Chapter One

I'm not a very nice person. Most people would probably call me one anyway, but only because it's what you say when you don't know someone well enough to speak good or ill of them.

Honestly, most of the time I prefer the company of books to people. Actually I prefer the company of trees to people, while we're here being so up-front and all. I love my best friend, but even though she and her boyfriend are long distance now, they still manage to make me feel like the third wheel no one asked for. I do have other friends and school friends, but I can't see my actual friends as much as I would like to due to distance and not going to school together and whatnot, and my school friends are more akin to aquaintances, and that's being generous if you ask me.

I'm not easy to talk to, I guess, or maybe I just don't find talking all that easy. Whatever the reason, the people in my life don't really tend to know me all that well. But you're about to know a lot.

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1. You're reading this online, I know, but picture it like this instead:

You were browsing the shelves of your favourite bookstore, when a smallish volume, crammed hastily onto the bottom shelf of a bookcase tucked way in the back, caught your eye. You pick it up, out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. It's a hardback book with a green cover, the lettering on the front in plain brown type. On the front cover is a picture of the house you see in my profile picture. You turn it over to find: nothing. No summary, no author photo. No publisher, come to think of it. You flip through the pages, but most of them are empty. There's only a title page, followed by a dedication page bearing the words "Find me beneath the apple tree. I wait for you." There's also a first chapter, so you sink down into the nearest red armchair, plushy yet somehow perfectly firm, and begin to read this perplexing volume. This is where we are now. Do you follow me?

2. If you have a distaste for magic and stories about magic, this is not the book for you.

3. I hope you have a lot of free time, because we're in this for the long haul here. If you're unwilling to follow, put the book back where you found it please. Give someone with half a sense of adventure the chance to discover it.

Still here?

Really?

Great. Let's begin.

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Sneak the book out of the store. Don't worry, no one will notice. In case you didn't already guess, it isn't strictly speaking a regular bookstore-library-ordinary book you're holding. And don't worry about there only being one chapter. You'll find that as you read, the story writes itself.

Sincerely,

- the Dryad

(Postscript: if you were expecting a name, I'm surprised at you. Is the mystery not intriguing enough in itself? If you must, picture glasses, dark hair, and a face hidden behind a drawing of an apple tree, only with bright red books hanging from its branches in the place of delicious fruit. Satisfied? I hope not.)