When we last left Olivia she had just discovered that her winged necklace was an exact match to the mysterious carvings in the shutters of her home. When Olivia held up the necklace to show both Music and Ralph how the gold wing matched the carvings, the shutters shook and then suddenly came loose, carrying Olivia off. After twirling and twisting through a spinning tunnel, she landed on her feet in front of an elf named Darius, an Elder of Fifty-Fifty Land, a place where Chosen Ones go for a day or two to be taught helpful lessons about how to be a Chosen One. Olivia partners with an elfin girl named Willa who helps Olivia to understand her true calling and the importance of being a Chosen One. Meanwhile the Evil Vole King Teivel is making plans to attack the school with his huge army of evil minions. He wants to gain the land the school sits on so he can increase the size of his Kingdom of Evil in hopes of ruling all evil. Mischievous twin brothers Colin and Riley McPatrick are students at the school who hear of the Evil Vole's intentions and take it upon themselves to spy on the Voles in hopes of getting valuable information for the leaders of the school, but instead find themselves being captured. Read as Olivia and Willa - helped by Olivia's faithful dog Ralph, her charming cat Music, and her steadfast horse The General - take on the adventure of rescuing the McPatrick boys.

The Skeleton Leaf Stories

Behind the ShuttersBy Jane Boatwright-Cook

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Jane Boatwright-Cook
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-1347-6

Contents

Chapter One The New Arrivals................................1Chapter Two The Makings of an Evil Plan.....................36Chapter Three Bad News Arrives..............................51Chapter Four McPatrick Boy's................................67Chapter Five Music's Big Idea...............................79Chapter Six Back To School..................................93Chapter Seven Home Sweet Home...............................104

Chapter One

The New Arrivals

"Oh-Oh! Already? Olivia Anne Maitland, what or where are you heading to now? What am I to fight now?" As I was being lifted and tossed around in a wind tunnel, these thoughts entered my head along with a few others. Suddenly, swoosh! I had landed on my feet in front of an older looking elf. Much to my surprise, he knew my name.

"Well, hello Miss Maitland! What a pleasant surprise to have you here. We were not expecting you for another year. You must be a clever one indeed to figure out how to get here already. Well done, young lady! My name is Darius, and I am one of the Elders here in Fifty-Fifty Land. I hope you enjoy your stay with us."

"It is nice to meet you too sir," Although my head was still spinning, I squeaked out my answer, wondering how long this dizziness would last?

As Darius continued, speaking to each of the new arrivals, I found myself getting lost in the beauty of Fifty-Fifty Land. I looked around and could see a panorama of beautiful lush green hillsides with very large trees. The leaves on the trees were brightly colored which made the hillside twinkle up as though by tiny lights. Also here and there, dotting the hillsides, were mushroom-shaped homes with beautiful flower beds surrounding each one. Colorful birds were flying and singing around me. The birds seemed to match the beautiful colors of the tree leaves. There were flower-lined paths leading to the many different areas around this Fifty-Fifty Land. I felt like I was in a beautiful landscape picture you might see in a fairytale book.

After taking in the view, I realized I was so busy looking around that I wasn't listening to Darius, so I quickly turned my attention back to him and began to focus on his welcoming speech. I heard him explaining why we were here and what to expect in the next few days.

"... Because there are many faces attached to Evil, we won't have the time to teach you the behaviors of them all, but we will explain those you are most certain to see in your time of being a Chosen One. You also will learn some helpful hints with Spielings and Glangers. Also some Fighting Moves and Healing Herbs for your job as a Chosen One. Because this will take two or three days of classes depending upon your needs, we have accommodations for you while you are here. Are there any questions?"

No hands went up, and so Darius continued: "Let us not dawdle. Follow me. I will point you to your new temporary lodging." Darius began walking. We all stared at each other and then one by one followed Darius up the flowered path.

