Ian Hobson, Guiseley, UK - Artist & Writer

Story 12

The Coffin

©2006 Ian Hobson

Getting up for work had been difficult for the first couple of days, but I soon got back into a routine. In fact, everything was going fine until the Tuesday of my third week. I was up at six-fifteen as usual, had my breakfast, and was out of the front door by a quarter to seven. I live in an old terraced house that used to belong to my mum – the same house I grew up in - and the front door opens directly onto the street. As I left the house, checking the contents of my rucksack to make sure that I'd not forgotten my thermos flask and sandwiches, I locked the door and turned around and there it was: a coffin! Sat there on the pavement, right outside my front window!

Where the bloody hell has this come from? I thought. It was a nicely made coffin; nothing flash, just pine, by the look of it, though it had very ornate-looking brass handles. I glanced up the street; it's on a slight incline, and I wondered for a moment if the coffin might have fallen from a hearse and come sliding downhill, but if that was the case, how would it have got itself up onto the pavement? Anyway, there was no sign of a hearse, just the usual parked cars. I don't have a car any more; I sold it about a year after my wife died. I had other uses for the money then; though not any more, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Anyway, I couldn't stand around waiting for someone to turn up and claim the coffin; I own the house, not the pavement outside it, so it wasn’t my responsibility. So off I went to catch my bus.

When I got to the factory, all hell had broken loose: during the night a water main had burst on Coalback Lane and the water had flowed through the back railings and across the yard and almost completely flooded the boiler-house. Of course, as a maintenance engineer, I got roped into the cleanup operation, and so I forgot all about the coffin; until a quarter to five, when I got back home to find it still sat there outside my house.

I suppose at this point I ought to tell you that the house has been in the family for many years, as it used to belong to my grandfather, and that's who this story is all about really.

Anyway, some bright spark had blue-tacked a sign to the coffin that read Vacant possession on completion. As I read the sign, old Mrs Gray from next door came out and asked me if it was my coffin. I told her I wasn't planning to have a use for one just yet and then, foolishly, I asked her how her husband was, as I hadn't seen Joe for three or four weeks and he had been quite ill throughout the winter. She told me he was very well, thank you very much, and went back inside. So, wishing I'd kept my stupid mouth shut, I unlocked my front door and went in to make a couple of phone calls.

It only took a half-hour for a young copper to show up. Fortunately I was out of the shower by then, though I hadn't quite finished shaving. He examined the coffin and took a few notes and then suggested I phone the local funeral directors. I told him I'd already done that and that they'd said that they hadn't lost any coffins. At this point he got on his radio while I made us both a cup of tea, and then after another half-hour or so, two more coppers arrived with an undertaker. A Mr Greenwood, I remember his name was, and he had a small tool-kit with him and, as quick as a flash, he had the lid off the coffin, and the five of us stood staring down into it.

This is where my grandfather comes into the story. He'd died during the war and, according to my gran, on the day he was due to be buried in the parish cemetery, both he and his coffin had gone missing. Apparently there had been an air-raid just as the coffin was being carried out of the house. I think most of those doing the carrying were women, what with there being a shortage of men, and all, and as the siren went off they set the coffin down and everyone, including my mum and my gran, scurried off to the air-raid shelter. And then later, when they returned, the coffin and my granddad's body were gone.

Black-marketeers were blamed at the time; not that my gran was bothered about the coffin; she just wanted her husband back so that she could give him a proper burial. My mum reckoned that my gran had never got over the loss. She said it was like grieving twice. And I know all about grieving, what with loosing my mother and my wife in the same year.

But anyway, back to my granddad. I'd forgotten all about the incident with the missing coffin; though I still had all the family photographs and knew what he looked like. But of course, he'd died several years before I was born and, to me, the disappearance of his body and the coffin was just a story that my mum and my gran used to tell me. Though you'd think that finding a coffin on my doorstep would have jogged my memory a little; but it didn't.

Anyway, as I stood beside the police officers and looked into that coffin there was no doubt in my mind about what I was seeing: it was my granddad, all dressed up in his Sunday best, and with his hair neatly trimmed and parted, looking just as he must have on the day of his disappearance, over sixty years ago.

I passed out, or fainted, or whatever you want to call it. And when I came round I was lying on my back outside my front door with the Grays from next door leaning over me and asking me if I was alright. I asked what time it was and Joe told me it was ten to seven. When I asked what had happened to the coffin and the policemen, Jo and his wife exchanged knowing looks and then sent for an ambulance.

By the time I arrived at the hospital I felt fine, but I couldn't work out why the day was getting brighter when it should have been getting darker, and why the sandwiches I'd eaten at lunchtime were still in my rucksack along with my still full-to-the-brim thermos flask. The digital clock-cum-calendar on the waiting area wall read 07.58, Tuesday, 16 April, and as I looked at it, it dawned on me that it was still Tuesday morning.

That afternoon and evening at home, I sat in a daze, unable to comprehend what had happened. I even searched the house and the dustbin, looking for empty bottles, but there were none. And, anyway, if I'd been drinking, I'd have known about it. But, physically, I felt fine. So I watched some TV - just to confirm that it really was still Tuesday - and then, at half-ten, after I'd watched the news, I set my alarm and went to bed. Then in the morning, when I got up, I looked out of the front window to make sure there were no coffins, and then went off to work.

I was a little worried about explaining my day's absence; I could hardly tell the truth, could I? Fortunately my boss was on a management-training course, but he'd left instructions that if I was back at work I was to help Dave with some work in the boiler-house.

‘You missed a right day, yesterday,’ Dave told me. ‘A water-main burst and flooded the boiler-house, and we had a hell of a job cleaning up the mess.’

Story 11

The Elf, the Trollgood and the Magic Sword

©2008 Ian G Hobson

Ripley was on his way home. He had been staying with his cousins in the north, and after a detour to the east, to visit his great-aunt Mistledyne, he was travelling south along woodland routes, known only to a few. Being an elf, he loved the woods and was not looking forward to leaving them for a while, in order to cross the Planes of Insul, but he knew that this would save him a day's journey.

'When you come to the Planes of Insul,' his great-aunt Mistledyne had told him, 'look for two rocks that stand like sentinels. Pass to the left of each and continue in a straight line to join a narrow road that leads over a bridge and then on to the Forest of Bow. I've not been that way for a long time, but I'm sure that the bridge will still be there. But be sure to find it, as there is no other safe way to cross the Devil's Crevasse.'

And this was good advise, because the Devil's Crevasse was a huge crack in the earth that ran for at least a day's journey from east to west, and though in places it looked narrow enough to jump across, those that had tried had fallen into the crevasse and never been seen again.

Naturally, the bridge had been built at one of the places where the crack in the earth was at its narrowest, and it was sturdily built from stone, and just wide enough for a horse and cart. So, when the elf arrived at the bridge, he stepped onto it without a second thought, stopping only to peer over the edge and down into the depths of the crevasse. But it was then that he was taken by surprise, as an ugly creature leapt out from under the bridge and barred his way.

The creature, as you may have guessed, was a kind of troll: a trollgood to be precise. Not that there was anything good about him, for he was, in fact, a rather nasty creature, with huge hairy hands and feet, and a face that resembled a knobbly old piece of wood. And he had recently taken up residence in a cave beneath the bridge so that he could waylay unwary travellers and relieve them of their valuables.

'Who is this that tries to cross my bridge,' he asked, in a deep and rather odd voice that seemed to come as much from his nose as it did from his mouth. Quite startled, the elf took a step backwards before answering.

'I'm Ripley,' he replied, in a light and almost musical tone, 'and I'm on my way home.'

The trollgood pulled and even uglier face, grimacing as though he had just bitten into a rotten apple and, with his nasal voice, he said, 'Well, Master Ripley, you have to pay before you can cross my bridge. I'll take sliver or gold, whichever you have.'
'But I have neither,' said Ripley, putting his hands into his pockets and pulling them inside-out to show that he had nothing at all.

'But you must have something!' exclaimed the trollgood. He was almost a head taller than Ripley, though his stature was somewhat crooked, and his head tilted to one side as he examined the elf closely. 'What about that hat you are wearing?'

Ripley wore a cocked hat made of the finest green velvet. 'But my hat would not fit you,' he said. He offered his hat to the trollgood who tried to pull it onto his head, but without success. 'Just as I thought,' said Ripley, 'your head is far too big for it... What is your name, anyway?'

'My name?' said the trollgood, handing back the elf's hat. 'It's Snuffler; not that that's any of your business.' He bent forward slightly, eyeing Ripley's shoes. 'What about them shoes?' he asked, pointing. 'I could use a pair like that.'

Ripley's shoes were made of the finest, soft, red leather, and came to a point at the toes. 'But these shoes would not fit you, Mister Snuffler,' he said, placing his foot next to the trollgood's. 'See, your feet are far too big for them... Where do you live, anyway?'

'Where do I live?' Snuffler replied. 'I live in a cave under the bridge: not that that's any business of yours.' He looked closely at Ripley's coat and felt the material around the collar with a thumb and forefinger. 'Well what about your coat, then? It feels nice and soft and would help to keep me warm on cold nights, and I'm sure I could squeeze into it.'

Ripley's coat was woven from the finest wool and dyed a beautiful shade of autumn gold. 'But I don't think my coat would fit you, Mister Snuffler,' he said. He slipped off his coat and held it up for the trollgood to try on, but Snuffler couldn't even get his fist into one of the sleeves. 'No, just as I thought, it's far too small for you,' said the elf. 'But, anyway, what do you eat?' He looked over the side of the bridge and down into the crevasse again. 'There can be nothing down there to eat but spiders.'

Snuffler pulled another excruciatingly ugly face, showing the gaps between his crooked, brown teeth – it was the closest he could come to smiling. 'I eats travellers,' he replied. 'Them what can't pay to cross my bridge. I ate one this morning; he was a dwarf, and though he had gold in his pocket, he refused to pay, so I ate him; which is why I'm not too hungry right now, but if you go on talking for much longer, I will be.'

It was then that the trollgood noticed the short sword that sat neatly in a leather sheath that hung from Ripley's belt. 'Now there's something I could use,' he said, pointing to it with a big, hairy index finger. 'You can pay me with that, and right sharpish, with no more of your silly questions, or else I'll snap you in half and eat a bit now and save the rest for later.' He flexed the muscles in his huge, hairy arms, as if to show that snapping an elf in half would be easy.

'Well, I suppose I could give you my sword,' said Ripley as he put his coat back on, 'though it was a present from my father.'

As he touched the sword, running his fingers over its carved, wooden hilt, he remembered his father's words. 'Keep this with you on your journey, but never take it out of the scabbard; for there is magic inside it, magic that might save your life one day.'

Reluctantly, Ripley unfastened his belt, slipping the sheathed sword off the end and handing it to the trollgood, who immediately pulled it from the sheath and examined it closely. It was a most unusual sword, as its narrow blade had a greenish tinge to it and curved gently from left to right, forming an elongated S-shape, while its hilt, also green and gently curved, had a bulbous end with two small dimples that looked rather like eyes.

