18: Echo Valley
Sasha looked around her. The sun was beginning to set on the plain they were standing on, surrounded by hills and ponds. The occasional tree poked up here and there. Below her, there was a gorge. A perfectly ordinary, I-can't-see-the-bottom-don't-get-too-close-to-the-edge-dear-let's-move-on gorge. George and Molly took them to the edge, and led them down a steep, narrow path which went down and around the walls of the gorge in single file. Sasha, slightly scared of the height, jumped on Alex's back.
"Don't worry," Alex joked. "I'm a Mountain Lion. You are perfectly safe."
Alex's speech was better than the wolves'. Perhaps this had something to do with Witch choosing cat not dog. Or maybe the lion picked speech up when he lived in a zoo. Sasha still didn't know if 'Alex' was his real name. Perhaps he had had no name in the zoo, just a serial number. Either way, he never objected to being called Alex.
Actually, the above comment may have not been a joke. Perhaps Alex was a Mountain Lion. Sasha had never asked Alex about his exact species. He was a golden male lion who used to live in a zoo, and that was enough information for her.
They reached the bottom. Sasha could now see that the bottom of the valley was lined with rows and rows of khaki tents. Around the edges were much smaller ones. In the middle, there were tents about four times the size. Nearest here, there were a few much larger tents.
On their arrival, George and Molly howled. Numerous other wolves howled back. Sasha had no idea what they were saying. She didn't speak Death Wolf.
"Shut it will ya!" A boy's voice came from the large pentagonal directly in front of them, marked with a black one. "Bob, Gertrude, Percy, I told you to stop howling!"
The tent unzipped and the boy emerged from it. He could only have been about fifteen. He had similar colouring to Sasha, red-brown skin, jet black hair. But only when he came closer did Sasha see who his face, somehow incredibly, hauntingly familiar.
Oh
My
Goodness.
The boy was Sasha's brother.
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{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK I} The Path of Fire
FantasyBOOK ONE OF THE WILLOW FOREST ELEMENTISTS SAGA Sasha used to think her life was abnormal enough. She lived on the streets. She'd got out of nine care homes. Then, she discovers she's an Elementist: she has the ability to control one of the seven...
