When the bell rang for recess Frances was one of the first to leave. With practiced ease, she slipped her thin form past her classmates, but rather than join the throng heading for the cafeteria she headed for the school library.
Hugging the locker-lined halls of Grenfall High, the young Grade 8 student kept her head down as she passed unnoticed by sophomores and seniors. However, she peeked around every corner, before scurrying on.
That caution paid off. At the second corner, she instantly pulled back, having seen her bullies waiting in the hall for her.
Luckily, Frances’s bullies, the pretty, dark-haired Leila, and her blonde counterpart Jessica had been chatting. As Frances risked another look, she saw that they were still talking.
Breathing out, Frances readjusted her ill-fitting backpack and plotted another route. The library had two entrances after all. If she was fast enough, Jessica and Leila wouldn’t suspect a thing. At least, Frances hoped they wouldn’t.
She’d only been able to finish her own homework last night because her arms and back had hurt too much. She wasn’t sure why, but she had to have done something wrong. Her parents had beat and kicked her with cane and boot for what seemed like forever before they’d locked her in the walk-in closet that served as her room. She did have a flashlight to do homework with, but it’d hurt too much to do anything other than crawl into the lumpy quilt that served as her mattress and pull the threadbare towel that was her blanket over herself.
And since she had nothing to give to her bullies, they’d add more bruises on top of the ones she already had.
Her arms, already aching, wailed at the mere thought of more punishment. That thought forced her feet to move.
It was raining badly as Frances peered out of Grenfall High’s eastern exit. However, her only way to get to the library without running into her bullies was a long, circuitous route around the outside of the school building. She had no jacket or umbrella.
Still, she was going to get wet anyway on her way home, and the book in her backpack and her favorite reading spot called to her.
She ran out, hand raised to ward off the droplets battering her face. The rainwater pooling in puddles soaked her socks and feet. She managed to get to the school’s western exit, stopping just for a moment to wipe her shoes on the mat and the raindrops from her olive-brown skin.
Some students glanced at her rain-soaked form, but she ignored them, skirting on the edges of the final stretch of hallway, studiously avoiding the attention-grabbing center. Running down a staircase, she hunched down, trying to make herself as unnoticeable as possible, before pushing through the library’s turnstile.
“Frances? What happened to you? You’re soaked!”
Frances jumped at the voice and spun to see Mr. Thomas, the school librarian, looking up from behind his desk.
“I… I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas. I—forgot my umbrella,” she stammered.
Frances liked to think she was quite good at lying. She’d had to do a lot of it in order to keep wearing long-sleeved clothing and to skip swimming days. If she didn’t like everybody would see the bruises covering her skin.
But lately, Mr. Thomas had been giving her this narrow-eyed look every time she had come to the library. It was as if he was examining her.
“Wait here,” he ordered. He turned around, opened a cupboard, and pulled out a fluffy white blanket, which he handed to Frances.
Her eyes widened. “Thank you, Mr. Thomas.”
“Just return it here before recess ends,” said Mr. Thomas. She nodded, forced a smile, and scurried off.
Rubbing her short brown hair and the rain from her face, Frances took more turns, into the non-fiction section which nobody read. There, she found it, her little corner of the library. Into the wall ran a dead end formed by a shelf of reference books. She tucked herself into this corner, dropped her backpack onto the floor, and pulled out her book.
Frances couldn’t comfortably lean her back against the wall. She tried anyway, but the moment the hard concrete pressed into her bruises, she gasped, and nearly cried out. She hadn’t realized how badly her mother and step-father had been on her yesterday.
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Perhaps because of that it was harder than usual to blot their words, and her pain out. For a while, even as she focused on the book that lay on her lap, all she could think about was the truth her parents made her repeat, that she was a worthless waste of space.
She shook her head. Recess was ticking by and she only had so much time to read. She was on the last entry of Tamora Pierce’s The Lioness Quartet— “The Lioness Rampant.” Starting over from the beginning of the page, she began to whisper the words out loud.
And just like that, as the world of her favorite author came alive in her mind, everything seemed to hurt just a bit less. She could escape, for a brief, blissful moment into the world of the lady knight and mage, Alanna. It was a world of magic and knights, where good would triumph in the end if you worked hard enough.
