QUEST
By G.E Waldo
Copyright © 2010 by G.E Waldo
Cover design by G.E Waldo
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
G.E Waldo
Visit my website at:
http://questbooks.webs.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: February 2010
ISBN-
978-0-557-37826-5
QUEST
CHAPTER 1
"Miss." Old Joneth said, a large thick-limbed, red faced fellow with tired eyes. His mistress Noane, the daughter of his former master, did not hear him.
"Miss, Miss!" Finally she looked at him, her long black braids sprinkled with straw from the bundle she carried in her arms.
One great rough hand pointed to the darkening clouds beyond the hill behind her farm. "There's a storm coming."
Noane's eyes followed his pointing finger, and she sucked in her breath. It was true. Huge dark clouds, stacked one on top of the other like the hay bales in the feed barn, rolled across the distant fields toward them. A dark, lumbering creature filled with fury was quickly swallowing the sky. She spoke quickly. "Joneth, don't forget the sheep's feed."
Noane raced toward the thatched roofed animal barn, her tanned hide shoes making little dust devils in her haste. Chores must be completed quickly now, and she hurried through the rest of the feeding and mucking out. Joneth himself finished with his tasks and then leaned on his rake, his face crinkled with humor. He had seen Noane like this many times.
Noane finished piling three heavy bags of corn as quickly as possible in the feed shed. The last rays of the evening sun shone on her chocolate skin. A steadily blackening shroud slowly engulfed the heavenly orange disk.
Joneth watched her customary race to the little hill behind the farm with a shake of his head. "There she goes."
Noane's heart beat faster. She hastily retrieved her long cape from the log and mud house and ran toward the hill, her faded blue and black striped dress flapping around her ankles.
A storm was coming. Noane ran to greet it.
She stopped at the top of the highest hill. When others would head indoors to some hot tea and biscuits, Noane would come here where a few stunted trees would stand stubbornly with her on the otherwise bare hump of granite. Wind blown rain struck her cheeks. Each droplet stung like the bite of an insect, but she did not mind. Her heart beat faster.
Noane looked down to the small house with the smoke rising from the chimney, but that frame of ordinary things did not intrude. It was not the time to think of tasks. Noane lifted her chin in the air, turned her nose to the approaching beast and closed her eyes.
That beast was close. Under its mysterious power, she would fly to a more wonderful place where, within the storm clouds and under the rain, trees would bow and sway, the sky would darken and become like an ocean above her, all movement and surge. Clouds, lined with gold from above, rolled over and over like when she and her father used to roll the bundled hay sheaves down the hills, would become her closest companions.