'Huh, this sword's not even straight,' said Snuffler, testing the sharpness of the blade against his thumb. 'And it's blunt! What's the good of a bent sword with blade what's blunt?' He threw both the sword and the leather sheath to the ground and then set his hands on his hips and stared malevolently at Ripley. 'You have done nothing but waste my time, elf, but at least I've got my appetite back, and I think you'll do very nicely for my supper.' And with that, he grabbed hold of Ripley with his huge, hairy hands, opened his mouth wide, and was about to take a bite out of Riply's neck, when he stopped.

'What's that?' Snuffler asked, as he felt something slither across his right foot, and then, 'Arrrrgh!' He uttered a very loud scream, and let Ripley fall from his hands, as he realised that a snake had sunk its fangs into his ankle. 'Arrrrgh!' He screamed again, hopping up and down on one foot, while shaking the other foot to rid himself of the snake. It was a long thin snake, and a poisonous one and, although it soon let go, the poison was already taking effect, and the trollgood staggered backwards and fell over the side of the bridge and into the crevasse, and was never seen again.

Ripley, sitting where he had been dropped, had watched with astonishment, but he was even more astonished to see that the snake had slithered back into its sheath and turned into a sword once more.

'Thank you, father,' he said with a smile. Then he got to his feet, picked up his magic sword and set off for home.

Story 10

Spadework

© 2004 Ian Hobson

Lesley finished filling in the entry form for the Kent Village of the Year competition. Should she tell the full story? She laughed out loud at that thought.

'What are you chuckling at?' asked Betty, looking up from her encyclopaedia of garden plants. Betty was Lesley's sister. The two of them lived together in a cottage in the centre of the village and were two of its oldest residents.

'Oh, I was just wondering what the judges would think if they knew the secret of our success.' Lesley slipped the entry form into its envelope and then looked out of the window. It would be getting dark soon.

'They'd probably all have heart attacks,' remarked Betty, reaching to switch on the standard lamp. 'Though if they did, we'd do even better next year.'

Lesley laughed out loud again. 'Betty, you're incorrigible!'

'I think,' said Betty, as she reached for a pen and made a note on a pad that rested on her chair arm, 'we should have more Salvia Splendens Compacta in the borders next year. They did really well this year, and they flower from June to October.'

'Oh, yes. They're a lovely shade of red.'

Suddenly the telephone began to ring, so Lesley walked through the hall to answer it. 'Hello… Oh! Another one, already? Just a moment… Betty! Harvey's got another… you know what. Are we free in about fifteen minutes?'

'Of course,' replied Betty. 'We can have a late supper. Where does he want us? Suggest the rose bed opposite the church.'

'Where, Harvey? Betty thinks the rose bed opposite the church… Yes, okay, see you there.' Lesley replaced the receiver and walked back into the lounge. 'We better wrap up warm; it's supposed to get chilly this evening.'

The two elderly, but sprightly, sisters put on their coats and scarves and Wellington boots, and left the cottage by the back door. Outside, the sun had just set, but the sky was almost cloudless. And even in poor light, the garden looked beautiful, with its manicured lawn and hedges. Betty stopped to smell one of the standard roses; by rights it should have stopped flowering weeks ago. She wondered if it was due to the superior feed or to recent climatic changes.

'Oh, what about our spades?' Lesley asked, as she opened the garden gate.

'We won't need them. Harvey always carries spare ones.' Betty closed the gate behind them. 'He did say just the one, didn't he?'

'Oh, yes, just the one. Might be heavy though.'

The village was one of the smallest in Kent and, as the limited street lighting came on, the two sisters made there way through it; proud of its cleanliness and of the dedication of their fellow villagers; almost all of them keen gardeners and, of course, all non-smokers.

That was where it had all begun really: The need to keep the village free of litter, as well as in full bloom, for the judging. Smokers had often been the worst culprits, but banning smoking in the village had improved the situation enormously. Though the masterstroke had come after Betty had had an argument with a visitor who had ignored the prohibition signs and blatantly thrown a cigarette butt into the gutter. She hadn't meant to kill him; just to whack him with her umbrella and make him see the error of his ways. But because the idiot had fallen backwards over a plant trough, and fractured his skull on the stone paving, things had taken an unusual turn.
Burying the corpse under one of the new rose beds had been Harvey's idea. And the resulting blooms over the following years had been breathtaking. So when, three years later, old Tom Bankcroft shot a man for fly-tipping, the villager's policy towards offenders changed for good.

'Here we are,' said Betty, as they reached the church and crossed the road. On the other side Harvey was waiting beside his estate car with his brother, Gordon.

'Big fella, late fifties, I'd say.' Harvey gestured with his thumb towards the back of his vehicle. 'Caught him emptying his ashtray in the pub car park. I got Richard and Mary to drive his car away and loose it.'

'How did you, err, dispatch him?' asked Lesley.

'Garrotte. Old army trick I learned when I was younger… Right then, there's spades in the back of the car. If you ladies get the roses up, we'll dig the hole and get him planted.'

Story 9

The Wishing Cave

(c)2006 Ian G. Hobson

It was a very hot day in the part of Astrantia where Luzula lived. She was sitting beside the ornamental pond in her mother's garden. It was just a small pond with a single water lily and two goldfish, and sitting around it were three stout little garden gnomes, all dressed in red suits and hats, and shiny black boots, and each with a long white beard. They had been there in the garden since long before Luzula was born, and she was very fond of them and would often sit and talk to them, just as she did to her dolls.

'It's so hot today,' she said, pushing back several long strands of dark hair from her forehead, 'even with my parasol.' Luzula had found a bright green parasol lying across the footpath beside the river. It was rather a large parasol, especially for Luzula as she was only eight years old, but it held back the heat of the sun very well indeed. 'Are you hot, Fisherman?' she asked.

The gnome she called Fisherman sat on the edge of the pond and held a fishing rod. The other two gnomes were amongst the flowers, one carrying a lantern and sitting on a wooden toadstool, and the other, with a pickaxe tucked into his belt, sitting on a rock. Luzula always thought the one with the pickaxe looked a bit grumpy.

Suddenly one of the goldfish leapt out of the water and returned with a splash, and as ripples quickly reached the edge of the pond, Luzula noticed, for the first time, that the water level was very low, and that the water was looking rather murky.

'Hello,' said a very familiar voice. Luzula's mother, Caltha, had just returned home carrying two heavy wooden buckets; both full of water. 'I had to go all the way to the river for these,' she said. She set down the two buckets and rubbed the small of her back. 'All the village wells have run dry. That's never happened before. I don't know what it can mean.'

'Can I put some water in the pond?' Luzula asked, folding her parasol and then trying to lift one of the buckets, but it was too heavy for her.

'Good heavens, no!' replied Caltha. 'Not if I have to go to the river for it. Perhaps the wells will have water again tomorrow; then we can bring some for the pond.' She lifted the two heavy buckets and walked off towards her cottage, soon followed by Luzula.

***

As the sun went down, the day cooled and darkness descended. But soon Hesperis, Astrantia's pale pink moon, rose into the sky, giving enough light for creatures of the night to go about their business. A hedgehog stopped beside the pond and lapped up a little water before moving off in search of slugs and snails to eat, and nearby an owl hooted. And then three other nocturnal inhabitants began to move.

'Could be serious,' said Gromwell, sliding off his toadstool and setting down his lantern. 'If there's not enough water for the pond and it dries up… well… it won't be the same without the pond, will it?'

'Your right there,' replied Willowherb. He adjusted the pickaxe in his belt and then stood up from the rock he'd been sitting on all day and rubbed his bottom. 'By heck, my bum's numb tonight.'

Fisherman, whose real name was Sedum, lay down his rod and got to his feet and walked around the pond towards Gromwell. 'Be worse for the fish though… if there's no water.'

'As if you care!' exclaimed Willowherb, as he joined his two companions. 'You’ve been trying to catch 'em since they were just tiddlers.'

'I don't mean 'em no harm,' replied Sedum. 'It's not as if I have any bait on my hook.'

'Now don't start that argument again,' said Gromwell with a grimace. 'I've heard it too many times already… Now listen… what's happened to the village wells? That's what I want to know. I hope it's not the prophecy.'

'Prophecy?' replied Willowherb. 'I've heard of no prophesy.'
'You have,' said Gromwell. 'You must have. There's a little rhyme about it. Don't you remember? It goes, err… oh, yes, it goes:

‘If the wells run dry
The village will die
The houses will crumble
And the children will cry

'If the wells run dry
We'll turn to dust
And be blown away
With the wind's first gust

'If the well runs dry… oh… I can't remember the rest of it… Something about fire and dragons and such.'

'Sounds like just another old wife's tale, to me,' said Willowherb. 'And there's no such thing as dragons.'

'Maybe not,' said Sedum, lifting his chin and scratching under his beard. 'But I remember hearing that rhyme, and it definitely was a prophesy; though I'm not sure about the dragon bit. I think somebody just added that to frighten the children.'

'So what should we do about it?' said Gromwell.

'What, the dragon?' asked Willowherb, looking puzzled.

'No, not the dragon, the wells!' exclaimed Gromwell. 'We should try and do something about the wells.'

'But what can we do?' replied Willowherb, standing defiantly with his feet apart and his hands on the head of his pickaxe. 'We're just three garden gnomes. If the wells run dry, they run dry. There's nothing we can do about it.'

'We could go and take a look,' suggested Sedum. 'As long as were back by morning we'll not be missed.'

'You mean go and take a look down one of the wells?' exclaimed Willowherb. 'But wells are very dark, and we might fall in and never be seen again.'

'Oh, don't be such a wimp, Willowherb,' said Gromwell, reaching for his lantern and giving it a shake. 'There's plenty of oil in my lamp to see by. Where's your spirit of adventure?'

***

'It looks an awful long way down,' observed Willowherb. 'And very dark too.' The three gnomes had walked to the nearest well and climbed up onto its circular wall and were looking down into the well-shaft.

'But we're used to the dark, aren’t we?' said Sedum. 'And Gromwell's got his lamp. And look; we can go down in this bucket.'

There was a large wooden bucket standing on the wall, and the bucket was attached to a long rope that hung from a beam that was held up high over the well by a wooden framework. The rope was wound around the beam many times and on the end of the beam was a crank-handle for winding the bucket up and down.

'But none of us can reach the handle,' protested Willowherb. 'So who would do the lowering?'

'What if we send the bucket down by itself?' suggested Sedum. 'Then we could climb down the rope.'

'Good idea,' said Gromwell. 'Let's give it a push.' So Gromwell and Sedum leant against the bucket and pushed, but it was too heavy and hardly moved. 'Give us a hand, Willowherb,' said Gromwell. So all three gnomes pushed together, as hard as they could, and this time the bucket went rapidly over the edge. In fact, too rapidly, as both Gromwell and Willowherb lost their balance and fell over the edge of the well.

