The Forgotten Thirteenth||Prologue

Instructions

Teysiri raced through the rainforest on silent feet, panting as she ran. She knew her sister was far ahead of her, but she did not let that stop her. Oliea had challenged her younger sister to a race from their home in the forest depths to their favorite climbing tree. As usual, Teysiri had accepted. For a three year old, Teysiri had a competitive streak a mile long, so she had taken a shortcut. She had leapt over a small, winding creek and gained the upper hand. Not for long, however. Oliea leapt over the creek as well and landed with a thump beside her sister. On the two ran, side by side, each attempting to overtake the other. They kicked up small amounts of soil and leaves in their wake. Their noise sent the fan lizards swirling away. Tangled up in their joyous race, neither Teysiri nor Oliea noticed the climbing tree flash by in a blur of blue and green. Then the soil turned to dirt and the dirt turned to ash and the ash stretched to the edge of a small cliff. The cliff sloped down to meet a paved road that led to miles of heavily armed stone wall at least fifty feet high. With a gasp, Teysiri realized. “Bridgehead!” she exclaimed,”That means-“ Oliea looked at her sister with fear in her eyes, “We’ve gone too far.” Teysiri was astonished. Her sister was not afraid of anything! But the fear in her eyes when she looked at the human city suggested otherwise. “We’ve gone too far!” Oliea said,”Mom and Dad are going to kill us!” “Oliea?” Teysiri asked. “We’re never going to be allowed outside the clearing again!” “Oliea! Look!” Three guards stood outside the main gate of Bridgehead, their avatar bodies bulging with muscles. One of them, the largest of the three, was turned to look at the two sisters. He grunted and his two companions turned to look at them as well. The first avatar raised his riffle to point at Oliea and Teysiri. Oliea clenched Teysiri’s arm in a steely grip. Teysiri could feel her sister shaking. “On the count of three, we run,” Oliea’s voice quavered as she spoke. “One…” Teysiri braced herself. “Two…” Oliea breathed deeply. “Three!” The sisters bolted away and into the rainforest once again. Meanwhile, the three avatars had begun scaling the cliff face, gripping hand holds and slipping their feet into notches in the stone. All the while, Teysiri and Oliea pelted on. They leapt over the creek and just before they could reach the path to their clearing home…Wham! Teysiri had tripped over a fallen log and landed, face down, on the forest floor. Oliea immediately stopped to help her sister. But, before she could get up and keep running, Teysiri was pinned down by one of their pursuers. Meanwhile, the other two lifted Oliea up by her underarms. She struggled, hissed, and bit, but to no avail. Her two captors were not fazed by her attempts to escape. They stood stone stiff, holding Oliea’s arms in such tight grasps that she felt her arms go numb. Quietly, the three kidnappers slunk back to the edge of the ash-covered cliff and proceeded down it, the Na’vi children in their arms. Oliea continued to struggle against her holders as they climbed, until one, a female, whispered in her ear. “Keep on like this and there’s gonna be an unfortunate accident on the way to the city.” Oliea instantly fell still. “The city!” Oliea thought,”Why would they take us there? What do they want with us?” Oliea looked around frantically, searching for an escape route. There wasn’t one. Even if she did manage to free herself from her kidnappers, it wouldn’t be long until she plummeted to her death on the pavement below. Oliea turned her head to look at Teysiri, who lay asleep in her captor’s arms. Her limbs, tail, and braid hung limply down like loose vines. The avatar who held her did not look aggressive. In fact, he looked kind and…wistful? The look in his eyes suggested that he wished he could do this all the time. “Kidnap children?” Oliea thought,” No, this is…different.” “He must’ve had something like this-kids likes us. But then he lost them, somehow,” she thought, noticing the way he carried Teysiri. Carefully, tenderly, quietly. How one might hold a small child. His face a clear, silent message to both children present. It was the thing their parents faces said all the time,”I will protect you, no matter what they try to do to hurt you.”