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Prologue:

Long, long ago; there existed a rural community recognized as Kikuyu; it was a land of opulence, cosmic emerald meadows, soaring peaks, and tranquility. There was no such thing as infidelity, because there was no reason to be. Every man loved his wife, and every wife loved her husband. The children were not spoiled, but were raised to live up to the highest moral standards, and when they became of age, they waited until marriage before sleeping with a man.
But one day, a powerful witch came into the kingdom, and- with her black magic- slaughtered all who apposed her. She became the supreme ruler of the land.
Under her rule, Kikuyu fell from its once high stature, and into darkness and despair. Nothing would grow in the weeping earth; and this caused a plague of infidelity to break out in the land like hives on the face of an allergic individual. Thus, destroying the beautiful land.
But one day, a teenage girl with acid green eyes came forth from a distant land and slaughtered the witch, sealing her away from the world; and giving the land back its radiance.
The heroine’s name rang out through the kingdom, and she was given the title “The Heroine of the Sword” and she was treated like the hero she was until the day she died. In the kingdom she left behind, a statue was assembled in her honor, showing her seizing the sword she used to slaughter the witch, a sword that would forever be known as the sword of witch’s blood.
Her story was past down through the generations until it at last became a renowned marvel.
But one day, a cold wind blew through the village, and an evil omen fell upon the kingdom. The witch from years ago climbed out from her pit in hell and resumed her dark visions. Except she wasn’t the only one who came back from hell, the witch brought a wizard, who was rumored through the kingdom to be a lover she found in hell.
Everyone in the kingdom prayed for the spirit of the Heroine of the Sword to come back from heaven, and save them from the darkness that had returned. Although no matter how much they prayed, no matter how many animal sacrifices they made to the gods…
...The heroine didn’t return.
All the villagers could do was put their fate in the hands of god when the hour of destruction drew near. They could do no more since the Heroine of the Sword had abandoned them in their hour of need.
In one night, the witch and the wizard plunged the kingdom back into darkness, and that once prosperous kingdom was destroyed, and the statue of the once famous heroine was reduced to rubble.
But what became of the Kikuyu kingdom?
No one knows.


Chapter One:





