Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 1

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The best stories are those which make the unknown the destination. In this story I am about to tell, there is no nameless hero, a prophecy foretold, or an evil ruler. This is a story of witch meets girl.

This is a fantasy of speculation, of discovery, and of vibrant, unbridled people in a great big world. This is also darker than your average fantasy, and stranger, and while you might not believe it now or once you begin, you will if you reach the series' end. To frown or to smile will be yours to decide.

So here we are, Chapter One—I don't think it has a name—and as anyone would tell you who has ever a good book known, what you read is as real as you make believe.

Elise grew up in green grass. In springtime it rained, in summer it did not, in autumn it did again and in winter it snowed, although no matter the weather the grass always remained green. That afternoon there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the hills around her looked just as green as they had all her twelve years living. Yet she couldn't altogether stifle a grumpy feeling, sitting in that train car beside the open window. Her parents had yet to return with lunch.

Two suns hung in the sky, one white the other gold. Obviously Elise didn't live on Earth. She lived in a small town among the fertile hills of Elmul, on the island continent known as Unum, in a realm known as Aro il Sea: a place vastly water and nothing else, or so she had been taught. No one much knew, really, what lay beyond their splendid isle. Perhaps one day she would learn for herself.

At the moment, though, she was on a train bound for Mirborne Harbor. It was to be a daytrip, but she was momently unhappy and hardly disposed to picnicking or even a fair—except for the intervals at which she might entertain jam and butter sandwiches or cotton candy.

"Daddy's probably holding up the pastry line. Hrmph."

"Or, being just a girl, you're impatient. I know that look. You should be more trusting of adults."

Disdainfully, the girl in the simple turquoise dress looked down at her pet cat, which had talked. Germón—a grey, black, and white striped tabby cat—commonly talked, and commonly argued with his owner. He pawed the train's car red cushion. It was a fussy, stuffy sort of train, Elise thought, with its leather upholstery and brass railings, and it didn't make at all better her fussy, stuffy sort of cat, who licked the back of his paw as a human might clear his throat for a timely lecture.

"I don't know why they ever decided to let cats talk," pouted Elise.

"Many animals have been able to speak for a very long time, Elise. If you listened to your tutors, you'd know that. Magic is a complicated but not altogether unscientific subject."

Elise pushed her braided brown hair behind her shoulders. While a yellow band seldom kept the remaining hair out of her eyes, she managed to use those grey eyes sarcastically. "Says a cat!"

"If you were magic yourself—a witch—you'd understand intuitively." Her cat began to fiddle with the ribbon tied about her waist. "In fact—oh, a snag."

"Oh, a witch indeed!" As Elise very well knew, there were no witches anymore; only long ago. She pulled his claws out of her sash, picked him up, and sat him at the other end of the seat. Elise was a clever girl this way. Now he played with the tassels of a drape instead, for in spite of his volubility, Germón was just a cat.

Where were her parents, anyway? They had gone to so much trouble to arrange this vacation to Mirborne Harbor, and now they had disappeared like ghosts. Would it be another ten, twenty minutes? A nightmare came to her that it would be an hour.

Looking outside again, she considered her simple life, simple Elise, the daughter of two farmers. Perhaps she didn't listen to adults well because she wanted to change all of that, and adults didn't understand her sense of adventure. What had been the problem turning the butter churn into a thing for rolling inside, or feeding the horses less hay and a lot more sugar? If you get an idea, let Elise know.

Then, for a peculiar second, the white sun flashed in her eyes and she forgot all her concerns. She thought it a bird at first, but when she noticed the object glimmer continuously, she understood it to be no bird; and, as her mind searched for answers, she realized it was something far larger, too. Larger and more numerous.

"What... are those?"

They came from the skies like angry hornets, but were no more hornets than birds; they were men, a flock of pirates whose steam-powered sloops were borne by a warm wind. She heard screams as the pirates, each with a mounted Gatling gun, squeezed their triggers with impunity. 

The train wheels screeched and Elise tumbled to the ground. Bullets shattered her window. Crying out, she just managed to catch a hold of her panicked cat and crawl toward the open doorway. All around her the cacophony grew—the shrieks and the shrill bangs of spent cases—and in the hallway she found several curled freshly in their own blood. Elise hadn't time to comprehend more. She clambered toward the exit across from her compartment, whose heavy door by some grace had fallen ajar.

She flung herself off the sizzling train, but as she hit the ground a panicked Germón sprung from her arms and darted into the fields. She shouted after him, but with buzzing and blasting on all sides, she could only hope that he would be all right. Herself rolling down the bank into tall, thick grass, she collapsed onto her back and looked up at a train on fire.

It started with a crawl, swelled to a scramble, and by the time that she reached the twist of a distant hill, Elise ran with a pounding heart. She tripped through grasses sinking and swept until she reached a place where no one might see her. A rush, and she fell through the roughly hewn doorway of a cold, ancient ruin.

She was safe. As she slid down the wall, though, the reality of her situation slowly eclipsed her. She was alone now, and she cried uncontrollably. Without, under the suns, the green grass played gently in a breeze that grew only better on a better spring day.