Author's Note.

Good day! This is a cool little story I'm writing with my sister. I'm sorry if it does not make sense right away. I'm Sage; and my Sister's character is Gwen. You'll see how's where connected and everything as our story goes on. We work really hard and everything, but things can tend to be mixed up, because we do it over msn. This is chapter one, and we are working on chapter two, and three and so on

It does have some stuff to do with Tamora Pierce but it's kinda after everyone, and Sage lives a while off of the Copper Isle.   

I'm sorry if something doesn't make sense, but we are both new at this. Please read and review!

Every time you see a --- ,bold and not bold it's a change of character. Or, if you don't get that, it just changed scenes, and you'll get it as you go. 

So….Onward!

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Leaning down in the garden, Sage plucked a weed. Her hands where filthy and her face was dashed with dirt. Her dress was brown with filth. A messy ponytail held back her straight long orange hair. Her face, behind the dirt, was splattered with freckles, and her green eyes matched the vibrant colours of the plants.

"Sage, the clouds are getting darker, get inside!" Her mother called to her from the front door of their house, a few meters away.

"Coming!" Sage replied, grabbing her shovel and her untouched gardening gloves. 

Sage ran to the shed, as it began to pour. Sage sighed and smiled. The water was so beautiful. She wanted to so badly run out and play in the rain. And collect its tastes like the flowers were.

"Sage!" Her mother called again.

"Coming!"

Sage threw her shovel in a basket, took her hair out of the chaotic ponytail, and dusted out her dress.

Her mother hated when she didn't wear gloves, because she would go off to school tomorrow, with dirty filled nails.

Sage then ran back into the small cottage she called home and slammed the door.

"Did you get wet?" Her mother called form the kitchen.

"Little bit." Sage shrugged.

"Clean up, suppers on the table."

Sage did this. She scrubbed as hard as she could, trying to get the dirt out of her nails, but it stayed. She gave up, and went to sit down.

Sage and her mother lived in Raleigh, a small town close to the main city, Dell. The Copper Isles where close by, but hardly talked about. Tortal was about a days boat ride away. King Jonathan's reign was long over, but many followed.  Sage was told that her father worked with the new king, King Jonathan the 5th, but she never really believed it.   

Sage's only remembrance of her father was when she was three, and he kissed her goodbye, and told her he would be right back. He never came back for her, or her mother. Her mother now considered him as dead, and never spoke of him.

"Happy Birthday, sweet pea." Her mother smiled, as Sage took a seat.

"Thanks Mum." She grinned and looked down at her favourite dinner.

"There's more-"Her mother started, but was cut off by the front door, slamming open.

"Sage!" A man's voice boomed from the front hall. 

---

A dark girl walked down a dark alleyway in the streets of Paris, France. Her form swallowed by the shadows and her dark clothing her plain black-brown hair shining in the dim light.

This vacation was just as stupid as the last. Gwen longed for her native country of Ireland.

A tall shadow walked up behind her. The man, for he was a man, was dark sharing many of the same features as the girl Gwen and startling green eyes.

"Damian. I thought you were going out barring tonight." Gwen said to her older brother

"Change of plans sis. We just got a message from the travel agency and we have to go to Transylvania the day after tomorrow. The concert is next Friday." Damian who was just 9 months older than Gwen were best of friends (as much as brothers and sisters can be). Because of their parent's hectic traveling careers as musicians, they were constantly on tour and taking their two unwilling children along with them.

---

Sage stood up form the table, with her eyes wide and her stomach twisted.

"Mom!" She cried, her hands on her face, afraid of who was at the door. Her mother got up and ran to the front door. She heard her mother gasp.

"Fredrik!"

"Lianna, where's my daughter."

"You can not see her, Fredrick, I forbid-" But Sage heard a cry from her mother and large footsteps coming towards her. She shut her eyes and took a step away.

"Sage!"

Sage opened her eyes and gasped. It was her father, yet...he had changed, from what she could remember.

"You must come with me."

"Mother!"

"Lianna, you stay away." Sage's father warned, taking a step closer to her, " Sage, come with me, NOW!"

