Prologue
The whipping crack of a slender arrow
whizzed by the mother doe’s ear. She stood erect, sensing the motion hidden in
the trees, and dashed away in an instant just as the arrow snapped against a
rock. “Horsefeathers! I missed again!” The crunching of pine needles underfoot
rustled from the bushes, and a tall thin teen stepped out from the shadows. Her
arrows quivered in the early breeze as her shiny hair flew. She picked up the
fragments of her best arrow and uttered a sharp curse. Laying the snapped wood
in the bottom of her pack, she scanned the meadow for any signs of deer.
However, only the wind ruffled the grasses, and silence rose over the clearing.
A hawk soared overhead, screeching. It was too high in the air to shoot, but if
it landed, she may have a chance. Húðdskógr, Ivory’s hometown, lay about a mile
away from her location in the calm meadow. Squinting against the morning
sunlight, she sat herself down on a rock, and pulled out a small book. With a
beautiful inscribed ink feather, she scrabbled in her journal, recording her
actions like a diary. She suddenly snapped the book shut, jammed her pen and
book into her pack, and stared at everything around her – the trees, the grass,
the birds – the list was endless. Whirring out of her peace, she realized she
had no food to bring back to her family. Until she did, she could not come back
to the house. Sliding her arrows into the notch of her bow, she rose to her
feet, stared around, and romped back into the trees.
Birds flitted lightly above her,
ringing out their gleeful calls in the leaves. A white flash darted across her
vision, disappearing into the bushes. “Rabbit.”
Ivory muttered, not bothering to look for the swift, small animal. She
searched throughout the forest, shooting at chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and
birds. Every arrow missed its mark, and she aimed and fired until the last rays
of sunlight slipped out of sight under the horizon. As darkness fell, the
birds’ calls ceased, and the crickets started to chirp, their rackety humming
pulsing all around her. Soon, the stars shone through the trees – darkness had
indeed come. It was too far to return to her home now, and much too dark. Using
long sticks and fern leaves, she constructed a small lean shelter against a low
branch. This, although makeshift, would provide at least protection during the
night. A leafy forest floor wasn’t exactly her idea of comfortable, but it
would do. Ivory lay down for quite a while, but sleep hesitated in her mind. So
she crawled out of her lean and watched the stars. After a while, dark clouds
swirled through the distant sky, covering the stars beyond. A faint, low
rumbling pounded in her ears – a thunderstorm lay ahead in the distance. With a
flash, the sky lit up – it was going to be a long night.
A cooling, light mist soon hung over
the forest, obscuring Ivory’s vision. The storm was approaching her site fast,
and she would have no time to prepare for its coming. Soon, thunderclouds
rolled over the sky between the clumps of trees, and the rumbling grew deeper
and louder. Abruptly, a flash of light
ignited the sky, and buckets of rain poured down - buckets of rain, sheets of
rain, crashing, pelting down on the forest. Ivory was immediately soaked,
completely unprepared for the flash storm. She quickly scrabbled to her
shelter, which, indeed, was dripping as well. The rain grew icy, and a
whipping, cold wind whistled its way through the trees. Her crystal blue eyes stared
at the sky, and she rose to her feet. Scrambling out into the rain, through the
mucky wet leaves, she aimed her bow at an unknown target, and out of
desperation and anger, she fired.
At that instant, a slicing flash of
white lightning split the sky with a splintering crack, and the heavens burst
with a flash of sparks, igniting the clouds and the stars. Thunder clashed
through the forest, and the earth shook, knocking Ivory to the leaves. Another
flash, this time snaking through the trees and landing in front of her, shook
the ground once again and pierced her very heart. Struggling to stand on her
weak legs, the swaying stopped, and all grew silent and still. Not a living
thing moved, aside from the thunder, crashing lightning, and pelting rain. Small
wisps of smoke where the lightning had landed swirled up to the sky. Limbs
trembling in shock, she finally stood, and walked weakly over to the vapor. The
arrow she had fired was singed into a million tiny fragments. All that was left
of it was the seared head wedged into the bark, which barely survived the
mysterious blast. Laying in the depression that the lightning had made was an
oval, shining the brightest, deepest emerald green Ivory had ever seen. The
surface was soft and smooth, slightly warm to the touch as she bent down. It
sizzled as she picked it up, and found it was lighter than it seemed. Ivory
knocked on it, a rich, hollow sound responding. She rolled it all around in her
trembling hands, inspecting every inch. She had never noticed this here before,
and it sure wasn’t normal for a perfectly oval emerald just sitting there. She
wondered if it had anything to do with the phenomena explosion that had
occurred just minutes before. Nothing made sense – but with the growing dangers
in her town, something like this might just cause enough trouble to set the
entire town on misfortune. Húðdskógr didn’t need another catastrophe, nor a
trouble-making girl bringing strange artifacts into her homeland. But she
couldn’t leave it here – not with what happened. Misfortune or not, this
emerald was special – and perhaps valuable. Zapping out of her thoughts,
wondering what it could be, she realized it. It was a stone. But this was no
ordinary stone, my friends. This stone, lying in Ivory’s very hands, was going
to change her life forever – and what she would find out of it, no one would
ever know.
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