His dad uncurled the paper and held it up in the air, smiling at the paper. “Come stand beside me, Jeffery. Hurry, we don’t need to stay here long.”
He moved so he stood beside his dad, who lowered the paper down to waist height. “You need to study this and remember what it says. It is important to your history and your life. It will save it or . . .” Dad’s hand shook, causing the paper to waver. “This is what we’ve always taught you about your entire life.”
Jeffery rested his hand over the side of his Dad’s and took the paper from him. He stared down at the foolscap wondering where the fancy writing was. He’d been told day after day for ten years by his father and grandfather that their family history was written on some ancient sheet of an unusual-sized piece of paper. He never believed a word of their stories, it all seemed make-believe to him because they held no proof of such paper. Oh, he’d heard of the paper and saw them in books, but why would some Magical Beings family history be written on a foolscap? Dad swore to him only the Old Ones wrote on an 8 X 13 size paper with quill and ink. Okay, that part actually made sense. How else would someone back from George Washington’s time write? He guessed he was lucky and it wasn’t on a clay tablet in picture form. Still, there was nothing on the paper, so what was he supposed to be looking at? From what he’d been taught and what his dad just told him he was supposed to learn his family history and where he came from since the Orgs took out his entire family before his entire fifteenth. Birthday.
“Can I help you with something, young man?”
Jeffery spun to find a crumbled-in-, on himself, long, whited-haired man leaning against a wooden walking stick that stuck a good foot above his head. A voice he’d not heard in over six years came to mind.
“Elder of Summar, you must kneel, boy. Now!”
Why had his dead father’s voice sprung to life inside his mind? He’d not heard it since the day before the Orgs attacked. It put an intense, deep ache in his bones, but he did as it said, yet he tucked the foolscap behind his back. Whatever his Dad had stolen, Jeffery was sure he wasn’t supposed to have it if his birth father, King Effery of the Effery Cove told him an Elder of the Elemental Gods stood in front of him.
Jeffery clenched the ancient sheet of paper, praying the Elemental God failed to notice how his hands were stashed behind his back. Luck was not on his side. The Elemental God pointed at him and crooked his long, hair-covered dart-tipped-like finger at him.
“Stand and extract the Futurity Teller the Stealer of Life’s Future has taken from its protective case.”
Jeffery took a huge breath and told himself to puzzle through what he’d been told to do by the old fool. Not that he’d even call an Elemental God an old fool to his face. The only paper he. Could extract was the one behind his. Back, which meant it had to be the Futurity Teller. The name itself led Jeffery to believe it had to tell the future of something, but what? And since his father took it from the case, he had to be what the old wisen man referred to as the Stealer of Life’s Future.
What was a Stealer of Life’s Future? Dad would steal nothing. He’d rather cut his hand off than do so. He wore my rear-end out when I stole a candy bar. What was going on?
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