“Why are they packing my things?”

The dark-haired lord looked up from his account book and stared into the eyes of his son. “You’re thirteen, plenty old enough to be on your own.”

“You’re... kicking me out?”

The man frowned. His son looked so much like him... and yet... in his mother’s dark blue eyes, there was something wild... almost beastly. “Yes. I never want to see you again.” The dark-haired man looked back down at his account book. The red ink was better than looking the incarnation of his sin in the face. “You’ll be fine.”

“But where am I to go?” the child asked. “And who will go with me?”

“No one will be going with you,” the lord said. “There are some servants already employed at that castle.”

“But where is it?” the boy asked, impatience and panic making his voice crack.

The man gestured for his son to leave. “You needn’t worry about that. Mana, take him away.” He held out the account book he’d been studying to Mana, who took it and nodded.

“But where am I going?” the boy shouted to his father as the servant ushered him from the room. “Why do I have to go alone?”

“You won’t go alone,” Mana whispered once he’d shut the door behind him. “Allen will go with you.”

The boy left that evening with his personal servant and friend, Allen. The ride was long and went late into the night, so late, that the lord’s son fell asleep. But Allen stayed awake and stared out the window, running what his father had said over and over in his mind.

Mana’s words had been vague, but Mana was always like that. Still, his words before they’d left had made no sense. “Stay with the young master, no matter what form he may take,” was all his father had told him, and he wouldn’t say any more, even though Allen had asked. Of course, his father had given him a note to give his friend and master in a few days time. Allen was just itching to open it, but he knew it wouldn’t be right. In most places, especially the cruel castle they were leaving, it was a crime to read another person’s mail, and in the lord’s castle, resulted in losing an eye. Even if the crazed looby1 wasn’t around, Allen was scared of the envelope in his pocket.

At last, the carriage came to a bumpy stop. The sky was just starting to turn pink with the rising sun. Allen helped his master from the carriage. He was surprised when the boy’s skin felt too hot against his own. The young master looked ill. His face was ashen and his breath was coming in shallow bursts.

“Y-young master?” Allen asked nervously. “Are you all right?”

Allen’s master looked up at the castle and only spoke one word: “Mom...” The young master collapsed in a heap and screamed in pain.

That’s when all the trouble began...

Lavi looked up from his book. He wasn’t sure what had drawn his attention from the book he’d been reading so intently moments before, but it seemed important... More important, Lavi was sad to say, than the latest romance novel he had hidden in the dictionary his guardian and master Bookman thought he was reading.

Speaking of which...

WHACK!

“Ouch! Bookman! What’d you do that for?”

Bookman glared at the boy from next to the man driving the cart. “What are you reading?”

“The dictionary,” Lavi replied innocently.

“There were too many words for that to have been a dictionary.”

“Um... Dictionaries and words kind of go hand-in-hand, Bookman.”

“You were reading it too intently for it to be just a dictionary.”

Damn it, the redheaded child thought. He’d dug himself a deep hole to get out of. “They were... interesting words?”

“Like?”

“?”

Bookman raised an eyebrow. “That’s not even a word.”

Shit. Lavi cast around his brain for an excuse. “Have you looked it up?”

“I’ve memorized the dictionary.”

“This dictionary?”

“That one, and three others in four languages.”

“Freak,” Lavi muttered. He received another whack on the head for his impertinence.

The old man took the novel Lavi had hidden and hid it among his things. Little did he know Lavi was smart enough to bring a second book to read and ignore his studies with. “Put your eye patch on, Jr. We’re almost in town.”

“But I can’t read good with it.”

“Well.”

“Well what?”

“Read well.”

“Stupid grammar.” He got hit a third time.

“Just put the eye patch on. Do you want to be chased out of this town too?”

“It wasn’t might fault they were superstitious freaks.”

This time, Bookman didn’t hit the now ducking Lavi. “I know you—”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That scream!” Even though it was a retarded thing to do, Lavi stood in the back of the wagon on tiptoe to see their surroundings better. “I heard someone scream just now!”

Bookman shrugged. “It was probably an owl.”

“Owls don’t sound that human.”

“Obviously you’ve never heard one. Put your eye patch on.”

Lavi stuck his tongue out at Bookman’s back and put the eye patch on. Even if the old panda didn’t believe him, Lavi knew what he’d heard. There was something about these woods, and Lavi was going to find out what.

1 Slightly stolen from the Beka Cooper series. A “looby” is a nutcase.

Well, another co-write from us!

This one might be our last co-write together...

Yeah... Shim’s moving away, so we won’t physically be next to each other, but we’ll try our best through email!

Yay to the world wide web! And if that doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something.

She might just have to come back for this. XD Anyway, tell us what you think!