We’re almost halfway through April 2016’s Camp NaNoWriMo session. I can’t believe it!
I’ve been working really hard on my novel, The Lost Girl, and so far it’s coming along quite nicely. In my opinion.
I thought I would share a quick excerpt with you guys from the story. This excerpt is the beginning of chapter four, where Peter Pan first joins the party.
This is first draft material, but I did proofread it to clean it up just a bit.
I hope you enjoy it!
Grace looked over her shoulder as the elf-boy led her away from the rest of the boys. She couldn’t see anyone anymore leaving her to believe that they obeyed their leader and had in fact gone back to their duties—whatever that meant.
She looked back ahead of her and stared at the back of the boy’s head. He hadn’t said a word to her since they had left the other boys behind. Where was he taking her? Was she in trouble? Or was he going to help her get out of the forest?
Before Grace could open her mouth to ask, the boy swiped a tree branch out of their way and held it aside for Grace to walk through. He let go of her hand and waited for her to walk through. She slowly took steps on her own afraid of what was going to be on the other side of that tree branch. Yet what she saw in front of her was unbelievable and she stared at it in awe.
“Welcome to my Treehouse.” The boy announced with a smile.
“It’s… Huge.” Grace said softly.
A giant tree stood before. The base of the tree took up space in more than half of the clearing. The trunk was as thick as a ship and seemed to be as tall as the sky. She placed a hand over her eyes shielding her sight from the sunlight as she tried to see the top of the tree. Branches stuck out in all sorts of directions, the branches being about as thick as a normal tree trunk.
“Is this…? This is the Tree of Life, isn’t it?” Grace couldn’t help but ask.
“Huh?” the boy raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“I read about the Tree of Life in school.” Grace explained.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“I read it in my history class textbook.”
The boy blinked at her.
“A book,” Grace stated.
“Oh! You mean stories. I know what a story is. I like stories.” He grinned.
Grace shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I guess history class is kind of like telling one big story.”
“Anyway,” he patted the base of the tree trunk, “I don’t know what this Tree of Life is that you’re talking about, but this is my home.”
Grace pressed her lips together thinking. Then she pointed to the tree. “So… When you said, welcome to my tree house, you meant an actual tree house?”
“Well,” the boy looked the tree up and down before settling his gaze back on Grace. “It’s my house and it is a tree, so… Yeah.” He shrugged his shoulders.
Grace nodded her head not knowing what else to say. She wrapped her arms around herself holding onto Curly’s cloak again. Sure enough, this all seemed to be happening in real life and not a dream.
“Follow me.” The boy prompted her. He began to climb the tree.
Grace stood where she was and watched him climb a little higher. She had never climbed a tree in her life before, especially not one as big as that tree. Even though he wanted her to follow him, she was going to be perfectly fine standing on the ground and watching from afar.
Then he looked down and slid back down the trunk as soon as he realized he was climbing alone. He walked over to Grace taking her hand in his once more and smiled at her. “It’s a lot of fun. You’ll see.”
Grace wanted to protest, but she couldn’t get her voice to work. Curiosity was taking over again. She should have learned her lesson from the first time, but she was too interested in the tree to mind.
The boy led her to the base of the tree and began to climb once more. He let go of Grace’s hand, but only for a moment so he could get a firm grip on the trunk himself. Then he looked down over his shoulder and reached out to her again. Grace took his hand with a short hesitation and began to climb the tree behind him. Though she wasn’t sure how she was going to climb such a massive tree in a skirt.
He kept leading the way, higher and higher. They dropped each other’s hands once in a while to get firmer grips on their climb. Then Grace would stumble and grab onto his hand or foot or whatever was closest to her.
“You’ve never climbed a tree, have you?” he asked with a smirk.
“Not one this big.” Grace grunted in response. She glanced down over her shoulder and shivered at the height. She was getting tired. Just how far up were they going? And how were they going to climb back down?
“We’re almost there.” He assured her.
Grace looked straight up and narrowed her eyes. They weren’t even halfway up the tree! How were they almost to the top?
It was just another couple of steps when the boy sat down upright on a branch. He reached down, grabbed Grace’s hand, and pulled her up. She sat on the branch in front of him breathing heavily. She gripped the branch as tight as she could; her knuckles began to turn white.
“Okay, now how do we get down?” she asked quickly.
The boy smiled. He reached over behind her and opened a small hatch in the neighboring branch, which looked as though it had been cut off to create a hollow hole. Grace peered down the hole looking into the abyss.
She suddenly felt afraid again. And she wasn’t nervous because of the height.
“It’s fun, I promise.”
Those were the last words Grace heard before the boy pushed her down the hole.