Danni Haig: 丹妮海格（国际英文版）

By Jiaqi Zhong and 钟家琪

Blurb

The song hung in the air, strange and eerie. The figure cloaked in black seemed to turn its head around and stare into her eyes, but it was just an illusion, for she could not see his or her face. She had never been able to glimpse the face of the stranger that haunted the dream that plagued her for three months...

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• Language: English
• Publisher: EHGBooks
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781647848699

Book preview

Blurb

The song hung in the air, strange and eerie. The figure cloaked in black seemed to turn its head around and stare into her eyes, but it was just an illusion, for she could not see his or her face. She had never been able to glimpse the face of the stranger that haunted the dream that plagued her for three months…

Like all faithful princesses, Danni would never argue with her parents, especially about matters of her kingdom’s safety, even though if their kingdom’s safety relied on her making some sacrifices. And that came on her sixteenth year, as she was about to meet the prince that she had been promised to at a very young age.

But on that very day, she had gotten distracted by the opportunity to get the answer to a question that she had been asking for three months. And by following that source which would allow her to get the answer, she found herself wound up in the village pub. Where, luckily she had found herself with a friend, Theodore, a young knight who grew up with her in the castle. Out of curiosity, the knight had found a hooded stranger who claimed that he had a dragon egg for sale. And for whatever reason, or maybe it was merely just fate, Danni had bought the egg.

A few weeks later, she had befriended the castle’s new arrival: Jason, the prince, and her dragon, who she had named Chaol, had grown considerably. But disaster struck. The castle was invaded by Vikings. Danni had no choice but to flee, along with her dragon, into the woods.

After arriving in the woods, she finds herself with more strange and wonderful things that she had ever encountered before in her life, the most wonderful and shocking: animals in the forest can actually speak and read English！ And all those animals seem to have one of the qualities that helped her get out of the forest: friendliness. In fact, the very first animal that she befriended on the way was an owl by the name of Eyelop, and with Eyelop’s help, she found more friends on her way. For example, a tiger with extreme borderline personality disorder and a garden mouse who managed to befriend a bald eagle. They were all glad to help her find her way out of the woods and to Jason’s kingdom.

When she was almost to the kingdom, she found, with delight that she wasn’t the only one who had managed to escape the fire. Her best friend, Theo and the prince, Jason, had also escaped into the woods. And the three of them, along with her dragon Chaol, succeeded in finding another home. And so they lived, happily ever after.

About the Author

Jiaqi Zhong was born in Beijing, China in 2002. She now lives in Xiamen and is a student of Xiamen Foreign Language School as an 8th year.

She was bought to London, UK with her parents at the age of 4, and lived there for 5 more years before returning to her homeland. And because of those 5 years, she has adapted reading and writing as a second nature, but it wasn’t until she had been in contact with J.K. Rowling’s masterpiece Harry Potter that did she really start to put her efforts into writing.

Right after she had finished reading Harry Potter for the first time, she couldn’t help but to be enraptured by the book, and after three more times of reading the series, she soon became a huge fan of the books and eventually, through many hours of surfing through the internet, she soon found a website called fanfiction.net and set her talents into writing (not only) Harry Potter fan fictions.

Using good time of the summer vacation in 2016, she has set to work on some original works of hers, and the first of them to be finished is a fairytale called Danni Haig, which is also her first finished piece at the early age of 14.

Table of Contents

Blurb

About the Author

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 1

The song echoed in her head, beautiful and relaxing; a lullaby of sorts. If the song were sung to her before she was to sleep, her journey into sleep land would’ve been a lot smoother, unlike what she would have to go through about hours later. It had always been hard for her to fall asleep these few months.

Maybe it was because she’s been having the same dream for more than three months in a row, and it was getting a little tiresome, but at least the dream itself had been peaceful. Well, as peaceful as she can get it to be. Every single night, she heard the same song hummed in her head time and time again, and the same picture planted in her mind: a  forest, with mist swirling around the roots of the trees.

Every time the dream appeared in her mind, she always searched to find the singer, but she never found them. The only thing she ever saw was a mane of long brown hair swishing away, nothing else plus she only caught sight of the person right before she awoke from the dream.

Once she was awake, she liked to dwell on the dream, wondering what it all meant. However, today, she didn’t have the time. As she reminded herself the day before, today was a day that didn’t allow distractions - for today is the day that might change the course of her life.

Every good princess has to marry a prince, or a king, or someone of noble blood (even though some are allowed to be wed to lords), some has their soul mate picked for them at a very young age, for example, 6. And today, she was about to meet hers. She had never met the prince before, but they were destined to be together ever since she was 5. Or rather, been put together for the good of two kingdoms.

