SMV Chapter 1: The Bad Decision
Oh, by the way, SMV is the abbreviation of The Secret of Moonflower Valley. Just thought I should mention that! Oh, and here is the very first chapter of SMV—pronounced smuv. (I love saying that word. You should try saying it out loud, it’s very wonderful.)
This chapter is dated. For more recent content, click here.Chapter 1
The Bad Decision
Clementine
In most of my favorite books, the adventure starts with the main character making a bad decision. After that bad decision, the main character meets someone, usually the other important main character, and then something terrible happens. But in the end, good triumphs evil, perhaps a love confession or two, and the main characters live happily ever after.
That’s what I tell myself every time I sneak into the Black Forest.
I wouldn’t say I’m a rebel—not exactly. I just despise dumb rules. Such as my parents’ and nearly everyone in Moonflower Valley’s rule, “DON’T go into the Black Forest.”
I guess I kinda get why they don’t want us to go in there, but nobody even lives in the Black Forest. Well, except for criminals, rogues, sorcerers and I guess some unsavory people. But…
I haven’t met anybody in the forest so far, so I’m safe.
(Probably.)
All this to say, I see nothing wrong or dangerous with what I’m doing. But my dad definitely would.
My goodness! You don’t even know who I am. How rude of me! My name is Clementine, a red bengal cat humanimal.
A humanimal is a cross-species between humans and animals. When I’m Standing Up, I look like a regular human, and when I’m on All-Fours, I’m just a regular cat but I can speak like a human.
I also have a younger sister, Citrine. She’s a small blue ocicat when she’s on All-Fours, and her copper, almond-shaped eyes sit with an upward slant in her face. That’s how Citrine got her name. She’s also just barely younger than me—we’re only two months apart—but I still like to torment her about the age gap, as small as it may be.
I pulled on the brakes of my bicycle as the Sunrise Tower came into view and planted my feet on the ground to steady myself. I looked around as casually as I could to see if I was alone.
It wasn’t entirely necessary—few people hung out by this part of the forest and the watchtowers were usually empty—however, you can never be too careful with these kinds of things.
I hid my bike in a bush and hurried into the Black Forest. It was beautiful. It was never boring to take a walk through the humongous trees, the flowering bushes… even the butterflies were prettier than the ones in the kingdom.
Everything seemed more… peaceful.
As I looked around, I noticed a small fruit-bearing shrub with round, dark blue fruits that looked like blueberries. I plucked one and held it up to the light. I tilted my head and turned it in my fingers, studying it from every angle. It was just an ordinary berry. Poisonous, probably. But I couldn’t resist thinking about what I’d thought that morning.
In most of my favorite books, the adventure starts with the main character making a bad decision.
To humor myself, I lifted the berry to my lips as if about to pop it into my mouth.
“Don’t eat that!”
I dropped the berry and whipped around, embarrassed and alarmed that someone had seen me joke around like that. If that was a soldier, I would be so dead.
But a part of me knew that the voice was too young to be a soldier. I stared at the fox in front of me in awe; her eyes were startled and alert. She Stood Up, cautious, and narrowed her eyes at me. There was a dark red cloak draped over her shoulders, but her hood was down. She had bright green eyes flecked with gold and curly, long cinnamon-red hair framed her face. She was wearing a sage green tunic over a long-sleeved charcoal gray shirt that was cinched in at her waist with a thick belt. And, I noticed as she stepped out of the shadows, her leather armbands were the same chestnut brown as her knee-high boots.
“You’re a… a Fox,” I pointed out in disbelief. Foxes don’t live in Moonflower Valley—they live in packs around us.
She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “And you figured that out all by yourself?”
I bristled. “You shouldn’t be this close to the kingdom,” I said, more because she was rude and I wanted to say something equally rude back than anything else.
“Well, you shouldn’t be in the Black Forest.”
“Mm. Touché.”
Despite her not exactly being my favorite person, you know, her being so rude and all; I saw a perfect opportunity to befriend this girl.
“I, uh, I never caught your name,” I ventured.
“Good,” the girl turned to leave. “I didn’t throw it.”
A smile crept onto my lips. “You’re funny. Wait! Don’t go.”