I did have questions, many questions, but decided to wait to ask them later since no one else seemed to have any questions needing answers. I also did not know if I should have explained to Darius that it was just by chance that I was here and not so much of being a "clever girl." I was simply excited to see that the design on the shutter on my house matched the design on my winged necklace, and I never dreamed that together they would bring me here. Then I started thinking that perhaps it was after all a little clever of me to notice the match of my wing and the shutter ...

But where is Fifty-Fifty Land, and what exactly does the name mean? And what are the Spielings and Glangers that Darius was talking about? The last thing I remember before being swept here was wanting to show my cat Music and my dog Ralph what I had discovered.... Oh no! Ralph and Music! They must be wondering where I am. And what about Mother and Father and anyone else who might notice that I'm gone. Will they panic, wondering what happened to me? I did not want to scare my family by my disappearance. How could I get word to my mother? Then I remembered what Mother had said about Nature correcting itself by re-setting time upon my return. That made me feel a little better about being here. I decided to let the thought go and focus more on where I was and why I was here. Besides there really wasn't anything I could do now since I was here — wherever "here" was.

As we all walked up the flower-lined paths toward our huts, younger and older children were running around laughing. It looked like they were playing a game of tag. While we all were still following Darius, I glanced at them and noticed that some of the children were elfin looking, some were animal looking, and others were children that looked similar to me. I saw fairies flying around laughing, and I wondered if any of them did what I did to get here – or did someone have to show them how to use the shutters. We got closer to the small huts when a young elf girl came up and starting walking with me.

"Hi. My name is Wilhelmina, but everyone calls me Willa. Your name is Olivia, right?"

"Yes, my name is Olivia," I answered with a smile.

Willa's voice was very childlike. "You're a human child and the first one I have ever gotten to be partnered with at school," Willa announced with great enthusiasm.

"You have been here before?" I asked.

Willa said, "Yes, my sister and I come to help when a larger than normal batch of new arrivals come. It seems each year more and more people show up. Oddly it must mean that Evil is growing too. This is my fifth year helping out."

"So I am the first human you have been a partner with? Well, I have to say I have met a fairy before, but not an elf."

Willa giggled and said, "Yes, you have – you have met me silly."

Willa's face just lit up to her own joke. I could not help but giggle with her over such a bad joke since her little giggle alone made me want to giggle too.

Willa came to my shoulder, with long shiny brown hair that hung down to her waist. Her eyes were a lavender color and sparkled as she spoke. Her clothes were pretty and colorful: A bright green sweater and blue pants with embroidery flowers along the bottom of each leg. She had a soft, warm, gentle smile that seemed to never leave her face even while she was talking. When she tucked her hair behind her ears, I noticed that her ears had a slight point to them. Willa was about the same age as me, or so I thought until I started doing the math.

"Willa, you were only five when you first came here?"

"No, I am twenty years old today. We elves age differently than you humans do."

"Oh! Well then, how old were you when you found out you were a Chosen One?'

"Most elves are born to help with the fight against Evil. Unfortunately some do choose to join Evil, but to answer your question, I guess you could say all my life."

"Willa," I continued, "Darius mentioned learning Spielings and Glangers – what are those?"

A deep, thoughtful came upon Willa's face, and she finally answered, "Ummm, I think in your world you might call them chants and mixtures or potions, something like that. Spielings and Glangers are elfin words."

"Oh, okay. I will have to remember that. I like using new words ... Wait! My world? Where the heck are we, anyway?"

Willa was just beginning to tell me where we were when Darius turned to the two of us to indicate the hut where Willa and I would lodge. Darius told us to go in and unpack, and when we were through, Willa could show me around.

He also told us there were classes beginning if we wanted to join one or maybe even two today.

I turned to Darius and said, "Thank you, Sir." A quick thought of Mother smiling went running through my head because I had remembered my "please" and "thank yous." Darius nodded and moved on to show the rest of the new arrivals their temporary homes.

