Prey
Prologue
The archer’s of Caien were always greatly respected by their people, known for their courage, honor, and their strange abilities. The archer’s unbelievable accuracy was known throughout the land and several others too. Caien could always count on a group of archers in times of war, until Draciea heard about their heroes.
When traders went to Draciea, speaking of the great archers of Caien, and their strange powers, the Dracieans were not pleased. For the leaders of Dracieans were ready to declare war against the Caiens, for taking over several of Draciea’s best trade routes.
Furious, the Draciean leaders decided to take out the archers, one by one.
And so they did, each archer dieing of incidental causes, or just disappearing, leaving a note of absence.
This went on for ten years, until all but one archer, had died.
The one archer left, named Trinity Jameson, a leader of the Caien archers. Though the Draciean hunters tracked her for many years, trying to locate her, to kill her, she evaded them. They never caught her, to many people’s disbelief.
215 years later. . . . .
Chapter 1:
“Jillian get you’re lazy butt out of bed!”
I jumped up out of bed, expecting something to be terribly wrong. SOMETHING WAS!!! It was 8:47 am, the first day back from Christmas Break, and I should have been up exactly forty-seven minutes ago. I shot towards my closet, pulling on whatever I could find, a t-shirt here, a sock here, a pair of decently clean jeans, and yet another sock.
I looked at the clock then I started moving even faster, seeing as I only had five minutes to be at the bus stop. I pulled on my favorite worn out pair of high tops and grabbed my grey and red, single strap, backpack, pulling it over my messing, short vivid red hair.
I ran three steps at time, down the stairs, wondering how I didn’t fall, when I was smacked in the face with a blue winter coat. “Don’t forget your Bass Clarinet!” my mother yelled. I bit my lip, I was sooo going to be late, so I put my backpack down, then ran back upstairs, coming back down a lot more slowly, seeing as a bass clarinet, plus its case, plus all the stuff that goes with it weighs a lot more than my backpack generally does.
So, bass clarinet in one hand, apple in the other, backpack slung over one shoulder, and one high top untied, I ran to the bus stop. The bus doors were closing and I was only twenty feet away. “Stop!” I yelled, watching the kids in the back of the bus snicker, as I continued to run.
Finally, the bus driver saw me, and stopped the bus. Huffing, and puffing worse than the Big Bad Wolf, I climbed up the stairs and crashed into the first seat, where no one really wanted to sit.
So I was smashed against the window with my bass clarinet on top of me and my backpack against my side, and waited to get to school.
About twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of my blue locker, trying to get my bass clarinet inside of it. In middle school, I had always had trouble with my bass clarinet, because we always had such small lockers, so I had to keep it in the band room. But when I finally got to high school, and we got full sized lockers, I could finally stop making two trips across the school building.
I groaned out loud as I heard the bell ring, and I pulled my books out of my locker and high-tailed to first period.
Chapter 2:
I stood up suddenly in English class when I heard the bell ring that signaled seventh period, AKA band class. I carried my books back to my and threw them on the top shelf, then grabbed my bass clarinet, and music folder, and started my ‘journey’ across the building to the band room.
As I opened the big wood doors that led into the band hall, which mostly contained practice rooms, and the band, and choir director’s offices, I noticed that our usual band teacher was absent. I was puzzled. Mr. Horn (Yes that’s his real name) was always in the room when we got there.
Confused, I sat down in my spot in the back, by the tenor saxophones, tubas, and baritone saxophone, and started putting my bass clarinet together. I sat there a few minutes, getting my reed wet in my mouth, when the bell rang. Then, a man a lot younger than Mr. Horn, who played the trumpet, walked into the band room, carrying a trombone. But what was weirder than his age, and musical instrument was that he seemed to be looking straight at me.
I tried to shake off the feeling of him watching me, as my tenor playing friend, Sam, ran into the class, late as usual. She sat down next to me, wearing her usual punkish attire that she just loved to wear, to my confusion.
I opened my music folder to our school’s fight song, which was written on the board, but the man in the front, yeah the one with the trombone, said that wasn’t what we were playing. Instead, he began handing out songs, from a LONG time ago.
It was called something stupid, like Victory Bow, and Arrows at War. Is this new guy obsessed with cupids, archery, or war? I thought, mentally going through the fingerings for the first song. It was pretty simple, and she went through the long, boring, old song easily.
At the end of Arrows at War, I started feeling weird. Almost tingly. It started in my finger tips, and spread throughout my arms, but no further.
Then Sam shook my shoulder, “Hey! Jill! Anyone home?” and I snapped out of my tingly state. “Huh? Oh, yeah, what?” I said, stupidly. But then, we were both forced to look back up at the guy with the trombone, who had yet to tell us his name, clearing his throat.
“You are dismissed.” The man said, still strangely staring at me.
“Was it me, or was that sub staring at you?” Sam asked me after class. I just shrugged the question off, to self-conscience that she was right to actually tell her, that she was right.
So I put my bass clarinet in the band locker, pulled my backpack over one shoulder, and running to catch my bus, which always left five minutes before all the other ones.
I hate my bus.
