Good book or not, uh... remodeled?

Ta-Da! I've been working. The only thing that's the same, is the characters...




Prologue

I lay there, gasping. I tightened all the muscles in my body involuntarily, shaking. The pain was unimaginable, tearing at me from all sides, like someone slashing me with a sword. But I had no opponent, the pain was from inside. I relaxed my muscles, and then tightened them as another round of convulsions hit. The convulsions hit my whole body, causing all of my muscles, ones I didn’t even know I had, to tighten so much more then ever they could if I had done it on purpose. I was gasping, but I couldn’t cry out. I was in so much pain, worse than any I’d ever felt before. I relaxed again, panting, breathing in all the air I could. I felt terrible, now my whole body was sore, like I’d just run a hundred miles. My breathing was quick; I was sucking in air because whenever the pain hit me like that, it wouldn’t let me draw oxygen. I nearly cried out as another round of the strange pain hit me, but the muscles in my throat were so tight that I couldn’t even squeak. It happened three more times, causing me to wonder if I was dying. Is this what it felt like to die? Then so quick I couldn’t even react, it was over. Nothing was happening, and the pain seeped away like it had never been….







1

I snapped up out of sleep, and off of my spot on the dirt floor, my one blanket getting tangled around my legs. “Someone’s coming!” I cried.
Shadow sat up groggily, his shaggy black hair sticking up. “A dream?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, my face flushed from the sudden heat of summer nights.
He considered me for a minute. I knew he could see the carefully hidden terror in my eyes. “Get Jay,” he told me quietly. “We’re gone,” He looked right into my eyes. He knew me better than anyone, except Dee, Shadow did. We had grown up together, in the same orphanage. Shadow turned to shake his thirteen year old sister awake. “Dee!” then started over the piles of blankets to wake ten year old Karma. Dee got onto her hands and knees, the only one out of the five of us who could be instantly awake.
I left the tent, pushing aside one flap, and ran out into the night air, away from the warm light, glowing from the metal work lantern hanging outside on a pole. “Jay!” I called quietly. Jay is nine years old, and he likes to sleep outside, for a reason that none of us can comprehend. I don’t think he even told Shadow, and Shadow’s our leader. If anyone has a right to know anything, it’s our leader. “Jay,” I called again. I spun around as a twig snapped behind me. “Yeah?” Jay whispered.
I tried to calm my racing heart, and said, “Shadow wants us all together, right now.” I turned back to the tent. “Do you even sleep, or do you run around with the night-time predators?” I teased
Jay looked at me solemnly. “I only sleep sometimes,” he said “Other nights there are more important things to do,” That was all we ever could get out of him.
When we got back to the tent, walking noiselessly, the other three had totally dismantled it and were ready to leave. I picked up my pack, swinging it over one shoulder. I had part of the tent tied to the loop on top of my backpack. We all carried part of the tent, that way we could move faster. My pack had a few things in it. I had few clothes, and none of them were heavy cloth, so that took up almost no room. I had threads that I used to weave flowers into my long black hair. I had an old brush that one of the matrons at the orphanage had given me. She said it was rightfully mine, but she didn’t know where it had come from. The brush was small, about the size of my palm, (and I have small hands) and made of silver, with ornamental flowers carved into it. The bristles were horse-hair, according the woman who’d given it to me. And an old black and white photo of my parents. They were standing together, my father’s arm over my mother’s shoulder. They were both smiling, and looking at my mother’s pregnant belly. I love that picture. It’s the most precious thing I own. I looked up then, and saw Dee looking at me. “What?”
She kept looking at me. “Are you alright?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
Dee has this really creepy ability to know what you’re thinking, sometimes. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it mind reading. Dee knew me better than Shadow. We’d lived together, too. We’d been in the same room at the orphanage. Her parents died in a fire, like mine, but she and Shadow, well, they had it worse than I did. They’d been there. They’d seen their house go up in flames. And they’d known that there was no hope for their family. So Shadow took Dee, and left. Dee had been six years old, Shadow, ten. Shadow had taken Dee and hidden in the streets of New York City. I admired them, their bravery. They’d been so young. I’d been at my friend’s house, playing with her dolls, when I found out. My friend’s mother took me in for a while, sheltered me, found a foster mother for me, and sent me away. I’d been no help to them anyway, moping around all the time. The family I ended up with expected me to be like a maid, scrubbing and cleaning for them. Eventually I ran away, too tired to put up with it anymore, and sick with grief. I ended up mal-nutritioned, dehydrated, and half dead in a side ally in NYC. The matron who gave me the brush found me. She brought me to the orphanage where she worked. She was my only source of comfort for two years. For those two years I refused to talk to anyone, and gave no name. The matron told me I was a nameless beauty. Then, my first piece of good luck for a long time. Dee came to live with me, in the same room. We became like sisters, even though I was fourteen, three years older than her, at ten. Sometimes we shared the same cot, more often sharing our memories. I started to talk to her, only her. I told her what I could remember of my parents, and showed her the only photograph that could be found of my mother and father. She in turn told me about Shadow, how he’d taken care of her until they were found. They hadn’t wanted to be found, she said, Shadow had taken care of her, she said. I wished I’d had a brother to take care of me, I said. Dee laughed. I loved the way she laughed, high and musical, like bells. Dee never told me her name, during our stay at the orphanage, so I called her Belle. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, I said. I told her what I wanted to do as soon as I hit eighteen. I was going to get a job, and earn my way into a house like my parents’. She said that Shadow was only three years away from eighteen, and that she was going with him when he turned. I said that I’d be sad without her for company. She looked at me in a strange way when I said that. I asked her why she was looking at me like that, and she said, all incredulous, that I was silly; of course I was coming with them. We got out earlier than we thought, though, because Shadow managed to convince the orphanage that he was eighteen when he was actually seventeen. He refused to give his real name, but told them that he was Shadow. Just Shadow. Shadow no middle name, Shadow no last name. Even Dee couldn’t remember his real name. So we got out and for two years, we’ve been nomads, living together, and rescuing other orphans. That’s how Jay and Karma came to be with us; we found them, before they went to an orphanage.
So, Dee knows everything about me. From big things, like my past, and my feelings for her brother, to the little things like what I’m thinking at any given moment. I knew that she knew something was up. “I’m thinking about…. stuff.” I told her. She kept watching me.
“My parents,” I said quietly, whispering so no one else could hear, though they were kind of busy, packing up their stuff. “My past,” And in my head, so nobody could hear, my dream.