Young Writers Society

hello there! I'm new here and this is my 1st post! I hope you like it. I wrote it a wee while ago so please forgive me if it sounds a little childish! My real name is Betty Darci. so you can call me Betty if you like! Please review! Lots o' Love

Chapter 1

Uncle Stephan

This particular day began nothing special but it turned out to be one of the strangest and most eventful days of my life. I sat down to breakfast that day as normal as ever, grabbed my spoon and dug into my (normal) cereal.

We all jumped when the phone rang in the living room and my mum excused herself to go and answer it. We (me and my dad) heard her speaking from the living room.

“Hello?” a pause. “Yes,” another pause. “Oh, hello Stephan.”

My interest and curiosity arose suddenly. Stephan was my dad’s brother. I never got to see much of my uncle as he was usually either in his home in Holland or travelling the globe on business. My earliest memories of him were of when I was three or four and then again at six for a memorable birthday party where he brought a live snake into the house. It was just a harmless grass snake. I wasn’t frightened. I thought it was cool. But I hadn’t seen him since. All I know about his job is that he works for the government.

“No, why?” asked my mum after another pause. Stephan said something but I couldn’t hear him from where I was in the dining room. I slipped out of the room muttering something about packing my schoolbag and rushed upstairs, taking them three at a time.

I barged into my mum’s room and grabbed the cordless phone off her ironing board. The two phones were linked so I could hear everything that they were saying in the phone downstairs. I punched the power button and pressed the phone to my ear.

“I need to hang out at your place for a while. Can you help me?” asked a male voice I presumed was Stephan’s.

“What do you mean? For how long?” asked my mum. Her voice sounded reluctant.

“For a week. No more, no less. Please,” he begged. “Gild can rent a flat near your street and-”

“Why are you bringing Gild?” interrupted my mum. “Is this to do with your work?”

“Yes and no,” he answered hastily. “Please Monika. Just for a week,” he pleaded.

“What if-”

“I swear your family will be in no danger from this at all. You have my word.”

“Well… I s’pose you could sleep in the spare room…” sighed my mum.

“Yes!” whooped Stephan. “I’ll be over round fourish, today. I could even pick Emily up from school if you wanted.”

“Fine, fine. But Stephan, I will hold you to your word. No harm will come to my family over this, you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good, I will see you today at about four.”

“Goodbye,” Stephan said cheerfully.

“Goodbye.” They hung up on each other and I quickly replaced the phone on its stand and rushed off to get ready for school. What was going on? What did my mum mean when she made Stephan swear that no harm would come to her family?

I stuffed my school planner into my bag along with my textbooks and jotters. Stephan was going to pick me up from school today and maybe, just maybe, I could ask him then. Although I could guess what type of answer I could expect in return.

My mum entered my room. “Your Uncle Stephan is going to pick you up from school today and maybe stay here for a couple of days, okay?”

“Oh,” I said, trying to assemble my face into what I hoped was a surprised expression.

“Yes, so hurry up and get ready for school you lazy lump,” she scolded briskly.

I grabbed my bag and a couple of pencils and marched down the stairs with my mum at my heels. I stepped out of the front door, into the bitterly cold of the Scottish morning, and into the car where I sat and waited for my dad, watching my breath rise in a mist before me.

School ended slowly because I couldn’t wait to see my Uncle Stephan. Time always seems to stand still when you’re waiting for something or someone. At last the bell rang to signal the end of my last class (geography) and I raced out with my two greatest friends, Zita and Milda, heading for the front gates.

There was a great “oooohhhh…” from passing students as a beautiful car glided into the car park. Even I, who knew nothing about cars, could easily see that this was spectacular.

It had a sliding, wind-stream bonnet and hood. Its tinted windows gleamed in the shining sun. So I was pretty smug, albeit rather shocked, to see Uncle Stephan slip out of the driver’s seat.

The man looked a bit dishevelled compared to the car and he wasn’t exactly the way I remembered him. He was leaner and a bit more powerful looking though his hair, which had been black, was speckled with grey so his head now looked as though it was sprinkled with salt and pepper. He was smoking a cigarette that sent plumes of foul-smelling smoke into the fresh air.

But he still had his broad smile and sparkling blue eyes. “Come on Emily,” he called. The other kids stared open-mouthed as I climbed, blushing, into my uncles shiny, silver car. The inside was very comfortable and just as stylish as the outside though it smelt strongly of smoke.

I fastened my seat belt and leaned back in the black, leather chair. Stephan revved up the engine and smoothly moved out of the car park.

“How’s school?” Stephen asked casually, after taking a deep pull on his cigarette.

“It’s okay, but my history teacher’s given me too much homework.”

“What do you have to do?”

“A three hundred word essay on William Wallace,” I groaned.

“Well, that’s not that bad.”

“No, I s’pose it’s not. Not with you here to help me. I mean, you should know a lot about it, seeing as you are old enough to have seen it all happen.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Stephan chucked. “Anyway, look on the bright side. Anything you write, the teacher has to stay back and correct.”

We fell about laughing. With Stephan for company, the journey was shorter than usual and I got home in time to do my homework, play my video games and get a little bit of The Simpsons (my favourite show) in at the

end.

