Young Writers Society

Chapter 3

James

I hit the floor and groaned. Plumes of dust sprung up from their resting place. Annabeth lay beside me, rubbing her head, the package held tightly in her hand.

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The low moaning of cows tore me from my sleep. Light flooded my eyes, as I sat up; it looked like we were in a barn. Its beams, eroded from long years of the elements, seemed ready to come down at any moment. Barrels were stacked high to broken up ceiling, where early morning light shone through the cracks. My whole body ached as I sat beside my best friend, wanting to be anywhere but here. Annabeth was already awake.

“So what are we going to do now?” She asked as I groggily sat up.

Thinking she was going to be happy at my answer, I said. “Get out of this crazy world.” She actually looked pretty disappointed.

“What do you mean get out of this crazy world.” She looked at. “These people need our help and you just want to leave and return to your normal life!”

“We don’t even know them.” I said trying to be reasonable. What she said did make sense but, after what we just seen, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. “The only thing I know that this could be a hoax or something.”

“A hoax? We just jumped through two portals, seen candy people and almost got blasted into Jello now you’re saying this is a hoax.” I kind of laughed, all that just happened? “If all of that didn’t convince you I don’t know what will.” She walked off leaving me to think.

I guess she was right, these people did need our help and obviously this couldn’t be a hoax, not after what we just seen. Sighing, I put my hands in my pocket. My hand landed on a piece of paper reminding me of what the short guy had said.

My eyes widened as I looked at it. Never had I seen my mom this young. She looked about my age, 15; her black hair glimmered in the sunlight. A boy standing next her looked familiar, strands curly dark brown hair hung in his face. I couldn’t pinpoint just who it was.

“Annabeth, come over here.” I called to her in a shaky voice. Hesitantly she came around the wall that separated the two sides of the barn and looked at me.

“What?”

“Just come here and look.” I held the photo up to her, awaiting a reaction. Her anger turned into confusion and she came closer to get a better look.

“Is that your mom?” I nodded and sat down on a bale of hay. “And who is tha-” A look of recognition laced her face.

“What?” I asked anxiously. “Who is it?”

“I-It’s my dad.” She was right, it was her dad. Two peppermintmen stood next to them, javelins in hand. All four of them must have been friends because they were smiling and holding each other’s shoulders.

“So your dad and my mom were… friends?” It was hard to fathom. They never seemed to like each other, my mom even tried to make me stop seeing Annabeth but that didn’t go too well.

“I guess so, but…” She sat down, put her head in her hands and shook her head. “It doesn’t even matter. “At least we know why they wanted you. These people are like your… family and they need your help.”

“They’re your family too.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We sat there for a few moments, enveloped in our own thoughts. It now made sense why my mom never talked about her family, why she was so secretive about anything that had to do with relatives. But why did she keep it a secret? I wondered. It was hard to process all the information, but we couldn’t sit there forever. Standing up I spotted the package that lay on the floor.

“Annabeth,” She looked up and raised her eyebrows. “We should probably see what that package is. We’ll probably need it to… find the clouds.” She nodded and handed it to me. Ripping the paper off revealed a staff, it looked like the ones we seen at The Meeting. The purple and white stick spiralled up meeting a dark purple crystal at the top.

“James, it has your name on it.” I turned it over and sure enough, there was my name spelled in black letters.

“Wow.” Then the strangest thing happened. As I was putting my hand out to touch it, the letters disappeared. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” A cow stuck its head between a crack in the wall as I leaned the staff against it.

“I wonder how you shoot that power stuff out of it.” Annabeth reached for the staff only to have it disappear.

“It’s gone!” I said, slightly alarmed. The men said that we would need it to find the clouds and it had just disappeared. I got up and began to walk over to where it had been.

“There it is!” Annabeth pointed to the barrel of hay that I had just gotten up from.

How about we just leave it alone, obviously we don’t know anything that can help us find these… clouds.” Annabeth nodded and eyed the staff like she was expecting another disappearing act.

Just then I heard voices, they were far off, but they were definitely voices. They became clearer and what they said didn’t sound good.

“We can get o lot ‘o’ money if we find those two. It says here that there’s ‘o’ girl with dark curly brown hair and o boy with black. Not much description but I bet it’ll be easy to fin’ them, there bound to be wherin’ outsiders clothin’ and stuff.” I turned to Annabeth… we were in big trouble.

“Yeah daddy,” a girl’s voice interrupted his ranting “but it’s not like they’ll be in the barn or anywhere near here.”

“I know,” he sounded disappointed “but go in there an’ milk dem’ cows. I’m goin’ to go an’ finish brewin’ this batch ‘o’ moon and go sell it in town, people still want their liquor even in a drought.” He laughed his footsteps retreating. I started to panic as I heard the crunch of the girls shoes on the grass come closer.

“On the count of three we run.” Annabeth whispered, her voice shaking.

“Three” Click. The latch opened

“Two” Creak, There goes the door

“One”