"Go away!" Sage screamed, covering her face.

Her father huffed and knocked down the table, full with foods and liquids, now staining the carpet which lay beneath it.

"You must come with me now," Her father whispered, his voice frantic and rushed, "before they find you."

Sage looked up.

"Who?"

"I'll tell you on the way.... They're coming-"

Sage heard the door open again, and her mother scream.

"Oh, oh. They're here!" her father grabbed her arm.

----

Gwen and Damian walked into their hotel room. Damian flipping the light on, throwing the room into high relief. The central room was rather large with a table and a couch. Gwen's room was on the right and Damian's on the left.

"Mom! Dad! We're home!!" Gwen called into the suite. There was no answer.

"Maybe they went out?" Gwen unsure asked Damian.

"I doubt it. They were here when I left to get you."

"They don't usually leave us in the hotel rooms by ourselves. They're too paranoid that we'll clean out the minibar and call room service." Gwen who was sceptical replied

Damian knocked on their parent's door. Receiving no reply opened it and saw...

  

---

Her father opened the back door and pulled her out with him.

"Mother!" Sage screamed, so terribly confused, she was almost sobbing again.

"Sage!" Her mother cried back, trying to get up form the hallway, but was knocked out by a few passing men. One of the men grabbed her mother, and swung her over his shoulder easily. Sage saw this just as her father threw her atop a black stallion, and cried out.
"No!" Sage sobbed, as her father got in front of her, told her to hang on tight.

She didn't do as she was told, and began crying.

"This can not be happening."

The man with her mother threw her in a carriage behind two horses and him and the two other men began running towards them.
"Sage hold on, tight," her father ordered.

When she did not, a man grabbed a tight hold upon her ankle.

"You can't hide her for her whole life!" The man growled at Sage's Father.

"I can try." Her roared back, and as Sage took a tight hold around her father's waist, and they rode off, the man quickly letting go of Sage's ankle.

---

Gwen's scream tore through the air; her mother and father were lying in their bed, as if dead.

"Do something!!" Gwen was nearly hysterical. Damian walked up to their forms and put a hand to their mother's neck. She was alive. Gwen worked her way into the room, and looked at her mother and her father.

"They look as if they were stolen away or put to sleep or something." Gwen was trying hard to make the best of things.

Suddenly her mother sat up and yelled

"Get out save yourselves!!! He will find you. Enslave minds. Same. Prisoner. Cousin. Find. Not on earth. Search beyond. What seen." with that she fell back on her pillows back into the dreamlike state she had been in before the outburst.

---

Sage was in tears. She heard the men scream and get on the backs of their horses and begin to follow them.

"I don't understand!" Sage cried out. Her father told her to hang on tight and he would loose the men before he told her. Sage shut her eyes and hung on. One of the men, on a solo horse rode up beside them.

"How about a deal?" he requested. Sage's father looked ahead and kicked his horse, trying to get her to ride faster.

"There can be no deals," my father spat.

"You give us the girl; you get your precious wife back," the man sneered.

"Give it up," her father growled and drove the horse faster.

"You're making a huge mistake. They're going to be more, and they will find you both, and then… well then you will have nowhere to run!" The man slowed down his horse and stopped with the men in the carriage.

Sage opened her eyes a minute later, and looked back. The men were talking, and watching her. One even waved, and sneered evilly at her. Sage shook.

"Where's my mother?"

"I'll get her back later, Sage, but for now, you're the one who needs the safety."

"I want an explanation."  Sage demanded.

"We must get you to your aunt and uncle's," her father pondered aloud as if not hearing Sage's last statement, "You'll have a girl to play with, your age, and her older brother. You'll be safe there. I just hope they haven't found them yet."

"You're not staying with me?" Sage whispered.

"I can't."

"You never cared about me!" Sage screamed.

"Sage, it's not like that, I have so many things to do--"

"You can't even find time for your only daughter."

Her father went silent.

"You're not alone," was the only words she heard him speak.

