The Beginning Read Online Free PDF

Scede hissed in a very low voice, “we shouldn’t talk about it here!”
    They had been back to school for two weeks now, and the three of them were standing in the front of the schoolhouse waiting for professor Tarnik to arrive. A few other children were standing around, but like always, they were as far away from the three friends as possible.
    “You’re right. If Eydeth and Ellysian got wind of this . . .”
    Jahrra shivered. She couldn’t imagine anything worse happening. After all those months of hard work, it would be devastating for their enemy to find out about it.
    It was at that very moment that a spotless, white carriage came chattering up the road, pulling to a stop only twenty yards away from them. Jahrra tensed and put a scowl on her face, ready to do battle. Eydeth and Ellysian stepped out of their carriage like mobile porcelain dolls and sauntered confidently over to where Jahrra and her friends stood.
    “Haven’t seen you at the puddle lately,” Ellysian commented dryly. “Have you found another mud hole to hang out at?”
    It was true. Jahrra, Gieaun and Scede had spent the last three weeks gathering all of the excess horse hair from the summer trimming at Wood’s End Ranch and hadn’t had a chance to visit the lake. Gieaun thought the bedraggled, tangled hair would be a nice touch to their already fearsome looking lake monster.
    Jahrra now stared at Ellysian, wondering what her excuse had been for not visiting the lake the entire summer. Were she and Eydeth up to something again? Jahrra furrowed her brow and glared down at the sour girl, ready to give a heated retort before Gieaun grabbed her arm. She turned and saw Scede mimicking what she could only guess was a terrified Eydeth after being frightened away by the lake monster. Jahrra forgot her anger and all three friends burst into laughter, leaving the confused twins standing like dumb statues on the path.
    “I cannot wait until we are finished with that monster!” Scede said on the ride home that afternoon.
    “As soon as we finish the frame, we’ll be able to add the seaweed and horse hair,” Jahrra shouted gleefully as they raced their horses through the fields. “It won’t be long before our lake creature drowns those spineless twins!”
    By the end of that month, they had the frame completed, all fifteen feet of the long neck and head. All that was left for them to do, other than lure Eydeth and Ellysian out onto the lake at the right time of course, was to fill in the skeleton of their creature with muscle and flesh. For that extra touch of authenticity, they gathered dead reeds for stuffing and dried strings of seaweed to hold it all together.
    “It already looks terrifying.” Gieaun shivered happily, stepping back and looking at the half-filled neck that stood among the reeds of their little island like a rotting pier post.
    The dark seaweed clung to the sturdy neck like thick ropes of decaying flesh, giving the strange skeleton a life-like appearance. Gieaun and Scede closed their eyes and imagined what this creature would look like once it was completed, looming out of the lake, dark and dripping, with a thick mane of grizzled hair running down the back of its neck.
    “Hey, I finally found something for the teeth!” Jahrra huffed from the edge of the reeds, interrupting her friends’ thoughts.
    She’d made a trip to the shore to get some more seaweed, but had found something else instead. She stepped out of the small boat with an armful of what appeared to be several bleached rib bones of some long-dead sea creature.
    “Whoa!” Jahrra dropped the bones in awe when she spotted the several feet of blackish, ghoulish neck rising in front of her. “It looks great! But we’d better put it back under the water before anyone sees it.”
    The children worked diligently on their little island for the remainder of the day, grateful for the quiet, cool air. Although they had their minds preoccupied with their grand project, they