Legends from The Warlock's Chair - Book One - Ravengaard

Chapter Two - Ellyonia, Land of the Elves

SPRING HAD TURNED TO SUMMER IN THE WARLOCK'S CHAIR. Danielle stepped out of the front door, took a deep breath of the clear country air, and gazed at her new surrounding.

It had been several weeks since the family had arrived from the city and they were now practically settled into their new home. Mum and Dad had been busy cleaning and redecorating the house. It was hard work, but slowly everything was beginning to take shape. Even now at this early stage, she and her brother and sister were beginning to enjoy this new lifestyle. They had begun to like living in the countryside and were happy in their new schools.

Dad and Mum had collected them from school after spending most of the day in town shopping.

'You can get changed and go play in the garden until tea's ready.' Mum told them when they arrived back home.

They quickly changed out of their school uniforms and went into the garden. The early evening was warm and sunny, but a gentle cooling breeze had sprung up, blowing down the valley, bringing with it a promise of rain.

At fourteen Danielle was the eldest of the children. Tall and willowy, with brown hair and eyes to match. She loved music and dance with a passion. At first, she had not wanted to move to the countryside. She was happy at school and afraid of losing all her friends. But Mum and Dad had sat down with her and explained that in a couple of years she would leave school and move on to other things.  Most of her friends would probably move on and she would lose track of them, so it would not be as bad as it seemed.

And so it had turned out.

The new school was great, and she soon made lots of new friends. She had been allowed to have them over and—if properly supervised—she smiled thoughtfully—spend time at her new friend's homes. She had even been allowed to visit the shopping mall in Shrewsbury with a trip to the cinema thrown in. All in all, it had not been as bad as she feared when Mum and Dad first told her about the move.

The gardens were large, enclosed on all sides by stone walls. A couple of men had arrived at the beginning of the week and mowed the lawns, removed all the weeds and tidied up the flower beds. The trees and shrubs were now pruned back, leaving the gardens a beautiful place filled with scents and brilliant displays of colour.

The woodland trees and shrubs grew right up to the walls in most places. Only the front had been kept clear. The trees cut down long ago to leave an unobstructed view out across the valley. From where she stood, a wide gravel driveway wound down a gentle slope to the main gate. On either side of the driveway, the now immaculate lawns surrounded the rose gardens and colourful flower beds.

Off to one side, a waterfall trickled melodically down through a rockery covered in all kinds of plants and low shrubs. It splashed into a deep man-made pool where goldfish swam and frogs, dragonflies, and other insects crept and buzzed among water lilies and reeds that grew around its gently sloping edges.

She watched her brother George race ahead, he always has to be first, she thought. Nothing ever changed him; he had been like it for as long as she could remember. At twelve—soon to move into his teenage years— he was the middle sibling. Handsome, stocky and athletically built, he loved sports and promptly joined many of the schools sporting activities, almost instantly becoming a member of the school football team. He had scored the winning goal in the school's cup final, and he had not shut up about it since.

But she loved him just the same.

As did most of the girls in his year at school, must be those big brown eyes, she mused. When he was not bragging about his winning goal, he was stuck on his games console or trying to invent novel ways of getting out of doing his homework. Something Mum had threatened to put a stop to.