Please, please, pleeeease review as this is my first story and i need some motivation to continue. Btw, if your looking for more stories to read, try The Daughter of Apollo by MidgleyMacbeth or Nobody Likes a Sore Loser by MysticReader365.
CHAPTER 1
His only chance is to cross the river by crossing a fallen tree. The current is too strong to allow him to swim across. He takes a deep breath and places one foot on the trunk. It seems strong enough to support his weight. Slowly, carefully, putting one foot in front of the other, he begins to walk. He can hear the shouts of the search parties behind him. "Come on, come on." he whispers to himself. He starts to walk faster. Suddenly, he hears a splintering sound. He looks down. The tree must have been put there years ago! With a loud "crack", the tree snaps in half and he falls, falls into the river below.
When he woke, still half asleep, he realised he was lying down on a warm bed with clean, white sheets. He was in a large room complete with a fireplace and a window. Suddenly, it all came rushing back to him. Who he was, what he was doing, where he was. And it wasn't good.
10 years ago, when he was five, the small village where he had lived was attacked. He and his family managed to escape and moved to another village. It took five days to get there, and when they arrived, he and his brothers were exhausted. He remembered his mother talking to him when they arrived.
"Okay. Now, honey, I know this is hard for you. The change. But please bear with me Jake." she had said. Jake. That was his name. "Jake, Jake." The name slid off his tongue. It felt familiar.
He had stayed in the new village for nine years and when he was fourteen, he left to find the people who destroyed his home. His real home. on his travels, he met a girl named Eleanor. Jake remembered her from his old village and together they set off.
They had travelled back to their old village. Eleanor walked over to a pile of rubble that must have been her house. Jake walked over and put his hand on her shoulder.
"We will find them and make them pay." He said. Eleanor looked up, eyes wet, and nodded.
"And we'll stop them from doing this to anyone else." she said.
They walked around the village. Suddenly, Eleanor stopped.
"Look, over there." She whispered. She was pointing at an arrow in the ground. "Good eye." Said Jake, smiling. He rushed over and pulled the arrow out of the ground. There was a mark engraved in it.
"Oh my god. Oh no, no, no!" cried Jake. "This is the mark of the Capria!"
"You mean those people our parents told us stories about when we were young? They're real?" said Eleanor, shocked. Jake nodded.
"And I think I know where to find them."
Jake led Eleanor through a huge forest, thick with trees.
"How do you know where the Capria are?" asked Eleanor.
"Well, when my mother told my brother and I stories about them, she would give clues as to where they were. She said things like; they live in mountains, taller than the clouds, and to get to them you had to head east from your real home and pass through a forest where the trees sing."
"When we were younger, my brothers and I never fully understood the clues. Where the trees sing? Your real home? What did that mean? When I grew older, I managed to make sense of what it was talking about. Now I know exactly where to find the Capria." replied Jake.
"How about 'where the trees sing'? How did you work that one out?"
"Birds. Birds sing and live in trees. When they hide in the trees, it's as if the tree is singing. I also experimented with the wind, but the trees just whistled." Said Jake. Eleanor looked at him, watching, waiting for his next move.
"There's something weird about him." she thought. "He's different." With his dark, wavy hair and scrawny structure, Jake looked like the average 14-year-old. Though he didn't know it just yet, Jake was indeed different, special. And he was part of something much bigger.
"Look up" Jake said to Eleanor after a half hour walk. Eleanor looked up.
"What? She asked
"There." Replied Jake, pointing south east. Eleanor followed his finger with her eyes and saw mountains. She gasped. The mountains were so huge, the clouds covered half of them.
"Where about on the mountains, do you know?" she asked.
"Uhh, somewhere above the clouds I think." Said Jake. Eleanor slapped her forehead with her palm.
"Aaand we don't even he know where we are going" she mumbled.
"Hey, give me a break. I've never been here before" retorted Jake. "Sheesh."