Fortunately Gromwell fell into the bucket, and Willowherb had time to grab the rope before the bucket swung away from the wall and began to descend. 'Wait for me!' shouted Sedum, as he leaped off the wall and grabbed for the rope as the bucket swung back towards him. And so, with Gromwell in the bottom of the bucket, and Willowherb and Sedum clinging to the rope, and the rope beam and the crank-handle spinning ever faster, they made their decent.

Suddenly the bucket jolted to a stop and then bounced on the end of the rope, as there was no more of it left to unwind, and Willowherb and Sedum lost their grip and fell feet first into the bucket. Willowherb landed on top of Gromwell, and Sedum landed on top Willowherb. But before they had chance to recover, the bucket began to fall again before coming to another abrupt stop as it hit the stony bottom of the well. And it was soon followed by a long length of the rope, which had snapped somewhere above them.

'That was fun,' said Sedum, who was sitting on top of the other two gnomes with his hat down over his eyes. 'You were right about it being dark though, Willowherb.'

'Fun?' exclaimed Willowherb. 'I'll give you fun. How would you like a bash over the head with my axe? You nearly broke my neck.'

'Now stop that,' said a muffled voice from underneath. 'I hope my lamp's not broken. Can you both get off me please?'

'Gladly,' replied Willowherb, as he squeezed out from underneath Sedum and then found himself tangled in the length of rope. 'And then you can have a bash over the head as well. You know what's happened, don't you? The rope's broken; and now we'll never get out of here alive.'

'Oh be quiet,' said Sedum. 'We can always climb up a rope from one of the other wells; they'll all be connected to this one... Oh, look.' Sedum had pushed his hat back out of his eyes and was looking straight up the well shaft. 'I can see the stars and Hesperis.' The pale pink globe of Hesperis was shining straight down the well.

***

'Now I see what the problem is,' said Gromwell, holding up his lamp. The three gnomes had made their way along a long winding tunnel, splashing through a few shallow puddles as they went. Gromwell had lit his lamp so that they could see, but every now and then they passed under another well shaft where the rocky floor of the tunnel was lit by moonlight from above. Sedum had been right about the village wells all being connected. Finally they came to an old disused well that had collapsed and completely blocked the tunnel.

'All we have to do,' continued Gromwell, standing in a tiny stream of water that trickled out from under the blockage, 'is shift this pile of stones so that the water can flow through again.'

'Oh, is that all?' said Willowherb. 'I was worried it might be something needing hard work. But just moving a pile of stones, each of which weigh more than we do; that should be easy shouldn't it? So I think I'll sit over here while you two get on with it.'

'But you're the one with the pickaxe,' observed Sedum.

'Oh, so I am,' said Willowherb, 'I was wondering when that would get a mention. Here.' He pulled the pickaxe from his belt and handed it to Sedum. 'You take it. Be my guest.' And with that he sat down on a stone beside the wall of the tunnel and folded his arms.

'Very well,' said Sedum. 'I know how to use a pick.' He took a step towards the wall of stones that blocked the tunnel and took a swing at one of them. A few sparks flew off but very little else happened. So he tried again and again, and then Gromwell tried, but he too made only the slightest dent in one or two of the stones.

'Oh, give it back to me!' exclaimed Willowherb, as he got to his feet. 'Don't you two know anything? You need to start higher up, not at the bottom. And you need a bit of leverage. Hold your lamp a bit higher, Gromwell.' He stuck the pickaxe into a crack beside a stone that looked as though it might easily fall out by itself, and then, with all his might, he pulled on the handle until the stone came free. 'Now we're getting somewhere,' he said.

He did the same again with another stone and then another, and then he leapt aside as a really big stone fell from above where he had just made a hole. But then things began to happen faster than Willowherb had expected. More stones fell away and jets of water began to spurt through the cracks, and then more stones fell away and more water squirted through.
'Do you think it's time we left?' asked Sedum, as a jet of water almost knocked his hat off.

'I think it is,' replied Willowherb, sticking his pickaxe back into his belt. 'In fact, I think we better run. Would you like me to carry the lamp and go first, Gromwell.'

'No, I can manage,' replied Gromwell as he raced off down the tunnel, closely followed by Willowherb and Sedum. Behind them they could hear more rocks tumbling, and there was now a stream at their feet and it was getting deeper and deeper. Soon they passed under the well shafts that they had passed under before, but there were no ropes to climb up. Then eventually they came to the well shaft that they had descended earlier. The bucket was still there but it was beginning to drift away with the ever-rising stream of water.

'Grab the rope!' Gromwell shouted. The rope, still attached to the bucket, was trailing behind it and Sedum waded past Gromwell and grabbed the end of it and pulled the bucket towards him. Gromwell caught up and reached out towards the bucket, managing to hold it still while Sedum and then Willowherb climbed in. But the water was still getting deeper and flowing faster, and Gromwell, hampered by his lantern, was unable to do the same.

'Give me the lantern!' shouted Sedum, snatching it from Gromwell's hand. 'Now get in quick!' Gromwell hauled himself over the side and into the bucket, helped by Willowherb who grabbed Gromwell's beard and pulled. And, in a tangle of arms and legs, the three gnomes in a bucket were carried along as the waters increased in speed and rose almost to the roof of the tunnel.

***

'Where are we?' asked Gromwell, feeling very dizzy. For a very long time the three gnomes had been swept along at great speed, and the bucket had bashed into the side of the tunnel several times. But eventually the tunnel had come to an end and the bucket had floated out into the centre of a large underground lake.

'I think I'm going to be sick,' complained Willowherb. 'And my boots are full of water.'

'Keep still,' warned Gromwell. 'It's not just our boots that are full of water. I think this bucket's going to sink.'

'We seem to be in a cave,' said Sedum. 'But look, there's a hole in the roof and I can see the stars and Hesperis again!'

'What's that over there at the far side of the cave?' asked Willowherb. 'It looks like an island.'

'It is,' replied Gromwell. 'I wish we could get to it.'

Suddenly the bucket was no longer in the middle of the lake. It was standing on the island with three very confused gnomes inside it. They climbed out and onto dry land. Gromwell walked to the water's edge and looked into the lake. The water was deep but very clear, and in the moonlight he could see the bottom.

'I don't understand,' he said. 'A moment ago we were in the middle of the lake and now we're here on this island. How could that happen?' Then suddenly something made him step back from the water. A dark shape was swimming towards him.

'Because you wished it,' said the dark shape as it broke the surface and swam towards the water's edge. 'Welcome to the Wishing Cave. All who enter are granted one wish.'

'My goodness!' exclaimed Gromwell. 'You are the biggest fish I have ever seen. A hundred times bigger than the ones in our pond.'

'Ah, but I'm not a fish, I'm a dolphin, and my name is Melissani.' The dolphin swam a little closer and then turned aside, showing off her large dorsal fin. 'I live here in the Wishing Cave; when I'm not out in the ocean.'

'I do beg your pardon,' said Gromwell. 'But I've never seen a dolphin before.'

'But how do you get to the ocean,' asked Willowherb. He and Sedum had come closer and were just as amazed as Gromwell by the site of the huge dolphin.

'There's a channel that's connected to the sea,' replied Melissani. 'The water that flows into the cave has to flow out.'
'I see,' said Gromwell.

'Did you say that all who enter are granted a wish?' Sedum asked.

'Yes,' replied Melissani. 'So wish away. It was nice to meet you. Goodbye.' And then, with a flip of her tail, she was gone. For she knew exactly what they would wish for.

'I wish the water in our pond could always be full to the brim with lovely clean water like the water in this lake,' said Sedum.

'A lot of good that will do us,' said Willowherb.

'Well what would you wish for then?' asked Sedum. 'Be careful. We have only one wish left.'

***

Luzula was always up early in the morning. As she stopped beside the pond in her mother's garden to say good morning to the three gnomes, she thought that somehow they all looked just a little different. The grumpy one with the pickaxe in his belt didn't look quite as grumpy, and the one with the lamp seemed to have a very contented expression, and Fisherman somehow looked very pleased with himself. And that was not all: The two goldfish looked very happy indeed and the pond was full to the brim with crystal clear water. And from that day on, it was always so.

***

So, what would you have wished for? (There's no place like home)

THE END (for more Astrantian tales visit:
http://www.abctales.com/story/ian-hobson/astrantian-tales

Story 8

Survivors

©2003 Ian Hobson

In early 2003, as America, Britain and Spain pushed for war without UN agreement, I wondered where it might lead. Meanwhile a deadly virus was beginning to spread...

***

Billy stretched and yawned and scratched his beard. ‘You awake, Jan?' he asked, quietly. There was no reply. He began to cough and rolled onto his side, holding a hand to his chest. As the coughing subsided he reached for the torch that lay on the floor of the car beside his boots. He switched it on and raised himself up on one elbow to look into the back. Jan's sleeping bag lay on the rear seat with the zipper unfastened, but the impression of her body still evident. Billy turned his head as he tried to see through the steamed up windows and front windscreen into the darkness of the basement car park. But he saw nothing; just a little daylight that filtered through the rubble-filled hole where the main entrance had once been.

There was a click as the nearside rear door opened and Jan climbed in. ‘Morning, sleepyhead,' she said. ‘The rain's stopped.' Billy lifted himself up on his elbows again and grinned at Jan, who leaned over the seats and kissed him full on the lips.

‘Who taught you to creep around so quietly?' Billy asked, as Jan flopped back into the rear seat of the Peugeot 406. In the torchlight, Billy studied Jan's face for a moment. He thought she was beautiful, despite her pale and wasted features, and once again he realised how glad he was to have found her. With virtually the whole population of Britain - and for all he knew, all of Europe – evacuated or dead, it seemed like a miracle that they had found each other.

‘You did, my love,' Jan replied. She returned Billy's gaze, but hid her worry behind a smile. She had heard him coughing as she returned to the car, and wondered if it might be radiation sickness – or the virus. His cough always seemed worse at night and first thing in the morning.

‘What's for breakfast?' Billy asked.

‘Well, Sir, we have tinned tuna, tinned tuna or tinned tuna.' For several days now, this had been their mealtime joke. They had found twenty-one cans of tuna in the Peugeot, together with the body of the driver, whose name, according to his credit card, was R. G. Walker. His body now lay buried beneath rubble outside, and the car had become their temporary home - not as plush as The Queens Hotel, a few blocks away, but safer.

‘Oh, in that case, I'll have tinned tuna.' Billy unzipped his sleeping bag and scratched his ankle. ‘A slice of bread and butter to go with it would be nice though.'

‘Hmmm, fresh crusty bread smothered in butter,' said Jan, ‘and a nice hot cup of...'

‘Oh, stop,' said Billy, ‘I can't bear it.'

‘You started it, Lover... We must find something soon though. We're down to three cans. And that bottle of water we started yesterday...'

Billy began to cough again but soon brought it under control. ‘Yeah, I know. It's our last.'

‘There's always rainwater,' suggested Jan. That barrel you left under the fall pipe's full now.'

