" Never let the spark of imagination fade from your life. That's my best advice. When you lose your creativity, I believe you are giving up the only part of your child-self that you took with you into adulthood. By embracing this side of myself, I find it easy to create and weave stories; pursuing them with the same enthusiasm I would have had as a child playing a make-believe game."
Izzy Jungclaus
A New Novel by Isabel R. Jungclaus
Preface
Music drifted through the trees like a pleasant breeze. Although the air was still, the forest rustled and swayed, as if the trees wanted to dance to the somber tune occurring strangely in the dead of night.
The sounds of a violin and a piano were embraced in a deeply beautiful song; the long, smooth notes of the violin and the loud, strong notes of the piano weaved in and out of each other, always the same melody, but different at the same time. The notes went off in different directions, but always came back, dancing together in the end.
In a small clearing of the forest stood the violinist wearing shabby traveling boots and peasant's apparel. He was playing with a beautiful woman sitting in front of a shimmering piano. The woman was shimmering too; her light silky hair sparkling in the moonlight while her pale fingertips danced across the keys gracefully and effortlessly. A smile played across her silver lips, which possessed all the beauty of a crescent moon.
The music grew faster, more intense. The man played furiously, his bow flashing across the strings in a blur, and a single glistening tear slid down his nose and onto his violin.
The shimmering woman was no longer smiling, and the tune she was playing became more dark and morose. Finally the tempo slowed, but the notes of the man and the woman danced closer than ever. Tears fell freely now down the man's cheeks. The woman's sparkling dimmed into a dull glow, and she grew ever more pale as the music died.
The music stopped, the last note echoing sadly into the night. The man watched through blurred eyes as his true love, along with her piano, disappeared once again. Before she completely faded her eyes met his intensely for one last time, and then she was gone.
"Farewell, goodbye my dragonfly, I will see you again, and we will be together! But for now, farewell and goodnight."
And with that the peasant man strode off into the forest with only the clothes on his back and a tearstained violin.
Fern awoke cold and hungry on the street, as always. She pulled herself up and looked out at the bleak, damp, and dirty city streets that were her home.
Fern had been abandoned there at a very young age, or so she thought. She had been living on the streets of New Laventon for as long as she could recall. She could not remember anything from when she was a child, save a few images in her head that might have been old dreams anyway. Fern thought she remembered a warm room filled with light, and a hand that felt like velvet stroking her cheek
Oh, the days she had spent trying to come up with something, anything that would give her a clue to solve the mystery of her childhood. But nothing ever made any sense.
Of course, Fern didn't know what her real name was, or if she was ever given a name. She was called Girl and Thief and You for a long time, and got tired of it. So she made up her own name. She remembered the day she did. In her mind she had made a list of all of her favorite words to say. They were pebble, mist, jewel, spring, and fern. She thought pebble was ridiculous, and spring and jewel didn't fit her personality.
She liked mist because it sounded mysterious, like her. But finally she decided on Fern. She found it much more pretty than mist.
Fern was right about not choosing spring or jewel. They certainly did not suit her at all. Growing up alone in the streets does not make one exactly courteous and kind. She was tough, but clever. She had learned from all the foolish mistakes she made when she was young. On one occasion she was caught crawling through somebodys window, and then was lashed twenty times with a whip.
The people of her dark city were cruel and corrupted. There was nobody at all who would show a starving orphan like Fern an ounce of pity. So she was forced to steal to survive, and she was skilled at it. She took everything she could and to gave nothing to anybody except those who were worse off than her. This was Fern's life strategy.
Click on the edges of the book to turn the pages. Enjoy!
Coming in 2011!
