The Puppeteer of Palladia

Chapter 1

"Lilac! Stop ferreting around and go help your uncle!"

Lilac winced as her Aunt Meryl's sharp voice rang through the kitchen. She grudgingly withdrew her head from the fridge, and shot a resentful look at the beautiful frosted cupcake sitting right on the shelf, taunting her. Heaving a sigh, she shut the fridge and slumped out of the little kitchen. Like her uncle needed any help. And like she would be able to help anyway.

Lilac, or as she preferred, Lila, was very small for her age, skinny and petite. Her parents had sent her off to live with her aunt and uncle for a month and a half, hoping it would knock her supposed shyness out of her. Of course, this shyness didn't exist; just Mr and Mrs Mon Harde barely saw anything of their daughter, so they just presumed what they didn't know.

So now Lila was stuck in the middle of nowhere, helping run her uncles little farm. Chickens, cows, goats, sheep, and a couple of horses. Oh, and three llamas. Mustn't forget the llamas. Mostly, Lila looked after the chickens, as they were really the only things she could take on without running away if they made a noise. But today, her uncle wanted to move twenty goats into the next paddock. Really, he would have much more success without Lila getting in the way.

As she stepped out into the bright sun, a scream rent the air.

Luckily, it was only Essa. Lila suspected perhaps Essa's parents dropped her as a baby or something, as she had always been the weird one. One of her eyes was blue, the other, black. They almost banged into her face as Essa herself rushed towards her.

"LILA! Guess what! We're moving goats! Rhymes with moat! And boat! A goat in a boat on a moat! Haha!"

Lila gently pushed her away, and together, or as together as you could be with someone pretending now to be a rabbit, they made their way over to the paddock gates.

"Ho! Lila! Over by the gate please! Keep it open until I say shut it!" Lila's uncle bellowed at her. She slowly padded over to the gate, and carefully grabbed one of the metal bars. All of a sudden, goats were flying towards her. Abandoning all pretence, she jumped over the fence and ran.

"LILA! COME BACK!" Lila could hear her uncle yelling for her, but she didn't listen. She just ran towards the thatch of trees, hidden within there was a little pond.

~~~~~~

Lila sat picking at some reeds, squatting next to the pond. The girl that looked back at her from inside the pond had a few freckles across her cheeks, and her long chocolate hair hung in two braids. Scared green eyes flitted over the little tadpoles frolicking in the water.

She froze. She could hear something. Not hear, but feel. Something rumbling slightly, something definitely not normal.

A loud screeching noise pierced the clearing, and Lila was frozen to the spot. Slowly, coming in and out, something large and blue started to materialize on the other side of the pond. It boomed into place, fully materialized, and sat there for a few seconds.

It was a police box, one she'd only seen in history books. What it was doing here, out of it's time, and definitely out of its place, she had no idea. Suddenly, the door opened and a young woman stepped out, looking sceptical. Not noticing Lila, she called out behind her, "Did you say water planet? This isn't a water planet, not unless they happen to have very normal looking forests." Her eyes swept the clearing, and then they found Lila. They both froze, staring at each other.

"Er, Doctor, we have a little problem."

A mans voice, getting progressively louder, came from inside the box, sounding irritated.

"What is it this time? Some sort of monster? An ambush?" He stepped out of the box behind the woman, looking around. "Ah, Earth again? What is it with you and your people Clara?" He, just like the woman Clara, scanned the area, then rested of Lila.

One person coming out of a materializing box is one thing. Two, not possible. Lila jumped to her feet, and not taking her eyes off the pair, backed away. She tripped on a rock, and the woman moved forwards, but Lila jumped back up and ran, not glancing back, all the way back to the farm house.

~~~~~~

"But Uncle Don, I saw it! I swear it was real! A man and a woman just appeared out of nowhere! They were talking and they were saying weird things, but it was in english an--"

"Lila! You just panicked after the goats, you were seeing things, okay?" Lila swallowed her complaints, and tromped out up to her room. When she got to the door, it was very dark. Her light switch was next to her bed, however, and no way was she going in to turn it on. She quietly walked back downstairs, and found her aunt and uncle having a quiet argument.

"There is no way she'll be able to survive in the world! She's scared of her own shadow, for crying out loud! Melinda might not see it, but I think the girl is right. She's not shy, she has got some sort of problem!"

"She can still think, Meryl! She isn't so deluded that she has serious problems!"

"Yes, I know, but I think the poor girl would be much better off in isolation, perhaps in a children's institution-"

"Would that help her get any better? If anything, it would make her worse! She's scared of everything! Imagine what shoving her into a new place with new people and changes in her routine would do to her!"

"Look, lets just try her for the rest of the stay. That’s all we were asked to do." Lila heard chairs scraping on the ground as they were pushed back. She silently dashed back up the stairs to her room, but froze when she realised it was still pitch black in there.

"Lilac? You okay dear?" Her aunts voice floated towards her.

"It's dark in there." Her aunt gave an audible sigh, but pushed past her to turn on the light.

Lila settled into her plump bed, thinking about what she'd heard. So her aunt thought she should be in a mental institute? No way was she going to go and get 'treated', in other words, prodded, poked, and experimented on, by some random doctors.

Doctor.

The word spiked something in her memory.

"Er, Doctor, we have a little problem," Said the woman with the bronze hair, looking around from the blue box.

Doctor.

Could she do it? Possibly the riskiest thing ever in her life?

Well, one thing was for certain. It was this, or a mental institute. She would never manage to fix anything by sitting idle.

Quick as a flash, she grabbed a bag and shoved some clothes and pills and things that helped with her fears in.