The Queen of the Elves

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Richie McCord leapt up into the train, skipping the three stairs and bumping into Bernard Greco. Bernard in turn was pushed into Mason who elbowed Caroline Jones in an attempt to keep upright. Caroline was standing off by herself as usual, and hadn't noticed Mason come up next to her. Therefore when she was suddenly jabbed in the back she yelped in surprise and turned suddenly on the offender.

"Sorry," Mason mumbled, feeling his ears burning red.

She lifted an eyebrow quizzically at him, but turned back to finding a seat, her own ears burning.

The whole Junior class was on a field trip. It was a historical train tour and all of those going were looking forward to hanging out with their friends and not paying attention to the tour. Everyone except Mason and Caroline. They had their own reasons, but they simply weren't going to enjoy it.

Neither of them was quite normal, Mason even less than Caroline. Mason wasn't quite human really. He had to work very hard to fit in and all of his conversations with anyone were forced and rather hard to follow. His friends noticed something different about him and his enemies took every chance they had to ridicule him about it. There wasn't really any one thing that made him weird, just a combination of little idiosyncrasies that threw his whole aura off. He looked normal for the most part: shaggy, jet-black hair that looked like he had spent two hours getting it to look like bed-head (Mason however, actually just had bed-head), tannish skin with a few freckles barely visible on his nose, average height of about 5'9", and a healthy weight. The only thing that really set him apart from others was his eyes. They sparkled and shifted constantly, changing color every few seconds. One second they would be blue then fade into gray, and then from gray they would darken and become black. Once they were black they might change back to blue or go on to purple, and so on. The one color they seemed to prefer was green and when they reached a certain hazy olive color they would falter and stay there for as long as even a whole day. But most of the time they were changing.

Mason found himself seated directly behind Caroline once everyone had settled down and found their seats. He began talking and trying to joke casually with the others around him.  Caroline sat hunched over in her chair writing furiously in the thickest spiral bound notebook known to mankind. No one talked to her, but she no longer cared. Caroline was secluded, a hermit, alone. She didn't like talking to people because she was afraid that everything that came from her mouth sounded dumb, or might be stupid. She was quite content to sit quietly and read, or write, or listen to music, completely alone in a crowd of people. She was however, at this moment, keenly aware of Mason's presence behind her.

On the other side of the train car sat two also abnormal teenagers. They were Bernard and Richie, best friends since birth. They had found out two months ago that they were half elf. Does that surprise you? Well, my dear reader, it surprised them a great deal too. It had come about that they were hiking together one day and a really, very odd pair had suddenly appeared before them. I will now recount that odd story for you, my reader, and come back to the present momentarily. To best give you an idea of what happened I'll copy a page from Richie's journal and let that explain.

                       Dear Journal,

I'm an idiot. Why the heck did I have to pick today to go prancing through the woods? It was stupid anyway. Guys don't randomly  go exploring their backyard. Idiotic thing to do.

Anyway, I wish we would have just stayed home, or something because I found out who my dad was. He was an elf! Not like Santa's elves, like the elves off of Lord of the Rings, in a way. Bernard's dad was too; apparently they caused the storm that killed our moms. I now really hate my dad, who is apparently still alive. We met our fathers for the first time today and they are forcing us to go on some quest for the Elvin queen Tatiana. I guess I'd like to explain from the beginning. See we had decided to hike through a part of the woods in Matilda's backyard that we haven't been in yet. As we were kicking and stomping along we heard music coming from a spooky hill that was surrounded by locust thorns. Just for the heck of it I stabbed this hill. I was just kind of goofing around with my new sword. As I drove my sword deep into the dirt a man suddenly appeared out of nowhere bearing a sword twice the size of mine. The man grabbed me by my shirt collar and began shaking me. I yelled and Bernard ran over and jumped on the man's back. Another man appeared and grabbed Bernard by his shirt collar and shook him! After a minute they dropped us and began speaking in these freaky hisses and gurgles to each other, then they pulled us to our feet.