Sprites Amulet

By Susan Lombardi

What if the world of magic was not gone but hidden in our modern world?
What if those Hoodies following you were not really Human?
The World of Elves, Sprites and Dwarfs is under threat.
And it will take a Human boy and his friends to try and save both worlds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ross Lombardi
• Release date: Apr 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458113245

Susan Lombardi

Wife and MotherSusan Lombardi is interested in period costume and history.She has a long list of creative gifts to long to mention.Ross Lombardi is VERY lucky to be her husband.

Book preview

THE SPRITE’S AMULET

By Susan Lombardi

Copyright 2011 Susan Lombardi

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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CHAPTER ONE:

If in doubt, poke it with a stick.

Connor peered into the murky pool. He tilted his head of curly brown hair and squinted his blue eyes, considering. Ione crawled over to inspect what had caught his interest. With both heads staring into the muddy puddle, Connor carefully prodded it with his stick. Ripples ran over the surface, but nothing else exciting presented itself. Ione satisfied the pool was safe to play in started poking it with her finger, first making ripples, then little splashes. Connor, growing bored, dropped the stick and went to see what was keeping Lily’s attention.

Her blonde head was bent over a pile of pebbles which she was trying to pile into towers. Connor somewhat of an expert in this department started to help. Ione, meanwhile, having spied Connor’s abandoned stick was doing her own experiments with it, poking the puddle, just to be sure. When Connor saw what Ione was doing he jumped up and took the stick from her.

Mine, mine, he shouted.

Ione smiled at him, her brown eyes twinkling, reached up and pulled his hair. Connor knew this was Ione’s sign of affection for him and smiled back. He ran in a circle around the puddle and his two little friends, waving his stick. Lily looked up at the commotion and then giggled in delight at Connor running round in circles, her blue eyes shining with glee. Ione looked on, non-plused. Eventually he came back to Ione, still sat next to the puddle, and gave the stick back. Ione gave him her cheeky smile. Connor, being the oldest, she looked up to him. She returned to poking the puddle with her stick.

Connor pricked his pointed ears. He’s heard something, someone was coming along the dirt path they were playing in. Three sets of beautiful, sparkling, butterfly wings were spread, and Connor, Ione and Lily quickly flew up into the leafy green trees overhead. Ione and Lily flew to the top of the trees to be well hidden. But Connor, who suffered dreadfully from curiosity, stayed lower in the branches and peered between the leaves to see who was coming.

Connor saw what looked like an adolescent human, but he wasn’t entirely sure if he was a human or one of their kind. He had never seen hair like that before in the human world. The newcomer had blue hair coming out in spikes from all angles of his head. As he came closer he seemed to be emitting some sort of music, but Connor couldn’t see any sort of musical instrument he appeared to be playing. Unless it was the white strings he seemed to have coming from each ear which went into a little white box. Most curious. He leaned further forwards through the leaves to see better what this creature was. As he walked past, Connor was fairly sure it was a he, he could see he had the type of misty grey eyes, fairly uncommon in the human world, but not so in his world. He also appeared to be wearing someone else’s trousers. They were far too big for him, black and also appeared to have a lot of buckles and long ties which hung from somewhere around the knees. Connor started to follow through the trees, Ione and Lily who knew him well, fluttered their wings anxiously, he was always tempting trouble. But Connor pulled a face at them and continued to follow, making sure he was well hidden, and making no more noise than what could be mistaken for the wind in the trees. Connor was now intrigued by those trousers and their ties; for as well as suffering dreadfully from curiosity; he was also subject to mischievousness. He could feel his hands tickling and twitching. Mischievous thoughts would just pop into his head unbidden; he didn’t know where they came from, but not acting on them was agony for him.

The blue haired one suddenly started emitting another tune. He stopped and pulled another small, shiny box out of his trousers, this one black. It lit up and he stared at in intently. Connor was now in the tree right next to him, but if he had turned to look where he was, he would never have seen him. He would have faded into the surroundings looking like a part of the trees, twisted pieces of wood and leaves and perhaps sunlight on dust motes to give a slight sparkle to the air.

The blue hair was still engrossed in his little black box, his thumb was now doing a tap dance on the surface of it, he appeared to be mesmerised by the shining light coming from it. Perhaps the box is a magician’s and it has trapped his mind in it thought Connor, anyway he is certainly spell bound by it. His hands gave another itch and a twitch. It’ll only take a second thought Connor I am very quick and quiet; it will be done in a twinkling and he will not be the wiser it was a little me.

Connor who had unconsciously been slowly creeping to knee height now darted out and fastened together a tie from each leg. A grin on his small face from ear to ear he was about to dart back to the cover of the trees when the legs he had just tied together suddenly and without warning spun around, or tried to, as if their owners had suddenly decided to return back the way they had come. Unfortunately, as they were tied together the walking back the way they had come turned into a spin around and a fall in Connor’s direction. Connor was very surprised to suddenly find the blue spikes heading towards him, but probably not as surprised as the one sporting the blue spikes. Grey eyes opened in surprise at falling over, widened in shock at what he saw now in front of him. A creature the size of a toddler but with a greenish tint to his skin, and green butterfly wings on his back which were flapping frantically trying to escape. The grey eyes met the blue ones and both shouted. As gravity took its course and the blue haired one fell to the ground his arms flailing, he nearly caught hold of Connor. But with a final flap of wings Connor soared up into the trees and disappeared blending into the woodland, his heart beating as rapidly as his wings.

Connor had never been properly seen by a human before, he had come very close a few times, yes, but not actually seen this close up. It was forbidden. All the non-humans knew their survival depended on not being seen or caught by the humans.