---

Gwen now in a panic started to breakdown in hysterical sobs. Damian caught her as she collapsed to the floor. Picking her slight form up he carried her into her room. When he got there he got the smelling salts from the pouch on Gwen's dresser. Usually Gwen didn't stand for fainting or hysterics and that's why she had the salts and bandages.

She believed in the old fashioned remedies for everything she had learned everything from any natural healers they could find as they traveled. He was more into going out and enjoying himself but Gwen had dragged him to several of these places and also to weapons training.

She was fascinated with anything old-fashioned even weapons training. He had certain suspicions that his sister was a kind of seer. She had always been subconsciously prepared for everything. She often had packed exactly what they needed for herself nothing left out and not an article more than she would ever use. He had always just thought she was well prepared.

But this was just weird. He knew that he had to get Gwen and himself to safety before whatever was coming came and enslaved their minds or whatever their mother had said. This was not a time to doubt anyone.

---

"Not alone?" Sage repeated.

'Your brother's in trouble as well…"

"Brother?" Sage questioned. Her head hurt, and she was beginning to have a headache fro the constant pounding of the horse's hooves.

"Your mother should have told you this ages ago." Her father fumed. He didn't want to explain it all.

"Your brother, Dicken, is your identical twin. You two where separated at birth," Her father explained, slowing down the horse, "He lives with his adopted parents, about three days from here. We need to find him before they do."

"Who are they?" She asked.

"Unwanted guests." Was her father's only response.

They stopped at nightfall, and dined on the only breadsticks her father had left over and some water from a passing water hole.

"Are you going to be ok?" her father asked, eyeing her over his cup. She had been quite the whole time.

"I-I-I guess…"

"Here, have my bread-"her father offered, yet she intermittent.

"No. I'm not hungry." She stuffed her last few bites of bread in her over jacket pocket and wiped her hands on her blue dress. Her hair was coming out; so she took the bow out, and placed it back in gently.

"What's that on your dress?' her father asked, pointing to a dirt stain. He stuffed the last bite of his bread in his mouth. Sage ignored the bites of bread stuck in between his short beard and his moustache.

"Dirt stain." She replied dryly.

"You help out in the garden?"

"I have my own. Mother hates gardening." She looked away.

"How interesting-"

"If you're trying to be my father again, it won't work." Sage warned. "I don't open up to people who left me."

"I didn't-"

"Don't even bother. As far as I was ever concerned, I never had a father."
She looked down at her hands. She couldn't believe any of this. And she would want to be anywhere in the world, anywhere, but here.

"I'm sorry…you just don't understand-"her father tried, but stopped, and tried again. "You are right. I was wrong to leave, but thing have just been wild."

"Sure." She sighed.

They sat in silence.

---

Gwen revived from her hysterics was now frantic in packing and preparing for their expedition. She packed for both her and Damian, sending her brother to get her weapons and their travelling gear from the safe.

"Gwen! Hurry! I have the stuff. We better go. I have the tickets to Transylvania and we have to go before…" Damian was cut off by a piercing scream that came from their parent's room. They both knew what that meant and knew they had to leave as fast as possible however hard it was.

"Daim, I'm done let's go!!" With that Gwen and Damian sprinted for the door running for the train station. Trusting no vehicle they had to rely solely on themselves.

When they reached the station they jumped on the next train leaving for Ireland. They felt that they should start from their homeland in the place they felt the most comfortable.

---

After eating, and drinking, their full, Sage and her father got back on the horse and began to ride again. This time sage didn't touch her father.

"You should really hold on." Her father called back to her, over the thumping of the horse's hooves.

Sage promptly ignored him and held herself up quite nicely. It wasn't the first time she had ridden before.

Three days later, they arrived in a small town. Sage was very hungry, for she had finished her last bit of bread the last evening, and did not want any of the rabbit her father had caught.

"Hungry?" Her father asked.

'Right on time.' She thought, her stomach grumbling. Her father bought her some tea and flat bread at a stand, and got himself a loaf of bread, which he broke in halve and stuffed some in his jacket pocket.

"Let's go find your brother." Her father stood up after eating with Sage down on the ground, under a tree.