I stood, looking over the building standing in front of Willa and myself and about how unpacking would not take long since I brought nothing with me. The building I was staring at looked like a large mushroom-shaped cottage. It had a window on each side of a heavy wood door and the window boxes were filled with wonderful looking and smelling flowers. The roof was neatly lined with large green leaves that hung over the edge of the roof. With the leaves hanging like that, it gave the hut the look of a mushroom.

Willa had started to go through the door into our hut when she stopped in the archway and turned to me asking, "Are you coming in or staying out?"

"Coming in!" I replied as I quickly moved toward the door.

Once I stepped inside, I really was not that surprised to discover that it looked just like I had imagined a mushroom would look on the inside. The walls were off-white with brown smudges of color mixed in. Some very nice woodland pictures hung on the walls. (I wondered for a moment who painted them.) Over in one corner was the door to the bathroom and in the other corner there were bookshelves filled with books and a desk nearby. Under each window was a bed with a dresser at the foot of it. On each of the beds were piles of clothes. When I looked at Willa, she was putting her pile of clothes away in her dresser. I walked over and lifted one of the shirts from the pile of clothes on what was to be my bed and, sure enough, it was one of my shirts from home.

"How did my clothes get here?" I asked in surprise.

Willa moved over to her bed, giggling because of my puzzled look. She said "It's the power of Nature. It somehow knows how to take care of you when you are out of your world."

"If Nature can take care of us, why does it need us at all? I mean why doesn't Nature just put Evil away itself so Chosen Ones needn't get hurt or killed? And if it can look out for us, why do Chosen Ones get hurt or killed?

"That would be easier," said Willa, "but Nature can't interfere with the balance like that. It is allowed to help us as we help it. To actually interfere and take Evil on all by itself would throw off the balance of all life. So you see, that is where we come in: to keep the balance."

"Well, that makes sense I guess. If you don't mind me asking some questions, I sure would like to know what you meant earlier when you said 'in my world?' What do you mean by that: my world?" I sat on my bed looking right at Willa as I asked her so many questions all at once. "And just where is Fifty-Fifty Land anyway?"

Willa was sitting on the edge of her bed now, still folding clothes, while her short little legs dangled in the air. She was really laughing at me now.

"Oh, you human children have so much more to learn, than we elves. You see," she started, "there are so many different worlds inside of this one big world of ours, and human folk tend to think that they are the only ones in this world, when in reality there are many more smaller worlds inside of this big one."

"I don't understand," I said, looking confused at Willa.

Willa jumped down from her bed and walked over to climb up on my bed. After she got comfortable, I could see on her face that I was about to get my first lesson of Chosen One evolution. Willa looking at me asked, "Have you ever seen bees working a hive before?"

I nodded my head yes and answered, "Of course I have."

"Well, that is a world. Bees know that world so that is the world of bees. Fish live in a pond and that is their world. Ants have their hills and that is their world. Do you see?"

"You know, Willa, I never thought about it that way before."

Willa continued, "You see, Olivia, some human folk never take the time to really look and enjoy their own world which is why they can't see elves, fairies and pixies. It is sad really when you think about it, especially when you think about how many folks just work all their lives and never even really enjoy the beauty of their own world. We elves believe that if more human folk took time to be human there wouldn't be so much hate for Evil to grow on."

"Hey, are you blaming us humans for all the Evil that has happened?"

Willa moved her eyebrows down and said, "Of course not, but you humans seem to walk around blind to its cause and let it continue instead of helping to fight against it."

Getting a little upset with Willa and her words I asked, "Well, what about you elves?" I mean I heard you say just a moment ago that 'unfortunately some elves go bad,' so why isn't it your fault?"

Willa was now nodding her head yes said, "Unfortunately that sometimes happens, but still we work hard to keep Evil elves away from the light. And we thank our lucky stars that there are not too many that we have to contend with."

"The light?" I asked, confused again.

Willa explained: "Light is the good around us. You see, in everything in this world there is always an opposite. We have day and night, right?"

"Well, yes," I answered.

