JadeRaven

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.