1st 5 Pages Nov Workshop - Grant

Name: Belinda Grant

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy.

Title: The Librex

Climbing down a slippery cliff in the dark was not one of my talents.

My sister Sunny was made for the task. While my stubby fingers gripped for dear life, she’d scampered down like a lizard, barely touching the grooves in the stone. She dropped down to the hard, slick rock as if it was spongy grass, dumped the contents of her bag and began to make a fire, occasionally looking up as if surprised I hadn’t joined her.

I wished I’d stayed in bed. The night’s little moonlight had vanished. All that guided my hands was the slight glow of the clouds, and the white waves that lapped against the rocks below. Those same clouds also gifted a misty rain, adding to the unpleasantness of my descent. Secret, mysterious caves, it turned out, were not so appealing in the rain.
I inched my way down further, dropping the toe of my boot into a lower groove. Now I stretched out as far as I could reach. I let go with one hand to grab a rock jutting out near my elbow, but the pressure on my other hand was too much. With a cry I fell. I landed on my feet but lost my footing and crashed onto my rear.

“Why'd you let go, Annie?” Sunny called out.

I lay flat on the rock, glaring at the grey sky as if it was to blame. “It wasn’t exactly on purpose.” I groaned and pushed myself up onto first one, then both of my feet. My ankles survived, though my rear started to throb. Why couldn’t my body behave for once? 

“Well, hurry up. We don’t have much time.” Sunny had finished her fire and was now preparing a torch to light our way.

She was right. I’d spent many sleepless nights observing the tides, and the platform where we stood was only safe from the waves for an hour at a time.

Research. That was a talent of mine.

For years we’d been fascinated by the cave, situated in the cliff up the slope from our house. Visible during the low tide, we pondered if anything hid behind its jagged mouth. We couldn’t risk swimming in, where the waves did their regular battle with the rocks. We assumed the smooth cliff was too difficult to climb. But then I’d noticed the strange grooves in the rock, making it safe to descend to the platform at its mouth.

Safe for someone like Sunny at least.

The grey sea reflected the night’s cloudy sky. The biggest waves would break against the platform, close to reaching Sunny’s spitting fire. I ducked down, holding my aching hands up towards the warm flames. The cave was darker than I’d pictured, and I rubbed my prickling arm.

Sunny finished twisting some cloth around her wooden torch. She rocked from one foot to the other and her night-dress billowed in the wind against her tall, lean frame. Her blonde curls danced across her face as she worked. She kept blowing them out of the way with frustration, but little success.

“What do you think’ll be in there?” Sunny asked, using her body as a shield from the wind as she lit the torch.

“Treasure?”

“Treasure?” Sunny’s laugh had a patronising undertone, as if I was a baby, instead of two years her junior.

“What do you think it is, oh wise and great Sunnilyn Demar?”

“A pirate skeleton maybe? Not coins or jewellery.”

I hadn’t meant coins or jewellery. I hadn’t lost sleep marking the tides for coins or jewellery. I hadn’t risked my ankles or the wrath of our parents for coins or jewellery.

I had a greater treasure in mind. Magic. I licked my lips and moved forward.

Sunny stepped into the mouth. The slimy walls and loose rocks at my feet were perfect locations for things to hide. Slimy, dark things. I pushed up close to Sunny. What might have made their homes in the caves depths?

I could almost taste the salty water that clung to the walls. The light from Sunny’s torch bounced off the stone as she hurried along. She came to an upward ledge standing just above the high tide line. With a jump she was up, light in hand, and she reached down to help me lumber my way to the top.

The cave walls narrowed in around us, the roof brushing against Sunny’s head. Though the wind didn’t curve into this part of the cave, the damp from my cloak seeped through to my nightdress. Sunny raced ahead, but I slowed down, surprised at the length of the tunnel. Who’d last braved this spot?

Someone had been here. Waves couldn’t forge this. Someone cut those groves in the rocks.

The tunnel went dark as Sunny turned a corner. She gasped, and I quickened my steps. There were no hints of any magic whispers yet.

Sunny stood at the end of the cave. If there’d been any doubt that people had made this, it was quelled by the sight of a symbol, the size of my head, chiselled into the wall. Four triangles connected at their tips and fanning out like a flower. Below was a stone pillar, carved out of the back of the cave.

On the pillar was a wooden box.

Tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand, the wood was chocolate-brown, coated in thick resin. On the box, etched into the surface and burnt black was the same symbol that watched over us from the wall.

Sunny poked the wood with her finger. “It might be an artefact. Do you hear any whispers?”

I moved closer, even held my hand over the top of the box. I strained to hear something, anything. But it was no good. There was only the sound of distant waves and two sets of breath.

“No whispers. It can’t be magic.” My voice was low and someone more sensitive than Sunny would have picked up the hint of tears behind it. There was no reason to think there’d be a magic artefact just waiting in the cave by our house. But I’d day-dreamed the possibility too many times, it had become almost a certainty in my mind.

I turned the box in my hand. The resin which protected it from the elements sealed it shut. Sunny rustled through her pack and handed me a knife. She rested her chin on my shoulder and held up her torch for light as I pried it open.

Inside was a stone. It was speckled, cloudy white, with a vein of metallic blond running through the centre, shaped like a bent knuckle with a hole in the end. A quartz stone?

“A rock?!” Sunny shook her head as I held it up to the light. “I could find five thousand of these on the walk to town. Why the shrine?”

It made no sense. Why would someone go to some much trouble for something so ordinary? I turned it in my hand, watching the glow from the little string of mental. It was rather pretty.

“What a waste of time!” Sunny ripped it from out of my hand and readied to smash it against the walls.

“Stop!”

Sunny turned towards me, her face ghost like in the strange light. She watched me for a moment, then handed it over.