Analise Parker: The White Rose

Chapter One

The microwave echoed its alarm, screaming that the popcorn was ready. This was the snack that Analise had been waiting for all day. Her daily bag of microwave popcorn was her therapist. One delicious soother after a long day of dramatic peers, piles of homework, and math tests sent from hell. Even better, no one was home. Her mother was out shopping, her father was still at work, and for unknown reasons none of her four siblings were around. These few hours of silence were heavenly for Analise Parker.
    She carefully picked up the bag and collapsed into a chair at the dinner table, facing the sliding glass door. Using her bare feet, she pulled out another chair and set her legs on them. The homework that awaited her prodded the back of her mind, but she pushed it away to enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet. Analise had a bad habit of procrastinating things like that. She also had a bad habit of biting her nails whenever she was stressed, but that isn't relevant.
    Analise was a friendly, quiet person. She was almost to a professional level with her piano playing, and performed in musicals at her school. She was a senior without a driver's license, with heaps of curly brown hair that fell to her waist and wide silver eyes. Freckles adorned her pale face. She was tall, slender, and graceful. Well, mostly graceful. When she tripped, she fell hard, and it was hilarious.
    Toasty rays of sun seeped in through the windows, urging Analise to fall asleep. She glanced over at her backpack, thinking uneasily of all the homework. Should she do it now, and enjoy the rest of her evening? The sunlight, seemingly reading her thoughts, began to come in stronger, begging her to stay and nap a while. What good was homework, anyway? Sleep was more important. Analise agreed with the rays, and turned back to the window facing her yard. She would do the work in a few hours, she thought. Oh, Analise. In a few hours, homework will be the least of your worries.
    The Parker family's yard had no fence. Their lawn stretched out into an immense forest. The forest itself was owned by no one, but Analise enjoyed calling it hers. Its leafy trees towered over the houses, swaying majestically with the breeze. Sometimes, when a storm would come, the wind would use the canopy as an instrument. The trees would emit a glorious roar when the wind played them just right, and it was her favorite sound.
    In the twilight, when the sky was lavender and the clouds were melting, deer would come out to explore. They'd nibble on the grass, their outlines crisp in the rising moonlight. Analise would perch at the kitchen table and watch them eat. For some reason, it calmed her. The forest soothed her- the adventure, the history, the limitless possible exploration waiting to be done between those trees calmed her like a lullaby.
    Analise reached her hand into the greasy bag of popcorn and watched the trees. The warmth was slowly pulling her eyelids down, down, till sleep was just an inch away. She leaned onto the table, pressing her head into her arms. She could feel sleep enveloping her, quickly,  quietly.
    Bang.
    Sleep retreated as rapidly as it had come. Analise sat up quickly, knocking the bag of popcorn to the floor. Her heart jumped into her throat when she saw what was banging at the screen door. Or rather, who.
    A young man, grimy, with tossed blond hair and daunting brown eyes, was banging his fists against the glass. He wore strange clothes- they reminded Analise of the illustrations of pirates from her old Peter Pan book. He had a sword strapped to his waist and some sort of blue crystal was tucked under his arm. Her eyes immediately went to the door handle, making sure the door was locked. A small burst of relief pushed her heart down her throat just a smidge. It was locked, so this stranger couldn't get in and murder her. That was her primary concern.
    "Let me in!" he shouted. Terror filled his voice, and it scared her. She moved to grab her cell phone, and he banged his fists against the door, even more desperate than before. She grabbed her phone off of the counter. The keypad was right beneath her fingers, and the numbers 911 were almost typed, when the stranger screamed something even more terrifying. "They're coming! Open up, they're coming!"
    Analise stood up and looked over his shoulder. Two men, dressed in something shiny, were running out of the forest towards her home. What on earth was going on? Her gut told her to open the door. Her mind told her to call the police. Thank goodness she listened to her gut, or there would be no story.
    As soon as the door was unlocked, the boy sped inside. She heaved the door shut and locked it again, just as the two men began to close in. The boy ran past the kitchen and into the living room, stumbling over his own feet as he fiddled with the blue sphere.
    As the men came closer, Analise could see that they were clad in golden armor. One wielded a sword, and the other was doing something strange with his hands. She turned to the boy, who was turning the crystal over and over in his hands. It seemed to be split into different sections by silver lines, which he cranked round. Some of the sections were glowing.
    "What is going on?" she demanded, voice shaking. She was trying to sound as if she was in charge, but goodness knows it wasn't working. The stranger looked up at her for a split second, then went back to messing with the sphere.
    Bang.
