Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
“His official justification for sending them away was to find a solution for the drought. But we all knew he merely wanted to protect the Norfolk bloodline, while allowing the other kingdoms’ proxies to die off here in Monsterland. As a new king, it was seen as unjust and almost became his downfall. But then the water flowed, like he promised.”
Rain came. Rain Norfolk. That was when my great-grandmother was born, and the drought back home ended. It brought much-needed water into to the Tionesta River that flows through our property. Since then, the War People have seen us Norfolk women as good luck.
My eyes start to tear. We are from here. We’re from Monsterland. How’s that possible? No wonder Grandma Rain hated everyone back home and saw them as weak. She was rude and unkind, too. It was probably how she was raised by her parents. Monsterland culture.
I never would have guessed it. Then again, there was so much about her I didn’t know.
I think of her sitting on her old gray couch in her office, her nose buried in a book about gardening, surrounded by piles of books. How could someone know so much about gardening and still be such a bad gardener? She literally read from sunup to sundown, like it was her job. Her office was stuffed with thousands of gardening books from all around the world—the plains of Africa, the mountains of Japan, the coasts of China. Yet she killed her rose garden by putting some strange fertilizer in the soil. After that, they never grew back. You’d think she’d know how not to kill her own flowers or restart her garden.
I mean, I did see her putter a few times and put some stuff in the soil, but they were mostly rocks and weird crystals. Once she even planted a bunch of charcoal. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to grow black beans.
I shrugged it off. She was always eccentric.
Actually, that’s what I used to think. Now I know better. She had her reasons for everything. But what would possibly motivate her to read all those books…and then…
Maybe she killed the roses on purpose. Maybe she ruined that soil. Her rose garden was her testing ground.
Is that why she read her books nonstop? Was she was trying to find things that might grow in that toxic dirt. Dirt one might find in a place like here? She could’ve been looking for food for the monsters to live on.
It’s just a theory, but it’s exactly what I’d been planning before my peace plan went to shit. I thought if I could help them create stable food sources, they wouldn’t be a threat to my world anymore.
She very likely could’ve come to the same conclusion. Sadly, she was barking up the wrong tree. I know that now. It’s like Alwar says, the creatures here don’t want to live in peace. They like fighting. They like hunting. Closing those doorways is the only solution.
“Growing up, did you hear any old stories about the First People witnessing a big hole opening in the sky?” I ask Rool.
“No, but there are other stories. The First People were known for their wild tales filled with nonsense.”
“Nonsense, how?”
“They told fantastic tales that glorify their kind. They spoke of a time when these lands were inhabited by billions of humans who constructed grand temples made of steel. They told of mechanical Fliers that could carry entire armies. They even believed there was once an ocean filled with fish. Nonsense.” He laughs. “Do you see any of that here?”
Giant temples made of steel? Mechanical Fliers?
“As if ignorant, weak humans could be capable of producing such things,” he adds.
I frown. “Then how do you explain my world?”
“They have had thousands of years to evolve. The First People have always been very primitive. They are incapable of adapting. It is why I chose to join the Blood People.” He laughs, shaking his head. “Steel temples.”
This conversation sets my mind reeling.
“But didn’t humans build the wall?” It’s an architectural marvel, an entire city inside a stone wall, complete with running water, plumbing, defense systems made with harpoons, and massive stone doors on hinges. It’s not a medieval castle. It’s a jaw-dropping fortress.
“Yes, but they had the help of the War People.”
“But when was it built?”
“I do not know. Perhaps a thousand years ago? Try asking that husband of yours.”
I already have. I once asked Alwar about the wall, and he told me the humans built the first portion but needed more muscle to complete it.
So how did primitive humans know how to build something that’s a thousand times bigger than the Great Wall of China, or hundreds of times taller than any pyramid found back home?
My mind snaps hard and floods with facts, stories, and pieces of puzzles that never fit—monsters having invaded my world long ago, but no record or evidence of it ever happening. Humans running from that invasion to come here, and then turning into giants. Humans back home fighting off the monsters and burning endless bonfires to keep the monsters out, which destroyed these lands. Then there are the stories of humans, my ancestors, building an insane wall. Finally, there’s the story of monsters pouring in one day from a hole in the sky.