"That is part of the balance of life," Willa explained.

"Then why do we, as Chosen Ones, fight Evil if we have to keep it balanced? I mean, if we get rid of Evil, wouldn't that leave us unbalanced? All good no bad?"

"We cannot really destroy Evil; we just keep it from destroying good," said Willa. "But Evil wants to have it all for themselves – with no good around – which would be a terrible imbalance. It is imperative that we keep balance to keep the world that we know as it is, in all its beauty and glory. This means we end up at times having to fight Evil and put Evil back from where it came when it tries for a takeover. Then the world will stay in its balance."

"Oh, I do remember what Meera had told me about what the world would look like if Evil got the upper hand. I did not like the sound of that nor the idea of Evil completely ruling us."

"Meera? And she is who?" questioned Willa.

I reached in my shirt and pulled out my winged necklace to show Willa. "Meera was the fairy who gave me her wing for my protection necklace."

Willa reached to take a closer look at my necklace and said, "I have heard of these necklaces but never have seen one. How do they work?"

"Yes, you have seen one," I said, holding back a smile. "You have seen mine, Silly!" Laughing now, we both realized I used the same bad joke back at Willa that she had used on me earlier. After we both stopped laughing, I began telling Willa about my necklace.

"I know the necklace protects me from being killed for the most part, but that is only if the Evil I am fighting isn't willing to die for the cause. You see, if Evil chooses to kill me while wearing the necklace, then the Evil that attacked me will die also, which could cause a major blow to Evil's side. So chances are they will find a way for a Chosen One to remove it, which usually will give us some time to think of a way out. The best part of the necklace is that if another Chosen One is around, we both can put our necklaces together and say a chan ... a Spieling (smiling because I got to use the word Spieling) and then we are able to send that Evil back from where it came. I can't rely totally on my necklace though, because I don't know if another Chosen One will be around at the time I need help, and who knows whether the Evil is willing to die completely just in order to take out a Chosen One.

Willa nodded her head in agreement with what I had said about Evil's ways and not to trust my life alone to the necklace.

"I sure hope I can see Meera again someday, Willa. I never got to thank her for all her help."

"She sounds like a good friend. I am sure she knows how thankful you are, Olivia, and how thankful she must be that you were there to help correct the wrong."

I blushed a little, thinking of myself as a hero, but then said, "Hey! Where is your necklace?" knowing I never saw a chain around Willa's neck.

"We elves don't need necklaces because we can be invisible, especially to Evil. For others who do see us, we can make ourselves disappear when we choose. We rely on our powers and our Spielings and Glangers to send Evil back." Willa was staring in my eyes now, and she said, "Don't be alarmed by that. It has been that way for centuries, and for the most part it works rather well. You just need to know the right time to use them."

I looked at Willa and said, "I wasn't alarmed. I figured you knew what you were doing. I just can't believe you can become invisible. Wow, you can become invisible? Could you show me later?"

"If you like I will," Willa said with a smile and a little smugness.

"I would indeed," I answered, still not believing she could. Thinking now of all the things we spoke of, I turned to Willa and said, "You know, Willa, for the first time I believe I truly understand the real importance of being a Chosen One."

Willa nodded her head in agreement and said, "Now to answer your question about where Fifty-Fifty Land is: It is behind the shutters of your home. It is another one of the worlds I was telling you about and the one where you are right now. That will be one of your lessons: How to travel from world to world with shutters. Shutters help us all to travel from place to place faster. We found that almost everywhere in the world you can find shutters, so they make it easy and fast for us to travel unnoticed anywhere we need to be in the worlds-among-the-world. Shutters used to be just for fairies and elves until the Chosen Ones came along and had to use them as well to travel so they too could help with taking care of Evil."

Nevertheless, I continued to question Willa, "Why do they call it Fifty-Fifty Land?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Skeleton Leaf Storiesby Jane Boatwright-Cook Copyright © 2012 by Jane Boatwright-Cook. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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