Realm Keepers 01 - Realm Keepers

hover above my own. He stared at me with wide eyes.
    “Sarah, are you okay?”
    I groaned, then pushed up off the ground to look around.
    It wasn’t just me and Calvin. Miles, Blade, Raven and the shy girl were all there. Miles was up already, but the others were still out. Seeing me start to get up, Miles came over and helped me to my feet. His strong hand wrapped around my forearm, propelling me up so quickly that I felt my stomach lurch.
    “You okay, Sarah?” Calvin asked again. Miles looked at me, worried.
    I shook my head to clear it and smiled reassuringly at both of them. “I’m fine, guys. Thanks. But…where the heck are we?”
    We were in some sort of large square courtyard rimmed by a stone wall that had to be twenty feet high. There were two doors leading out on opposite sides of the courtyard, but they were closed. I couldn’t see anything above the top edge of the wall; either nothing was out there, or it wasn’t tall enough to be seen. We could have been in the middle of a city, the middle of a forest or the middle of nowhere for all I knew.
    But what was way more interesting than the courtyard wall were the stone pillars. There were six of them, arranged in a circle. We were sitting right in the middle of the circle, which was probably a good thirty feet wide. The pillars were round, made of stone, and had intricate designs carved all over them. They were about four feet tall. Each of them had a stone sitting on top of them. They were carved with hundreds of facets, like gemstones, only they were translucent and didn’t look like any gems I’d ever seen. In fact, I’d never seen anything quite like any of it before, but the pillars and the walls reminded of pictures I’d seen of Ireland or ancient Rome.
    Of course, that was impossible. We were in Rhode Island; Europe was half a world away.
    There was a rustle, and I looked over to see the shy girl slowly pushing herself to her feet. She looked unsteady, and I’m sure she felt the same as I had, but she didn’t make a sound as she got up and slowly looked around. She flipped her head to cast her dark brown hair back over one of her eyes, but she still didn’t say a word.
    I stepped past Miles to go to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” I asked.
    She stared at me with a wide eye and nodded, but still didn’t say anything. I hoped she wasn’t going into shock. Mostly because I wasn’t sure what to do about it if she was.
    “I’m sorry, but I never got your name,” I told her, hoping to make her focus on something, even if it was as simple as talking. “I’m Sarah.”
    Finally, I saw a change of expression: a tiny little smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I know your name,” she said softly. “I voted for you, remember? You won.”
    I smiled back. “That’s right. But what’s your name?”
    “Tess,” she finally told me.
    “Okay, Tess,” I told her. “Until we figure out where we are, I need you to stick real close to me or Miles, okay?”
    “Hey!” piped up Calvin from behind me. “Why not me!”
    “Because she’s older than you, Calvin,” I shot back over my shoulder before returning my attention to Tess. “Can you stick close to us, Tess?”
    She nodded very slowly.
    “What’s with the rocks?” asked a bored voice.
    I turned to see that Raven was standing behind Calvin and Miles, staring at the pillars. Blade was up, too, and he was looking at the symbols carved into one of them with interest. His eyes kept flicking to a red stone on top of one pillar.
    “Check it out!” said Blade. “This pillar’s got fire carved into it.”
    “This one looks kind of like a bolt of lightning,” Raven commented.
    I looked around at the pillars. Each one of them had a different colored stone on top, and a different element carved into its side. In addition to the ones Blade and Raven had pointed out, I saw what looked like a water drop, a cloud, and a rock. The sixth pillar had what looked like a series of concentric circles, with the outline of a human head in profile in the center. The stone on top of it was purple, and was the only one that was slightly see-through. I didn’t know what the pillar carvings were supposed to be.
    My attention was drawn to the pillar with the picture of the rock, and the stone on top of it. The carving looked so beautiful, and the stone was such a nice shade of grey-brown. Something about it was compelling. It made me want to reach out and brush my