Mother of Darkwaters: Book one of the Vessel series by Tony C. Skye Page A

me.
          Yes, I thought about picking the door's lock. But when I looked at the next book in the yellow set, I seen a lock on it. Book after book is locked. All of them! The only one that isn't is this first one. And if this book could speak, it would probably say, “Hey, Theresa. You are too dumb to continue.” Oh, in case you didn't hear me the first two times, THIS BLOWS!
                                                                                             Theresa
     
----
         
     
       No freakin' way.
       Julianna grins. She tries to recall a strange nursery rhyme her mother used to recite when she was around five or six. It always put her to sleep at night.
       
       How did she start it? Something about a princess. No, it was a queen. A queen and her kingdom. Her white kingdom.
       The girl smiles and begins reciting the nursery rhyme aloud,
       “The queen searches all of the colorful kingdoms.
          She searches to find her place among angels and demons.
          She begins in the white kingdom. One, two, she finds a key.
          The key, which opens the yellow door, if she only believes.
          One by one, the queen finds them all.
          The door to each kingdom down the hall.
          The queen spends her time in careful examination.
          So her mind is not filled with any contamination.
          She does not skip, hop, or run along the way.
          For the power and danger she faces is not for play.
          She takes care to read every word she sees.
          And it all begins with one, two, she finds a key.”
     
       Julianna throws back her covers and springs out of her bed. She heads upstairs with her mother's diary. The auto-feature of the library's lighting detects her movement and illuminates the dimmed area.
        She stops on top of the circle with a star inside and faces the three u-shaped rows of bookshelves. Her eyes widen as she spots books with white tags upon their bindings. They are located on the first four rows from the top of the first shelf, and wrap all the way around the u-shape shelving. She notices a set of blue tag books underneath the white ones. They finish the massive horseshoe with a whopping sixteen rows to their credit.
      
       Geezus. I'll be two-hundred before I can read all of that.
       The girl notices the air is a little chilly in this open area of the library. Dressed in her short-shorts, the girl realizes she probably should have grabbed her robe. Her red-streak side bangs dance among her raven black hair while she rubs the rising goose bumps from her arms.
       “One, two, she finds a key,” the teen quietly speaks while moving closer to the books. Julianna sees a ladder to her right. It is placed near the end of the bookshelf. She crosses the sixteen-foot distance to the ladder. It is attached to the thirty-two foot wide horseshoe. With roughly eight feet between each shelf, Julianna surmises that the third shelf must be around sixty to seventy-feet wide.
       “I take that back,” the girl reconsiders each of the three shelves; “I'll be five-hundred.”
      
       Julianna's emerald green eyes sparkle against the florescent lighting as she peers up the towering ladder. She exhales a quick forceful breath. The sudden burst of air parts her lips.
       “Gotta start somewhere, I guess,” Julianna coaches herself into making the high climb.
                                       
       Her legs nervously shake as she reaches the top row and looks down.  
       “Stop that,” Julianna scolds herself for the rookie mistake.
       She locks her left arm – still holding her mother's diary – through the gap between ladder runs and around the forty-five degree riser-board attached to the right side of the ladder. With her right hand clutching the ladder run