It was midnight. The moon shined through Bobbie’s bedroom window. She had fallen asleep hours ago but her friend Gina was still awake from the moon’s bright reflection. She rubbed her ankle where a bruise was forming. Bobbie had kicked her there earlier. But Gina wasn’t sorry about writing that nasty email to her. Gina left Bobbie sleeping and headed outside. I wonder if it will hurt to walk, she thought. She walked down the back stairs. Her leg seemed ok. She found an old-fashioned key on the ground beside the trashcan. The words Frozen Forest were printed along the teeth in fancy letters. She picked it up and ran back into Bobbie’s room.
“Bobbie wake up!” Gina said.
“What?”
“I found a key outside your house. It must be special.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“Come with me,” Gina said. “I wanna figure out what this unlocks.”
“No, go by yourself.”
“Come on. I’ll quit those nasty emails if you come.”
“You’re a liar,” Bobbie said.
“I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Good,” Gina said. “Let’s go to the Frozen Forest.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. Those are the words on the key.”
“Oh,” Bobbie. “When will you start being nice to me?”
Gina didn’t answer.
Bobbie and Gina walked past old houses and dead trees. They tried pointing the key in different directions. When it glowed, they went the way it pointed. They stopped in front the gate to the Frozen. Across the path they spotted a library.
The gate to the forest was rusty and covered in webs. Bugs lived in the trees and creatures lived inside the cavces. Signs on the gates said, electric trees, War Hogs, and quick sand. Bobbie and Gina went inside.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Gina said.
Bump.
“Be careful when you’re walking.”
“Look at all these pink mushrooms on the ground,” Gina said.
“Those are War Hog ears, not mushrooms,” said Bobbie. Bobbie pointed at a sign on the gate. “It says, Beware of the War Hogs.
“Oh,” Gina said.
“If you want to know what this key is for we’ll need assistance, and I think these pigs will be helpful.”
“How?”
“They have noses,” Bobbie said. “They probably know where things are.”
“How do you make them help us?”
“Let’s try offering them things in our pockets.
“Fine.”
The girls dug through their pockets and pulled out an mp3 player, four pieces of candy, a shopping list, and crackers. The hogs didn’t move and just stared at the things on the ground. Then slowly they plodded towards the candies. They ate them and sniffed around. The hogs led the girls past crystal torches that hung from mountains, icicles that melted on the cliffs, and rock that froze on the ground. The kids and the hogs stood in front of a castle. It was as big as a mountain with ice torches poking up from its parapet, and windows and bricks of ice.
“This is the place were looking for,” Bobbie said.
“Probably, but how do we open it.”
“With the key you found.”
“Oh yeah.”
Click.
The door opened. There were six rooms. Books lay on the floor, music blared from a record player, and paint was splattered on the walls. Colorful keys were taped to each door. They went into the first room, which was filled with books from the ceiling to floor. The hogs and girls entered.
“Why are there so many books?” said Gina.
One of the war hogs made an oinking sound and the others wandered around in the entranceway the room while the girls searched the shelves for anything special. Bobbie opened a book and found a ruby. The ruby had a leaf inside, one side was blue and the other was gray.
“Hey Gina what are we going to do with this ruby?”
“Well let’s go to the library and see if we can find any books about this ruby there.”
“Where’d the hogs go?” Bobby said.
“Maybe they’re in a different room,” said Gina. “Let’s just go.”
Bobbie and Gina left the forest and walked across the path to the library. Staff members from the library were leaving. One of them turned the lights off. Bobbie and Gina looked through windows. Workers were putting books away and locking up rooms.
“The library is closing!” Gina said.
“Then let’s sneak in,” Bobbie said.
“How?”
“Go through that opened window.” Bobby pointed. “It’s not closed.”
Bobbie and Gina jumped through the window when the lights went off.
“I can’t see!” Gina said.
“I brought a flash light,” Bobbie said.
“Good thinking.”
They went to the mineral aisle where there were books about gems, rubies, and crystals. They searched for a book about gems. Gina opened a book and found a picture of the same ruby they had.
“Look,” Gina said. “It says this ruby will bring you to an ice town if you break it. The ice town is also filled with gems.”
“That’s awesome!” Bobbie said.
“Then let’s go and find them,” Gina said.
Gina snatched the ruby from Bobbie then hit it against a table. A hole formed on the library floor right beneath the girls’ feet. They fell through the opening. Icicles stuck out of the walls of the hole and leaves fell along with the girls.
“I’m going to die!” Bobbie said. “Ah I hate you Gina!”
Boom! The girls fell to the ground.
“Ouch that hurts,” Bobbie said. “I’m alive.
The place was cold and foggy. No one was there except bones and ice. They heard water drip and saw nothing but a barren town. They wandered around a pile of bones looking for shiny gems when she found an igloo.
“I found an igloo,” Bobbie said.
“We don’t need an igloo!” Gina said
“We can put things we find in here or just rest.”
“There’s nothing to put in here unless you want to put bones or more blocks of ice,” Gina said. “I’m leaving.”
“Why,” Bobbie said?
“Because this place is creeping me out.”
“You said you wanted to find the gems and that’s why we came here.”
“Fine then.”
“Okay,” Bobbie said. “Now look around for something shiny, like those things over there.
“Yes it’s the gem.” Bobbie said. “The one they mentioned in the book. We found it!”
“But how do we get out now?”
“There’s a glass bottle there go get it.”
“Fine.”
“What’s in it?”
They looked through the glass.
“Some papers I guess.”
“Take them out.”
“How?”
Bobbie threw the bottle at the igloo. Pieces of glass scattered and they grabbed the papers from the shards. They were a map and a note. The map had paths and directions placed everywhere around the map.
“I think it’s a map to get out of here, hooray,” Gina said.
“But what path are we suppose to take?”
The map had different directions and paths marked everywhere around it. Some directions were crossed out and some weren’t.
“Just read the other piece of paper then.”
“It says ‘Get out of he!’ Isn’t it supposed to say, ‘Get out of here’?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?” Bobbie said.
“I don’t,” Gina said. “Maybe it’s just a note warning us to leave.”
“Maybe that means someone was trying to write this but died and couldn’t finish,” Bobbie said.
“You’re not scared right?”
“No, this is great. I get to discover even more about this place.”
Gina threw the note on the ground and said, “Stop being sarcastic. This is serious. What if we don’t ever get out and eventually die.”
“Then think of how to get out.”
“This map shows oceans, cliffs, and random directions—wait one says, Go to a cliff then jump off,” Gina said. “What!”
“You never know,” Bobbie said. “It might lead you back to your home.”
“Fine. We’ll find the cliff since if I die I won’t to be nice to you.”
“How do we get there?” Bobbie said.
“The map shows a bone path.”
“I think it’s that one over there.”
“Then let’s go now.”
They followed the bone path to a cliff about thirty feet high.
“This is scary.”
“Let’s just do it quick and get it over with.”
Goose bumps covered their bodies. Fog was forming and it was starting to sprinkle. Then they put the map down, held their noses, closed their eyes and jumped off the cliff.
About the Author
Hi my name is Lisa and I am eleven years old. I live with my mom and my three sisters in San Francisco. I am good at drawing and I want be better at it someday. When I grow up I would like to be an artist. I’m very quiet compared to my classmates. If I were a plant, I would be ivy because it is an active grower. This is my first published book. I am the author of many poems, including, “If Eyes Were Lightning” and “Things that Make Me Feel Like a Floppy Blanket.” If I could choose any super power, I would choose the power of invisibility so I could play tricks on people.
