That night she had a terrible nightmare. She felt as if she were falling down the rabbit hole in Wonderland, falling down forever and ever. Eventually she found herself wishing it would just end, even if it hurt. It finally did end; however, she was unharmed. Amazingly, she landed in a pool of water...or some other dark substance. It wasn't cold, but Brooke found herself shivering anyway, probably from the sheer dark of the hole-so dark she couldn't even see the top of the hole, where there should have been a small circle of light, much less the hands in front of her face.
She screamed, but either no one heard or no one cared. She walked along the floor of the pool, feeling for the walls. But there weren't any. Just a never-ending pool of darkness.
Oh, Brooke, She thought to herself miserably. She almost laughed at the irony of her name: The infamous Brooke dies in some sort of giant well. It must be God's well, Brooke thought with a small glimmer of hope. He must be sending her a message or lesson!
Very suddenly, Brooke felt herself falling again, but only for an instant. She opened her eyes, which had been shut automatically as she started falling, and saw she was now sitting in the cool shade of a great big tree. It rested on a sloping bank just above a small stream that bubbled sparkling water to somewhere in the distance.
"Is that you, Princess Brooke?"
Brooke whirled around to see a strange woman start down a nearby hill. The land was very strange-woods to the...east?, flat plains to the south, hills to the north, and what looked like distant mountains to the west. Brooke turned her attention back to the woman as she came closer. She was very beautiful with light blonde, almost white hair that gently tumbled down the sides of her face to past her shoulders. Her face was diamond-shaped, very unlike Brooke's round one, and had clear, pale skin. Her lips were a light shade of pink, and her eyelashes were a perfect black. As she got closer, Brooke could see she was not a woman at all-in fact probably younger than she was-maybe 9? Despite her small size however, it was obvious she was more beautiful than any woman Brooke had seen. It was enough to unnerve her.
When she was close enough for Brooke to see a playful twinkle in her bright blue eyes-too cute to belong to such a pretty girl-Brooke called to her.
"Who are you? Where are we? How do you know my name? And Princess? You look more like a princess-"
"I understand you have many questions, but I may only answer a few due to our limited time."
She spoke with an elegance uncharacteristic of any nine-year-old girls Brooke had known.
"I am Marise, the guardian of this land. No man has ever visited before, so it is known only by my ancestors, who all call it something different. I call it Azarga, but most believe that to be an ugly name for a beautiful land." She paused to sigh. "You must follow me to find the answers to all your other questions."
She seemed delighted to help Brooke.
"How do you know all this if I'm the first human to visit, like, ever?"
"My ancestors are very wise…"
She trailed off as they reached a tree that seemed to be bigger than Moonacre. Brooke gasped as Marise pulled on a gigantic branch and a hidden door opened in the tree. Marise simply smiled at her as she led the way in.
The inside of the hidden castle was very different on the inside than it had seemed outside the tree. Brooke almost screamed aloud as a billion screams entered her mind and threatened to tear her apart, each one sending an electric shock throughout her body. "What's wrong?" Marise asked through her laughter. Brooke could barely breathe, much less answer. She had long ago shut her eyes and turned off her nose to the horrors within this torture castle, but she knew without looking Marise had a twinkle in her eye, as if she had just played a magnificent joke. And nobody could possibly forget the smell.
She awoke screaming, refusing to tell anyone, including her mother, what had happened in the dream. She even hid the tiny scar on her palm she had obtained from Marise. She simply lay on her bed for hours, shivering in the warmth of the sunlight streaming in from the glass roof.
She almost cried for fear when, after everyone had left, she felt the eerie feeling once again that someone was watching her. But unless it was the clouds, she could not see who it was. Not even the sight of her unicorn horn necklace fixed up could comfort her.