‘Good, I could do with a wash. But we don't drink rainwater unless we have to,' replied Billy, lifting his legs over the gear lever and reaching for his boots. ‘We better move on today, we've exhausted this area.' He opened the glove box and reached for his soap before opening the passenger door. ‘I think I'll have an all-over wash before breakfast.'

‘Hmmm, can I help?' replied Jan, with a giggle.

***

Feeling better for having a thorough wash and another shared can of tuna, Billy and Jan cautiously left the basement via the rear emergency exit, which was still in tact. Outside the clouds were thinning, and a little watery sunshine was beginning to filter through. They were getting used to seeing the sun again. For weeks they had thought that the warnings of an everlasting nuclear winter might be accurate.

Billy stooped to pick up the two plastic bottles that he had filled with rainwater earlier, stowing them in his rucksack before following Jan as she climbed over the rubble. A Barclays Bank sign lay propped against what was left of a stone wall, and a huge rat scurried beneath it as the two approached.

‘Which way?' Jan asked, looking around at this now familiar part of the city. Somehow she had grown accustomed to the devastation. Though here was not as badly damaged as other places they had travelled through.

‘We'll head up past the supermarket that we visited the day before yesterday, and then we'll head north again,' replied Billy, as they began to pick their way across the debris-filled street. More rats scurried away from a corpse that lay half buried as they approached. ‘Maybe we'll be lucky and find another car with some petrol in the tank... How are the new boots?'

‘They're okay,' replied Jan, giving the corpse a wide birth. ‘I could do with some more socks though.'

‘Me too. We'll keep an eye out for a store once we're passed the supermarket.'

Billy took the lead but stopped at the corner of the street beside a burned out building. The air smelled of soot and rain. He peered around the corner before continuing on. Jan followed, a few paces behind. They moved quickly, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, their eyes darting from window to window and door to door – where there were still windows and doors. They knew that they were not the only survivors.

***

It took almost two hours to get to the supermarket. They hurried past, knowing that there was nothing edible left inside. It had been looted and emptied a long time ago, maybe even before the bombing had stopped. And there were bodies; fresh ones, some with limbs hacked off. They knew what that meant. More than anything, they feared the cannibals.

Further on there were more corpses, but these were much older, scarcely more than skeletons in tattered clothing. Some had their hands tied and all had been shot through the head. Probably looters caught by the military when they were still operational, Billy thought. He stopped beside a tree, which stood undamaged on a street corner. It had shed most of its leaves and they lay in drifts; a sign that winter was on the way. Billy wondered how they would survive the winter. He knew that their best chance was to keep moving north. The Scottish parliament had declared Scotland neutral, refusing to be a part of the war. And many people had fled there, until the borders had been closed.

‘Billy.' Jan came up behind him. She was an inch taller than Billy, and two years older. But with Billy she felt safe; much safer than when she had been alone. She pointed towards a small hatchback further along the street. ‘I think there's a body in that car.'

‘Worth a look,' said Billy, as he set off towards it. Abandoned cars were usually empty, of both bodies and petrol. But a car with a body in it might just have petrol as well, and with luck, a battery that was not flat. ‘You stay on this side of the road, Jan.'

As Billy got closer he saw that it was a Ford Fiesta, and that there was a human shape in the drivers seat. He froze as he saw movement but then continued as a magpie came out of the open window and took to the air.

The keys were in the ignition, and from her clothing, Billy could see that the diver had been a female, though her skull was picked clean. A few flies buzzed in and out of it as she sat staring down the street through empty eye sockets. Billy walked around the car, first checking that the tyres were inflated and then opening the driver's door. He took a grip of the woman's sleeve and pulled her out of the car, leaving a trail of maggots as he dragged her into the road. The mess in driver's seat was worse than that in the Peugeot, and Billy was inclined to turn away. But he leaned inside, checked the position of the gear lever and then turned the key in the ignition. The engine turned and failed to start, but the petrol gauge needle began to rise. Billy beckoned to Jan, and she came running across the road.

‘I think we might be in luck. The tank's more than half full,' he said. ‘I don't fancy sitting on that though.' He gestured towards the driver's seat. It was stained with more than just dried blood, and there were bird droppings on the steering wheel and passenger seat.

‘We can sit on our towels,' Jan suggested. ‘It's time we found some new ones anyway... There's a hairdressers over the road. Shall I take a look?'

Billy looked across the street. ‘Okay, but be careful. I'll take a look at the engine.' He opened the Fiesta's bonnet and checked the oil and water. Jan dropped her rucksack onto the rear seat and then crossed back over the road to the hairdressers.

The window was shattered, and the glass crunched under Jan's boots as she stepped over the sill and walked past a row of washbasins and overturned chairs. She stopped for a moment and looked at herself in the wall-mirror. ‘Look at you, Janet Miles,' she said out loud, ‘you're a walking skeleton'. But vanity was no longer a priority, and she moved on towards the door at the back of the room. She tried the door and found it locked. But Billy had taught her how to kick open locked doors, and it sprang open at her third attempt; releasing the now familiar smell of death.

Two blond-haired corpses, a woman and a child, sat in an easy chair, clinging to each other in death, as they must have in life. Probably suicide, or perhaps victims of the mysterious virus that had claimed so many lives, Jan thought. Terrorists had been blamed for the virus, though it had never been proven, and Jan wondered if it was just nature's answer to an overpopulated world - or some kind of divine punishment.
She looked around the room and then walked over to a large wall-cupboard and cautiously opened the doors, finding exactly what she was looking for: a neatly folded stack of towels. She grabbed an armful, but as she turned she noticed a refrigerator standing against the far wall.

Outside, Billy had checked the car over, spread their towels on the front seats, and was ready to leave. He called Jan's name and ran across the road to see what was keeping her. But as he entered the shop, Jan came through the rear door carrying an obviously heavy cardboard box with several towels balanced on top.

‘Here, take these,' she said. ‘I'll just go back for the rest.

‘What's in here?' Billy asked, as he took the load from Jan.

‘You'll see,' Jan replied, disappearing through the door once more.

Billy hurried back to the Fiesta and opened its rear door. ‘Oh you beauty!' he exclaimed, as he stowed the box and looked inside it. ‘Fosters lager... and three bottles of water... Brilliant!' But his joy was short lived.

‘Billy!' Jan was outside the hairdresser's shop, her arms filled with large plastic bottles. She looked panic-stricken and was staring along the street.

As Billy followed her gaze he saw three men running towards them. ‘Run!' he shouted, before slamming shut the Fiesta's rear door. Their two rucksacks almost filled the rear seat, so as Billy scrambled into the driver's seat, he opened the passenger door for Jan, who was now racing across the road, still carrying the bottles. Billy turned the key in the ignition, praying to a God that he no longer believed in, that the car would start. The engine turned but failed to start, and Billy cursed himself for not starting it before. But as Jan ran around the back of the car and leaped into the passenger seat, he tried again, this time depressing the accelerator pedal, and the engine came to life.

The first of the three men - a tall and powerful looking white man with tattooed arms and a shaved head – was now only a couple of strides away, and as Billy put the car into reverse gear and let out the clutch, the man lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Fiesta's wing mirror. But as the engine roared and the car sped backwards, with its gearbox wining, the man was pulled off his feet and dragged along the road until the wing mirror snapped off in his hand. The man hit the ground hard but immediately rolled over and sprang upright, as if made of rubber, and uttering a long string of obscenities, he threw the wing mirror at the retreating car and it bounced off the bonnet.

Billy swung the car in an arc, bumping over debris in the road and almost colliding with a lamppost, before changing into first gear and speeding off down a side street. ‘That was... too close for comfort,' he said to Jan, his heart racing.

Jan was shaking like a leaf, yet still clutching the three plastic bottles of Diet Coke that she had found in the hairdressers. ‘Do you think they were...'

‘Whatever they were and whatever they were selling, we don't need it,' interrupted Billy. He turned right at the next junction and was relieved to see that the road was reasonably clear for several blocks. He wrinkled his nose and glanced at Jan. ‘What's that smell?'

Jan set the bottles down on the floor at her feet. ‘It's just the Coke bottles. They were in the bottom of a fridge with a load of bad food.'

‘And you found some beer!' Billy was grinning now.

‘Yeah... and more water, and six tins of baked beans.'

‘You're kidding?'

‘No, they're in the box. It was on top of the fridge. I thought it was probably empty but...' Jan began to laugh, and as Billy laughed with her the sun broke through the clouds.

***

Billy took his first sip of lager for more weeks than he could remember, and let out a long sigh. ‘Do you want one?' he asked Jan.

She was stooping over a tin of baked beans that was balanced somewhat precariously on their camping stove. She turned down the flame and gave the beans a careful stir. ‘What, a whole can to myself?' she asked.

‘Well, I think we've earned a can each today,’ Billy replied. They had travelled well beyond the city, but with difficulty, as the roads were littered with abandoned cars and, in some places, bomb craters. Finally, late in the afternoon they had stopped beside the road in an area that looked untouched by war.

‘I think these are about ready,' said Jan, as she shut off the gas. They set the hot tin can on the ground between them and groaned in delight as they took turns to eat with their only spoon.

When the beans were finished and the can scraped clean, they sat on the ground for a while and slowly finished their lagers. ‘Shame about the radio,' said Billy. ‘I never thought to search the woman's clothing.' The Fiesta had a radio but the removable fascia was missing.

‘We'd probably just get static or foreign languages again,' Jan replied. ‘In any case, I think no news is good news. Hearing about the nuclear strikes in the south put me off TV and radio for good.'

‘I know what you mean... Just before the battery in the Peugeot fizzled out, I picked up another report,' said Billy. ‘More nuclear strikes in Europe.'

Jan just stared at the ground, but Billy got to his feet. ‘It's not our problem,' he said, regretting mentioning it. ‘We have to think of ourselves... Did you say there were more tins in the box?'

Jan nodded, close to tears; she had spent the previous summer in Paris. ‘Two have no labels, but the other one's pineapple rings.'

‘Shall we have them now?' Billy asked. ‘We've not had any fruit since we found that orchard.'

‘Okay,' Jan replied, standing and following Billy over to the rear of the Fiesta. She put her arms around him and clung to him as he reached into the cardboard box and took out the remaining tins.

‘Bloody hell, look at this,' he said. Jan looked over Billy's shoulder and watched as he pulled an old newspaper from the bottom of the box. The headline read:

IRAQ WAR COULD LEAD TO WORLD WAR III – WARNS HISTORIAN

Billy shrugged and tossed the newspaper aside. ‘Okay, lets have some pineapple... Then we'll take a look at that farmhouse over there. Maybe tonight we'll sleep in a bed for a change.' he said.

‘Not just sleep, I hope,' said Jan.

They had survived another day. And though they were unaware of it, it was exactly one year since World War III had begun.

