Silvea by Jasmine (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

The wind rustled through the leaves as Silvea strode back through the forest, wiping her scythe on her cloak. It had been a long night; there had been more of them than usual-they had taken a long time to haul to the river. Pushing back her hood, she shook out her navy hair as she reached the tree. Puling out her knife, she drew the intricate symbol upon the bark, and splashed some blood on it, waiting for the way to open. With a great creak, the wood drew back to reveal the inside.

Silvea dumped her cloak in the corner, never having been one for tidiness, and dragged herself downstairs, lights coming on as she went deeper into her underground home. As she reached the bottom, she only just managed to stagger into her armchair before she collapsed from the lack of magic. She had been stupid, wanted to show off to nobody, and decided to channel it into her weapons, but that had drained her to the point of exhaustion.

“Idiot, idiot.” She muttered to herself, head nodding as she sat there. She didn’t want to sleep, she had more important things to do, but as the waves of drowsiness overtook her, her mind began to slip back to her past…


Silvea Thrayew had never had the life she should have had. As long as she could remember she had been shunned from every society, all because of one simple fact- she had been born with blood red eyes. The Graesta had made a prophecy, before any who lived remembered, that the child born with the eyes filled with blood would bring down all Hieltari. As soon as her mother saw her, she had ran from the hospital screaming, leaving Silvea's father to raise her alone. He had always said that he never had any regrets, but Silvea had caught him crying over an old photo album before.

She had never had any such thing as friends-she had never had the opportunity. Her father had kept her in their house, high up in the mountain and away from prying eyes and abusive voices. When she was young she had hated her father for it, and went to the length of running away to the villages below. But as soon as she got there, people had started screaming and running away from her, and men had come towards her holding weapons shining with Hielik, their faces twisted with anger. Terrified, she had turned and ran, all the way back up the mountain, bursting into the cave and falling into her fathers arms sobbing. It was only then that he told her what she was-what she was meant to do.

She had grown older, and when she came of age at 13 years her father had taken her through the portal, to the human world into one of their forests. He had left her a knife and his scythe, the spellbook she had so detested as a child and a basket of seeds.
“My child,” he had said, kneeling down in front of her “There are people out there who want to hurt you. They will happily kill you if they get the chance. If you stay here for a while, you can train yourself, defend yourself for now. As long as you stay out of sight and keep up your training, you will be alright. But I can no longer stay by your side, Silvea- Its too dangerous, for both of us.”
“Papa” she had cried, “How am I meant to train without you? Where will I find my motivation? You know I will never train my Hielik…”
He had taken her shoulders firmly then, looking straight at her. “Silvea, listen to me. I don’t care if you make yourself train day and night, to the point where you collapse from exhaustion- you must carry on. You are unique, my child-many will want you to do horrific things to you, thing you could not even imagine. But for some, you are the last hope out corrupt world has, so for me-keep on living.”

With that, he had disappeared into the trees. Silvea hadn’t tried to follow him- he was the one who taught her the art of stealth, she would never find him. She had set about making her home in the largest tree she could find, carving deep into the inside with Hielik, planting seeds around to make her own food. She had trained hard, as her father had told her, learning the art of controlling the wind- she wasn’t very good at it, but time improved on her. But there was one instruction she had not stuck to, which had lead to what she had become today.

Memories blurred together, creating a pattern dancing across her eyes as she slept through the night…


Light streamed in through the hole in the ceiling, straight onto Silvea's sleeping face.
“Aaaaargh…” she groaned, rolling out of the way. She was still feeling the strain of yesterday, and was in no mood to be getting up. Even so, she was hungry, so, dragging herself out of the moss-covered armchair and half crawling to the stairs. She looked up them with disgust.
“Stupid stairs…set on making my life miserable…”
Pulling herself upright, she stretched out her aching limbs, sending white sparks flying from her fingers, threatening to set her home alight. Quickly withdrawing them, she took her knife from her pocket and headed up.

Three years had passed since she had been left to fend for herself, and they had certainly not been wasted. She was undeniably more skilled with her scythe than before, having a passion for combat. Her Hielik improvement was not so obvious, but there.

