Thanks to Zain, I realized that I was so caught up in explaining how my world worked that I didn't think about when certain facts should be revealed, or who should do the revealing. So, readers who have read The Scroll 12, consider yourself lucky: you've just had a sneak peek at what Leslie is supposed to learn in The Lantern. If you haven't read The Scroll 12, you can if you want, but know that in the now-revised world of The Scroll, Leslie hasn't learned all that stuff.
And to think, just one post previously I'd written about details and the balance between too much and too little information. It 's a little ironic.
So, without further ado, here's the revised version of The Scroll 12:
* * *
“Spill what?” asked Gray.
“Everything,” said Leslie. She stood and started pacing. “I think I deserve to know everything—about the scroll, about shifting, about where your’re from, about this task or mission or whatever you’re on. You said you’d be honest, so ‘fess up.”
“Oh. That’s quite a lot.” Gray gingerly touched his side and grimaced. “I wonder where to begin.”
Leslie folded her arms and waited, tapping her foot against the floor.
“So—” said Gray, plucking at a flake of dry skin on his hand, “you really can’t shift? You can’t even change your hair or eye color?”
“Only through contacts and dyes,” said Leslie.
Gray mouthed the word contacts, then dismissed whatever he was thinking with a shrug of his shoulder. He fiddled absentmindedly at the bandage on his neck. “And you’ve never seen someone change into an animal before?”
Leslie gave a harsh laugh. “I think I’d remember something like that happening.”
Gray nodded thoughtfully. “So that’s why they said to be careful,” he muttered to himself. “I thought it was just so people didn’t know what my shifted form was. They told me it was different here, but I never thought—I mean, everyone can shift. I wonder if they know that’s not true.”
“Excuse me,” said Leslie. “I’m still here. And who are ‘they?’”
“Sorry,” said Gray. “My side hurts—I can’t think. Thy’re my father and his colleagues. They sent me here.”
Leslie held up her hand. “Wait. Your father’s alive? But I thought you said he was on the Other Side.”
“He is,” said Gray. “I’m from the Other Side.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re some sort of angel or demon?” asked Leslie, sitting down on her bed. She clenched her hands together.
“No,” said Gray. “Why would you think—”
Suddenly, Leslie’s bedroom door burst open. Savannah stood in the doorway, clutching the doorknob. “Whoops,” she said, sauntering into the room. “Didn’t mean to do that. The door was unlocked. What were you saying about angels and demons?”
“I’m not one,” said Gray.
“Savannah, get out,” snapped Leslie.
Savannah stared at Leslie. “No.” She sat on the ground in front of Gray. “So I’m guessing the Other Side for you doesn’t mean the same thing as the Other Side for us. To us, if someone’s on the Other Side, it means they died. So the question is, when you say Other Side, the other side of what?”
“The path,” Gray said simply, as though that explained everything.
“To what?” asked Leslie. “The path to what?”
“Another world.”
Savannah’s face lit up. “I knew it was something like that!”
Leslie started laughing softly. She shook her head, smiling. Gray and Savannah looked at her, concerned. “Another world. You expect me to believe that? What, you think I’m five?”
“Don’t you—don’t you at least have stories about other worlds?” Gray tried to look into Leslie’s eyes, but she averted her gaze.
“Yeah, we have tons of stories,” said Savannah. “Some where people wander through a door into a magical world, though in more of them nowadays people travel to other dimensions through scientific gizmos where they meet their doubles. They’re not real stories, though it’d be cool if they were.”
“Well, my story’s real,” said Gray. He tried to meet Leslie’s gaze. “I’m real. My world’s real. When the sun, sand, and sea meet, people can cross over. I did, and now I’m here.”
Leslie forced herself to stop laughing. Slowly, she unclenched her fists. She thought about all she’d seen, all she’d heard, and she tried to make herself believe it was true. If Gray was lying to her…She closed her eyes, and two tears trickled down her face. She was such an idiot—she should be able to tell reality from fiction. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at Gray. “And why are you here?”
Gray looked at his hands. “My hometown, Westwood, is dying. There’s a sickness going around, and nothing we do helps stop it. There are ways for people from our two worlds to communicate, and my father knows a professor over here—Professor Brown.” Gray looked up. “I came here to give Professor Brown the scroll so that he could work on the cure. There are things we can’t do in our world that can be done over here. Your medicine—it’s more advanced than ours.”
“So Professor Brown is a doctor?” asked Leslie.
“I don’t know!” Gray forced himself to his feet. He leaned heavily on the desk next to the bed. “All I know is that he’s a professor, his name’s Brown, he’s living somewhere in this area, and if I don’t find him everyone I know and love will die!”
“So we find him,” Savannah said simply.
Leslie turned towards her. Suddenly, she remembered a day two years before when the sun was blazing bright and Savannah’s face was red from crying. She thought of Cougar Girl’s attack. She couldn’t let Savannah be near danger. Not again. “No. We’ll find Professor Brown, but you won’t Savannah.”
Savannah scowled. “Why?”
“Because we were attacked, and I don’t—I don’t want you to be hurt again. If something happens…I don’t want you anywhere near.”
Savannah crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving. And why were you attacked anyway?”
“I don’t know.” Leslie frowned. “Gray, if you’re just trying to help save people, why did that woman attack us?”
Gray shrugged, then winced. “I know that in my world there are people who want to cut off all ties to this world. Maybe she was someone who thinks like that who came over accidentally. She might be communicating with people from my world and learned about my mission. Maybe she’s afraid this scroll will open up more communication between worlds. I just don’t know how she found me.”
“Your face is all over the news,” said Savannah. “That Castillo lady’s trying to find your family. She mentioned you’re in the Half Moon Bay area. If Cougar Lady’s been here for a while she’d know all kids go to school and you’d be enrolled somewhere. She must’ve been sneaking around, looking through windows until she found you.”
Gray groaned. “So she might attack again.”
They sat in silence until finally Leslie asked, “Gray, what does the sickness do?”
“It changes you, from the inside out. Your muscles stiffen; your organs don’t work right. And sometimes, you shift without wanting to. Sometimes, I’ve seen people that were stuck between their true forms and their shifted forms, though that’s not supposed to be able to happen. And—and sometimes people go crazy. Then, they die.” Gray tugged at the bottom of his shirt. “Why?”
Leslie thought about the yellow eyes that stared at her in the dark. Her breath caught in her throat. She stammered. “I—after you chased the mountain lion away, and after I came home, I found you in the orange tree. You—you weren’t human, and you weren’t a panther either. You were somewhere in-between.”
Gray’s face paled. He lurched to the bathroom and stared in the mirror. Leslie and Savannah crowded behind him. Gray pulled down one of his eyelids. Parts of the flesh on the underside of his eyelid was discolored—blackish instead of pink. With a moan, Gray slid to the floor and put his head in his hands.
Savannah and Leslie knelt next to Gray. Leslie asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Gray peered at them over his hands. “I’ve contracted the sickness. I—I’m dying.”
* * *
Tell me what you think. What's better or worse than the original The Scroll 12, for those of you who've read it? This scene will probably take a lot more revisions to get exactly right, but this is closer to what I wanted in the first place. (Trust your gut. Always trust your gut. I knew something about The Scroll 12 wasn't right, but I couldn't put my finger on it)
The part where Savanna forces Grey to shift for her to believe would still work well in this one. It might also help explain how Leslie finally accepts the truth of the situation and decides to find out why Grey is here and how she can help. You would have to figure out what to do about the bandages that I assume are still on Grey though.
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