Story 7

The Looking-Glass

©2004 Ian Hobson

The light was fading rapidly, as was the summer, but the evening was still warm. He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze, but then suddenly, he was gone, leaving Astana sitting alone beneath the willow tree. But Astana was used to Valdo’s sudden departures; his habit of melting away, or sometimes, when he was feeling theatrical, vanishing with a loud ‘pop’ or in a cloud of green or orange smoke.

She sat for a while and then, rising from the bench, she stepped lightly along the stone pathway and up the steps towards her cottage. There was a light breeze, and the full moon, now just visible as it almost crested the tops of nearby trees, conspired with them to cast dancing shadows across the garden. Astana stopped beside the small circular pond and, using a spell the old warlock had taught her, she raised and tilted its mirror-like surface, to look at her own reflection.

She was beautiful. Her features were fine, as though chiselled from granite, yet her skin was as smooth as porcelain. In the moonlight her long golden hair shone, her emerald-green eyes sparkled, and her full-length gown of ivory coloured silk seemed to flow over her feminine form like melt-water running over a frozen waterfall.

‘I have much to thank you for, Valdo.’ Astana’s voice was as soft as falling snow. She stood for a moment then, as she turned away towards the cottage, she let the pond fall gently back into place; causing circular ripples to run from its circumference to its centre, where they took the form of tiny fish, leaping above the surface and returning with a splash. From the shadows beneath a bush, a black kitten raced to the edge of the pond, stopping just in time to avoid falling headlong into the water.

‘There you are, Caldra.’ Astana had turned full circle and was looking down at the kitten, as it playfully reached with its right paw towards the centre of the pond. ‘You’re not still falling for that trick, are you? You should know better at your age.’ Caldra meowed as she looked up at her mistress, enquiringly.

‘Yes, Valdo has gone. Though I don’t know why you are so afraid of him.’ Astana reached down to stroke the kitten; and as she ran her long fingernails through the sleek black fur along her flank she purred loudly, arching her back and lifting her tail. ‘Look at all he has done for us. You had almost used up the last of your nine lives, but he’s given you nine more.’

Once more Astana turned and continued along the pathway towards the cottage, now with Caldra skipping along behind her. The scent from the last of the summer’s climbing roses filled the air as they passed through the pergola, and a fresh fall of petals carpeted their way. The cottage stood in darkness, but as Astana approached, welcoming lights appeared in the windows as candles were lit inside. This time the magic was Astana’s own, for though her craft could not quite match Valdo’s, she was more accomplished than most witches.

Before Astana reached the threshold, the timber and iron-studded door swung open, and as she stepped inside, it silently closed, almost trapping Caldra’s tail as she leaped through the narrowing gap. Astana laughed. The newly refurbished cottage had a mind of its own and seemed to enjoy a little childlike mischief now and again.

The dapper-looking grandfather clock in the hallway struck nine, and with a wink, lifted its top hat and bowed stiffly towards Astana, before resuming its regular pose and its steady tick… tock. Astana stroked its polished mahogany frame as she past, before entering the parlour, where the log fire beneath the Adam stile fireplace began to blaze and long velvet curtains drew themselves across the single leaded window.

She looked even more beautiful in the firelight as she crossed the room towards the alcove beyond the fireplace; yet the long shadow she cast seemed distorted. In the alcove was another velvet curtain, but not until Astana stood in front of it and held up her left hand, did the curtain glide silently open, revealing a full-length mirror.

This part of Valdo’s miraculous spell was less than a pleasure, but served as a reminder of the gift he had bestowed on Astana. His words of warning echoed in her mind. ‘Remember, for the spell to remain unbroken you must return to the looking glass, daily, at the appointed hour and gaze upon yourself as you really are.’

The hag who gazed back at her was old and wrinkled; her nose long and crooked; her hair, straggly and grey; her eyes dull and lifeless. And her tattered gown, stained with the grime of years, couldn’t hide the stooping and withered shape of her aged form.

‘You were almost late,’ the old witch admonished, in a hideous croaking voice. ‘One day you will be late, and then I will be freed from this accursed looking-glass…’

Astana sighed and raised her hand, closing the curtain before her other self could say any more. Then suddenly, the youthful and handsome love of her life was beside her again. And, as she turned towards him and returned his smile, Valdo took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

Story 6

Imagination

©2008 Ian G Hobson

It must be almost a year ago now: my mum and dad had gone out and my granddad had come round to babysit. Not that I was a baby; I was just a few weeks short on my fourteenth birthday then. But my little sister was only six, so we needed a babysitter, apparently. Anyway, my sister had gone to bed and I was sat at the kitchen table doing my homework. I'd finished the maths, that was pretty easy. I've even got to like maths since my granddad told me the secret of how to get good marks.

I remember my granddad saying, 'Your exercise book looks like someone's tipped a load of numbers onto the page and then given it a good shake. It's no wonder you get low marks; your teacher can't make head nor tail of it.' He was right: teachers like you to be very neat, you see. Like when you're doing equations – you have to keep all your equal signs in line down the page, then it's easy for the teacher to mark. And even if you get the wrong answer, they'll still give you higher marks 'cos they can see where you went wrong, and they like that lot better than if the page is a mess, even you've got the right answer at the bottom. 'Keep it neat - that's the secret,' my granddad had said.

I was thinking about that when my granddad came downstairs from reading my sister a bedtime story. My computer was on the blink, so my dad had lent me his laptop so I could do my English homework (we're allowed to use computers for that). The homework was to write an essay, or a story or whatever, on any subject we liked, – but I could never think of anything to write. And I said that to our English teacher, Mrs Dickinson. So she said, 'Write about something you know about.' Yeah, very helpful - I don't know why I bothered asking. I mean, what the heck did I know about, beyond the fact that my bike had a puncture, City had lost three-nil at the weekend, and I'd had a boiled egg for breakfast?

'Granddad?' I said, as he came and got himself a beer from the fridge. 'Is there a secret to writing essays ‘n stories ‘n stuff?' He frowned, so I said, 'Mrs Dickinson says we should write about something we know about.'

He laughed then. 'That's the sort of crap advice teachers always give you. No, forget that. That's far too limiting at your tender age. If there's a secret, I suppose it's imagination. That and punctuation, because if you muck that up, anyone reading what you've written will loose track of what you are trying to say.'

'I see,' I said, looking at the blank Word document on my dad's PC.

My granddad ruffled my hair. 'Don't look so glum, Adam. We've all got an imagination, and as for punctuation, well, that's just common sense, and if you're stuck, just look in any of your reading books to see how it's done... Your Harry Potter books will do. You like Harry Potter, don't you?' I nodded. 'Well that all came out of what's-her-name's imagination.'

'J K Rowling,' I said, feeling non the wiser.

'Aye, that's her, J K Rowling; and who's to say you can't be as successful as her one day. Just use your imagination; write a sentence and think of one to follow it, and then keep going... Well, there's a programme on the History Channel I want to watch, so I'll leave you to it.'

'Thanks, Granddad,' I said as he went through to the living room. Though I was wondering what I was thanking him for, as I still had no idea what to write. Imagination? Just make something up? I scratched my head and had a think, and then I remembered that my granddad had been in the merchant navy when he was a young man, and it gave me an idea.

***

Running Away by Adam Howarth

There was this kid called Dave, and he lived with his mum and dad. Except that his dad wasn't his real dad, because his real dad had been killed in a car accident. No, Bryan was his sort of step-dad, as he wasn't actually married to his mum, he'd just lived with her since Dave was about seven. Anyway, he was a right boozer, was Bryan, always down the pub, and he smoked so much he smelt like an ashtray. Dave hated Brian because he was always making him do things, like the washing up, or cleaning the car, or weeding the garden. So, one day, Dave decides he's had enough, he can't take any more of this beer-swilling, ashtray smelling, fake dad, and he decides to run away. He was almost twelve years old, so why shouldn't he?

So one Friday night he stuffs a few things – some Mini-Mars Bars and a bottle of Pepsi and socks and stuff – into the rucksack his uncle Fred bought him for Christmas, and then he sets the alarm in his mobile phone for five o'clock and goes to bed. It took him ages to get to sleep, and it seemed like he'd only been asleep for ten minutes when the alarm wakes him up. It was the middle of June, so it was light early, and he got dressed really quickly and then went for a piss, though he didn't flush the toilet because he didn't want to risk waking Bryan or his mum.

He felt a bit sad about leaving his mum, because she wasn't a bad mum really, she just happened to have lost her first husband and then ended up with a boyfriend that was a beer-swilling, ashtray-smelling, pig.

Dave went back to his room and had one last look round at all his toys, and the computer his Uncle Fred had bought him for his birthday, before picking up his bag and his mobile phone and sneaking downstairs. Bryan always left his bunch of keys on the coffee table in the living room, so it was easy for Dave to let himself out of the front door and then lock it again and stuff the keys through the letterbox.

'You're up early.'

Dave nearly jumped out of his skin. It was next-door's milkman looking at him over the hedge. Dave’s mum always bought milk from Tescos, but next-door must have theirs delivered; he hadn't realised that, but figured he wouldn't as he was usually still in bed at this time.

'I'm going camping with a mate from school.' Dave whispered the lie. 'His dad's picking me up in about ten minutes.'

'Oh, well have a nice trip then,' the milkman whispered back, and then off he went. He had one of those electric milk carts that didn't make any sound at all. Dave watched to see which way he went and then ran off as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Not that he didn't have a plan; he was going to go that way anyway, as he'd decided to head for the canal and set off along the towpath. He'd once walked about three miles down the towpath with his Uncle Fred, who had told him that it was possible to walk all the way to Liverpool, though Dave couldn't remember how far that was.

It was cold down by the canal, but Dave had put on two t-shirts and his blue Nike top with a hood, so he wasn't too cold - especially with the running, and then the walking along to towpath. But after about an hour, during which time he'd seen no one, he decided to stop and have a rest beside a dirt road and a funny-looking bridge thing that could be swung out of the way when canal boats wanted to pass through. There was a bench, so he sat on it and had a drink of Pepsi and one of his Mars Bars.

'Got any more of those?'

For the second time that morning Dave nearly jumped out of his skin, because right behind him in the bushes was a tramp, slowly getting to his feet. But there was something very odd about this tramp because, apart from the way he was dressed, he looked very familiar, as though Dave knew him from somewhere.

'I'll swap you a drink of milk for one,' said the tramp, as he took a pint bottle of milk from the pocket of the scruffy jacket he was wearing.

By then Dave was off the bench and standing clutching his rucksack to his chest and looking very suspiciously at the tramp. 'You're next-door's milkman,' he said. 'I saw you this morning.'

***

My granddad came back into the kitchen then. 'How are you doing, Adam?' he asked, looking over my shoulder and reading what I'd written. 'Mmm, I can see one or two spelling mistakes that the spellcheck-thingie's missed, and you need to add a comma or two.' He showed me where the spelling mistakes were, and where the commas were missing. 'Not bad though,’ he said. ‘Keep going, Adam.'

