Chapter One

She couldn’t run much longer.

Her breath came in quick gasps, and her sides hurt terribly.

She glanced behind her to see if he was still there, but unfortunately, he was. Just a lousy piece of fruit for goodness sakes! Anyway, it was so beat up that he wouldn’t have gotten a half pence for it. What would happen if… she was caught?

As she deftly jumped over a puddle she saw her chance. She ducked into a busy market street and tried as hard as she could to blend in with the crowd which was jostling her from all directions. She looked back and saw the vendor’s son, the one who had chased her, standing on the corner of the road looking disgusted. He turned away, defeated. How had he seen her anyway?

She touched her hand to her hair, which felt very tangled. I must look terrible, she thought, her eyes scanning the surroundings for her brother. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. Whipping around she saw it was Jamie.

“Good grief! What are you trying to do, scare me to death? I thought you were the vendor’s son!”

Jamie laughed. “Well you do deserve it. He could’ve caught you, you know.”

Sylvie felt a tear rung down her face, no doubt leaving a dirty streak. “I dunna know how he saw. I was as sly as… as you are!”

Jamie looked sadly down at her. “I know. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Sylvie, but I dunna want you to have to leave me.”

Sylvie started, and sat up. It had been a dream. But why did she keep having these dreams? The dreams in which she had a brother, an older brother. In real life she had no siblings.

And her dream was placed in a long ago time. Somewhere back in the 1800’s.
She stood and stretched. And then she knew that she would have to find it… today.

She was running as she had in her dream. The cold of the winter day bit her bare cheeks, but she didn’t mind. Her long skirt swished and whipped around in the wind, its eggplant colour standing out shockingly from the white of the morning. It was the skirt she never wore in public, it brought too many odd looks. Maybe it was the contrast of the teal tee shirt. Her mother had always said she was colourblind.

The snow crunched hard under her canary yellow high tops as she ran through the woods. The long tan scarf she had thrown on was growing stiff in the frigid air, and her hands were numb.

At last she saw the entrance to the cave, and ran in. It was warmer there. She looked around the floor of the cave with expectation and upon seeing it there she dropped to her knees. She sat across from it, not knowing what would happen. It was a cube, slightly warped. Its translucent outside encased a shape, a heart, a heart floating in what seemed to be weightless blue green liquid. It glowed, a glow which was a cross between Sylvie’s favourite prismacolor pencil, persian green, and the colour of grass encased in frost. Celadon. She shook her long bangs away from her eyes and bent closer to it. It was light and warm in her stiff hands, and she heard and felt it vibrate softly, like the purr of a cat.

I dunna want you to have to leave me. She heard the words and sighed.