The traders come at last

It was two years after this conversation that everything changed. I woke up really exited. The traders were coming today! This shouldn't have been a big deal to me, after all, traders came all year, but it was, because Alieina wouldn't shut up about these particular traders. One day I asked her why.

"Duh," she answered, "they're the only ones who are written about in Eragon!"

I rolled my eyes. And today was the day that the traders would come at last.

Around noon, we heard the sound of approaching horses, and people. Alieina rushed outside to see them, and the rest of us followed more slowly. What we saw, was Alieina staring open-mouthed at someone. I looked closer.

The face was too fine to be a man's, and he moved with a grace impossible to be human.

That's right. It was Eragon. Eragon Shadeslayer. Alieina wasn't the only one exited, but I was exited for a completely different reason. 'If Eragon is here,' I thought, 'Then Saphira must be too!' I had always held more interest in Eragon's blue-scaled companion then with the rider himself.

I would do anything to have a dragon.

I should probably mention that a year ago, Alieina made a shocking discovery. One winter's night, when she had come hunting with me, she was freezing her butt off on the mountain, and tried to light a fire.

She did not succeed.

In frustrated, she cried out (In English, we never used the Alagaesian tongue while on the mountain) Why won't this stupid fire-"

She cut herself off there, and it was obvious why.

Just as she said the word 'fire' the jumbled heap of twigs and branches roared into a bright purple fire, warmer than an ordinary fire, which instantly melted the snow a few feet in all directions, forming a ring of bare earth.

Alieina had used magic.

A month of experimenting brought us to the following conclusions.

All six of us could use magic to varying degrees. Alieina could use it best, and I was not quite so talented… the best I could do was light fires and hunt with magic.

English in our world was the same as the ancient language here

Magic makes skinning a squirrel a whole lot more fun.

Anyway, we dragged Alieina back to the shop before she made a complete fool of herself, and managed to restrain her. At least, until Eragon stepped into the shop.

Then we had no chance.

She threw herself at him, fending off all our attempts to get her off him. Finally I knocked her out with a large rock.

Eragon stepped up to the counter. I gasped. No, I was not gasping at the fact that he was walking. I was gasping because in my backpack had been a copy of Eragon. That book now lay on the counter.

I started to hurry towards it, intending to grab it and chuck it out a window or something, but Eragon had already noticed it.

He picked it up.

He looked at it.

He read the title.

He skimmed the summary at the back.

Then he said, "What is this?"

So we told him everything. Actually, Alieina did. And she really told him EVERYTHING. Our world, the books, the plague, and the shadows. And things that no one should ever have to know. Like how she has hair on her feet.

I know.

Not nice.

The next day, after the traders had left, we found a note from Alieina on her pillow. It read.

Sorry to leave,

But I'm going after Eragon!

I'm going to travel with the traders in hopes of meeting Eragon again.

See you same time next year!

You'd have thought that we'd now had enough adventure for a life time. But we hadn't. We still had to…

Figure out how to make the shadows remember,

Get back to our own world, and

Get Alieina back.