It was at that moment that Frances fell into the world of Durannon. For years, even after numerous trials, Frances would wonder how the series would have ended, and whether Alanna would have succeeded in stopping the evil Duke Roger.
It began suddenly, without warning. She just dropped, and the world went white.
Her limbs flailing, Frances couldn’t help but scream as her little corner of the school, hidden away from her bullies, vanished. Gone were the rickety metal bookshelves of the history section that had surrounded her. Gone were the pages of her book. She was just falling into white nothingness. Thankfully her brown hair was cut even shorter than a bob, so it didn’t whip into her eyes.
Somehow, despite the speed she had fallen at, she landed softly on red carpet. Staggering to her feet, she looked down at herself. Gone were her wet, worn school clothing. Instead, she was wearing a kind of simple white shift that was far too large for her thin frame.
At least it hid the bruises that mottled her arms and back.
She looked up and found she wasn’t alone. Boys and girls were scrambling to their feet. She knew who they were. They were the three hundred students from the grade eight class of her school, Grenfall High School.
Frances scooted away from those girls, trying to place herself in a corner. She recognized two of her usual bullies in the group, and she didn’t want to give them a target. However, they were more focused on the fact that the carpet they were all on had no end. No walls were in sight. There was just white around them, as far as her eyes could see.
There was simply no corner to go to.
“Welcome, boys and girls. We are the Summoner System of Durannon and we’ve called on you to be the heroes of this world.”
Shrieks were heard from boys and girls because in an instant the carpet was in the air, flying over a lush continent. Mountains and cities, rendered tiny by the height, twinkled under them and the bright sun that shone above. Frances just managed to clamp her hands to her mouth and to bite back her scream.
“Durannon is much like your world. A world of humans. But it’s a world under threat,” chimed the voice. Frances couldn’t figure out if it was that of a man or woman, but she said nothing, as she could hear the authority in that voice.
“Fae-kin, also called Alavari, though you’d know them better as monsters, have launched an invasion of the Human Kingdoms. The Human Kingdoms don’t stand a chance,” said the voice of the System.
Images in her head suddenly started to play like a movie. Monsters of all kinds. There were orcs, harpies, centaurs, and others that she didn’t quite recognize. They seemed to blink into her mind like flashing broken lights, but there was a common theme.
They were tearing into human homes, burning down cities, and marching across the land in army columns.
“So, as it has been done many times over the years, the human kingdoms have activated the Summoner System. A hundred and twenty thirteen-year-olds pulled into our land, at the perfect age where they can be trained for their duty.”
The adolescents murmured, even as Frances thought about it in her mind. Who? Was the system referring to them?
“If you die in your task, you will simply return to your bodies on your Earth, to exactly the time you left. Simply declare, “Return me back to my Earth and home!” and the system will return you home. However, if you succeed in your task and kill the Demon King Thorgoth, you will be able to return to your bodies at the time you left them, with gold in your lockers and a blessing of luck.”
“How can we believe you?” shouted someone.
“Yeah? How can we know you’re not telling a lie?”
“Leaders of your world… Sargon of Akkad, Charlemagne of the Franks, Shaka Zulu, and others have completed their tasks, and returned, wealthy and with the luck and talents to move their world. You will find their marks on Durannon as well.”
The voice paused, before chuckling as if it knew something its enraptured audience didn’t.
“And of course, if you would like to stay in Durannon after you complete your task, you are most welcome to do so.”
Frances felt a chill run through her, and she clutched at her still sore arms, fingers digging into the red marks she knew were just hidden by the shift.
Marks her mother and stepfather had given her last night. Maybe it was the A- she got on her test. Maybe it was because she was a worthless waste of space. It didn’t matter wherever she was going, it would have to be better than living with her parents.
“Good luck, heroes and heroines.”
The sky vanished and the carpet with it. In front of Frances’s vision, a tall vaulted ceiling appeared, draped in crimson flags with a leaping black horse. The room they were in was filled with knights in armor, warriors, men, and women in wizard-looking robes.
And at the head of them, in long white wizard robes with gold trim, was a woman with long black hair and piercing green eyes. For some reason, she was hunched over, leaning heavily on her staff. Yet, she stood, as stately as any queen. A warm smile curved her lips
“Welcome to Durannon. Heroes and heroines.”