The Hope of Elantris Read Online Free Page B

every short story will work for every reader.
ANNOTATIONS
PART ONE: MATISSE
    All right, now the annotation. This story actually has a very
interesting backstory.
    If we flash back to January 2006, we find me having been dating
Pemberly (her real name is Emily, but she goes by Pemberly on-line)
for about two months time. Our relationship was still quite new,
and we weren't exclusive yet. (Though I wanted to be. I was pretty
sure I wanted to marry her by that point.)
    Well, at one of our dates, Pemberly told me this amazing story.
It seems that one of her eighth grade students-a girl named
Matisse-had done a book report on ELANTRIS. Now, Matisse didn't
know that her teacher was dating me. She didn't even know that
Pemberly KNEW me. It was just one of those bizarre coincidences
that happens just to prove to us all that the world is a funny
place.
    Now, when I say book report, that doesn't get across the scope
of what Matisse did. Being a clever, creative girl, she went the
extra mile. Instead of a simple write-up on the book, she did a
"Dragonology" style book on ELANTRIS. This thing is amazing; it has
sketches and bios of the characters, strips of Elantrian cloth
stapled in as examples, little pouches filled with materials from
the books, all of that. A total multi-sensory experience dedicated
to the novel, all hand-made. Pemberly showed it to me, and it was
honestly just about the coolest, must humbling thing I'd ever seen.
Matisse had obviously loved the book very much.
    That set me thinking of something I could do as a thank-you
surprise to Matisse, who still didn't know that her teacher was
dating one of her favorite authors. I'd had this idea itching in
the back of my head.
PART TWO: HOLES IN THE STORY
    In any novel, there are decisions you make regarding what to put
in and what to leave out. A lot of authors talk about the 'iceberg'
theory-that for any good book, there's a lot of story and
worldbuilding beneath the surface that the author knows, but the
reader never discovers. These things give weight and a foundation
for the story you DO see, allowing it to feel more real and more
engaging because the author has thought through so much of what
isn't stated.
    In ELANTRIS, there are a couple of these holes. Places where I
knew what was happening off-screen, but decided that I couldn't
talk about it in the book. (In this novel, there were generally two
reasons for these holes. One was if I couldn't get a viewpoint
character into the right location at the right time; the chapter
triad format earned me a lot of things, but also constrained me
sometimes. At the end of the book, however, the triad system fell
apart on purpose, and so I COULD so random other viewpoints. In the
case of what was happening with the children in Elantris, however,
I decided that there was already too much happening during the
climax, and these sections were the ones that had to be cut.)
    So I knew what was going on inside Elantris when the attack by
the Dakhor came. In the back of my mind, I also knew that the
children were saved and protected by Dashe and Ashe the Seon, kept
from being slaughtered by the attack. I didn't want them to fall
like the others; Karata had worked so hard to protect them, and
letting the children not have to suffer through the slaughter at
New Elantris was my gift to her. A kind of compensation for her own
sacrifice at the end of the novel.
PART THREE: HOPE OF ELANTRIS
    I'd been itching to write another ELANTRIS story. Because of the
nature of publishing, I knew that I couldn't do a sequel to the
book at the time, as the MISTBORN novels made so much more sense to
publish. However, Matisse's project gave me the inspiration that I
needed to turn my attention back to ELANTRIS. I stopped writing on
MISTBORN: THE WELL OF ASCENSION for two days, and wrote out this
section of the ELANTRIS story.
    Because Matisse had inspired me, I decided that I would name a
character after her. I also felt that, if I was taking the time to
write a