Odessa Island was in the middle of summer, and everyone on the island enjoyed the close proximity they had to the beach. It was convenient for the summer, but inconvenient when it was hurricane season.
Resting on the white sands of the beach, Blue Cable was sprawled out in a deep sleep. Her long, crimson red hair spread out around her like her head was bleeding; her blue cap with the yellow bill resting not far from her head, and her hands curled up in the sand, gripping a fist-full of sand.
“Blue!” She could distantly hear a male voice calling for her, she tiredly groaned; but didn’t wake up.
She was dreaming of far off lands. Places in the middle of the sea where pirates sailed free, a place where sky trains flew, and little dragonfly people spoke to her with wisdom and insight; she dreamt of the world beyond her little island.
The voice kept insisting her name, but was not answered. The mixture of the hot sun and the cool summer breezes kept Blue in her cavernous slumber.
Blue was often considered by her older brother and her father to be lazy; but she wasn’t. She was laid-back, and she was a dreamer. She was happy on her little island, even though she would have been vastly happier seeing what else the world had to offer her.
“Blue!” Insisted the voice again, she could feel the footsteps of her caller echoing in the earth, but her groggy state of mind left her unable to answer the beckoning, all she could do was stay in her dreams. “Wake up you lazy bum, I swear-”
Her eyes slowly fluttered open as she was being shaken out of her dream state by her older brother Cain, who had an irritated look on his face. Blue watched her brother for a moment, and then stretched her arms upwards.
Upon pulling herself up off the sand, she shook the grains out of her strands of blood red hair. She looked up at him, and smiled. Cain was always taller than her, and it was from him that she learned her bad habit of acting like a guy; even though he’d wanted her to be more like a polished lady.
“Keep your rat-tail on Cain; it isn’t like I’ve anything better to do today.” She said as she lay back down on the sand, putting her hands behind her head and closing her eyes.
“Yes you do, Monique wants you back at the house.” Cain, once his sentence was complete, saw a sour look brush on Blue’s face. “I know you detest her, but please go.”
“Fine, but you owe me big.” Cain rolled his eyes and agreed. Blue stood up from the sandy shore, and after dusting the sand off herself; started walking to the wooden house where Monique waited.
The second Blue opened the door, Monique was down her throat with insults about how much of a tomboy she is, how she’ll never catch a husband dressing like a guy, and how she was disgracing her family by being like she was. Monique was actually someone that Blue’s grandmother hired to help Blue become more ladylike. But she was failing miserably.
Monique sat Blue down on a wooden chair, and tied her to the chair with some rope. It was difficult, but Monique knew that it was necessary if she was planning on fixing Blue’s hair to show her how pretty she could look if she just tried to be more girly.
Long strands of Blue’s hair were pulled into a curler, and yanked to the side of her head where they remained as the others were being put in. It felt as if her face were being pulled back and off her skull. But it wasn’t; she was just used to having her hair just hanging down her back, and in no particular style.
“Stop fidgeting” Monique ordered her as she attempted to writhe her way out of the chair and out of the house, but she couldn’t even get out of the chair. “If you mess me up, I’m going to have to start over again.” Blue sighed and let her fix her hair, but she wasn’t happy about it. “Damn all this sand…can’t you be more like a girl Blue? You’re sixteen for god’s sake”
“So what? Girls can be just as strong as guys, look at the hero from the legend.” Blue retorted smartly. “She saved a whole kingdom when none of the men could.” She heard Monique growl under her breath, and smack Blue’s shoulder with a brush. That was what she always did when Blue said something that Monique didn’t have a counter for. That was Blue’s sign to know that she’d won the argument.
“But do you know how the witch destroyed the kingdom the second time?”
“…because she cheated and waited until the hero was dead?”
“No, because she had a man at her side.” Monique said to her smartly, causing Blue to roll her eyes in agony. “Now hold still damn it!”
“Oh but when I say things like ‘Damn it’ ‘hell’ and ‘s**t’ It’s “Unladylike”” Blue said, raising her hands as high as she could (Which was only to her waist) and making air quotes. Monique gave her another slap on the shoulder with the hairbrush before she started to pull the hair on Blue’s head again.
“Now don’t you go anywhere, I’ve got to get something. You sit. Right. Here.” Monique left the house for a moment, and went to the Parker house on the hill next to the Cable house. The Parkers were an odd bunch, the husband- Mr. Parker- was a wiry fisherman who wore big round glasses, while Mrs. Parker was a plump woman with hardly any neck, who always wore a big pink dress. The two parker kids were a boy and a girl, they were wiry like their father, except the boy was eight and the girl was only six. The girl wore big glasses, had buck teeth, and followed behind her brother when he would go play in the water.
When Monique got to the parker house, she saw the two parker children playing in the pigpen with the black piglet, and Mr. Parker was watching over them while trying to untangle the twine on his fishing pole.
“Howdy there Ms. Turner” Said the boy Parker as he trotted to the side of the pigpen with his sister behind him. “Lovely day ain’t it?”
“Very lovely, where is your mother?” Monique asked in her attempt to be sweet to the children who she found to be repulsive appearance-wise.
“She’s in the house,” Girl Parker piped up behind her brother, pushing her glasses to the bridge of her nose.
“Thank you” and she went into the Parker house, where she saw the Parker mother making pancakes for her Parker family. All the Parkers ate were pancakes, and all but Mrs. Parker usually burned the pancakes off by the time the next pancake meal came round. Mrs. Parker turned around and saw Monique standing in the doorway with a smile on her face. “Hello Mrs. Parker”
“Well hi there Ms. Turner! You ready for the festival tonight?”
“I’m not going.”
“Why not? Ain’t Mr. Cable payin’ you to teach his girl manners? Frankly I don’t think Blue needs manners, my chillins like her the way she is.” Monique rolled her eyes.
“I’m not going because I don’t want to. There won’t be any alcohol or eligible bachelors for me; so I’ve no reason to go. Anyway, do you have any lemons?”
“Lemons, Ms. Turner?”
“For her hair, I read somewhere that if you squeeze lemons on your head, your hair smells like lemons.”
“Sounds ‘bout right, hold on there.” Monique watched Mrs. Parker shuffle around the kitchen until finally she found a few lemons. “How many you need?”
“…about four or five.” Mrs. Parker nodded, picked up four or five lemons and gave them to Monique, who thanked her.
But when Monique returned to the Cable house, she saw the rope Blue was tied up with, circling the chair; and the chair empty.
“CAIN!” Shrieked Monique; within a few minutes Blue’s older brother was barreling into the house, and saw Monique with a red face.
“What is it?”
“You’re sister ran off! You have to find her, and if you don’t, you can tell your father that I’m not working for him anymore! THAT GIRL IS INSUFFERABLE!” And she stormed off to the guestroom. Leaving Cain with the responsibility to find his sister.





