The Pond of Secrets

(Anyone can contribute)

## Chapter 1- Ryder

"Dinner is here!" The guard presented a pile of slush.

I rolled my eyes and looked away. All I was thinking about was the satisfied look on my stepmother's face. hoH she smiled and told the guards to take me away. And for what? So her daughter can have the hand of the prince. How can a woman be that cruel?

The guard was eyeing me. "They say you can see the future, huh? So, what will I do next?"

*Yeah, but I can't control it, jerk*. But he gave me the keys to Annoyingdom. Might as well take them. "You're going to say I'm wrong."

"You're wrong--" he realizes his mistake. His eyes widen, and his jaw drops. "You. . . what? How?"

"Magic, honey."

It's 2 am, and I'm up sweating. The same dream again. My father running into the fire. Me being thrown back. I know it's selfish, but I hate him for leaving me. He saved a bunch of random people in exchange for ruining my life.

And that's when I notice the lights coming out of my hands.

With a start, I am reminded of the fireflies by father's cabin. They shimmer all around me. I reach out to touch one. My hand goes through it. Then they start leaking back into the castle.

"Stop, come back here! Not tonight!" I scrambled up and tried grabbing onto them. My hand--surprise--goes through them. The lights start moving into the other parts of the castle. They know who the one magician in the building is.

I watched the lights with glowing despair. When they touched the bars, I expected them to go right through. Instead, they burned the bars.

"Whooo! Escape time!" And you may think that shouting that in prison would get me in trouble. But I had already said it enough times that the guard stopped coming over to check. Plus, I was pretty sure they were asleep.

This theory was confirmed when I walked passed the guards. I came to an intersection with five hallways. I realized I had no how to get out of this castle. I felt a little pang of embarrassment. When a hero brakes out of jail, that's it. They're free. They don't get lost--

"Hey!" Someone shouted. I spun around the metal bar in hand. I came face-to-face with the person that I had only seen on the front page. Same green eyes and curly black hair. Same person whose father I had dreamt of killing multiple times. Same person whose hand was promised to my sister.

The prince. And he had lights coming out of his hands too. The *prince* was a fortune teller.

## Chapter 2- The Prince

"Lead me to the exit. If you don't, I will knock you unconscious. Let's see how they react when they find you, the prince, the heir to the throne, with fortune teller magic coming out of his hands," the girl said.

Why does she need help to go to the exit? Oh. "You're lost."

"I'm not lost! I just need you to talk if we run into any guards," she said way too fast.

"Uh-huh. Come, the exit is this way." I didn't know how to feel about helping a fortune teller. I mean, I know what my dad would say. But the girl was around my age. She didn't look evil. She just looked like she wanted to escape. I realized I was staring at her and looked away.

When we got out of the castle she didn't ask me to leave so, I didn't. Somewhere along the walk, she had started leading, and she was headed straight to Labyrinth Woods. I stopped.

She rolled her eyes. "What now."

"I am not going into Labyrinth Woods," I said firmly. She had obviously not heard all the stories that elders tell about it. Those gave me nightmares for a week.

She snorted, "where else would we go, just camp in the middle of an open field? Oh, and maybe mark all the stones on our path with THE FORTUNE TELLERS WUZ HERE? We're going to the forest."

And that's how we ended up walking to the Labyrinth Woods.