I was a bit pissed that he'd interrupted me, as I was dying to know what was coming next in this story that seemed to be writing itself. But I thanked him for his help, and he got himself another beer and went back to watch more television, while I read my last three paragraphs and then carried on writing.

***

'Ah, that will be my twin brother, Alfred,' the tramp replied. 'He always drops off a couple of pints for me... That was a Mars Bar you were eating, wasn't it? I could really fancy one, and I'll give you this full bottle of milk for one, if you've got any left.'

'I don't like milk,' said Dave, 'but you can have a Mars Bar if you want, they're only mini ones though.' Dave reached into his rucksack and handed a Mars Bar to the tramp, who thanked him and then sat down on the bench to eat it.
Dave pushed his hood back off his head and went and sat beside him, just as his mobile phone began to ring.

'Are you going to answerer that?' the tramp asked.

'Don't know.' Dave took the phone from his pocket to see who was calling him. It was his mum. Checking the time, he saw that it was just after half-past-seven, and he wondered how come his mum was up so early on a Saturday. He switched his phone off and stuffed it into the bottom of his rucksack. 'I'll have to be going now,' he said.

'Don't go just yet,' said the tramp. 'Stay and chat for a while. I don't meet many young people.'

'Just for five minutes, then,' Dave said, then looking at the tramp, he asked, 'Where do you live then?'

'Oh, here and there, but mostly by the canal. I like to sleep under the stars.' The tramp took the top off the milk bottle. 'Are you sure you won't have some?'

'No thanks,' Dave replied. 'But what about when it's cold, or if it rains?'

'Oh, I usually find somewhere. There's an old hut beside the cricket ground about a half-mile that way.' The tramp pointed along the towpath and then took a swig of his milk. 'So where are you going then?'

'Me?' said Dave. 'I'm off to Liverpool. I'm going to be a merchant seaman, like my Uncle Fred.'

'I see,' said the tramp. 'Bit young though, aren't you... for starting a job, I mean.'

Dave sat up straight on the bench, trying to make himself look taller. 'My Uncle Fred said that my great-uncle George started work when he was fourteen.'

'I see,' said the tramp again, looking Dave up and down. 'I didn't realise you were so old.' Dave said nothing, thinking it best to keep quiet about being only eleven and three-quarters. 'So I guess you don't like school much then?' the tramp said, before taking another swig of his milk.

'It's alright,' said Dave, 'but that's not why I've left home.'

'Family problems?'

'Yeah.'

The tramp drained the milk bottle and then wiped milk from his mouth with the back of his hand and set the empty bottle down on the ground. 'Want to talk about it?' he asked.

The sun was higher in the sky and Dave could feel its heat on the back of his head. 'There's not much to talk about,' he said. 'My dad died, you see… When I was three, so I can't really remember him.'

'And your mum married again, did she?'

'Yeah. Well sort of married... to Bryan.' Dave, still looking at the tramp, had noticed that despite him being quite scruffy, he seemed to be very clean and didn't smell at all.

'And you don't get on?' the tramp asked.

'No, not really.' Now Dave noticed something else about the tramp. Something that was very strange indeed; he was casting no shadow. Dave looked at his own shadow, and then at where the tramp's should be, but before he could say anything, there was a terrific screech of brakes, and as he turned and looked towards the little road that lead to the bridge, he saw his mum leap out of his uncle Fred's Volvo and come running towards him.

'David, whatever are you doing, sitting down here, all by yourself? If it wasn't for your uncle Fred, I wouldn't have known where to look for you.'

'I'm okay, Mum,' Dave said, getting to his feet, and looking first at his mum and then at his uncle, who had also jumped out of the car. 'And I'm not all by myself, I'm...' Dave had turned to look at the tramp but he'd vanished; there wasn't a sign of him anywhere. There was just the empty milk bottle on the ground beside the bench. Dave's mother wrapped her arms around him then, and began to cry.

'We've found him,' said Uncle Fred, ruffling Dave's hair. 'No harm done. Now how about a fry-up, back at my place?'

As Dave was driven to his uncle Fred's house, with his mum sitting with her arm around him in the back of the Volvo, he was thinking about the tramp and wondering where he had gone. Then he remembered the tramp's twin brother. 'Mum,' he said, 'do the Watsons, next door, have a milkman?'

As Dave's mum frowned and shook her head the car arrived at his uncle's house and Fred yanked on the handbrake and turned to look at Dave. 'What did you say?'

'I just said, “Does next door to us have a milkman?”'

Fred looked at his sister-in-law. 'I didn't tell you why I came round so early this morning, asking to see Dave, did I?'

'No, but I was wondering why, and how you knew where to look for him.'

'It was because I had a dream and it woke me up.' Fred looked at Dave. 'I dreamt that your dad was still alive and that he was a milkman. But in the dream he was crying because you had fallen into the canal by the old swing bridge and you were drowning, and he was pleading with me to come and save you, and when I woke up I could remember every detail and... Well, it all seemed so real, I thought I'd better go round to your house and see if you were okay.'

'Was there a tramp in your dream?' Dave asked.

'No,' Fred answered. 'Why do you ask?'

But before Dave could say any more, his mum burst into tears again. 'And what did Bryan do when you came round, and we found David missing?' she asked between sobs. 'Just went back to bed! Well, it's the last time he sleeps in my bed, or my house. When I get home, he can pack his bags and get out!'

Slowly, a smile spread over Dave's face. 'Can we have bacon, eggs and fried bread, Uncle Fred?' he asked.

***

My granddad came back into the kitchen then and sat and read the rest of my story. 'By heck,' he said. 'I think we've got a writer in the family.' And so I typed:

THE END

Story 5

Metamorphosis

© 2004 Ian Hobson

Given the amount of time Brantley had been down the hole, it was amazing his single, lid-less eye could still focus; yet he could make out the shape of one of his jailers above, silhouetted against the grey light of dawn.

Would today bring food or an upended bucket of icy water, or worse? After countless days of imprisonment, he knew to expect anything. As he heard the scrape of the wooden bucket, he pressed himself back against the side of his tomblike prison, relieved as he saw that it was being lowered, not tipped. He snatched at it and grabbed for its meagre contents before it was quickly hauled back up.

Bread and a half-rotten apple. He ate the food then knelt and lapped water from the tiny pool in the floor of the old well. The flow was, at times, not much more than a trickle, but it had never dried up completely. Brantley had considered blocking the outlet and allowing himself to be drowned, but his will to survive had proved stronger than his despair. Suddenly there were more sounds from above.

'Who wants him?' asked a gruff voice that Brantley knew well. It was Falmuth, the head jailer.

'Orders from the King,' came the reply. Brantley knew that voice also, but had not heard it for a long time. As he looked up, the end of a rope ladder fell towards him.

'Move yourself, prisoner,' ordered Falmuth. 'If I have to come down there, it will be the worse for you.'

Brantley grasped the ladder and climbed awkwardly towards the daylight, and as he neared the surface, Falmuth grabbed a handful of his hair and hauled him out. With his right hand, Brantley shaded his one eye against the brightness. The prison courtyard was circular, and he could see other prisoners staring open-mouthed at him through barred windows. Most had seen him before; but still, the sight of a childlike Cyclops - especially one so deformed and ugly - was something incredible.

'You don't get any prettier, do you, Cyclops?

'And you don't smell any sweeter, Foul-mouth,' croaked Brantley. This earned him a vicious stroke across the back with the short leather whip that Falmuth carried. It was painful, but Brantley did not cry out.

'Let him be!' This time Brantley could see who was giving the orders: Lord Chiron, the king's bodyguard.

'Chiron.' Brantley spoke his name, and for a moment Chiron looked questioningly into Brantley's one eye, before gesturing to the two guards that were with him and turning and striding away. The guards stepped forward and, taking the prisoner by the arms, they followed after Chiron. Brantley was barely half their size, but somehow he managed to keep pace with them.

The prison was at the lower end of the castle, so the winding alleyways that they passed through led gradually upward. Brantley inhaled the fresh air, ignoring the stares of passers-by. Ahead, Chiron stepped through a gateway where guards sprang to attention, and as he disappeared from view, Brantley's guards quickened their pace. When they caught up with Chiron outside the doors to the great hall, he ordered the guards to wait and entered alone, giving Brantley a much-needed respite. But soon more orders were given, and Brantley was pushed forward and allowed to enter unaided.

Inside, the hall was lined with courtiers: lords and ladies and their offspring; all dressed in fine costumes and gowns. Brantley knew them all, but as he ran the gauntlet of their stares, he kept his eye fixed on the figures ahead.

King Branghust sat on the largest and grandest throne and beside him sat Esmeltha his queen. Suddenly, aware more than ever of his grotesque looks and ragged clothing, Brantley stopped, fearful of what new humiliation might lay in store for him; until the king beckoned him, ordering him to come closer. As he drew nearer to the king and queen, he saw that Chiron stood close by, and that beside him stood another, much older, man; a man that he did not recognise.

'So this is the little Cyclops.' The man stepped forward and looked closely into Brantley's eye. 'I have heard of them, but never seen one… I am Durghal. Please tell me your name?'

'My name is Brantley, sir… Prince Brantley.'

At this there was a gasp of disbelief from the courtiers and Queen Esmeltha began to weep silently.

'But Prince Brantley was not an ugly one-eyed creature,' said Durghal. 'I am told he was a handsome boy, with two good eyes. Why do you claim to be him?'

'Because I am him… at least, I was him.'

'Murderer!' shouted one of the courtiers.

'You killed the prince!' shouted another.

'Silence!' King Branghust spoke for the first time, and then looked at Brantley. 'You were found wearing my son's clothes, and your hands were stained with blood.'

'I told you father; I was attacked by… this.' Brantley pointed at his own chest. 'And I stabbed the creature with the sword that you gave me. Then… I can't remember.'

'Where did you stab him?' asked Durghal.

'Through the heart.'

Durghal nodded. 'I believe him, your majesty. I believe this is your son.'

'But how can it be?' asked the queen.

'It is a curse, but one that can be broken. Just as Prince Brantley must have broken it for another.' replied Durghal. 'Many years ago the king saved my life. Now it is time to repay the debt.'

With surprising speed for an old man, Durghal produced a dagger and stabbed Brantley through the heart, and then with Brantley's blood still on his hands, he thrust the dagger into his own heart.

It was then that the impossible happened: As Durghal bled to death, he began to shrink and distort, and his two eyes merged and became one. But before he died he saw the reverse happen to Brantley, and heard the cries of joy that came from the king and queen.

Story 4

Brackentree

©2003 Ian Hobson

Overlooking Lock Trool in the heart of the Galloway hills, Brackentree House provides comfortable accommodation in a peaceful and beautiful setting. Five miles from the nearest town, Brackentree is entirely independent of the outside world and will appeal to those wishing to get away from it all. Brackentree has full central heating, a fully fitted kitchen, two bathrooms, and sleeps up to eight people. Well-behaved pets welcome.