She paused but didn’t face me.
“My name is Clementine,” I offered, scratching a large, red, irritated mosquito bite that was in the palm of my left hand. “Clementine Hazelwood.”
“I’m Flynne Bloomfield, the one and only. Oh, and by the way, that was a new moon berry you almost ate. They’re super poisonous. A single berry causes hives, hallucination, excessive salivation, itchy eyes and indigestion after a few seconds. In that order. Two berries will do that immediately. Three? Death.”
“I wasn’t going to eat it,” I said defensively. “I’m not stupid.” My mosquito bite was doing a good deal worse. Maybe I shouldn’t be scratching it?
“Eh, debatable,” Flynne was beside me faster than I could blink. She grabbed my wrist and showed me my hand- and oh my gosh! I stared in horror at the ‘mosquito bites’ that were sprouting on my skin. The sensation shifted from an irritated itch to a burning pain, and the ones in the palms of my hand were changing color from red to blue to indigo to purple to dark purple to–
“Here, I’ve got the antidote,” Flynne fished in her cloak pocket and pressed a small vial filled with milky white liquid into my hands. “You need to drink it. Oh, and just-”
I fumbled with unusual clumsiness to open the vial, then emptied its contents into my mouth.
“—a little bit,” she finished, taking back the empty vial. She lifted it up to the light to inspect it. “Yeah, no, that’s empty.”
“Sorry,” I apologized meekly, hiding my hands behind my back. The pain was fading, but looking at them made my stomach hurt.
“Well at least you’re not dead,” said Flynne, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself that that was a good thing. “And, uh, you owe me thirty dollars,” she added, sitting down on a log across from me.
“That little thing was thirty dollars?”
“Healer’s fee,” Flynne shrugged. “You know, supply and demand, and all that nonsense.” She waved a hand in front of her face as if to push away the question.
“Oh. Got it.” Well, there goes my allowance. My head began to throb, and I blinked hard to try to cancel out the pain.
“So, what’s a little girl like you doing in the Black Forest? Hm?” Flynne asked. “Joining a smuggling ring? Running away?” She gasped and covered her mouth. “Talking to strangers?” She smirked, propping her elbows on her knees.
“Ha ha, very funny,” I rolled my eyes. My stomach churned threateningly. “I was just exploring. I like coming in here to read or hang out. It’s very mysterious. Also- don’t you ‘little girl me’ we’re like the same age!”
“Month and year,” Flynne demanded.
“October 5th, 1910.”
“Ha! June 19, 1910,” Flynne said smugly.
I gave her a ‘What?’ look. “That’s only five months.”
“I was talking before you could roll over, I bet,” she said airily, before adopting a more serious tone. “Look, don’t tell anyone about me, or that you saw a fox near here, okay? Absolutely no one. Not your mom or dad, or any of your friends, or anything. I don’t want your army on my tail.” The girl stood, stretched, and then dropped to All-Fours.
I shot up, and then regretted it when the world went a little topsy-turvy. “Wait! You’re leaving? Already?” I reached for a nearby tree to steady myself as stars danced around my vision.
She gave me a look of concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “It’s nothing a glass of water won’t fix.”
“Right,” she dragged out the word. “Uh, get home safe, I guess. Oh, and don’t worry—I’ll see you again tomorrow, same time. You owe me.”
And with that, my newest, most mysterious friend disappeared into the Black Forest with a great flourish of her red brush. My head throbbed and I felt sick, whether that was because of those murderberries, or maybe the overdose of the antidote, I wasn’t sure. But even as I keeled over to throw up in the bushes, a warm feeling filled my chest.
I just made a new friend.
So, it was only when I went to copy-paste from my novel’s document that I realized the first chapter is 6,000 words long… heh heh heh… so this is part one of chapter one. When I go back and edit I’ll split up the chapter, but for now we’re just going to leave it like this. Oh! And perhaps next week when I give you guys part 2 we can try to figure out a good name for the separate chapter.
Gosh, and I almost forgot—what do you guys think of this chapter? The good and the bad—I’ll never get better without constructive feedback.
-Leah Larkspur (13)