Word Count: 111,000
Book One in The Diaries of Guardia series
It’s been ten days since Rye, Lily and Tamara found the weird cottage in the forest. Two days before that, they found themselves lost in Guardia.
The world they thought would be an escape from the drama of high school has become their biggest nightmare. Hunted by the monstrous Valroc, our heroes soon find themselves in the worst kind of trouble when they stumble into the divided city of Lierwick.
Because, let’s face it, we’d all rather face a blood-thirsty monster than a political debate.
When the mysterious assassin, Cheeva, reveals that they’re part of a prophecy that will see the end to the war between magic and technology, our heroes are obviously skeptical. But as they’re drawn further and further into conflict between the magic-hating Raggedite and the technophobic Royalists, the coincidences are hard to deny. And when your only ally is a debauched Knight who has run up debts in every bar in town, a heroic prophecy starts to look appealing.
But what if Cheeva is lying?
Painted as a genocidal monster by the Royalists, Jamie Troschke desperately fights to bring about a social and industrial revolution that could save his people from the tyranny of the Royalists and their magic. When he discovers that three teens have appeared without a drop of magic in their bones, this could be his chance to change the tide of war and the very foundations of the Guardi beliefs.
As the Raggedite, led by Troschke, advance on Lierwick in all their technological glory, Rye, Lily and Tamara must decide who to champion in a war that could see them divided forever.
Chapter One
-Rye
“Rye!” I started awake as a door banged open. There was a thud and a squeal behind me. Heart racing I toppled off the too-small couch in a cloud of dust and moths.
“What? What’d I do?” I asked, looking out from under my hair. Lily stood, hands clapped over her mouth as she looked down at the door, now lying uselessly on the floor. I clambered to my feet, trying not to lean on the wingback chair that wobbled warningly on three legs. “What?”
“Tamara’s gone.”
Once upon a time, I would’ve been glad to hear Tamara had left. After all, she’d dumped me – with a big fat smile on her face. But that was back when we were on Earth.
I scrambled to my feet, following Lily into the cramped hallway where a collection of oil paints glared down at us from sagging canvases. “Her pack is gone,” Lily said as I threw open the door to their room. I squeezed my way between the wall and the foot of the bed so I could rifle through our packs. Lily was right, there were only two left.
“Did she take anything?” I asked, digging through them anyway.
“No.”
I stood and raked my hands through my hair. “Come on, we’d better find her.”
I grabbed our packs – which were starting to feel depressingly light – and threw one to Lily. There was no way I was going home without Tamara. I couldn’t face her mother. I couldn’t face my parents if I came home without both the girls.
And that meant I was going to get Tamara home even if I had to drag her skinny butt, kicking and screaming, back through the portal.
When we found it again.
“Wait! You want me to come too?”
I inched back around the bed, hissing as I clunked my hip into the dresser.
“Yes! God knows if we’ll even find our way back here, if we do find her!”
I shrugged the pack on my shoulders, heading for the door. I thought Tamara was mad when she’d made us pack food and sleeping bags for a day trip into our secret world. Now I was worried about the pile of empty water bottles and tins we kicked through in the hall. We were too afraid to eat anything we found to boost our dwindling rations.
I shouldered the door open and tumbled outside, Lily on my heels. The cottage looked normal enough, really. Half-rotten waterwheel on one side, groaning as it dragged through a trickle of water. A stone wall that separated the once-garden from the wilderness, on the other. All perfectly normal if you ignored the giant hull of a ship rising up behind it like a misplaced Titanic.
“It’s getting colder, you know?” Lily said, as I shut the door. I don’t know why I did. Despite finding the house and the bridge that led to it, we hadn’t seen any other signs of life. At least not “intelligent life” as Lily called it. We’d found animals – incredible, bizarre creatures – but no people. I hoped that the people had just moved on and hadn’t died of some horrible disease.
I was good at first aid but not that good.
“It is,” I muttered, looking around.
It had been ten days since we’d found the weird ship-house. And twelve days since we’d lost our way back to the tree that led to Earth – home. Each day was getting shorter and darker. I didn’t even want to think about it snowing. “Come on.”
“I don’t even know where’d she’d go.”
I grimaced. “Me either.”
We looked around, staring at the forest. Everything looked the same. Just, trees. How did you choose?
“That way,” I said, heavily, starting off straight ahead over the bridge. If I was wrong, we could waste a day looking for Tamara. Or, worse, we could get lost again and end up spending the night in the forest again.
Brilliant.
“Do you know why she left?”
Lily shook her head and I sighed. So much for girls telling each other everything. We walked on in silence.
The first time we’d stumbled into this world, it’d been incredible. Everywhere you looked there’d been something new to see, to poke and, in Lily’s case, document. Now, we hurried past a million new things without even taking a second glance. Fear does that to you. It takes something beautiful and turns it into a nightmare.
The sun was well up bythe time we reached a narrow little gully, probably a dried out old creek bed. “Rye?” Lily said, as I held out a hand to help her jump over. She was already red in the face.
“Yeah?” I followed her over, easily. Sometimes it paid to be stupidly tall.
“I’m, like, sorry.”
I frowned, looking over at Lily as we walked. She was picking at the greying bandages on her palms. “For what?”