***

Mack wandered into the master bedroom and looked out of the window in gloomy anticipation. He hated visitors, they upset his routine and disturbed the peace and quiet. At least for these past few months, and even during Christmas for once, he had had the place to himself. Apart from when the cleaner, Mrs. Donald, had come to disturb him, with her scrubbing and polishing and hoovering. Though he had to admit, she was good at her job; quick, but thorough. And because he liked the place to be clean and tidy, he always kept well out of her way; usually in the attic. She never came up there; even when she did the two-day spring clean, which she had just finished the day before. The gardener had been, as well. He was less thorough. Mack turned his head to watch as a small flock of sparrows alighted on the newly cut front lawn, pecking at it and playing aerial leapfrog with each other.

He turned his attention back to the driveway. Saturday afternoon. Now it would surely start. Visitors. Mack hated them. Especially the large family groups with children. Poking about in every nook and cranny. Hiding and then jumping out at each other, pretending to be ghosts. Mack had never believed in ghosts. Never understood why perfectly ordinary folk would start to ramble on about ghosts and hauntings, just because they happened to be staying in a beautiful old house. Mack had lived at Brackentree for more years than he could remember. Ever since his wife, Beatrice, had inherited it from her uncle, back in the fifties.

'Why ever did she leave me?' Mack asked himself, and not for the first time. 'She only had a bad cold. People shouldn't die of bad colds.'

'And why did she will Brackentree to Gerald?' might have been Mack's next question, but he had learned to stop asking himself that one. It upset him to think that his wife could have betrayed him so; leaving the house, lock, stock and barrel, to their money-grabbing son. But then, before she died, she had become very odd. Hardly ever talking to him and never listening properly to what he had to say.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Gerald had come back to live at Brackentree. But no, without even consulting his father he had turned the place over to letting agents; after first installing central heating, and new plumbing, and new kitchen cupboards, and all manner of shiny white machines that hummed, gurgled, whined and vibrated as though about to explode.

Just as Mack stepped back from the window, a vehicle pulled into the driveway. To Mack, it looked like a cross between a car and a minibus. He remembered that a family the previous year had had one just like it; a Renault-something-or-other. He couldn’t remember. The sound of rubber tyres on gravel startled the sparrows and they flew off into the trees. The vehicle ground to a halt in front of the house, but just far enough away from it for Mack to watch without stepping back over to the window. As the doors were flung open, a young couple climbed out, soon followed by three children; two girls and a boy. No dogs, Mack noticed. Good. Dogs were a bloody nuisance.

The man stretched and rubbed his back, looking the house over as though he was trying to estimate its value. The woman came and stood beside him. 'It's big, isn't it,' she said. Her accent was English. Northern, but well below the Borders, Mack decided.

'Well, it sleeps eight,' the man replied. Another northern English accent. 'Where did they say the key was?'

'Under a plant pot beside the door.'

'I'll find it, Mum!' said the boy. He was the youngest of the three children. He ran towards the front door and Mack heard a scraping sound as the boy tilted the large terracotta pot that stood beside it. 'I've got it!'

'Be careful with that pot, Edward,' warned the boy's mother. Mack heard the pot rock back into place.

The rest of the family disappeared from view as they too approached the house, and Mack heard the key in the lock and the sound of the front door opening. He left the bedroom and went to stand in the shadows near the top of the stairs, looking down on the family as they entered the house. There was a time when he would have gone down to welcome them. But he had soon learned that visitors had been instructed to ignore him. He could just imagine what had been said. 'Take no notice of the boring old fart that lives in the attic. He won't bother you, if you don't bother him.' People were so rude these days.
'What's that pong?' the eldest girl asked, as she followed the rest of her family inside.

'It's just a bit musty, that's all,' replied the woman, opening the nearest door and discovering the lounge, complete with colour television and video. 'We might be the first to stay here this year. It'll be alright when we've had the widows open a bit.'

'I bet it's haunted,' said the other girl. The man stepped behind her and grabbed her shoulders, mimicking deep rumbling ghostly laughter.

'Get off, Dad!' The girl shrugged her father's hands off her shoulders. 'It might be haunted, anyway.'

'Well, if it is, perhaps the ghosts would like to give me a hand with the suitcases.' The man turned and walked back outside.

'Where's the bathroom?' asked the older girl, moving towards the staircase. 'I need a pee.'

'So do I,' said the younger girl, following.

'I need one first,' said Edward, pushing past his sisters and racing up the stairs.

'No you don't!' they shouted, in unison, chasing after him.
'There’s supposed to be two bathrooms! But let Edward go first.' The woman turned and walked along the corridor, her sixth sense guiding her unerringly towards the kitchen.

As the children reached the landing, Mack backed into the doorway of what used to be his son's bedroom, lingering just long enough to stick out his foot and trip the boy. He didn't like boys. Edward went sprawling across the floor, and began to cry loudly but unconvincingly.

'Now what's the matter?' The man was at the foot of the stairs, a suitcase in each hand.

'Naomi tripped me!' the boy managed to say, between howls.

'I didn't!' exclaimed the oldest girl. 'Did I, Melanie?'

The boy got to his feet, momentarily unable to speak or cry, as his lungs were now empty. He gulped air and then began to howl again.

'Oh, shut up, you big baby,' said Naomi.

'He did seem to trip over something.' Melanie was examining the carpet. 'But I can't see anything.'

'Well, put a light on or something,' said the man, as he carried the suitcases up the stairs. 'It's dark up there. You'd think they'd have painted the walls a lighter colour.'

Naomi opened the nearest bedroom door, and the light from its window illuminated the landing. 'I want this room, Dad,' she said, as she looked inside.

The old wooden flooring creaked as her father came and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. 'You and Melanie can share it. There are twin beds, look. Feels cold though. I think we better put the heating on for a bit.'

'I want to share a room!' exclaimed Edward. He had stopped crying. 'I don't want to sleep on my own if there's ghosts.'

'I'll share with you if you like,' said Melanie.

'There's no such thing as ghosts.' The man put the suitcases down and lifted his son. 'Are you alright now?'

'You should see the kitchen.' The woman was back at the bottom of the stairs. 'It's got a microwave and a tumble dryer and everything. And the view from the window is brilliant. You can see right down to the loch… Have you found the bathroom yet? I've found one next to the kitchen.'

The girls began to open more doors, soon finding the upstairs bathroom and disappearing inside. Edward wriggled out of his father's arms and ran down the stairs to his mother. 'I want to use the one downstairs.'

As the man picked up the larger of the two suitcases and carried it into the master bedroom, Mack came out of his son's old room and made his way silently along the landing towards the one remaining closed door. This was marked 'Private' and led to the attic stars; and as Mack climbed to his retreat he sighed to himself and wondered how he would get through another season. Bloody visitors!

***

Despite it being only mid April, the weather had turned very warm, and the visitors - the Bradshaws, Mack had soon learned - were making the most of it. There was just the one tiny window in the attic, but from there Mack could see the two adults and the eldest girl sunning themselves in the back garden. The younger children had discovered the orchard and were playing their own version of hide and seek, which for some reason unknown to Mack, included a lot of screaming. Worse than that, only two days into their holiday, Mrs. Bradshaw had started to use that unspeakably noisy contraption in the kitchen.

Suddenly the high-pitched whining of the automatic washing machine stopped and all was quiet. Mack, realising that at least for the moment, the house was his, made his way down to the kitchen. There were plastic bags full of groceries lying on the table; the proceeds of an early morning foray into town. And the little oven thing, with the glass door, was humming gently, with a chicken on a glass plate rotating inside it.

Mack thought about helping himself to something from the fridge. He opened the door. The shelves were piled with all manner of things, mostly in colourful plastic tubs and wrappers. 'What on earth is Muller Light?' Mack wondered. There was nothing there to tempt him; not even the cans of Foster's lager. His appetite these days was not what it was. A symptom of old age he thought. And he had never liked lager. Whiskey was a man's drink.

Hearing footsteps approaching from outside, Mack quickly retreated to the corridor. Mr. Bradshaw entered the kitchen and stopped as he saw that the fridge door was wide open. 'Edward!' he shouted, sticking his head back through the door. 'How many times do I have to tell you to stop leaving the fridge door open!' He stepped back to let Naomi in through the doorway.

'He can't hear you. He's right down at the bottom of the garden. Mum was in here last, anyway… What's for lunch?'

'You better ask your mum.' Mr Bradshaw walked over to the fridge and reached inside. 'I'm just after a beer. Do you want a Coke or anything?'

'I'll have a lager.' Mrs. Bradshaw padded barefoot into the kitchen. 'I can't believe how warm it is. And that view. I think I could sit and look at it for the rest of my… Oh, now what?' Outside Edward had begun to scream and clearly this was not part of the game he had been playing with his sister.

Naomi looked through the window. Melanie was racing up the garden path towards the house. She burst in through the door. 'Edward's been stung by a bee!' Naomi rolled her eyes and shook her head as Melanie and her parents rushed back outside.

'Serves him right,' said Mack, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and began to climb them.

Naomi turned towards the corridor. 'Creepy old house,' she said, before taking a bottle of diet coke from the fridge and closing the door.

***

Edward's bee sting had done him no permanent damage and by the evening the swelling had gone down. After a chicken dinner, the family gravitated to the lounge, where Mack heard them arguing over what to watch on television. Eventually they agreed to watch a video: Nightmare on Elm Street. Mack had seen this one before and thought it thoroughly ridiculous. He recalled the time another family had watched it and the subsequent screams in the early hours of the morning when he had inadvertently wandered into an occupied bedroom and sat on the bed. He stood outside the lounge door, chuckling to himself at the memory.

'Who's there?' Melanie was coming along the landing towards the top of the stairs, carrying a teddy bear. Mack hadn't realised that she was up there. As she reached for the light switch, Mack shrank back into the shadowy corridor.

'Dad, if it's you, you're not frightening me,' said Melanie, as the hall light came on and she walked resolutely down the stairs. Just then the lounge door opened, so Mack slipped into the dinning room.

'Come on, Melanie. You're going to miss the film.' It was Naomi. 'We're not waiting any longer.'

'I thought I heard a funny noise,' said Melanie.

'It'll just be the wind or this creaky old house,' replied Naomi. 'I heard a funny noise before.' But at that moment there was a crash as something in the dinning room hit the hardwood floor and shattered. The two girls stood and looked at each other. The rest of the family immediately joined Naomi, who was still standing in the lounge doorway.

'Now what have you broken?' asked Mr. Bradshaw.

'I think there's someone in the dinning room,' said Melanie. 'I think it's the ghost.'

'There's no such thing as ghosts.' Mr. Bradshaw headed towards the dining room, immediately followed by his wife and the three children. He switched on the light and looked inside. There was no one there and the door to the kitchen was closed. One of Edward's toys was on the floor at his feet, and close to it lay a shattered vase. 'It's just that vase that was on the little table beside the door. It must have fallen off.'

'Things don't just fall over by themselves, Dad,' said an obviously worried Naomi. 'I think you should search the house.'

