Elora Danan

Prologue

There once was a 15-year-old girl who lived in a castle far, far away. Life was pretty normal, she read for her studies, enjoyed her walks outside in the warming spring weather, loved getting dressed up charmingly for her days when she went to the small town to be admired from afar by the young gentlemen – pretty ordinary.

Her bedroom was her sanctuary. She lived in the highest room, in the tallest turret, and her window looked out over all the land. She could see mountains of green and grey in the far off distance. Coating the land up to the foot of the mountains were dense forests of pine, cedar and also of willows. On the far right on the horizon there was a vast valley from where the river flowed. Closer to the castle there was a smaller river and a ravine with trees all along the edges. The land was mostly dense, green forests that smelled of summer rains and when it was colder out, of crispy leaves. On warm summer nights, the air was filled with a thin, navy mist, often speckled with fireflies glimmering in the twilight. Either a full moon or crescent moon would grace the sky, floating serenely and casting an eerie yet comforting blue light upon the kingdom below. There were never no-moon nights in this land and on the rare occasion there was, trouble brewed. On a cool fall night the air was crisp and the wind had more of a howl to it – rejecting the cold and longing for its days of warm mist. Leaves would crackle and a darker, shadier mist filled the air just above the ground, concealing the foot of trees but broken by the odd, twisted root that surfaced from beneath its midst.

Yes, Elora Danan always welcomed the day with the same thoughts, the same perception of her menial life as a royal. On this morning, however, the air was full of new fragrance from buds and from the rain that fell the night before. Her renewed sense of belonging always returned in the spring. A fine mist remained in the air and the sun looked down on the periwinkle tree tops, with a hazy yellow squint. Birds flew in the sky and rejoiced the return of warmer weather, even though the winter had been a mild one. No winter ever lasted more than a month and the winters that fell were pure, snowy seasons of cleansing. Summer was the longest season, followed by cool and crisp autumns of bare tree branches and the annual Ruckmaran festival. On that day, however, it was time. Time for something that the castle within the kingdom was not prepared for. Something that no one could see coming, especially not Elora.