Jump

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a prince. He was the prince of a teeny tiny nation, devastated by civil war. One day, as Prince Edward sat in his solid gold throne, a man came in to request an audience. The guards outside the throne room, impassive and stony-faced, let him in to see the Prince. The man claimed that his name was Sir Jeffrey, and he had been sent with a message from the Very Mighty All-Powerful Baron King Allen. Prince Edward hated him. Many said that the Baron King hated him back. Bored by the monotonous tone of Sir Jeffrey’s voice and of his own mind’s wanderings, Prince Edward started to fall asleep. Seeing an excuse, Jeffrey reached into his jacket, and drew out an old rusty dagger. He threw it at the drowsy Prince.

Prince Edward sat bolt upright in his throne. He realized that a single ray of sunlight had reflected off a rusty dagger spinning out of Sir Jeffrey’s hand toward him. Leaping from his throne and out of the dagger’s path, Edward ran to one of the nearby windows. He tried to open it, but to no avail. It was bolted shut. Grinning, Sir Jeffrey advanced knife once again in hand. He threw it, and Edward ducked as the knife smashed through the window. Yelling naughty words, Sir Jeffrey ran toward the Prince. Unsure of what to do, Prince Edward jumped through the flying shards of broken glass and out the window. 

Regretting it instantly, he saw the sparkling blue ocean about three hundred feet below. He knew, from his earlier travels, that the nearest land was a desolate island about five miles north of his position. Edward (now the ex-Prince) thought about how funny it was that he was plunging to his death within sight of his entire country, as the palace was on a tall mountain. Then he passed out.

When he woke up, Edward’s first thought was that he should be dead. While he was pondering this strange event, he realized that he was still falling! As the sheet of blue-green water rushed up to meet him, Edward straightened into a diving position in preparation for the bone-crushing impact impending. Splash! As soon as he hit the water, Edward somehow knew that his arms were the only thing broken. Rocketing toward the ocean floor, he saw a cave off to his right. Edward foolishly turned and swam into it. 

Thirty seconds later, his head popped up out of the water. Edward saw a vast underground lake, with a shoreline a stone’s throw away. Getting over to it was the easy part. Getting onto it was not. Edward bashed his hands again and again on the slick, smooth rocks, hoping desperately to find a handhold to pull himself up with. After what seemed an eternity to Edward, his hand struck something sharp, and started bleeding. 

Ignoring the screaming pain from his broken arms and hand, Edward hauled himself out of the frigid water, and onto the rocks, cold, but immobile. Finally! A solid surface! He groped his way along in the darkness, wishing he were elsewhere. At last he reached a door, set in an archway of gold. Thinking that it might leadup to the palace, Edward continued. Passing by doors framed in silver and bronze, he came to a door, seemingly without an archway.

Edward felt around for a doorknob but couldn’t find one. As his fingers ran over the spot where he guessed the doorknob should go, he discovered a small hole and some grooves in the cool stone of the door. He traced the first groove with his finger. It was an N. Then there was a L. The next one felt like a V, no, a Y. “NLY” thought Edward. “What does this mean?” 

A soft voice sounded in Edward’s ear. “Only the chosen shall enter there. Others beware.” As suddenly as it had started, the voice stopped. The letters on the door glowed with a golden light, and Edward saw a stone nearby light up as well. He picked it up. Then he saw his arms. They glowed with golden light, and they weren’t hurting anymore! He looked back down at the rock. It looked like a doorknob, with a little rod poking out of the back. “Put it in the door.” the voice in his ear urged Edward. Edward put it in the hole quickly.

As soon as the doorknob touched the hole, the door transformed. The gold seemed to seep from the doorknob into the rest of the door, and before long, it was all glowing gold. When Edward took his hand off the doorknob, it transformed into a giant key. The door grew and divided in the middle. Soon two huge oak doors ribbed with gold stood before Edward. “Enter, Prince Edward,” a new, powerful voice boomed, “You are the chosen one!”

The doors opened, and there stood Sir Jeffrey. He threw his knife, and it hit Edward in the chest, killing him and knocking his body into the lake. Sir Jeffrey dusted off his hands. "Ha,"he said,"I win!"

THE END