The boy who loved to write

The boy who loved to write (Chapter one)

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It was a dreary day for the inhabitants of Lac des saisons. A storm was brewing and the children were trapped inside, staring at a blank wall of snow. It seemed to the children that the weather was like this all day and night for most of the winter season.

It was on this normal, stormy day that one boy was inside staring at a blank piece of paper. A few times his pen flickered over It, but the boy would soon see some reason and cross it out. I should tell you early on in this story that this boy loved to write. He had a dream that one day he could become the most famous author in the world and have people write about him. Leo North.

This was in fact a very big part in him wanting to become an author, although not his main reason. Leo came from a very poor family compared to the other people in his village. In fact, his two brothers and his sister occasionally had to sleep in the outhouse because of how cramped their shack was. His father worked as a logger, day upon day dragging logs down lakes or rivers. They were so poor that they couldn't even afford paper, Leo's 'paper' was in fact a piece of bark he had picked from a Birch tree.

It seemed to Leo that the only thing in life was wood and the wilderness. He had never been further than 50 kilometers away from his shack and the only time he left his village was too do a job. To emphasize how much the village used wood as material, he was now sitting outside of a wooden shack, on top of a wooden, homemade porch the size of a shower cubicle, he was sitting on a wooden log, his table was also a wooden log and his paper was a piece of bark. His pencil was even made from the ashes of the fire. Let's say that the family were very good at recycling.

Leo stared at the great expanse of snow covering the ground. Usually, he would have tons of ideas popping around in his head, but now his head felt empty. It was almost as empty as the white wall of snow he was staring at right now. He could hear his brothers murmuring to each other and started to wonder if he could write a story about them. Then he dismissed the idea as the story would be so dull no one would read it:

Tony wakes up at five am in the morning, a new day ahead of him. His father is already downstairs with the porridge on the fire, all heated up and ready for Tony to eat. He eats the whole pot leaving none for his amazing and utterly handsome brother Leo...

You get the idea. Leo shook his head, trying to find some other things he could make an interesting book on. The wooden clock on the wall, no. The picture of the Yukon mountains, no. Nothing seemed to pop into his mind. Bella walked into the room; Leo scowled.

"Go away," he growled, doing his best impression of a black bear guarding its territory.

She started laughing, "Leo, dad's got some news, he wants us all in the kitchen." At this Leo sprinted past Bella, the only time dad had talks like this was when something happened. For instance, last time it was when a suspected tornado was coming, but that was very rare...

The small room could hardly hold its own furniture let alone the whole North family. Bella was standing in the doorway, a grim look on her face; Tony was chewing his thumb, something he rarely ever did; Daniel (Leo's sick brother) was sitting in a specially made chair and was staring at the floor; Leo's mum, Sarah, was kneeling down next to his father. He could sense something was wrong the moment he had entered the kitchen. There was an air about the room that he couldn't quite catch. He stepped away from his family's intense glares and hid behind Bella.

Sarah opened her mouth as if to speak and then closed it again, staring at Leo's father, Stanley, who didn't move a muscle. After an age of silence, he mumbled a few words that Leo couldn't understand. The words brought life back into the family.

"Oh Dad..."

"No way..."

"How long..."

Leo caught whispers of conversation but couldn't piece together a full sentence. Sensing Leo's confusion, Sarah shimmied through the commotion and sat him down on a bed.

"Leo, I'm sure that you know about the gold?" His Mum looked at him in an amazed way.

"What gold?" he asked. Being a sort of loner in the village did have its drawbacks, for instance he didn't know all the latest news.

"Well," said Sarah, "let's say that your Dad is going to go away for a while. Only to earn some money, then he will return." She put extra emphasis on the word return. Personally, he thought this was great. He always wanted live in a normal house with some money of his own, and now his dad was off to find a job.

"That's great news, Dads going to make us rich." At that, Leo jumped up and joined in with the commotion. Tony opened his mouth to speak but his Mum shook her head and walked out of the room.

***

The next day Leo was bouncing around the shack, volunteering to help Stan as much as he could. "Would you like some help, dad?" he would say, and his dad would shake his head and point to a pile of supplies. "You're welcome," Leo replied, and he brought them down one by one to the roadside. He couldn't understand why everyone in the family was acting so gloomy. The whole day was taken up with Leo trying to be helpful and the rest of the house sitting around looking grumpy. The only exciting moment was when Stan said he was going into the village. Leo tried to follow him but had the reply of "SHUT IT, GO TO YOUR ROOM!" Of course, Leo didn't have his own room, but he took the hint and disappeared from sight. After an hour of hiding in a snow fort next to the road, he heard voices:

"Don't get scared Stanley, you're the biggest of us and we don't like big softies."

"Yeah, if we find that gold then you're gonna have ta work for ye share."

Leo didn't like the way the men were talking to his Dad, and what was all this nonsense about gold?

"I told you," it was his dad now. "I'm worried about the kids and Sarah, I'm not sure they're going to be able to cope with me not around."

"Oh Stan, you can't be worried about them! We could die and no one will even know what happened to us..."

Leo didn't like what he was hearing, what sort of job was so dangerous that you could die from it? It didn't make sense.

"...We find the gold, okay, it's a twelve-month expedition, but if we find it, you won't have to live in that old shack." Leo closed his eyes and imagined that he was somewhere else, not sitting in the soggy snow listening to this conversation. The puzzle he had been trying to figure out was complete. His Dad was not going to some suitable job in the city, but was in fact risking his life looking for, what, gold? Leo thought back to the time where his father had announced the news. He suddenly felt very angry, why had no one told him? Leo started pounding the snow, startling the group of men and making a 'real show of himself' as his father would say. He started screaming, shouting swear words at no one in particular.

"He'll never come with you," Leo screamed louder and louder. He could hear a distant voice through his tears, "Stay there Leo, and don't come out until I've gone." Leo realized that his Dad had thrown him in the outhouse with the door locked. This might be the last time he would ever see his father again.