I've Got A New Read!

 

     Yesterday I started reading the book 13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison. It is a pretty good book so far and has me asking a lot of questions. I am only four chapters in but here is what has happened; I have met Tanya a twelve year old girl who can see what others can not, fairies. These aren't your typical fairies either, these fairies are mean and won't leave Tanya alone. In the first chapter Tanya has another encounter with these mischievous creatures in the middle of the night. They pull her out of her bed and use magic so that she has to walk on the ceiling instead of the floor. Tanya has tried many times to tell people about the fairies and has written multiple journal entries about them. The fairies don't like this too much and come to punish her every time she does it. They came to warn her against trying again to reveal their secret and threaten to erase her memory. Tanya agrees and so the fairies send her crashing to the floor. Tanya's mom comes in (she is the only one Tanya lives with) and decides she can't take any more of Tanya's antics. Tanya's mother doesn't understand Tanya's unusual behavior and thinks it's her way of seeking attention. As a result she takes Tanya to spend a couple of weeks with her grandmother.

 

     Tanya isn't the closest to her grandmother and does not like that she has to spend so much time in her huge, aging house. One of the reasons Tanya doesn't like her grandmother's house is because of the mass amount of fairies that are there. Once they arrived at her house I met the creepy grounds keeper, Warwick, who isn't the warmest man on the earth. He is tall, dressed in dark dirty clothing and has skin that shows his long time spent in the sun. He takes Tanya to her room. After Tonya's mom  makes sure Tanya gets her belongings into the house, she leaves without a good bye. Then Tanya's grandmother shows up from the grocery. Tanya goes to help carry in her bags and finds a dead fairy on the car windshield. This makes Tanya uneasy so she has a proper funeral for the creature. She goes to the edge of Hangman's Woods by the house and buries the fairy. Once she is finished she runs into Fabian, Warwick's son. Fabian is a bit of a science geek and Tanya considers him nosy and annoying. He had been spying on Tanya and asked what she had buried. Tanya tells him a dead mouse, hoping that he believes her.

 

     Later Tanya heads to her room and finds that a usually locked room has its door open. Tanya sneaks inside following her curiosity. She finds a bunch of books-some with information on fairies-and she decides to keep one to take back to her room. She finds an old charm bracelet and an old news clipping. The news clipping is about a fourteen year old girl who went into Hangman's Woods and never returned fifty years ago. Tanya's grandmother finds her snooping but is strangely not upset. She lets Tanya keep the bracelet and takes her up on her offer to help clean out the room. Tanya figured it would be an easy way to do some more looking around.

  

     Aside from what is going on in Tanya's life, I learned about an old gypsy who lives alone in the middle of Hangman's Woods. She has a gift of "second-sight" and can see the future and past, however her powers have slowly begun to wear down. The gypsy has a vision where she sees a young baby girl taken from her crib and then sees the girl when she is twelve, sad and lonely. The woman knows this girls too has the power of a "second-sight"  and knows that their paths will soon cross. I know the girl that the gypsy saw has to be Tanya. I wonder what will happen if the gypsy and her meet. I also feel like Fabian and Tanya will get to be better friends and maybe he might find out about the fairies that Tanya sees. I guess I will have to keep reading to find out!