The Oracle of Avalbane

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Kate 

     We met Elys, the Elfwitch from Avalbane, in late summer before our senior year. She suddenly appeared in my room, right in front of me.

          Now, when I say appeared, I mean exactly that. I was lying there running through scenarios in my head of how I was going to get Jason Jensen to ask me out when this girl suddenly appears in my room. She has this ethereal look about her like she’s part angel or something. She looked so surprised when I yelled that she jumped about a foot and then looked like she wanted to curse.

          “You can SEE me?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline.

          “Yeah, sort of…” I said hesitantly.

         She stomped her foot and frowned. “NO ONE has ever been able to see me when I have on the amulet of invisibility.”

          “Oh, sorry.” I’m sure I sounded sarcastic, but I have to admit I was a little intimidated. She had on this outfit made out of some kind of stretchy gray stuff, and had long dark curly hair from which small pointed ears stuck out. What the heck? But in spite of the clingy outfit and hair, she looked… fierce. She had this dagger-like thing strapped to her side and with that frown—well, let’s just say even my brother Cole might have taken a step back and he is, or rather was, an Army Ranger.

          “Who are you?” I managed to ask.

          She moved towards me, examining me closely, even reaching out and pulling up a lock of my chestnut hair. Instead of answering my question, she said. “You look a lot like Rose.”

          “Rose? My grandmother?” I wasn’t sure what to think. This girl, or whatever she was, was young and obviously not from around here. Yet she seemed to have known my beloved, dead, grandmother.

          “Yes. Her portrait hangs in a place of honor in the Great Hall of Brynallt Castle. My father, the Oracle, had it placed there soon after she…left Avalbane.” She smiled a little. I guess the fact that I looked like my grandmother was a good thing, although I was more confused than ever.

          “Where the heck is Brynallt castle, or whatever you called it?”

          “Avalbane,” she said shortly. “You have a very strange manner of speaking.”

          “I could say the same,” I retorted. “But hang on a minute. You mean Avalbane is a real place?”

        Before she could answer, my brother Zach suddenly opened my door. He looked at me and then around my room.

          “Aha! Talking to yourself, Kate? The final piece of evidence I need to convince Dad that you are psycho and I should get our car to myself.” He said this with satisfaction.

          I glanced at him and then at the strange girl. Evidently he couldn’t see her, which brought a smile to her face but not to mine. Half of that car belonged to me. Besides, I wasn’t the crazy one. He was the one the police had hauled home when he broke into the Biology lab and freed the freaking frogs from dissection by the summer school biology students.

          “I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking to a girl from…” I choked on what I was about to say, somehow knowing in that moment that our life was about to change. ”From Avalbane.”

          Zach stared at me with the blazing blue eyes that had melted many of my friends hearts, only now they were stretched wide with disbelief. “I was kidding before, but now I really do think you’ve lost it.”