“There, it’s finished!” I shoved the last hay bale into place and looked up at our golden castle. “What do you think?” I asked searching my brothers’ faces for any signs of approval.
Kimball nodded and smiled, “It looks really great.”
“Yeah, ” Paul agreed. “We had better take cover before the enemy attacks.”
We dropped to our hands and knees and slithered into the secret tunnel on our stomachs. I had only gone a few feet when Paul reached out and grabbed my shoulder, “Shhh. Footsteps, do you hear them?”
I froze, straining to hear; my eyes grew wide as I nodded my head. The attackers were in the room above us. We remained motionless; afraid even to breathe for fear that they would discover our hiding place. Finally the footsteps faded and I looked at my brothers.
“Go on,” Kimball mouthed not wanting to speak in case they were within earshot. I continued to crawl through the tunnel with my companions at my heals. We came to the end of the tunnel; we were almost ready to enter the banquet hall. Paul drew his sword. Motioning for us to do the same, he waved us forward. Holding up his fingers, he silently counted to three. On three his foot lashed out connecting with the door, sending it flying. We leapt into the room with our swords raised, ready to free our castle from the enemy. We stood back to back fighting the guards and monsters off with all our might.
“There’s too many of them!” I cried. “We have to retreat!”
“We can’t, ” Paul shouted, his eyes wide. “The entrance to the tunnel is blocked, we’re trapped! ”
“Wait, we can climb up the rope by the wall over there! ” Kimball pointed across the room.
We fought through the enemy making our way to the rope. Paul got to it first and started climbing while Kimball and I fought to drive the enemy away.
“Kimball, look out! ” I screamed as a sword narrowly missed his ear. “Hurry Paul, climb faster! ”
“I’ve made it! Hurry J, start climbing,” he called.
“No. Kimball, you go first. You look like your getting tired and you’ve been wounded in the leg. I can still fight a while longer.”
Kimball started climbing up the rope as fast as he could. I gasped, as the throng pressed harder against me I found my self being pushed away from the rope and against the wall.
“Kimball, help me! ” I screamed as I felt the guards seizing my arms. My companions could only watch helplessly as they dragged me to the dungeon. The guard kicked the door open and threw me to the ground.
“I’ll be back for you later, ” he growled.
I scrambled away from him and tucked my knees up under my chin. Cold and scared, I found myself dosing when I heard voices, “J, J, look up.” Looking up, I smiled when I saw my companions grinning. Eagerly they lowered a rope. I grabbed hold of it and started climbing, but just as I reached the top the guard threw the door open.
“They’re escaping! ”
“Quick, jump! ” Paul yelled.
I grabbed the rope and jumped, swinging across the courtyard. Letting go of the rope, I fell into a large pile of hay. When I landed there was as a crack and a nauseating stench and our magical world disappeared.
My brothers started laughing, “You landed on rotten egg! ”
“Those stupid chickens,” I groaned, letting myself fall back onto the hay.
I believe I met the hose again . . .
(A little background: One of our favorite places to hang out was in the hayloft – the upper story of our barn. We would stack the bales and create grand castles and secret tunnels. Many of the bales got broken in the process, much to my father’s chagrin, though he admits now were he do it again he would let us break all the bales we wanted. The broken hay was shoved into a big pile. From the rafters we had tied ropes with footloops to swing on. We would pile up 4 or more haybales put our foot in the loop and swing away. Most often we would swing and do amazing leaps into the hay pile. Sometimes our chickens would fly the coop (I’ll do a chicken post one of these days) and lay eggs in hidden places and we always had to check the hay pile and other such places for eggs. Every once in a while we would miss the inevitable egg . . . )
p.s. Today is my one month mark, I have now been blogging for one month!! Yippee!! My posts may not be great or even very interesting to anyone else but I am having much more fun than I ever thought I would. 🙂
Fun and Flawed 