Young Writers Society

A lot can happen in a day.

You could move to a new house, make a new friend, open a lemonade stand, or have the entire town of Civent flood into a huge lake.

Unfortunately, Will Rodrigo had the latter happen.

Stranded on top of a wooden fort (which thankfully floated) Will and his younger brother Coleston were soaked, battered, and quite bored. They had just had dinner and went outside to enjoy the crisp autumn air when the flood came and submerged everything. Their parents were out of town, and their babysitter was huddled in a corner, quietly hiccuping. Things were not the best for them right now.

As their treehouse-boat floated along, scraping against roof tiles and bumping into chimneys, they saw multiple other families floating around on debris and a few people in lofts above the water level, who either noticed the flood, didn’t notice, or noticed but were too interested in playing dominoes to care much about floating treehouses.

All of these sights were confined to wherever they passed by, due to their blurry, waterlogged vision, so when they saw an enormous, pale blue structure emerging from the school, they wiped their eyes a few times to make sure they weren’t imagining it.

An enormous castle rising out of the public school of a flooded town couldn’t possibly be real, could it?

“This isn’t a good idea,” muttered Coleston. Will kept walking because nothing was a good idea to Coleston. Going for a walk was “too tiring”, staying at home was “too lazy”. Unless he was covered in bubble wrap and pillows, in amazing mental and physical health, and encased in a solid block of steel, he was never safe.

Will would have tried doing just that, but he didn’t have enough money.

After ditching their treehouse (and babysitter) by the entrance and walking into the newly transformed school-castle, Will was determined to get some answers about what had happened. Coleston was determined to get some sleep, but sleeping on the slightly damp floor of a school wasn’t very appealing.

Will kept walking, eventually turning into a classroom. He was astounded to see that it had been turned into what looked like an apartment building, but in 1600. Bookshelves instead of a TV, a pantry instead of a fridge, and no lights or electricity anywhere. Two spears laid next to a bed in one corner. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the whole room was submerged. The doorway laid next to a wall of water.

Placing his hand in, Will was surprised to see that it was just floating there, like an enclosed box of water that wasn’t supported by anything. But before he could think of some way to test it further, Coleston tackled him into it, swam him over to the closet, and dove in, shutting the door behind him. The closet was just as dry as the outside, somehow keeping the water out.

“What are you do-” Will managed to get out before Coleston slapped his hand over Will’s mouth. “Shhh,” Coleston whispered. “I heard someone outside.” Removing his hand, Will saw that he was shaking like a leaf. Outside, they heard what seemed to be a conversation between two people speaking some kind of foreign language.

“Qiz kaa shamana?”

“Mugaya.”

“Allayk Kana shemi cila kekeheh…”

“Fris sisy!”

“Klema?”

“Ks tusu audi kaa?”

“Audi klema?”

“Kiysiya!”

“Kiysiya? Klemus?”

“Zam igorpi sa!”

Neither of them knew what kind of language this was. They didn’t have any time to think about what that conversation meant either, because the doors to the closet were slammed open. Staring at them through the doorway were two very ugly humanoids. They looked almost like a cross between fish and humans. In their webbed hands were the spears Will had seen.

“KIYSIYA!” they screamed. At the same time, Will and Coleston came to the conclusion that ‘Kiysiya’ was not a very good word to be called by two fish-people with spears.