Things were a little different for my upcoming children’s books. Beyond Wisherton and Back to Wisherton are fantasies. The characters can do things that no one in real life can do; it doesn’t matter if some of them also have names that no one has in real life. That was a very freeing experience. It also helped me just a little bit that I let my kids name half the characters. Okay, that was awesome. I’ll share some of those names within an excerpt from the first book. This is from chapter 1 of Beyond Wisherton.
Yavic and Lolly Find Out
“I
think I have a gift,” Sevra said, her eyes pleading with her brother to
understand, “but I swear I don’t know how I got it.”
Yavic
couldn’t make any sense of what his sister said. She never did anything wrong. She was the last person who would ever be
tempted to join the Herders. She was the
last person who would even joke about it.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“A
gift,” Sevra hissed. “I have one.”
She
did not have a gift. Yavic was quite
certain of that. Sevra had barged into
his room while he was trying to do his homework. She’d looked into the hallway and closed the
door behind her. She was sitting on the
end of the bed, wringing the corner of his blanket tightly between her
hands. Sevra was clearly upset about
something and whatever it was, it was probably more interesting than the
equations he was supposed to be solving.
Yavic turned in his chair, away from his desk and towards his
sister. “What makes you think you have a
gift?”
“I
don’t think it,” she said. “I know it.”
“You
said you thought it.”
“I
was… trying to prepare you.”
Yavic
sighed at her overly dramatic tone.
“Prepare me for what?”
“For…” She took a deep breath
and exhaled slowly. “This.”
“This? You wanted to prepare me for a boring
conversation?”
“No,
for…” Her
head jerked sideways to look at the door as it opened.
“What
are you guys talking about?” Their
little sister poked her head through the door.
Lolly’s deep brown eyes were wide with curiosity. Everyone else in the family had green
eyes. And a safer level of curiosity.
“Get
out!” Sevra snapped.
The
eyes shifted in response to the reprimand.
Lolly closed the door slowly, watching her siblings the whole time.
Sevra
was battling too much fear at the moment to register any guilt for dismissing
her sister so roughly. She still wasn’t
sure it was a good idea to tell Yavic.
Lolly was only eight years old.
There was no way she could
keep it a secret.
“Sevra,”
Yavic said, “what is going on?” He was
looking at her with more concern now.
“I
have a gift.” It got a little easier to
say each time. Easier, but no less
terrifying.
“You
said that already. Why do you think you
have a gift?”
“I’m
too strong.”
“How
strong?” he asked.
“Too strong.”
“How
do you know you’re too strong?”
This
conversation was not going at all the way Sevra had pictured. She expected Yavic to be as freaked out as
she was as soon as she told him. She
felt an odd sort of gratitude towards her older brother for peppering her with
annoying questions instead. She suddenly
wanted to laugh. “Stand up,” she said.
Yavic
did as she requested.
Sevra
also stood and she picked him up.
Yavic
didn’t think that proved anything.
Though he was fourteen and Sevra was only twelve, she was two inches –
all right three – taller than he was. It
wasn’t inconceivable that she would be able to pick him up. The fact that she didn’t appear to struggle
at all only made Yavic embarrassed about possibly being too skinny and not
concerned that his sister might be “too strong.”
One
look at her brother’s face made Sevra put him down. “What do I need to do to prove it to you?”
she asked.
“Um…” Yavic surveyed the
items in his room. There was a chest in
the corner. It was mostly full of books,
and he knew he couldn’t lift it. “Try
that chest,” he said.
Sevra
nodded and walked over to it without a word.
She lifted the chest easily.
Then, to make absolutely sure he believed her, she balanced it on one
hand like a waitress with a tray of drinks.
“Wow,”
Yavic said.
But
his voice had an echo. Lolly’s face was
back by the door. Her expression
awed. “How’d you do that, Sevra?”
Sevra
quickly put the chest down. The damage
had been done though. She sank to the
floor with her head in her hands. Panic
threatened to swallow her whole. They
would find out. This night could be the
last she spent in her own home.
Yavic
motioned Lolly into the room and tried to take control of the situation. Sevra had a gift? He knew in his heart it wasn’t possible. There was no way she could have done anything
to earn a gift from the Herders. But how
else could she have lifted that chest?
They had a serious problem. Lolly
knew, too. That made the problem about
three hundred million times more serious.
Maybe four hundred million times.
He
looked up and down the hallway before he closed his door again. The last thing they needed was for Samtry to
wonder what the rest of them were doing.
He put a chair in front of the door to at least give them some
warning. “You cannot tell anyone,” he
said to Lolly. He tried to convey the
importance of the command with his tone and his expression. Though if Sevra’s crumpled form and
whimpering sounds didn’t convey that they were in trouble, there was probably
nothing he could add.
Lolly’s
initial amazement had already disappeared.
She swallowed hard before she addressed her brother in a faint voice. “Are they going to take her?”
He
shook his head firmly. He had no idea
how he could make that true, but he was going to try. “Not if we can help it,” he said.
Yavic
lowered himself to the rug to sit next to Sevra. Lolly followed his lead and looked between
them. No one said anything for what felt
like a long time. Sevra quieted at the
show of support. Her hands still mostly
covered her face though.
“How
did she get it?” Lolly asked.
Yavic
glanced at Sevra, who did not have her ears covered. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure it was a mistake. Some kind of mistake.”
Lolly
nodded with conviction.
Sevra
saw it between her fingers. She saw that
neither her brother nor her sister believed she had crossed over. A bit of the pressure squeezing the breath
out of her loosened. She put her hands
in her lap. “You believe me when I say I
don’t know how I got it?”
“Yes,“
Yavic said.
“Of
course,” Lolly added.
“Thank
you.”
The
way Sevra was looking at Yavic made him uncomfortable. It looked as though she was about to hug him
or something. “Look,” he said, “we all
know you’re the good kid. It’s really
obnoxious the way you go around trying to please everyone all the time. It isn’t shocking to think you haven’t turned
your back.”