The first thing that most people learned about Tara was that she lived and breathed fantasy. Books, games, movies, she’d be the first in line. Over the summer she had read The Lord of the Rings twice and had immediately added ideas from the book to the fictional world that her own alter ego, A’rat the Barbarian, inhabited.

For instance, when the Summers across street, who always brought the Brooks family leftover pies from work, left the neighborhood to move across the country, Tara had written that the local hobbits had fled the area of Brookmoor castle because…

She had yet to decide the reason, but she vaguely had the idea that she’d be getting new neighbors, so the idea would find a way into her head soon enough.

For now, she was headed towards one of many uninhabited houses, that littered the neighborhood now that the tourism industry had collapsed. She had attempted to work this into the ever growing lore that surrounded her second self.

The house she was headed for wasn’t that interesting by itself, but the cherry tree had finally born fruit and Tara couldn’t resist pilfering the tree whenever the mood struck her, reasoning that, if nobody was living there, nobody would miss them.

As usual, the house with the cherry tree bathed quietly in the afternoon sun. The neighbor lady sat on her porch, drinking tea and gave a brief wave to Tara, not concerned about the child robbing the tree of its summer fruit.

Tara hopped over the picket fence, using the one picket that was still stable enough to hold her weight, walked past the kitchen window and saw the wooden stepladder under the tree waiting for her. She hopped onto it, made a net out of the bottom of her shirt and, after putting one cherry in her mouth to suck on, she filled the cloth receptacle with cherries, before carefully stepping back down the ladder. She dropped down in the grass, which was slowly being taken over by weeds, and started to munch on her bounty.

After she had gorged herself on the fruit, she lay down in the still wettish grass, put her hands behind her head and quietly looked for shapes in the clouds.

“Does she come with the house?” a man asked.

Tara’s eyes shot open. She had apparently fallen asleep in the grass and now found herself face to face with a skinny, gaunt man. He wore a black rain coat, clearly expecting more to fall, that made him look even thinner and with the frown on his already heavily lined face he looked completely the part of a ghoul.

Tara blinked once.

The man blinked back.

“Hello?” he tried, speaking with a vaguely eastern European accent. Tara didn’t respond. She shuffled backwards on her rear, jumped to her feet, then sprinted past the man before he knew what was happening, then past a confused looking real estate agent and finally, an older lady.

“You can have the cherries!” the man called after, “It’s fine!”

Tara didn’t hear. She grabbed her bicycle from the picket fence and pedaled as hard as she could, not stopping until she was safely back in the garage.

After abandoning her bike, she kicked her off shoes and rushed into the house.

“I’m back, mom!” she said as she flew past the woman preparing dinner.

“Already?” was the only things Mrs Brooks managed to get out before Tara flew up the stairs.

When Tara was back in her room, she made sure the door was closed and nobody could see what she was doing if they happened to pass by he room, then took a large rolled up paper from under her bed. She brought it to her desk, swept the copy of her choose your own adventure book aside, and rolled it out to display a map she had painstakingly drawn. Had anyone with the knowledge looked at it, they would probably have recognized the parallels with the town she lived in, albeit slightly altered.

Among her many alterations were:

- The swamp of Decay, otherwise known as Mrs. McGillicuddy’s house

- The Goblin Ruins, known as the recently closed daycare center to most people

- The Black Market, aka the strip mall between her town and the nearest city

And perhaps most important was the centerpiece, Brookmoor Castle, which to the rest of her family was known as their home.

She took out a box of pencils, carefully selected one and scanned the map until she found a place she had marked as ‘The Tree of Life’ in swirling letters. She placed her pencil under it and, in the same graceful hand, added, ‘Danger! Ghouls!’

After updating the map, she rolled it up again, returned it to the hiding place under her bed and found her way back to her desk, picking out a pink notebook from a row of identical ones. On the cover it simply read, ‘A’rat the Barbarian and…’.

Whatever accompanied A’rat the Barbarian in this volume was left to the reader’s imagination for now.

Tara returned her pencil to the box, then chose a pen, an old fountain pen she had taken from her father’s home office. She started to write in the same neat flowing cursive she’d used for the map, but gradually fell into a sloppier hand as she got more excited about what she was writing.

“And then A’rat fled the field…” Tara wrote, putting the pen down and frowned at the paper. A’rat was supposed to be a great hero, who’d never run from battle, unless…

Her thought was interrupted by the door bell. It remained quiet in the house for a few moments, then it rang again.

Assuming her mother had gone out, Tara sighed and headed down to open the door, finding one of her brother’s classmates, Mitchell Jones.

It was a fact that nobody really liked Mitchell, as he had the bizarre idea of communist plots behind every tree, dressed like he was in the army, and would often crawl through peoples’ yards as he trained for covert ops. The only-recently-turned-thin teenager saluted Tara.

“Good afternoon, citizen,” he said, his still round face beaming.

“Zach’s not in,” Tara replied, hoping Mitchell was looking for her brother.

“I am not looking for anyone specifically,” Mitchell continued, immediately dissuading Tara of that notion, “I am looking for signatures for my petition.

Tara sighed and was about to close the door, used to Mitchell’s petitions as much as anyone in town.

“As a good Christian,” Mitchell said, “I’m sure you don’t want objectionable material brought into our fair community, miss! And I happen to have heard there we be a specialty bookstore opening.”

Tara swallowed back a comment about Mitchell’s ability to read, then just nodded blankly.

Mitchell was about to continue, but Tara interrupted him.

“It’s not like the chocolate milk incident, is it?” she wanted to know.

“No. I have proof this time.”

Mitchell produced a small pile of newspaper scraps from his pocket, selected one and shoved it under Tara’s nose. She took it and read

‘The Mage’s Pages.

Fantasy Bookstore.

D&D/wargaming

supplies available

Grand opening soon’

Under the ad was an address, below which was a simple picture of a smiling wizard that pointed to the text with one hand and giving a thumbs up with the other.

“And?” Tara asked, trying to hide her delight at this information, “Just don’t go.”

“We need to keep anti-Christian stuff like this far from our children, Miss Brooks!”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, will you sign the petition?”

“No…”

Mitchell’s face fell, but he wasn’t planning to leave without his prey, so almost immediately added a challenging why?

“I can’t vote, can I?” she asked, “My signature will mean nothing. Can’t vote till I’m eighteen after all.”

Mitchell considered this quietly, came to the conclusion this made sense, then took a step back.

“Sorry to bother you then, unless your parents are…”

“They’re out.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else, Mitchell?”

“Private Jones…” Mitchell tried, though with the previous deflation there wasn’t much to it.

“Whatever,” Tara mumbled and closed the door without another word.

After making sure Mitchell had actually left, Tara flew to the kitchen table, where her father read several newspapers every morning. With him having left early, today’s were still waiting for him, neatly folded on top of each other.

Tara grabbed one at random, flipped through it till she found the ad Mitchell had shown her. She checked the back of the ad to make sure there was nothing about cars on it and, when there was nothing, cut it out.

She pocketed it and prepared to spend dinner pleading with her parents to take her to visit.