Jacai’s Journal

For today’s post, one of the characters in my upcoming novel The Lost City of Netherborough has agreed to share a section of her journal.

I am a fool. A simpleton. A great flapping burgess bird. I’ve only gone and told Lauren the wrong day to set off on the expedition. Or no, she gave me the day. Then I gave the wrong day to Mistress Marda, and reserved three gryphons to carry us through the mountain pass tomorrow, when we probably will not need them. For if we haven’t left by then somebody sensible will have prevented us going. Unless we can hide somewhere, with someone as foolish as I.

And then only if I can find Lauren and Meghan, for in addition to Mistress Marda, I have apparently also given the wrong date to myself, and therefore I have not met Lauren and Meghan at the lake this morning. How will I find them? If I had a gryphon I could find them. But I had to beg and beg Mistress Marda for the use of her gryphons, and I don’t think she will let me have them early.

Will they have gone home and abandoned the project? I pray they have not. I have dealt with more than enough disappointment for one moon. This expedition must go forward. Otherwise I will never be able to convince the explorer’s guild I will be an apt pupil, and I will have to go home and make ornaments out of shell, and river rocks, and listen to scores of wild tales without ever having been in one myself.

I think I would rather eat sand than do that.