Royal Trespassing

Chapter 2

"Yo yo Mia are you pumped for this swag adventure?"

Her face lit up with humor and shock.

"I am very excited but please never talk like that again," said Mia.

"Yolo."

She proceeded to trip me so I fell face first in the grass.

"Hey what the heck?" I yelled while laughing, trying to turn myself right-side-up.

The weight of my huge backpack kept me pinned to the ground. Mia kicked and punched me for a minute before she helped me back up.

"Say something stupid again, I dare you!" Mia shouted as she did the come-at-me-bro thing with her body.

I laughed hysterically trying not to fall again.

"Look we're almost there!"

I pointed to the top of the Crimson Castle that was peaking out above the rolling hill we were on. Mia and I began to run towards it.

"It's gorgeous," said Mia.

She was right. It has a huge gate which most castles on the estate don't have because they weren't made for defense. The outer curtain, the towers, and the sides of the gate are inlaid with red glass shaped to look like rubies. Through the gate lies a courtyard. Directly across from the gate is the largest building, which probably contains the throne room, with half a dozen smaller buildings surrounding it.

"What should we explore first Rose?"

"Hmmm. Lets save the main room for last. We can go through the smaller buildings first. Ooh"

"What?" she said.

"Do you want to close the gate?"

She looked at me like I was crazy.

"Are you crazy?"

Yep, there it is.

"If we close it we'll probably never be able to open it again," Mia said.

"Yeah we'll have to tie a rope to the top and climb up and down to get in and out. It will be awesome."

"Okay let's do it."

I knew I'd win. Despite Mia's timid personality, she can be rebellious at times. We walked under the the rust covered iron gate and headed to the wooden crank to the right of the interior. I ran my fingers along the splinter ridden crank and the smooth rope used for the pulley system.

"Wait a second. This rope is made nylon. Nylon has only been around in the past century, this castle is several hundred years old," I said.

"Well maybe the rope broke and Mr. Wilson or a previous owner replaced it," Mia offered in rebuttal.

I have a bad feeling about it though. Mr. Wilson never cared about the castles, only the value of what's inside them. The previous owner couldn't have cared too much for the castles either, some of them are in really bad shape.

I slowly pushed the crank while Mia pulled opposite of me. It barely took any force at all to lower the gate and when we tried to hoist it back up the gate opened with ease.

"I thought you said it would be difficult to open the gate Rose."

"It should be, look how huge it is," I responded.

"Yeah it's twice as tall as you but it's half as dense."

"Haha, the Crimson Castle Comedian will be here all week ladies and gentlemen," I said while taking a bow to Mia.

We searched through 3 adjoining buildings. They didn't contain much. The first one appeared to be the servants' quarters. It was filled with crumbling cots, empty chests, and a few broken tables and chairs. The second one seemed to be an artisan's shop. It was filled with rusted tools, woods of various shapes and sizes, a furnace, and other things neither Mia nor I could distinguish. It did contain some valuable looking weapons that we will have to document later. The third building was almost empty except for scattered debris (which upon search held nothing interesting) and vines that managed to grow inside the structure, absorbing light through the holes in the roof.

It was already late afternoon. We left in the morning, about the the same time we wake for school, but getting to the castle takes a while since we have to walk from the entrance of the estate all the way to this castle. We decided to sit on a work bench in the artisan's house and take a lunch break. I was chowing down on a PB&J I made earlier when Mia let out,

"Why don't we move on to the main building? I want to find a good place to sleep before it turns dark."

"Yeah that's probably for the best. Maybe the king's bed is still in tact so we can rest in that instead of our sleeping bags."

After we ate and called our parents and Mia's boyfriend to let them know we were doing well, we headed to the main building. Stained glass windows with red crosses rested on both sides of the ornate wooden door. Together we pushed the heavy, creaking doors open.