    She whipped around, finding the two armor-clad men pressed up against the glass. Analise backed away, crushing  her spilled popcorn. "Don't let them in," the strange boy yelled. "I'm almost finished!" The two men continued their pounding.
    Anxiety clenched her chest. "Finished what?" she exclaimed, taking her phone out of her pocket. Now was definitely a good time to call the police, right?
    Suddenly, the pounding stopped. It was silent. Analise could feel her heartbeat in her ears. The two men had stepped away from the glass. One, who had a nasty scar across his nose, began to move his hands. He swirled them in the air. A patch of grass beside him began to tremble.
    A thick green vine emerged from the dirt, shooting up into the air and sprouting little leaves. Two more burst from the grass beside it, and at the man's signal, they began to intertwine. They braided into each other, pulling and tightening like snakes. At their tips, they knotted into balls.
    Move, urged the voice in Analise's head. As she ducked under the table, the great braid of vines plunged through her screen door, shattering the glass into a million pieces. The vines promptly plopped to the floor, so heavy that it shook the table. The two men entered her home, swords drawn. She watched their feet as they stomped towards the living room, towards the strange boy with the crystal sphere.
    "Back away!" she heard the boy cry.
    "Give us the Ostia," one man said.
    "Now," grumbled the other.
    She heard a sword being drawn. The clashing of metal. The bizarre events that were taking place swirled about her mind. Now seemed a proper time to sneak out and call the police.
    Analise inched out from under the table, wishing she had kept her shoes on. She resorted to crawling, and fragments of the class cut her hands and sliced through her jeans. Slowly, she stood, reaching for her phone. A flash of green, an angry shout, and the phone was whipped out of her hand. Its screen shattered against the floor. Analise bit her tongue to keep a nasty word from escaping. Beside her, the vines were unbraiding themselves, and the man with the scarred nose was orchestrating it.
    Okay, that phone was gone. Where else? Landline, she remembered. At the other edge of the kitchen. The vines lurched at her. She jumped up and ran across the room. At least, she attempted to run. One of the vines made a grab at her hair, and was victorious. It pulled back, and Analise grabbed the counter so as not to fall against the shards.
    Her hands slapped blindly against the counter, searching for something to grab onto. Her fingers wrapped around something cold, something metal. The vines pulled harder. Another vine wrapped around her ankle, struggling to trip her. She whipped around, slicing at the air with her new weapon. With a bit of disappointment she realized it was, in fact, a spatula. But she soon discovered that even a spatula can fend off evil plants. She swatted the one yanking her hair, which recoiled against the floor.
She kicked at the vine around her ankle, and that didn't do much good. Temporarily, she forgot that the floor was flooded with glass, and kneeled down hard against it in order to make use of her weapon. With the end of it, she sliced the vine in two. The tendril wrapped around her leg went limp, and she shook it off as she stood up again.
The phone was a few steps away. So was the man. He stopped moving his hands, and took out his sword, storming towards Analise. A spatula against a sword? She could only guess who would win this one. Her throat went dry and she backed away, eyes scanning the counter for a better weapon.
He was getting close. Time was short. She stood beside a neon green four-slice toaster that her mother had bought on sale. Her mind went blank. The words Oh goodness, oh goodness, oh goodness strung through her brain on repeat. The man was awfully close, his sword rising above his head to strike a blow.
Instinct took over, and Analise threw the toaster at his face. It was quite effective. He screamed an awful, heart-wrenching scream, and dropped his sword as both hands went to his face. A little pride swelled up in the heart of Analise Parker. She dashed to the phone and dialed, watching the swordfight between the other man and the strange boy in her living room.
No one picked up. Terror trickled down her spine like ice water. Oh, Analise, you poor thing. She was so confused that she had accidentally dialed the numbers 991 instead. She never would get the chance to call the correct number. What happened next happened all too fast.
Analise had been so focused on the phone that she hadn't noticed the wounded man sneaking up behind her. He was quite looking forward to getting her back for the bruises and cuts she caused on his face, but never got the chance. The fight between the other man and the boy had gradually moved into the kitchen, and neither of them was winning or losing.
The boy saw that Analise was about to get chopped up. His heart jumped. A sort of courageous feeling took hold of him, something quite new. I will now reveal that this young man's name was Eric Hawthorne. Analise's suspicions of him were correct- he was indeed a pirate, and he had stolen something that was immensely valuable. The two men fighting him were royal guards. What he did next may or may not have been heroic. He did enjoy charming girls, so whether he did this for her or for himself the worlds may never know. All we do know, however, is that he did it.
Erick spun round, and in one quick moment he had struck the man in the back, between two pieces of armor. The guard shuddered and fell to the floor. The other guard exclaimed something I won't repeat. Weakly, the fallen man summoned his vines to hold his wound.
