"Where the hell are we?" Jerome yelled out as he almost slipped out of his saddle. Normally I would ignore his angry comments but I had to agree with him. This place was no English countryside. Our whole gang had been trotting along for about two hours and the moon was slowly rising as the sun set. The thing about the mom was that it was changing colors. Every single minute whatever color the moon was glowing faded into a new and different one. If this was a normal situation and we were back at Anubis house I would have been studying it, trying to find a scientific reason to why it was changing colors. The thing was we weren't at home and I truly doubted a scientific reason for it. Actually I doubted a scientific reason existed in this land at all.
"I wish I knew! This moon and this map aren't working what so ever." Mara rubbed her temples in frustration. She was right- you really couldn't see much in the ever changing light. Sometimes you would get a bright white light and then other times a dark black glow would shine down on us. While it was fascinating it wasn't really practical. At the moment I was truly wishing we had a torch on us.
"Well we're still in the forest…but it seems to be thinning out a bit. I'm sure we'll get there soon." I reassured my friends, even though the woods didn't seem to be thinning out in the slightest. In fact the tall trees seemed to be getting even less spaced out. In the beginning we were all able to ride in a large group, but now we were going in pairs of two, side by side. Nina, who was born in and raised in Wisconsin, and I were the only ones who had any lessons before, so we were leading the way.
"Yeah I'm sure it'll only be a couple more hours." Nina backed me up to the rest of our friends. Even though her voice sounded somewhat convincing she sent me a disbelieving look, obviously knowing I had been lying.
Shrugging my shoulders I tried to make my horse move faster, because frankly, I was getting tired. Orno struggled for a moment before going forward slightly. Furrowing my brow I ignored the horse's slight protest and turned my thoughts to other, more important matters. Like the fact that my parents weren't really my parents. In fact none of my friends parents were who they thought they were. The people who had raised me and had treated me so well weren't even my parents. It wasn't even as if I had been adopted or anything. I wasn't wanted by them or anything or maybe I was I didn't get much of a back story, and they took care of me anyway.
I was lucky I winded up with good people. The people Jerome got stuck with were horrible. I had only met them once before and even from that five minute encounter I knew they disliked him. They always glared at him with looks of pure hatred and they never visited on the designated days. It wasn't a good situation and I'm just grateful I didn't get put into that situation.
Patricia had gotten the short end of the stick as well. Her mother and father tried to make her prim and proper, but it truly wasn't a smart move. She rebelled so hard she got sent off to Anubis house.
Of course everyone else had gotten off pretty easily. Most of us had great parents with great lives and everything we had ever wanted. Now that I knew it had all been a lie I didn't find it so so great. It seemed fake, and if the people I called Mom and Dad never truly loved me like they would if I was their biological son?
Now all of that stuff was in the past, a recent past, but still the past. In the present and the immediate future I was going to have to push the thoughts behind me and brave forward into a land that had never been proven real by science. In fact basically nothing that happened in the past few day or so had been proven by science. Folklore, fairytale, and mythical characters had come alive. They were real. One was, is, my father. I had to push those thoughts out of my head because I was becoming quickly distracted.
"Mate...are you getting the feeling we're being watched?" Mick held his horse at a study pace next to mine as he whispered to me. His voice was laced with an urgency I barely ever heard from him and he had a distressed look covering his normally calm face. Mick never got worried unless it was something he felt strongly about or something food related.
Glancing around I tried to locate the source of Mick's worries. While the forest was spooky because of the tall trees and dim colorful lights I couldn't see nor sense anything particularly threatening.
"Not really. Sorry Mick, I don't see anything." I told him. He pressed his lips together and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well alright. I don't have a good feeling right now. I'm sure it's okay though, you're probably right." Even though he agreed with me he still looked worried. His eyes moved around anxiously and he continued to nod, as if reassuring himself.
Turning my head away from Mick I looked forward, trying to get a sense of what was deeper in the forest. All I could see was the clear dirt path we were walking on and the countless trees that surrounded it.
"This is rubbish!" Patricia yelled as she threw her hands up in the air. "I can't see a damn thing, this horse smells and keeps kicking me off, we're apparently all adopted or whatever, and I have to pee! Ahh!" She ranted. Our eyes grew wide at the pissed off Patricia. She was angry, tired, and not a happy camper. "I mean my God, this has to be a dream! We have to be drunk or something! Damn it- this can't be real! It just can't!" Her voice became hysterical, meshed with tears I had never seen escape Patricia. Her head whirled around to look at as all. The look of her was shocking. Her eyes looked almost deranged and her hair had been whipped around her face messily. Prickling at her eyes angry tears threatened to stream down her face if she let them go awry. "Aren't you going to agree with me? Why won't you say anything?"
