So this chapter will be a little different. This one is showing what Zane, Zoey, Sensei Wu, Echo and Lucas are up to. That's right, you just read that. :) Enjoy! (:
5. On the Bounty
Zane walked out onto the upper deck. "Prince Lucas, your uncle wishes to speak to you," he said.
Lucas turned away from the edge of the run-down ship. "Zane, I've told you before you don't have to call me Prince Lucas. Just Lucas is fine."
"Sensei wants to talk to you, Lucas," Zane repeated.
Lucas nodded and walked down to the lower deck.
"Zane! Come play with me!" Echo said, running down to the upper deck.
Zane smiled to the young girl. "Okay," he said, "what do you wanna play?"
"Pirates!" Echo exclaimed. "I'm the captain!"
Zane smiled as Echo pulled him up to the bridge. The seven-year-old ran to the wheel and began turning it. Since the ship was broken, Echo played with the wheel and sails all the time.
"What are we searching for today, Captain?" Zane asked.
"There's an island out here," Echo said. "There's buried treasure on it!"
"Is that it, Captain?" Zane asked, pointing out the window to the "island"—which was just a small hill of sand in reality.
"Yes! Brave for impact! There's no time to do this properly!" Echo shouted.
Zane stifled a chuckle. "Aye, aye, Captain."
"Zane said you wanted to talk to me," Lucas said, entering the small room that his uncle slept in. The prince always wondered why his uncle didn't take the main quarters, but he never really asked.
"Yes," Wu said, sitting on the floor, drinking tea, "please sit down."
Lucas never liked it when his uncle asked him to sit down. It always meant the discussion was serious and probably long. Reluctantly, he sat cross legged in front of Wu.
"Lucas, I've been thinking, and if you wish to return to the palace, you may," Wu said. "It was wrong of me to force you to come, and it was on the slim chance that my suspicions were true."
"Uncle, really, I'm fine being here," Lucas argued, "and it was more than a slim chance. Since I turned twenty-one, my father has been acting strange. You didn't force me, I came completely of my own will. If I felt you were wrong, if I had one-hundred percent faith in my father, I would've stayed."
"I suppose you're right," Wu sighed. "I only wanted you to know you can leave whenever you want. If you want to go back, even for a night just to reassure Alexandra–"
"She goes by Alex now," Lucas corrected his uncle. "The nickname I have her…well she likes that more than her birth name."
Wu nodded. "So if you want to go reassure Alex, then you can. I know how close you two are."
"Thank you, but I can't go back to the palace without being noticed," Lucas said, "but my sister being worried isn't my biggest fear. My biggest fear, is that the rebellion is being blamed and targeted. If my father thinks they took me, he'll do everything in his power to kill every last one of them."
"So that way he can get to you before anything permanent to him can happen," Wu finished. "I understand how you feel but–"
"Daddy!"
Wu stood and hurried to the upper deck. Lucas followed behind, worried for his cousin. When he walked out onto the deck, Echo was crying and Wu was holding her close.
"Zane, what happened?" Lucas asked.
"I do not know," Zane said in his monotoned voice. "She ran out of the bridge to go onto the "island" when suddenly she screamed."
"They wuh-were s-snakes," Echo said shakily. "Buh-big snakes."
"Serpentine?" Zoey questioned as she came up behind Lucas. "Oh, Echo, they don't mean any harm. They must've just noticed the ship and got curious. The serpentine haven't bothered people since King Montgomery made peace with them decades before you were even born."
Echo sniffed. "Really? Maybe I'm just afraid of snakes."
"Well there's nothing to be scared about with these snakes," Wu said.
"Do you think there are any serpentine my age? Do you think they'd play pirates with Zane and I?" Echo asked.
Lucas chuckled. "Maybe, but if they don't come around here again, then I'm guessing not," he said, not wanting to crush Echo's idea but also not wanting her to run off looking for them.
Wu messed with one of Echo's pigtails. "Why don't you go do your homework or something for a little while," he suggested.
"Oh, fine," Echo said. She walked down to the lower deck.
"Do you really believe there are any serpentine children willing to play with Echo?" Zoey asked.
Lucas shrugged. "Why not? We are outside of the kingdom, so they might be brave enough to approach us."
"Just please do not get her hopes up," Wu said before heading back to the lower deck.
"Zoey, will you help me with something?" Zane asked. "In the bridge."
"Um, sure," Zoey said. The siblings walked into the bridge, leaving Lucas alone on the upper deck.
Echo opened her window and leaned on it. She had a perfect view of…sand. There was nothing but sand for miles. Before Zane and Zoey came, she'd thought that's all the world was. Sand. She'd asked her dad a couple times why they never when into the kingdom, and he always replied by saying, "We don't belong." She never understood why they didn't belong.
Then one day her dad came back with Lucas. He was the prince and old enough to become king! Echo smiled at the thought, that she knew the prince so maybe they'd fit in. Nope. Nothing changed and Lucas never went back because it was 'dangerous.' Now what was so dangerous that the prince couldn't be in his own kingdom?! Echo felt she was left out of 'that' conversation.
There was a sudden move in the sand that snapped Echo from her thoughts. A snake walked out from behind a small pile of sand. At first the young girl was scared, but then she remembered what Zoey and Lucas said.
"Uh, hi," she said shyly.
"Hi?" the snake asked. His red eyes locking with Echo's, which was a little scary until he looked away quickly. "Oh, um, I'm ssssorry I scared you."
"It's fine," Echo assured him. "I just didn't know." She studied his white and blue scales. She didn't know snakes could be blue. "What kind of serpentine are you?" she asked curiously.
"I'm apart of the Hypnobrai tribe," the snake said. "We're one of the most feared tribes, so it kinda makes sensssse that I scared you."
Echo smiled. "Hypnobrai huh?"
She quickly turned to her desk. She grabbed her chair and moved it over to the bookshelf. She climbed up and grabbed a book called, 'The Ancient Races'. She walked back to the window and set the book down on the seal. She flipped through it until she found 'Hypnobrai.'
"Nice book," the Hypnobrai commented.
"Thanks," Echo said, still reading it, "my dad got it for me, but I've never really read it…here it is! You can hypnotize people when you look in their eyes and rattle your tail, right?"
"Yep, except I don't know how to do that yet," the snake said. "We're ssssuppose to learn on our own, but I haven't really tried to."
"Oh…by the way, my name is Echo."
"I'm Rattla."
"Cool name."
"Thank you, Echo."
Echo looked down at the book again, trying to find more information. "Wait…judging by your scales I'm going to guess you're a…scout."
"Yeah," Rattla said, "and judging by your ssssize and how easily you got scared, I'm gonna guessss you're eight."
"Close, I'm seven," Echo corrected, "but nice guess."
Rattla smiled. "So do you wanna go play? I know this fun place outsssside of the kingdom–"
"I'm not allowed to go to the kingdom," Echo mumbled.
"What?" Rattla gasped dramatically. "Then you definately have to ssssneak out."
"I dunno," Echo mumbled, "if my dad found out–"
"Do you always do what 'Daddy' tellssss you to?" Rattla interrupted.
"Well…don't you?" she asked.
"If I did, would we be having this talk?" he questioned.
Echo hesitated and put her book on her bed. She turned back to the window and stared at it. This was her only chance, she might as well take it. She ran over and jumped out of the window, landing right next to Rattla.
"Let's go."
Dun. Dun. DUNN!
Will Echo get caught? Can she really trust Rattla? What are Zoey and Zane talking about?
Review!