I was just going downstairs to ask about dinner when I heard Stephan arguing fiercely with my mum and dad. I crouched behind the banister and listened intently.

“She can’t go all her life without knowing,” he was saying. I could almost see my mum biting her lip the way she does when she is nervous.

“She will know, but not now. She’s too young and-” but she was cut short

by dad.

“The elves believe that children are special and that they see things that adults miss. Our child certainly is special but without nourishing, that special something will go to waste.”

“One races’ faith is another’s delusion,” mum huffed.

“I found out when I was twelve,” snarled dad.

“What difference does that make!” shouted mum. They were getting vicious and I was tempted to retreat upstairs in case it turned into a row. But my curiosity kept me in place. Who or what were the elves? What did my mum want to keep from me? Luckily my uncle came to the rescue. “It’s not as if she’s not in danger! You know more about that damn prophet than most of us, Stephan.”

“Monika, please,” he soothed. “You cannot deny that Emily has power. This is her chance to learn how to use and control this power. I will only offer this once; will you let me teach her?”

“Stephen, you said that my family would not get involved,” sighed mum desperately.

“I said they would not get hurt and they won’t.”

There was a pause in which nobody said anything for a while. Then mum said; “yes alright, but be nice. Break it to her nicely.”

“She’s not a child,” sniffed Stephan.

“She’s not an adult either!” snapped mum.

Things were getting dangerous again so I decided to scarper to my bedroom where I tried to drown out the sounds of shouting and mull it all over. Elves? What were they? They sounded like a secret society. What “power” do I have that is so “special”? And just generally, what was going on?

I had so many questions spinning around in my head that I could barely see the text of The Hobbit which I had taken out to put my mind off it.

I was still trying to read The Hobbit when Stephan visited me in my room. He saw the book and chuckled. I switched off my personal C.D. player and lowered my earphones that I had been listening to while reading.

“You like fantasy?” he asked, smiling and gesturing at my book.

“Yeah, Tolkien, Lewis, Applegate, you know, that stuff.”

“What’s your favourite race?”

“Sorry?”

“You know,” he grinned. “Elves, dwarves, hobbits.”

“Oh, right. I like elves,” I told him. “But I like to be scared so I’d have to say I had a special soft spot for vampires.”

“Isn’t that horror though?” he asked.

“Stephan,” I said firmly. “Come on. You are not here to discuss books. I heard you arguing with my mum and dad. You’re here to tell me something important.”

He cursed loudly. “That’s not the way I wanted you to find out,” he

sighed. “Alright. Ask me whatever questions you might have and will try to answer them as best I can. But if I can’t answer for any reason, please do not push me for answers.”

That only got me even more curious but I knew that there was no point arguing. I had so many questions to ask that I didn’t know where to begin. “Who or what are elves?” I said finally. “I mean, you can’t actually be talking about real elves with pointy hats and all?”

“Elves are a race of people who have been hidden from humanity for over four hundred years. They have magical powers and can speak telepathically-“

“What, like mind-read?” I interrupted him.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “Now don’t interrupt. They are beautiful creatures that are faster, fitter and stronger than most humans.”

My uncle might have had two heads the way I was staring at him. “Are you telling me that elves exist?”

“I certainly am. I have seen many. In fact, I know one personally. “

“But… but…” I couldn’t understand it. I might have thought he was joking but he spoke with perfect seriousness. He didn’t smile or laugh as he usually did when cracking a joke. He really expected me to believe him.

“Are they immortal?”

“Yep.”

“Cool!”

He laughed when I said that. “You’re taking this better than my wife did. When I told her, she thought I was mad and tried to throw me out of the house!”

“You said something about a magical talent,” I said. “What did you mean?”

“Well your great, great, great, great, great… um… (well something like that) grandmother was an elf. She married a human but all her children were human, like their father, because the bloodlines can’t mix. But you are the first in all those generations to show signs of magic within you. You are not an elf. You would have pointed ears if you were but you, apparently, have the power to control magic.”

I sat there, stunned. The revelation that I could do magic and that I had an elven grandmother was just too much.

“But wait a minute,” I muttered. “How come I never knew about this before? How come I couldn’t turn my enemies into toads or fly or do anything cool like that?”

Stephan laughed again. “It’s not like that. Magic comes from the air in the form of what we call sydhafeb atoms. There is no magic inside you. You have to learn to draw it from the air, and no one, not even the most powerful elves that ever lived, could do that naturally from the day they were born. You have to be taught.”

I couldn’t say I understood everything he said and although it sounded impressive, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to turn my enemies into toads.

“Listen, it’s getting late,” said Stephan. “Tomorrow I will pick you up from school and take you to see a good and trusted friend of mine. I plan for him to teach you how to master your powers. His name is Gild. If you have any other questions then they will have to wait ‘till tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, okay…”

But it wasn’t okay at all. I had just discovered that elves exist and that I was “talented”, whatever that meant. And another thing had struck my mind just as Stephan was leaving. If it was possible for elves to exist, then why not dwarves, werewolves, dragons or even vampires?

Still full of questions, I lay down to sleep with my head buzzing.