"Patricia... we have to believe it. If we don't...what does it make us? Crazy? Insane? I know for a fact this isn't a dream and we aren't drunk either. I don't know why you're being so defiant but you're going to have to stop it. Because if you don't your going to drag us all down-and where we are right now isn't Anubis House. For all we know we could die out here! So stop complaining and shut your god damn mouth!" Nina lectured Patricia with more zeal then I knew she could muster. Startling enough this was one of the rare times I had heard Nina get so mad she cursed. Flat out cursed. It wasn't so much the word itself that was shocking but the fact that she could put so much energy behind it and mean it too.
"Did you just...cuss Nina? See Patricia this can't be a dream! Nina swearing is beyond your wildest imagination!" Alfie chuckled slightly, obviously trying to make the rising tension go down. It helped myself and the others because they're faces cracked into smiles but Patricia's face was still tense.
"Whatever." She turned away from us, hiding her face with her hair. Biting my lip I wanted to comfort her, considering that she was one of my best friends. Knowing Patricia though she wasn't the type that like to be comforted in the first place. Letting her horse trod behind us we trekked forward farther into the never ending forest.
"So...since that little spat is over with anyone want to tell me how much farther we have to go?" Amber questioned as she looked around with curious eyes.
"Amber we don't know! This map isn't telling us anything and it's not like a pixie or something is going to pop out from the woods." Mara explained to Amber.
And, for the first time since we had gotten here, nothing mythical jumped out at us.
"Well...that was anti-climatic," Alife muttered as he glanced around us, seemingly still looking for something. I nodded my head- I had been expecting a little girl with wings to whiz out of the forest and help us.
"Guys...I think we need to hurry up." Mick told us all with a wary look in his eyes. "Something isn't right. I can feel it." The panic was back in his voice and his eyes began to dart about again.
"Mick I'm sure we're fine." I reassured him again. Mick was never this panicky, he was always very nonchalant and unaware. It was surprising that he would be this concerned over nothing.
"Well I still don't-" He was cut off by a loud rustling in the woods. Our whole gang fell silent as our eyes darted over to the place where the noise had come from. The green leaves moved and I was sure it was just a small animal. Feeling safe I motioned for my horse to move forward.
"Holy shi-" Mick yelled from behind me. His scream was cut off by a loud growl. Turning my head backwards I saw a large wolf, with she-wolf like
"Get out! I as the Etruscan wolf command you to leave!" Evil and hatred, dripped through the wolf's snout as it spoke, fast as lighting in pounced on all of us, seemingly trying to kill us.
"Ahs!", "Oh my god!" and "Crap!" filled the air as our horses moved forward faster then I had ever seen any horses move before. The snarling wolf chased after us, snapping at the horses back. Nina led the way, being the fastest rider out of us all, pointed to the green glow that looked to be a huge barrier dividing this forested land and a seemingly endless town.
Before we could even reach the barrier the horses hind legs went up and I was being bucked from the horse. In fact we all were being bucked. Flying through the air we passed through the green light, and I felt myself losing the power I had previously had, as I hit the hard ground. Thankfully the backpack broke my fall.
A final snarl could be heard from the evil wolf as it took back into the woods where it had come from.
"Looks like we found Mercury. And I'm pretty sure it's my land." Alfie's voice sounded more serious then I had ever heard it before. He was right though. This place screamed Alfie. Lights flashed in bright colors, buildings twirled, and it was like a circus.
"Yeah Alfie, I think you're right."
AN- I've really got nothing to say besides sorry. This has been typed for a long time but still my beta is all MIA. I'll probably send a Pm or something...yeah thanks for reviews, and please leave more-that's the only way I'll know what you think!
izzi08- Hehe that little bit of Jara you mentioned...get ready for a boat load of it later ;)
Eccentric Illusionist- Yeah I did go back and notice my mistakes. I'm terribly sorry! Thank you for your wonderful offer but I love your reviews so much it would be a shame to have them stop! Your theories and guesses are very very...good. But I won't say more- but when they move to a new land the POV will change to whoever land it is. :)
alice-in-wonderland-22-Poor, poor Amber. :P Thank you!
SunnyShanghae- Awww thank you! Your comments mean a lot and they make me very happy! Rhymes are fun aren't they? :)