Walking out onto the grounds of the castle, she saw the whole court, around four hundred people, including the household, standing on the two sides next to the stone path that circled around the fountain and lead to the gates and out to the villages.

At the gates a carriage had just rolled in. The white stallions that were pulling the carriage snorted and pawed the ground. One of the footmen jumped down from the carriage and rolled out a velvet carpet. The other opened the golden carriage doors.

There was a collected intake of breath. Everyone was staring fixedly at the carriage doors. She walked towards her parents, standing  next to her father. Beads of cold sweat trickling down her neck.  She tried to hide her nervousness from the others.

A boy about two years older than her stepped onto the carpet and straightened up. He was tall, with brown hair and twinkling blue eyes. The eyes crinkled as the mouth beneath it lit up in a genuine smile. The smile was contagious, and true. One of the smiles that you rarely see. She felt herself relax. She returned the smile to him.

As customary, there was to be a party to celebrate the union of the princess and prince. After dancing so many dances with the prince, her feet began to hurt. She excused herself to rest, and that’s when she heard it, the same soft lullaby tickling her ears. The voice wasn’t loud, it was hard to hear really, but as the wind did the join carrying the song towards her very well, and she knew that it was the same song that plagued her head everytime.

She looked around for the owner of that voice. She spotted a girl standing by the table, the beautiful song coming from her lips.

Excitement coursed through her, she was finally going to find out the meaning of the song that had plagued her for these hard few months. She tiptoed towards the girl, wanting to run towards her and ask her what the meaning of the song was, but was not sure how to do this without startling the girl.

While edging towards her step by step, the girl suddenly looked around, saw the princess walking towards her and gasped slightly. She had no idea why, the girl scrambled away, but she had no time to figure out to the answer. She scooped the white dress that she was wearing in her hands and ran towards the servant girl. The girl immediately fled.

There was nothing to be done but to run after her, out of the garden and to the gates of the castle. One of the guards stopped the princess in her tracks. Mud smeared the edges of her dress, but she didn’t care. ‘Your highness, please,’ the guard said, asking her to stay in the castle. She shook her head and pushed onwards, shouting from behind her shoulders, ‘Don’t worry! I’ll be back soon!’

Chapter 2

She followed the girl into the village marketplace. She had rarely ever entered the villages  of  her  kingdom.  Sometimes  her parents had to greet their subjects and they would bring her with them, and sometimes, with the help of her maids, she was able to sneak out of the castle, sometimes to buy only some books to read.

Overly, she had never known  the village very well, and she was starting to regret it as she raced after the girl and wondered if she could possibly get lost in this tide of people milling about shouting and purchasing items.

She could only see the tail of the braid of the girl now, swishing into the crowd and out of her sight.

She followed as fast as she possibly can, in a long white dress and heels. The people murmured as she ran by, some accidentally knocking into her, but she didn’t mind.

The girl turned a corner and vanished once again. The princess started to panic. She followed the girl, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Not only did she fail to spot the servant girl anywhere, she found herself at the back of a tavern. Sitting at the grimy tables were buff men and a few knights, chugging down beer and having fights. And if you want to speak the truth, all the smell that was leaking from the tavern wasn’t the sweetest of smells. She winced and began to back away. Before she spotted the girl fleeing into the tavern.

‘Have you seen a girl? Around sixteen?’ She asked around, hurriedly searching the area, but she didn’t see the girl. She did, however, hear a conversation behind her.

‘Dragon eggs? You must be kidding me!’

‘How would I? Look at it. Does it look like a chicken egg, perhaps?’

She turned around. A hooded figure took out from under his robes, a giant black egg, glittering with red amber. She inched forward, staring at the egg, enraptured by its beauty.

‘Danni?’ The knight asked, looking around at her. ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at the castle?’

She looked back      at the young knight, confused and a little dazed. ‘I could say the same to you, Theo. What are you doing here?’

He shrugged. ‘Just getting a drink, met this fellow over here who says he has a dragon egg and is willing to sell it.’ Then, lowering his voice conspiratorially, he said, ‘Not surprising is it. If I had a dragon egg that was about to hatch, that’s what I’ll be doing too.’

‘So what are you thinking about? Buying the egg?’ She asked him, the girl with the song drifting out of her mind.

‘Nah,’ Theo said, ‘haven’t got that much money. Although I don’t see anyone else hurrying to buy it.’ He looked around to pressure the point. No one wanted to buy the egg, all right. No one was even looking towards them.

The princess sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll take it, follow me to the palace for the gold.’ Theo beamed