Analise turned around to find a man wallowing in a puddle of a substance that she could only assume was blood. However, it wasn't red. It was blue. A dark, threatening blue, the color of the night at three o'clock in the morning. She stood in shock, watching the puddle grow larger and larger, watching the vines wrap around his spine.
Erick moved toward her, pushing her away from the phone as he fought the standing guard. He slashed at the guard's face, splitting open his cheek and lips. Analise was grossly enchanted by the blue that seeped from his cuts. As the guard seized his wound, Erick ran into the living room.
He pulled the Ostia out from under his arm and continued to fiddle with it. Almost all of the sections glowed a brilliant blue light. The nearest guard finished touching his lacerated features and picked up his sword again, angrier than ever.
So much was going on, so many sounds, so much peculiar blood, that Analise found it hard to do anything but stand still. The thought that had crossed her mind so much already crossed it again. Was this a dream? Swordfights in her kitchen? A man controlling vines? A glowing crystal ball? This couldn't be real...could it?
Suddenly the Ostia was pressed into her arms. It was unexpectedly warm and smooth. "Take it," Erick panted, drawing his sword once more. "Just turn it one more time, that's it," and without further instructions he stepped away to fatally wound the guard.
Analise peered at the strange sphere in her hands. It was more hot than warm, like a cookie sheet pulled from the oven a little early. It began to burn her hands, so she pulled down the sleeves of her cardigan as makeshift oven mitts.
The Ostia was split into thirteen sections, sliced like a tomato and held together by strips of silver. It was enchanting to look at. All of the sections were glowing except for the one in the center. She knew she had to turn it. But oh, how beautiful the light was!
"Is it open yet?" Erick asked, grunting as he blocked a blow to his chest.
"What?" Analise snapped out of her trance, looking at the fight and back to the sphere. "No- er - one sec," she turned the center piece. It groaned and crackled as she rotated it, as if it hadn't been moved for a long, long time. When it would turn no more, it radiated a dazzling shade of blue. The warmth vanished. The heat disappeared, growing colder and colder until it numbed her fingers through the fabric.
"Excuse me?" Analise cried, somewhat timidly. She always tried to be polite, but now was not a good time for that. But she kept her manners anyways, bless her heart. "Excuse me?" she shouted again.
Erick jabbed his sword into the man, so hastily that Analise did not have time to look away. It was the second goriest thing she had seen  in her life, and she almost dropped the Ostia in fright. As the guard crumpled to the ground, Erick turned to face her. With not so much as a thank you, he sheathed his sword and grabbed the now fully glowing Ostia from her.
She whipped around to watch him, and almost screamed. There, in the carpet behind her, was a hole. It moved. It breathed. It was a golden liquid, a gas, a substance, all in one. Flaky tendrils of it swirled, grasping at air. The center pulsed down, down, far deeper than she could see. Instead of the bottom turning to darkness, it twinkled like a well full of stars. Did the sphere summon this hole?
Erick gazed into it, his face lit by the golden substance. A greedy smile crawled upon his face. His eyes blazed, more scarlet than brown. Whatever thoughts he had were interrupted by the guard he had sliced, angrily mumbling awful threats. Analise caught the words "pirates," "blood," and other things that she tried to wipe out of her mind immediately.
His chest was stained with that deep, dark, blue blood that Analise was so intrigued by. One hand pressed on his wounds while the other dragged his sword against the carpet, slicing the floor as he came closer and closer. Those awful chills gripped Analise's back. The voice in her head told her leave, leave, but to where?
The guard drew closer. She heard his rattled breathing, watched his chest drip with blood, heard the etching of the sword running  against the carpet. She locked eyes with him, a battle she knew she could win. There was no mercy in this man. If she didn't leave, she would die, she was sure of it.
In her peripheral vision, she watched Erick's figure fall into the golden hole, which we know to be a portal. A portal to another world. It was her only way out. There was no way she could fight this man coming at her, and he was extremely close now. She had to do it. She must do it.
And so Analise Parker committed her third courageous act of the evening. She stepped back, finding no floor behind her. The guard lunged at her, gloved fingers inches away from her nose. She tumbled into the light, into time, into space.
Clouds of stars and universes of color rushed past her. She felt wind against her body, she felt as if she was flying but she had no control over where she went. At times she was in darkness thick enough to bite into. Other times, brilliant glowing lights buzzed about her in wild dances. She heard glorious music, music to pull tears from her eyes and laughter from her lips. She was there for a thousand years, and yet she fell for only three seconds.