissy fit. If he liked me, he’d be all weirded out by Iris. And she, of course, knew that. She was trying to prove to me that there was a connection between him and me, but, being Iris, she found the oddest way to go about doing it.

I grabbed her arm and started dragging her away. “Come on, Iris,” I said. “William has better things to do than entertain you.”

“Actually,” William contradicted, “I don’t really mind.

Why did I suddenly have the intense urge to murder Iris?

“See, Cal, he doesn’t mind,” Iris said, quite smugly I might add.

I smiled wryly, feeling my face twist into a sarcastic sneer that probably wasn’t very attractive. “I hate you,” I hissed at her through my teeth.

“I know,” she said cheerfully, then practically skipped over to help William with his animals, unceasing with her terrible acting skills.

I sat down on a tree stump, folded my arms across my chest, and glowered at them. Iris was evil, and how dare William not see right through her?

I was still sulking when I looked up to find him standing over me, one eyebrow raised inquisitively. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I answered with a nod. “Why?”

He shrugged. “You seem a little angry.”

“I’m not,” I said, too quickly, as if with a reflex. “Besides, I’m always angry at something.

“Why?” he queried, sounding genuinely interested in my petty little problems.

Because Iris is annoying, and you’re humoring her, my mind screamed. “I’m an angry person.”

“Yes, but why?”

“I don’t know, William.”

“Maybe you should know.”

“Well, maybe I don’t,” I retorted, growing frustrated and impatient.

He nodded, letting it go, for now at least. He looked at me, then at Iris. “Your friend seems a little…”

“Demented?” I suggested.

“I was going to say ‘odd’, but that works too,” he said. His face opened up into a bright, inviting smile.

I smiled back, almost bashfully, which was not like me at all. Seriously, what was happening to me?

Iris came over, the look on her face saying that she knew something that no one else did. She plopped herself down next to my tree stump and said, “So, William, you’re an elf, right?”

No duh, you want a prize? I thought as he nodded.

“That’s so cool,” she mused. “Hey, Cal, aren’t you a half-elf?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, wondering where she was going with this.

“Well,” she continued, “I’m part pixie, but you already knew that. I’m also part human, witch, demon, ghoul, angel, vampire, and somehow ghost, if you can believe that, which most people don’t. Oh, and I’m also part sprite, but that’s really minimal.”

“That’s great, Iris,” I said, my tone both sardonic and detached. “Now come on. We don’t have all day, so let’s go.” I stood up, stretching my arms out. “Bye,” I told William, giving him a small wave.

“Yeah, bye William,” Iris called, hopping up and running to catch up with me. “We’ll see you later, I guess.”

“Good-bye,” he said. Again, I ignored the impulse to turn around as I walked away, retreating from Iris-caused hell.

CHAPTER 3:

I slipped through my door and heaved a sigh of relief, sinking down on the couch. I was tired and irritated, having just gone through one of the most humiliating ordeals of my life.

Heaving a sigh, I closed my eyes and slowly drifted into oblivion.

Glowing red, sooty coals sizzled in a bonfire, crackling from the heat. The wind whipped around the flames, giving them the haunting appearance of a ghostly dance. A poignant melody of flutes and violins played, the source of which could not be found.

There was the sting of something cold, hard, and slippery beneath me, and there was the twinkling of starlight above, made subdued and dim by the fire’s radiance. The heat painted a flush onto my cheeks, the light pinching my eyelids into slits. The relentless music teased my ears, drawing me up from my sprawled-out position. I suddenly realized that it was ice beneath me, my back wet from the water that my body-heat had generated. I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter around myself, tugging at the zipper.

I stepped off of the ice, my leg sinking into a shin-high pile of snow. I pulled it out, cursing the cold weather. It was then that I realized where I was.

William’s secret place.

Doubtful, I looked around. He was there, yes, sitting by the fire, stifling a laugh. Indeed, his poker face needed some work.

“Don’t laugh at me. I’m cold,” I mumbled, brushing the snowflakes off of my jeans.

“As am I,” he said, the starlight reflecting in his forest green eyes — an apt color. “Come; sit by the fire with me. It’ll keep you from freezing.” An impish grin spread across his face as he beckoned for me to join him.

Warily, I sat down beside him on the fire-warmed ground. “So what exactly are we doing here?”

“Beats me. It’s your dream.”

So that’s what this was! Figures that I would have a completely realistic dream, and then have it pointed out to me that it was the result of my subconscious and whatnot. I seriously needed therapy. Either that or a brain transplant. Whichever one was cheaper.

“Yes, but why are you here? Last time I checked, you were not someone I dream about. But I guess it makes sense, you know, with you being my neighbor and all.” I ceased my babbling, blushing slightly. I really needed to stop talking and take a breather. Even if I was only dreaming.

“I have no clue. I am merely a figment of your imagination, composed of images your mind has stored up over the past few days. I’m guessing you’ve been thinking about me a lot?”

“Unfortunately,” I muttered. I closed my eyes, staring at the pitch-black underside of my lids. Can one dream within a dream? Because I was exhausted. I would have to find out how these things worked.

His grin widened, and he raised an eyebrow at me. “Is that good or bad?” he asked.

“Both,” I groaned and buried my head in my hands. “But mostly bad.”

“Why bad?”

“I think I’m losing my mind.”

He laughed loudly, and I raised my head to glare at him. “Again, you make fun of me. Are you this mean in real life?”

“Do you think so?”

“Not really.”

He smiled and took my hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll wake up soon enough.”

“Do I have to?”

He looked at me curiously. “Don’t you want to?”

“Life is more difficult than a dream. By the way, can I have my hand back?”

“Oh, sorry. Sure.” He let go of my fingers.

I stared at my palms, eyes tracing the faint lines in them. I was dreaming, and I knew that. Typically, people in dreams didn’t know that they were just a dream. It made them worry too much. What if the dreaming person was to suddenly wake up and we would disappear? Cease to exist? And it seemed that this was the central problem in life as well: what if we were all just a half-dream in the span of the universe?

What if the universe woke up?

I looked over at William and said, “What about you? What happens to you when I wake up?”

“Nothing. The me of your imagination doesn’t exist, ergo I don’t exist.”

“But you do. You’re real, sitting here with me now.”

“In your dream, yes. But when you wake up, the William you know is not the William you dream of. Since I was created by your thoughts, I am more like you than I am like him.”

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. But isn’t it queer, to contemplate a dream within a dream? And isn’t it odd to know that a dream is a dream?”

“It is odd. But have you ever noticed that when you wake up, when you are still half-asleep, but aware of the world, you are still dreaming? Then the dream gradually fades away.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that. The human mind works in strange ways.”

“Indeed it does.”

I shivered as the wind picked up. Winter was cruelly cold, giving numbness and ice as unwanted gifts. Even in a dream, the cold was unbearable, although there was a fire burning not two feet in front of me. Now that I looked at it, the fire seemed less stable. It was gradually fading away, just as everything else was…

I opened my eyes, the horrid sleep-taste filling my mouth. The day had dimmed to mid-afternoon, and when I glanced at the clock, it read three PM, indicating that I had slept for a good couple of hours. Sitting up, I stretched my arms over my head and yawned loudly.

I had dreamt, yes, but the dream had escaped me the moment my eyes opened. But there was something about the dream, a paramount importance that could not be ignored. Yet all I remembered was a stinging cold and a thought-provoking dialogue, the words of which were lost.