“For, like, Tamara leaving and all? I should’ve heard her.”
I snorted. “Don’t. Tamara’s an idiot. She wanted to leave for whatever stupid reason. Even if you did wake up, it’s not like you could’ve stopped her.”
“I could’ve called out or something.”
I sighed. “Lil, seriously. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Save that for beating Tamara when we find her.”
“Yeah, right. Like we could beat her up.”
“That skinny twig? Of course we could.”
“You forgot angry. Angry twig.”
“And mad.”
“Maniac.”
“Crazy.”
“Scary?”
“Agreed,” I said, laughing a little. Some people found it weird that Lily and Tamara had been friends since they were little. They were as different as night and day at first glance. Tamara was tall – nearly as tall as me – stunning and blonde. Lily was just, I don’t know, an average girl. She was pretty I guess but not like Tamara. Not “in your face” pretty.
But when you got to know them, you could see why they were friends. Both of them had more brains than most people I knew. They made me feel dumb sometimes.
I’d met Lily when I’d been dating Tamara; she’d tagged along behind us on a couple dates. And when Tamara insisted on being friends after breaking up with me, I guess it was nice to have her there as a buffer. But, really, there was something about Lily that just made you want to protect her from anything and everything. She was like everyone’s little sister.
And that’s why I had to get them home.
The ground grew rockier as we started heading up hill. There was nothing in the endless clumps of teal-green shrubs and silver tree trunks that told me Tamara had even been this way.
“A few more minutes this way,” I said, pushing through a bush, thorns raking my arms. I winced. “Then we’ll try somewhere else.”
“Maybe we’ll see her at the top of this?” Lily said, pointing up the hill.
“Maybe.”
I adjusted the pack, trying to stop the sleeping bag from bumping into my neck. Lily was already panting behind me. I held out a hand to her and she took it without saying anything. I hauled her up.
I said, stopping finally to lean against a tree, looking up as the leafy floor disappeared and turned into a tumble of boulders. “I’m going to kill Tamara.”
“After…we…get…her…home…right?” Lily panted.
“Right.” I wiped a hand across my face and looked over at Lily. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“What…why?”
“You didn’t want to come through the tree,” I said, grimacing. “You said we should test it and stuff, first. And I just pulled you in with us. I was just…I don’t know. I got caught up in how excited Tamara was.”
Lily shrugged. “We all were, you know?”
“Yeah, but now it feels stupid.”
Lily echoed my grimace. “All I could think about was how I was going to be, like, the youngest biologist ever to make this kind of discovery. The only biologist ever to, you know, find a whole world. You guys just wanted to have fun. I was kind of…you know…after fame and all.”
I looked at Lily, a little shocked. I mean, I wasn’t surprised that she had focused on the biology side of things. That was just the way she was – more interested in animals and plants than people. But I guess I’d never really thought she’d want to be famous like other people.
She was just so quiet.
Whatever her motive, this was still my fault. I should have cut the tree down the first time Tamara and I accidentally stumbled through. I shouldn’t have kept playing with it. I shouldn’t have let Tamara talk me into letting them through.
And I definitely shouldn’t have agreed to the stupid “day trip”.
There was a crunch in the trees behind us and I whipped around. The rocks were so densely packed between the trees; I couldn’t see a thing around them. “Tamara?” I called. Nothing. “Do you see anything, Lil?”
She shook her head. The back of my neck prickled. “Let’s keep moving. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Rye, look!” Lily had clambered up onto a rock, just off to my right. I scrambled over a boulder covered in a blanket of fuzzy blue moss, feet slipping slightly as I clambered to her side. Lily was pointing at a wrapper, fluttering in the wind where it had wedged itself between two rocks.
“Unless this world started spontaneously creating Snickers, that’s Tamara,” I said, grabbing the wrapper. “Think she’s far?”
Lily shrugged, completely unhelpful again. I twisted the wrapper in my fingers as I looked around. “Okay, well, knowing Tamara, she probably went up,” I said, pointing at the rocks above us. They got bigger and steeper – you might as well have painted a welcome sign for Tamara.
“…maybe she went down,” Lily said, looking less than thrilled.
I shot her a look. “Really?”
“Well…she might!”
“Come on,” It wasn’t that bad, really. It wasn’t like there was a ten foot drop or anything. Just a really rocky…er…tumble to the bottom. “The sooner we find her, the better.”
“I’ll kill her,” I heard Lily mutter below me as she followed.
“I thought you’d like all this,” I said, pulling myself up onto a small ledge. I reached down and helped Lily up beside me. “You know, being outdoors, exploring all that stuff.”
“I’m hungry, tired and lost,” Lily huffed. “What’s to, like, enjoy? I just want to go home.”
“Me too.”
We’d stopped at one of the highest points on the mini mountain. The forest, a giant rippling lake of fiery leaves spread out below us in every direction. To the right the forest stretched toward the horizon, breaking now and then into patches of grass. To the left, the forest stretched right to the edge of an inky black sea. Even the sky was different from ours.
“It’s kind of beautiful still, isn’t it?” I said, looking around. For a moment I felt that bubble of excitement again. Yes, we were lost. Yes, we were scared.
But, for now, all of this was ours.
“Rye?”
No comments:
Post a Comment