{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK V} The Journey Across Water

France

5: France

After my mother died, my grandmother died, and, as far as I was concerned, my father and brother had never existed, everyone was sort of running out of relatives to dump me on.

Apparently, my mother had had a sister, who was, miraculously, alive and not unfit to look after a small child.

She was single and unmarried, with no children, and her criminal record wasn't even blemished in any way.

The only slight disadvantage of me going to live with Auntie Romane was that she was in Calais, France.

This meant that, not only would the Council have to pay for me to get there, all this legal business which I still don't get would be messed up.

Still, it was cheaper (in the long run) than putting me into Care, so I was to be shipped out (literally) to France.

The ferry terminal was big. It wasn't scary, though. The real scary bit was the vast, vast stretch of water called the English Channel that loomed out behind it.

Having been living up North, Dover was a long way away. I had to sit at the back of a social worker's car for five hours as she drove me across the country to get a better deal on ferry tickets. I remember being really, really, bored. The ****ty Social Worker-

"See?" Olivia said. "That was alliteration. You can now use alliteration, similes and metaphors!"

Sasha wailed. "Is there any stupid writing thing that I could use to SHUT YOU UP?"

"Erm..." Olivia tried to look thoughtful. "Power of three insults? A pen nib? You could prod me with it."

"I didn't like you when you were all wise and mysterious, pursing your lips and saying nothing. I think I like even less now you've opened up after telling me your life story and have started talking back, trying to make jokes, and, well, smiling."

"So soz." Olivia replied.

Sasha screamed. "You- you- you- used text language in a sentence? You never do that! You hate all abrevi8ions."

"Yes." The Leader of the Association of Elementists responded dryly. "The real Olivia died of boredom while you were debating when to start. I, her electrically-reproduced clone duplicate remain. Oh," She added in a normal tone, "And that wasn't a sentence. It was a minor sentence."

"That- that's what I mean! You're- you're being sarcastic!" Sasha was getting (slightly) freaked out now. "Is this the real Olivia Green?"

"No." Olivia snapped. "The real Olivia Green is the little girl who ran through the woods with Gama, and made vanilla cupcakes with minty green icing with Mama in the kitchen. The real Olivia Green is the little girl who read Enid Blyton books at the top of the world's biggest oak tree. The real Olivia Green is the little girl who played with her lions in her bedroom, and had not a care in the world, and thought that life was so- so perfect that it could never change."

"There we go!" Sasha clapped her hands together. "You're back!" She glanced at an unopened packet of biscuits on the table behind them. "Jammy dodger anyone?" She tried to reach for them, but in the process accidently knocked them against Ethan's walkie-talkie on the wall, and gave up.

"The real Olivia Green is most definitely not the girl who is put under constant pressure every day, thanks to the products of two great mistakes her ancestor Hephzibah made. She is also not the girl that was so freakin' terrified of when the descendant of Hephzibah's enemy came with an army of the creatures made by Hephzibah's other great mistake to invade her newly re-found home, and all the people that somehow ended up in it, she made a stupid deal with the boy's sister in the hope that she'd learn something about the boy that she could use to save her forest when he came. The real Olivia Green," Olivia spat, "Died the day that Les STUPID Serpents Rouges demanded that her mother and grandmother take her away from her home, and dump her in some stupid... city, away from her home, away from her forest, and away from everything she ever loved."