Shoving open the door of her tree, Silvea almost fell back down the stairs with the full force of the sunshine hitting her. Cursing loudly, she picked up the bucket from the low hanging branch above her and made her way to the river. She had always much preferred the winter, when she could evade the blinding sunlight and rejoice in the fact that she never felt the cold. The summer never turned out well for her.

As she arrived at the river, she recoiled- it had appeared that in her exhaustion, she had forgotten to cut the raft with all the bodies on it loose last night. They remained piled on the river, the smell getting worse as she approached. Yanking out her knife, she sliced through it in one smooth movement, sending the corpses floating down the river. Gathering in her power, she clumsily rushed the air across the water, speeding the raft slightly- she wouldn’t want the humans to miss them for too long. She had been doing this for years-they would come to kill her, she killed them, she piled them onto the river and sent them back down to the village. She had originally done it as a warning for them to leave her alone, but as they continued to came for her she had begun to do it out of pity-even if they were prepared to murder her, their families deserved to have them to mourn before they burned them, or whatever humans did as a funeral ritual. She really should feel guilty, but to be honest, she had stopped caring long ago-even if it was her fault in the first place…

She had been a curious child, and wanting to avoid training had run to the edge of the forest, searching eagerly for a human. She had never seen one before, and wanted to compare them to her father’s description.
A human had run by, laughing at the bird it pursued. She had watched it intently, staying in the shadows. It was very simple, hair a boring shade of brown, eyes a plain greyish colour. Its ears were stubby, not long like hers, and all its teeth seemed to be the same size. This intrigued her-how on earth was it supposed to defend itself without its incisors even slightly sharpened? It also seemed somewhat pointless in its antics- it wasn’t going to catch the bird with no kind of weapon, so there was hardly any point in trying…

Suddenly, the child had swerved in its pursuit of its prey, right into her path. It froze, letting the bird fly free into the sky. They had both stayed like that for a while, gaze locked on each other. Then Silvea had smiled, and had stepped forward into the light. Her pointed teeth glinted, and her pupils contracted to slits in her crimson irises. The child had run screaming, and she had retreated back to the shadows, frustrated-she had thought that the humans may be a little more open minded than her kind, but no-it seemed that they disliked those who were different as well.

That night, men with torches and blades had come for her, yelling into the pitch black. She had seen them coming from the top of her tree, and all the memories of her first time out of her home came flooding back to her. Terrified, she jumped from the tree and ran-there was no chance of surviving in the tree, they had already seen her. Scythe in hand, she had streaked through the forest, the hot breath of the men close on her heels, she was just gaining on them, when she cam to a sudden stop. Why should she fear them? She was and elf, they ere mere humans. She was meant to bring down a world. She was her father’s daughter. She was Silvea.

She turned on them as they approached her, and they stopped in their tracks in astonishment and terror. The being before them was of human form, but was clearly anything but. The red in her eyes blazed, her teeth were bared in a feral snarl, and as she burned with a white light, she rose above the ground, an angel of death with a scythe in her hand.

She could never remember exactly what had happened after that, but all she knew was that after a few minutes she was left with corpses piled at her feet. She had collapsed, and awoken next morning confused and distraught, but with a new flame in her heart. She had made her choice.

Flicking back her messy tangle of hair as if to brush away her nostalgic mood, she scooped up some water into the bucket and dumped it beside the river, walking back to the fringe of trees to yank up some dry reeds. Putting them in the circle of stones, she grabbed the two pieces of flint by them and struck them together, starting a small fire. Placing the pot on the precariously balanced stand above the flames, she left the water to clean while she made a new raft. Winding some reeds together, she lined up the logs she had cut down to make herself this clearing-she was always careful never to make them larger than necessary. Rolling the logs into place, she hesitated. She had read something about levitation in her spellbook- it was just a matter of concentration. Now was as good a time as any to try it out-she may be supposed to start on lighter objects, but what the hell?

Closing her eyes, Silvea tried to block out all of the surrounding noises, focusing on the log before her. Hand extended, she tightened her focus, and, channelling all of her Hielik towards it…

There was a splash, and Silvea snapped open her eyes to see the log had simply rolled into the river and was in imminent danger of disappearing.