Once there had been very few humans and they’d lived in harmony together with the other races. All the land had been free for them all to live and travel. The humans had respected the other races, who had powers and knowledge they had not. But in time they had become more numerous as the other races had dwindled. As the humans had become numerous, they had spread throughout the country and fought with each other over land and resources. The other races had retreated into their own settlements in the woods and caves and other out of the way places which the humans were not interested in because they could not be farmed, mined or settled on. As the human’s interest in commerce grew they lost their awe of the other races. With the arrival of reason and science the humans lost their belief in the other races and their magics. The other races began to fear the humans and their sciences. They now only felt safe hidden. Using magic to hide in pockets of their own world, next to that of the human world, where not even science could find them.

CHAPTER TWO:

They could have tied themselves in a neat bow couldn’t they?

Jude, for that was the name of the blue haired one, laid on the ground blinking. He did not believe what he had just seen. He was trying to will it to have not happened, or he had dreamed it and he was waiting to wake up. After neither of these things seemed to happen and he was still lying in a muddy puddle on the ground, he rubbed his eyes and pinched himself, just to be sure he was awake. He then tried to stand up, which was somewhat hampered by his legs still being caught up by something. Who would believe the straps on his combats could have got so tangled up by themselves? As he untangled them he realised he was clutching something in his hand which he’d not had before. He looked at it curiously, it was like a small silver coin with intricate designs wrought on it. It had a small hole in it with a fine silken cord threaded through which had been snapped, he had not seen anything like it before. He wondered how it had got into his hand, he didn’t remember picking it up. An image flashed into his mind of himself falling and grabbing for the….whatever was it? The creature that he’d nearly fallen on had flown away so it must be some sort of bird, and fairly big, perhaps a pheasant or an owl and greenish. The sun must have been in his eyes as well so he couldn’t see what it was properly, that would probably explain the sparklyness too. If the coin had come from the creature it must have picked it up somewhere and got it caught round its neck. It was probably glad to be rid of it.

Jude put the coin-like thing in his pocket and picked up his iPod and mobile which he’d dropped when he’d fallen. He looked around the wood, everything looked normal, just trees. He’d been coming to this wood since he was a child, he’d spend ages playing here making dens, creeping through the undergrowth. Now he was too old for those games he just came to chill out, have some time to himself. Nothing weird had ever happened before…had it? Jude started walking back home feeling reassured that all was well. He put firmly to the back of his mind the image of a pair of very surprised, sentient blue eyes; along with the knowledge that the sun was in the opposite direction to that in which he’d been looking and along with the fact that the straps on his combats had been tied in a very neat and definite bow.

Jude came out of the wood without any further incidence, he crossed the road on its edge and started to walk through the industrial estate. It was an old industrial estate, a sprawling mass of warehouses and industrial units on the edge of West Haven, the town he lived in. Some of the buildings were in use for different manufacturing businesses, the sounds of machinery banging, vehicles coming and going and people shouting mingled with the smells of smoke, oil and curry from a ready meal factory. Some warehouses were just used for storage and some stood derelict or empty, a playground for teenagers. Jude had always been drawn to the woods, it smelt nicer and wasn’t as dangerous, his Mum would have killed him for playing about in the derelict warehouses.

Jude could see three teenagers on the path ahead of him now. He didn’t think they were kids he knew, and they didn’t look very friendly, so he made sure not to catch up to them. All three were dressed nearly identically in hooded sweatshirts and tracksuit bottoms with their socks pulled up over the bottoms. They were walking quite slowly, more ambling with hunched shoulders, than walking and they seemed to struggle with a straight line. They were talking to each other as they went along, but they seemed to communicate in mumbles and grunts. I’m a teenager, Jude thought, and I can manage to walk properly and talk using words. Why do some teenagers think it’s cool to slouch and talk like a Neanderthal? I save it exclusively for my Mum not for my friends.

Jude was starting to get really bored of not being able to walk at his own pace when the three teenagers turned a corner and disappeared. Jude breathed a sigh of relief and set his pace to its usual speed. Until he realised where they had gone, he didn’t remember their being an alleyway there, he remembered just a long stretch of warehouse wall. When he was level with where they had disappeared, there was indeed an alleyway between two old warehouses, but he couldn’t see the teenagers. How come he’d never noticed this before; he’d come this way lots of times. He was distracted by the coin in his pocket which was oddly starting to feel really warm. He took it out of his pocket, and it was indeed warm and glowing slightly. Jude was just wondering what weird metal it must be made from to do that, when he was distracted by what sounded like an argument. The three teenagers he’d just seen go down here earlier were down another alleyway further down this one shouting at each other, but in some indecipherable language with a lot of grunts in it. Were they foreign or was he just out of touch with adolescent English? His curiosity aroused he cautiously looked around the corner of the alleyway. Caution was thrown to the wind when he saw what was down there. His eyes widened in shock and he took an audible sharp intake of breath. Three unhooded heads turned towards where the sound was coming from. But they only got an impression of blue spikes, and then there was nothing there.

Jude was running as fast as he could out of the alleyway and home. He really couldn’t believe what he’d just seen, the sun definitely wasn’t in his eyes this time and it was no-where near Halloween. Jude felt like having a stiff drink and couldn’t wait until next year when he could walk into a pub and buy one legally. He ran across roads barely minding the traffic. He’d wished he’d done more running; his breathing was coming in gasps and he had a stitch in his side, but he didn’t stop. He just needed to get home where it was safe, preferably under his duvet under his bed.

When he reached home he