Chapter Two:

Blue yanked the curlers out of her hair, and ended up brushing it for a long time to get it to look like its old self again. She’d run off to the tree-house like hideout at the beach, and she had no plans to go back to her home. Monique was unendurable, and just didn’t understand that Blue wasn’t a girly girl. She had Cain to thank for that.
The tree-house like hideout was where Blue and Cain once played when they were children. But Cain grew up into an 18 year old man, and Blue was supposed to be learning “Bridal Training”. But the hide out was still her prized possession, even if she was the only one who still hid up there.
She could still remember the summers she spent up in the tree house with her brother, gazing out over the sea, as Cain read his travel books, telling her that there was a whole world away from their little island. She believed him, and she wanted to see that world so badly.
But she knew that the odds of her really getting away were slim to none. There were no ships that came to Odessa Island, because it wasn’t a center for trading or anything important. It was just an infinitesimal island where a village of people lived.
There was to be a festival that night, it was the 100 year anniversary of the day the Heroine of Swords first saved the Kikuyu Kingdom, even though no one has ever been able to find Kikuyu on a map. It was like it never existed, and it was only a legend. But people liked to celebrate it anyway; considering the fact that Odessa Island was rumored to be the birthplace of the heroine.
“Blue” Came her brother’s voice, as he went through the door and into the hide out, he saw Blue turn her back to him. “Come on now Blue, go back to the house.”
“No” She said stubbornly, trying to make her hair look like she did before. “Why won’t Monique just let me be?”
“It’s not Monique’s fault Blue” Cain said as he sat beside his sister who was looking in the large piece of glass that they used as a mirror when they were younger. “Father just wants to know you’re in good hands when he passes on. He wants to see you get married, and he doesn’t think that’ll happen if you keep acting like a guy.”
“But there are plenty of guys who would marry a tomboy.” Blue argued stubbornly and then put her brush on the floor. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Frankly, no.” Cain answered. “You have to understand how the world works Blue; guys want girls, not guys with breasts. A girl wears a dress, and you should start acting like your sex or poor father will die without seeing you get married.”
“Shut up!” Blue fumed, jumping on Cain and starting to punch him. He grabbed her fists in his hands and forced her off of him. “What happened to you Cain? You used to be so much fun, you didn’t care if I acted like a girl or not…you’ve changed.”
“Such as people do” Cain said to her. But then he started to yell at her, “You can stay here all night for all I care, I’m done!”
“FINE!” She yelled at him as he left the hideout and climbed down the ladder. He could hear her yelling numerous swear words at him, but he didn’t care. He was angry with her, and she was angry with him.
Blue did stay up in the hideout, and Cain told Monique that he couldn’t get Blue to come out. By that time though, Monique had cooled off and was understanding to Cain, but that was mostly because she wanted him to be her devotee.
It took Blue a while to let her anger go, but she was still irritated with her older brother, who thought he knew everything there was to know about the world, just because he was a man. Having a kickstand didn’t give him the wisdom of all that is and what ever will be, and it certainly didn’t mean he had any authority to tell Blue how she should and shouldn’t act.