EARTH KEEPERS LEGEND: The Secret Trail

Chapter 1. Different

You told me to stay, but I can't.

It's getting worse.

I don't know what to do!

I don't know where to go.

I don't know who to tell.

I don't belong here.

I don't belong anywhere.

I wish I could disappear, like you.

Maybe if I try hard enough, it will.

Why did you have to leave?

Please come back.

Please come back and take me with you.

P l e a s e!

This is a story about 12-year-old Aria Wilder. Aria is the kind of girl that nobody notices. She doesn't have many friends and isn't part of any clubs. In fact, socialising in large groups makes her palms sweat at the mere thought of it. And before you go thinking she would fit in perfectly with the nerdy brainy kids, that's not for her either, because she's terrible at school work too. She can't add for toffee. Her handwriting is large and messy. And she struggles to sit through an entire lesson without sinking into a sea of visible boredom or clouds of pencil flicking distraction. As you can imagine, this usually gets her into trouble, most days. If she had been given even a small amount of money for each time she had been told that she "lacks concentration" then she would be very rich indeed. But she's not. Her long goldish-brown hair hasn't been cut in nearly a year, and her dull grey uniform is tatty.

It wasn't always this bad, but a year ago things took a turn for the worst. And since then, her dad had been forced to buy all her clothes, and he's not very good at it. Not at shopping anyway.

Aria is what some people would call different, and she's been that way since the day she was born. And until this fateful year, it had never occurred to her that being different could be a good thing. Perhaps, even the best thing about her. Or even the thing that would prepare her for everything that was yet to come.

But before we get to that part, there is something you should know. Try to listen closely, because it's very important.

You see, Aria Wilder has a secret.

It's a secret that she promised not to tell anyone, not even her father. A secret that explains how she knows which direction the wind is blowing in, or even if it's about to rain simply by closing her eyes, but struggles to remember ordinary facts like the origins of the steam train in class (George Stephenson in 1825 in case you were wondering). And why she's happiest outdoors in the fresh air. And why her senses are so finely tuned, that she notices every tiny detail in a room, from the soft sound of a breeze blowing through the window, to the smallest particles of dust floating in the sunlight.

Sometime in the future (though she doesn't yet know it), she will lead other children who like her, and perhaps even you were born to be different too.

This story tells the tale of how it all began.

∞

It had happened again. Over a dozen times during the end of primary school and now during her first year of secondary school. The last time, Aria tried to run away, but her mother brought her back. How her mother had been there at precisely the right moment, was still a mystery. But that was the day her mother had told her the secret. A secret that had burned inside her like a red-hot fire, desperate for air ever since. This is what her mother said:

You are not ordinary.

You are not meant for an ordinary world.

There are other lands,