Chapter 1

Prologue

A cool ocean breeze swept sixteen-year-old Marcus Weaver's curly blond hair behind him. Weeds and blue prickly flowers sprouted through the light gray stones underneath his red tennis shoes. This was his thinking place. It was a ruined castle on a hilltop not far from town, and it ended in a jagged cliff of reddish rock, plunging into the warm, dark blue ocean far below.

Once, there had been shards of earthen pottery scattered about the courtyard, engraved with blue and green transparent pebbles. They had long since been stolen, and all that remained was a pile of lichen-covered blocks of stone.

He liked to sit near the top of the pile overlooking the ocean, on a certain rock that was actually quite comfortable. Ideas seemed to drop into his lap whenever he sat there. One had just come in on the breeze when his friend Laura found him. Marcus was hunched over a notepad scribbling away with a stubby pencil, so Laura knew to keep quiet and wait. If she interrupted his brainstorming, he usually lost his train of thought and got mad at her.

It was best to sit behind him until it looked like he had finished writing. Having been a good friend of Marcus since they were very young, Laura had read a lot of his stories. Something about them always sent shivers down her spine; they were so real and so strange at the same time. Despite the abnormal settings, like a forest atop a cloud, the way he wrote the story made her believe that a whole world built on clouds was completely normal.

He had paused in the middle of writing a sentence and was sitting still again. Laura held her breath and tried to see over his shoulder, but she was too far back to see what he was writing about. Suddenly his head spun around, and she ducked behind a rock. She knew it had been too late, though, so she poked her head back up into view.

"Sorry, Marc. I didn't want to interrupt you. Your mom was wondering where you were. I told her I didn't know, but I thought you were probably up here," Laura said loudly to counter the wind.

"It's ok. What did she want me for?"

"Just wanted to know if you wanted anything from the store. She's going up to Kingston later today." Laura tried to keep her black, straight hair from whipping around her and pulled a strand out of her mouth several times.

"Only thing I can think of is some more notebook paper. Another pencil would be nice too; this one's about worn out," Marcus replied, holding up the stub of wood for Laura to see. He quickly grabbed a sheet of paper before it blew out over the edge of the cliff.

"Well? Aren't you going to tell her?" Laura persisted.

"...I'm a little busy. Could you - "

"Tell her for you so you don't lose your fresh ideas or whatever?" Laura said. "Sure, fine. Just promise me that I can be the first one to read whatever it is you're writing there."

"Of course. Thanks. You'll like this one," Marcus said over his shoulder, violently scribbling on the piece of paper. Laura sighed, turned around and carefully stepped down the pile of stone blocks. She could see the town of Tidesdale at the bottom of the valley below. Tidesdale was the kind of town where everyone knew each other. If anyone even knew about the town, it was either because they were relatives to one of the residents or because they were involved in the coal industry. It was just a small mining town at the base of Mt. Kearn.

Laura's grandfather, George Stone, was involved with switching the tracks for the coal trains going over the river. Her parents had disappeared long ago, and she and her younger brother had been in the care of their grandfather since before she could remember. George supposedly knew what had happened to Laura's parents, but he had never revealed the secret to her. Marcus was an only child, but he lived with both his mom and dad. It seemed more like he just lived with his mom, though; his dad's mining job took the whole day and much of the night.

The town didn't have a general store. The only things you could buy there were vegetables and gas. The residents had to travel along the forest ridge road for half an hour to get to Kingston, where they could buy a wider selection of products. The town wasn't much bigger, but unlike Tidesdale it rested on a well-traveled highway, so it had a lot more business. The people of Tidesdale usually took turns driving to Kingston and doing each other's shopping.

Laura kicked a good-sized rock down the hill in front of her. She was almost at the bottom. Looking back up the hill into the blue cloudless sky, she wondered if Marcus had thought anything interesting up. What kind of characters would he create this time? How long would the story last?

I shouldn't worry about it, she thought. It'll be perfect, just like his other stories. The idea of soon reading something new sparked interest in her, since Tidesdale had no library. There were only four streets in town; they crisscrossed to form what looked like a big tic-tac-toe game. Some of them went off to different places, like the forest ridge or the bridge over the river, and some just formed dead-ends. Marcus lived almost at the end of one of these.

Laura could see Tracy, Marcus' mom, waiting outside by their outdated pale blue car. Her sandy blond hair was pulled neatly into a ponytail and she was wearing her best jeans; they were probably the only ones without a paint stain or hole in them.

"Did you find him?" she asked.

"Yeah. He needs more paper and a new pencil; that's it."

"Oh. Ok, then. I'll be leaving now. See you later," Tracy said, pulling herself into the car and slamming the door shut.

"Bye," Laura said, watching the blue car disappear down the street. There was nothing left to do but go finish her homework and wait for Marcus to get back. She headed after the car towards her house.

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Marcus wrote so furiously across the paper that his hand started cramping. His thoughts didn't seem to slow down, even when he took a break to flex his fingers, so he tried not to stop often. The ideas flowed so rapidly that he felt like his brain couldn't keep up. The things he was writing about were even stranger than anything from his previous stories, and he began to wonder if they even were his ideas. There was real emotion in them, as if someone was actually telling him their life story.

There was no point in thinking about it, though. If he wanted to get it all down, he couldn't stop to think. He felt as though he was in a different world, floating amidst a thousand words, and if he lost concentration they would all be dashed away. If he stayed focused, this would be the best story he had ever written.