Storytellersunplugged

Many of my fellow Storytellers Unplugged authors have opted to post a story in place of their usual essay this month. I think that’s a fine idea, so I’ve decided to do the same. However, instead of posting one of my scary shorts, I’ve decided to share an original, unpublished young adult fantasy novelette, The Ghost Who Loved Books.

The Ghost Who Loved Books is a story based around the characters, settings, and situations in a currently unpublished young adult fantasy novel, first of a planned series.

My Phoenix Girls stories are aimed at a tween/young adult audience, but if JK Rowling has taught us anything, its that old adults can enjoy a good YA story just as much as our younger counterparts.

Please print a copy out (PDF link at bottom of post) and share it with all the little monsters in your life. I may be biased, but I think my Phoenix Girls stories are pretty good, and I hate to see a good story go unread.

Brian Knight

Adventures of the Phoenix Girls
~ The Ghost Who Loved Books
Brian Knight

Penny Sinclair, Zoe Parker, and Katie West’s favorite place was the willow grove clearing, The Grot, at the edge of the field Penny’s godmother owned. This was partly because Rooster, Penny’s closest neighbor, and his irritating friends could never find them there, but mostly because The Grot is where they had discovered magic.

They didn’t know much magic yet, just the simple things in the first few pages of the book Penny had discovered there - The Secrets of the Phoenix Girls - but they had been good, and lucky, enough to save themselves once already, and they were getting better all the time.

The problem was Katie, who had started later than Penny and Zoe, and was struggling to catch up. She was having trouble with the fire spell, and until she got it down, the book wouldn’t show them anything else.

“Magic has rules,” the talking fox Ronan told them once. “One of those rules is when you’re part of a circle you have to wait for each other. You can’t get too far ahead of your sisters or you’ll leave them behind.”

They already knew that from what they’d read in the book, so it wasn’t much help.

Penny guessed that was a fair rule, but it was still annoying having to wait. She was not a patient girl.

That was one of the few things the fox would tell them about their magic, and that irritated her because she thought he knew a lot about it and could probably be more help if he wanted to be. If fact, Penny was almost certain Ronan had once been a man, and had been able to use magic too.

She had asked him once, and he had chuckled at her and said, “If a dog had wings it might be able to fly, but it would still only be a dog.”

Ronan was not big on giving straight answers. Mostly he just lounged around in the high branches of the big tree next to the creek that ran through the clearing, or in the mouth of his little cave in the granite wall of the other side of the creek, watching them and chuckling when they messed up spells and unexpected things happened.

The other problem was that they only had two wands between the three of them, so they had to share, and since Katie had to practice non-stop every time they went to The Grot just to catch up, Penny and Zoe spent almost as much time arguing over the remaining wand as they did using it.

They hoped that the book would tell them how to make more wands soon. They wanted to learn more and do more. Their old tricks were great, but Penny was starting to get bored with them.

“Bored?” the fox had exclaimed when Penny had told him that, hoping to entice him into helping Katie out, and then he’d leapt down from the tree and chased her around the stone fire ring in the center of the clearing, snapping playfully at her ankles and laughing. “Maybe this will liven things up for you, Little Red!”

It hadn’t occurred to Penny until later that Ronan had given them a lesson, especially her.

Phoenix Girls are not allowed to be bored.

If that was one of the rules it had not been in the book, but Penny thought that maybe it was what Susan, her godmother, would call an unwritten rule.

It also didn’t occur to her until later that loudly proclaiming boredom might be an excellent way to conjure the wrong kind of excitement.

*

Penny, Zoe, and Katie’s second favorite place was Susan’s bookstore, Sullivan’s. They all liked to read; Penny’s favorites were scary stories, Zoe’s were fantasy (she had taken to calling Rooster, the most annoying boy in Dogwood, Gollum after the little green guy in Lord of the Rings), and Katie favored young romance books of the Sweet Valley High stripe.

Their school was only a few blocks away from the bookstore, so they went there for lunches most school days, and sometimes Susan brought them hot chocolate and doughnuts from the bakery down the street.

“Keep spoiling them,” Jenny, Susan’s friend and only employee, said while snaking an arm between Zoe and Katie to grab the last glazed doughnut before Penny could, “and you’ll never get rid of them.”

“I don’t want to get rid of them,” Susan said, plucking the doughnut out of Gina’s hand before she could take a bite, then running between the bookshelves to avoid Jenny as she tried to snatch it back. “I want to live vicariously through them.”

“Hey,” penny shouted as Jenny dived down between them again and grabbed a maple bar out of her hand. “Go get your own!”

“Those were mine until you girls showed up,” Jenny said with perfect seriousness, then rounded on Susan. “And as soon as I finish this, you’re toast.”

Susan took a monstrous bite of the glazed and blew a raspberry at Jenny from between puffed cheeks.

Zoe and Katie laughed, and Penny grabbed the last maple bar in the box, licked a stripe up the center of the frosted top, and smirked. “Dare you to take this one.”

“Don’t temp her,” Katie said. “She’ll do it just for fun you know. She doesn’t have to eat it.”

Penny considered this, and stuffed the maple bar into her mouth, biting it in half and looking like a red haired chipmunk as she struggled to chew it.

Zoe rolled her eyes. “That’s gross you know.”

Penny mumbled something through her pastry packed mouth that might have been we’re surrounded by doughnut thieves, or give me water, I’m choking.

Zoe ignored her, and turning her head to see where Susan and Jenny had gone, spotted the boy browsing the selection of Westerns.

“Hey,” Zoe said, nudging Penny with one elbow and Katie with the other. When they looked at her, she nodded in the direction of the boy, but said nothing.

Penny swallowed the remainder of her doughnut with a great gulp and gaped at him.

Katie put a hand over her mouth, but looked unsure about whether to scream or laugh.

The boy was staring down into the open pages of a hardcover about Billy the Kid, the cover of which was a very old and grainy black and white of Billy at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

The boy holding the book was identical to the boy on the cover, from the cocked derby hat to the one slightly squinted eye and crooked troublemaker’s smile. Even the clothes were the same, except that what was only varying shades of gray on the book cover was in full color on the boy; a dusty black coat, faded yellow bandana tied around his neck, and rough brown pants tucked into high riding boots.

Next to him, leaning against the bookshelf he was browsing, was an antique looking rifle, and on his hip jutting from a dirty leather holster, was the worn butt of an equally antique revolver.

Penny swallowed again, trying to force the lump that had gathered in her throat down so she could speak, and opened her mouth to call for Susan. Before she could make a sound, the bell over the bookstore’s door tinkled, and Susan trotted past him, popping her last bit of doughnut into her mouth.

She passed the boy as if she did not see him, and he looked up briefly from the book to consider her.

Then his eyes caught Penny’s, and his movements were so fast they seemed to blur into colored smoke. One hand snapped the book shut while the other dipped to the gun on his hip.

The smile never left his face as he pulled his gun on them, and fired three times, each report a ghostly pow that seemed to come from several blocks away, each bullet a puff of smoke that dissipated before it reached the girls.

The smile didn’t even falter when Jenny walked by him a second later, passing through his extended arm as if it were a mirage, acting as if she had not seen him or heard the gunshots.

Then he pushed the book back into its place on the shelf, winked at them, and faded away, pistol, rifle, derby hat and all.

*

To continue the story, right click on this link and save the PDF file to your computer. Feel free to print The Adventures of the Phoenix Girls ~ The Ghost Who Loved Books and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.