'It's kind of you to volunteer my services.' Mr. Bradshaw suddenly seemed a little less confident.

'I'm not staying here while you search,' said Melanie.

'An I'm not!' Edward's eyes were beginning to fill with tears and he tugged at his mother's sleeve until she lifted him onto her hip.

'Shall we search together?' she suggested. 'All of us?' Though she didn't lead the way. She left that to her husband.

Meanwhile Mack was in the kitchen. He had trodden on Edward's toy and then knocked the vase off the table. Now he felt like a sneak thief in his own… well, his son's own house. And as he heard the family hesitantly approaching the connecting door he slipped out and walked stealthily along the corridor and back into the hall.

He had meant to go back upstairs but, without knowing why, he opened the front door and looked out into the semidarkness of the moonlit evening. He hadn't been outside for a long time. He knew that there was a reason for this but it had slipped his mind. Another consequence of old age, he reminded himself; memory lapses. He stepped over the threshold and quietly closed the door, but then it came back to him. There was something wrong with outside; something frightening. It began immediately the door was closed. It was like being in a violent storm. Wind tugged at his clothing. Leaves fell from the sky and swirled about him. Yet there was no sound and the moon or some other light source had become so bright that he could hardly see.

He turned to go back inside but a female voice called his name. He remembered hearing her call before, but fear had always driven him back inside; back into the safety of the house. As she called again he steeled himself and turned towards the sound. The shadowy figure of a woman was walking along the drive towards him. And she walked straight through the Bradshaw's motor vehicle as though it wasn't there.

'Don't go back inside, Mack,' said Beatrice. Her voice was clearer now and her Scottish lilt sounded so sweet to him. She took hold of his hand and together they walked away, and Brackentree was haunted no more.

Story 3

Asperula's Rainbow

© 2006 Ian G. Hobson

It was a typical Astrantian afternoon, with warm sunshine and not a cloud in the sky; and Asperula was sitting in her garden reading. As you may recall from earlier stories, Asperula was a witch, and what she was reading was an old book of magic spells that she'd forgotten about and then rediscovered when if fell from a shelf as she dusted it.

The spell book had proved very useful. Asperula had deciphered some of the ancient writings and discovered spells to cure everything from toothaches to in-growing toenails, and from hiccups to spotty faces. She had found spells to mend leaky roofs and straighten crooked chimneys, and to chop fallen trees into firewood, and even to turn weeds into flowers. So her cottage was looking much smarter than it ever had before, and her garden was the best in the whole village.

'Rap, Rap, Rap! Visitor!' announced the shiny doorknocker on her front door. The doorknocker was, of course, a magic one, and it had become very good at predicting exactly when someone would arrive, even before it could see them coming. And sure enough, as Asperula looked up from her book, Thymus the cat sprang up onto the garden gate and then dropped down onto the garden path. He was on his way home after visiting his friend Luzula in the village, and having heard about Asperula's beautiful new garden, he'd come to take a look.

'Shoo!' exclaimed Asperula, as Thymus approached. 'I don't have black cats in my garden; they're bad luck. Now shoo, before I turn you into a goat!'

Thymus stopped and sat down to lick at each of his hind legs in turn. He wasn't the least bit afraid of Asperula. He lived in the old tower, across the river, with Holcus the warlock and knew almost as much about magic as Asperula did.

'If you turn me into a goat, I'll charge at you,' he said, interrupting his grooming and looking around. 'And I'll eat your flowers.' Then he noticed the book that Asperula held in her hand. There was a face on the front cover; an unsmiling but familiar looking face. 'Doesn't that book belong to Holcus?' he asked. 'It looks like one of his.'

Asperula thought for a moment; she had completely forgotten that the book had once belonged to Holcus. Then she remembered that Holcus had thrown the book at her after they had argued over something; they were not exactly the best of friends. 'It might do,' she replied, 'but that's none of your business. Now shoo!'

'Very well,' said Thymus, turning back towards the gate. 'I know when I'm not welcome.'

Asperula returned to reading her spell book, but just as Thymus leaped back onto the gate, she looked up and said 'Wait… Does Holcus ever travel by rainbow?'

Balancing easily on the top of the gate, Thymus turned back to face Asperula. 'Travel by rainbow?' he repeated, looking puzzled. But then he remembered hearing something about witches riding rainbows as an alternative to broomsticks. 'No, I don't think so, but he never goes anywhere these days anyway. Why do you ask?'

'Never mind,' replied Asperula, returning to her book.

'Ah, I see,' said Thymus. 'You've found something in the spell book about rainbow-riding. Well, you'd have to find a rainbow first. I can't remember the last time I saw one… Perhaps you should start by making it rain.' And with that, he turned and dropped down the outside of the gate and was gone.

'Making it rain,' said Asperula. 'What nonsense.' But then she looked up from her book with the beginnings of a smile on her face. Since finding the rainbow-riding spell she had felt a surprising urge to try it out, perhaps because she remembered stories of her great-grandmother travelling that way. But rainbows needed summer rain-showers; a rarity in Astrantia. So there was little chance of her doing so, unless: if she could find a spell to make it rain enough for a rainbow, then maybe she could give it a try. Perhaps a black cat in the garden was not such bad luck after all.

For the rest of the afternoon, Asperula studied the spell book, struggling with some of the ancient writings, until finally, on the very last page, she discovered what she was looking for: spells for making rain. One was for storms, with thunder and lightening, and one was for night-time rain, for people who wanted their gardens watering but didn't want to get wet.
Then she found just the one she wanted: a magic spell to make long summer showers, complete with rainbows. And she began preparations for trying it out on the very next day. She stoked the fire under her cauldron and danced around it, throwing wild flowers and herbs into the boiling liquid, and chanting:

First Hog Weed and Borage
Go into the pot
(I must get some more
Because I use them a lot)

Then Hawk Weed, for Orange
And Curds Dart for Blue
And King Cup for yellow
What a colourful brew

Now, Hair Grass for indigo
Hart's-tongue for green
And a sprig of fresh nettle
To keep the pot clean

That leaves Columbine for Violet
And Poppy for red
Give a really good stir, and
Then straight off to bed

And so off to bed she went, leaving the window open so that the steam from the simmering cauldron could make its way out into the night air where it could do its magic. And sure enough, when Asperula awoke in the morning, there were clouds gathering in the sky. So she dressed and put on her best apron and best black cloak, and carrying the old spell book, she set off towards the river where most of the clouds had assembled.

***

Thymus slipped in through the cat-flap in the back door of the old tower. The tower was more like a house really, as over the years, a roof and a chimney, and doors and windows, had been added. He padded across the stone floor of the kitchen towards the staircase. The kitchen was circular in shape, as was the tower itself, and the staircase ran around the wall in a spiral and led to the circular living room above and then on to the circular bedrooms above that. There was even a circular dungeon below, as the tower had once been part of a castle, most of which had crumbled and fallen.

'Hello,' said Holcus, sleepily, when Thymus appeared at the top step of the first floor and padded across the room towards him. 'Been out all night?' The warlock, wearing an old grey dressing gown, was sitting in semi-darkness in his favourite chair beside a huge fireplace. The sunlight that filtered through a large curtained window showed that he was old and thin in the face, and his hair was grey and straggly, but there was a proud, intelligent look in his eyes. He reached down and stroked Thymus who lifted his tail and arched his back and purred.

'No, I've not been out all night,' Thymus replied. 'But I woke early, so I thought I'd go out and see what the weather was doing.'

Holcus laughed at this. 'I could have told you that without going outside,' he said. 'The sun is shining and the weather's set fair, as always.' He reached for the crook that was leaning against his chair, and gave one sharp tap on the floor with it, and the curtains opened to reveal a lovely view of the fields and river but with rain clouds not far away.

'Not quite, you see,' said Thymus. 'The sun is shining, but there are some thick black clouds out there and it looks likely to rain.' He had an idea he knew why, but decided to say nothing to Holcus. He took his usual place on the rug in front of the fireplace. The fire was not lit, as it was the middle of summer, but at other times of the year, in front of the roaring log fire was one of Thymus's favourite places to be.

***

With the sun behind her and feeling very pleased with herself, Asperula made her way across the fields towards the gathering clouds. Hanging from a gold chain around her neck was her talisman, a jet-black stone from the middle of a shooting star. The talisman was relatively new and it had taken time for Asperula to get used to it, but gradually it began to yield its magic and slowly it had enhanced Asperula's powers and increased her understanding of spells like the one she was planning to use to ride a rainbow.

Rainbow-riding, as practised by witches since the beginning of time, is a novel way of getting from one place to another. It's especially useful for getting over obstacles like fast flowing rivers or for simply getting from one side of a valley to the other. Though many witches think it a ridiculous way to travel because, firstly you have to find a rainbow, and secondly you have to get to it - which isn't as easy as it sounds because rainbows do have this habit of moving away as you approach them - and thirdly, the other end of the rainbow has to be in the place you want to get to. So mostly it's just done for enjoyment – a joyride, in fact – or sometimes just to show off.

Asperula hurried along, with a spring in her step that she hadn't had for many a year. She even giggled at the thought of riding a rainbow. And suddenly ahead, as the clouds began to shed their rain, there it was: a beautiful rainbow, with all the usual colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – arcing across the sky and reaching over the fields and across the river.

Asperula opened her spell book at the right page and referred to the text. She knew that the first step was to make the rainbow keep still while she made her way to it. As she walked on, she read aloud the magic words, but the clouds and the rainbow seemed to drift away as though pulled by the river as it meandered downstream. Asperula clutched her talisman and repeated the words, over and over, and at last found that she was getting closer and closer to the rainbow. But she was also beginning to get quite wet so, as she walked on, she tore a bright green bracken stem from the ground and uttered more words of magic and immediately the bracken stem turned into an umbrella which she held aloft to keep from getting wetter.

Once more she referred to the book of spells before dropping it into her apron pocket, and with talisman in one hand and umbrella in the other, she reached the rainbow and stepped into its brilliance, reciting the rainbow-riding spell. For a moment nothing happened, then with an exhilarating whoosh, she was carried away, spiralling head first and with her black cloak flapping behind her, up into the rainbow's colourful core - but a little faster than she had expected for, almost immediately, the umbrella closed about her head and she couldn't see a thing.

'Get off me!' she cried, as he fought with the umbrella, finally flinging it aside and letting it fall. Now she could see, and what an amazing site it was too: she was surrounded by colour and yet, through it, she could see the greenery of the surrounding countryside and the sparkling blue river below and the charcoal-grey rain-cloud above. And then she crested the top of the rainbow and began to descend, shrieking with laughter, and still spiralling headfirst, and having the ride of her life.

Anyone watching would have been quite amazed, for this was most unlike Asperula. But this was where things began to go wrong. The rainbow had obligingly kept still at one end while Asperula stepped inside it, but all the while the other end had continued to drift, swinging ever nearer to the old tower across the river. And as Asperula neared the end of her ride she saw with horror that she was not going to have the soft grassy landing that she had expected.

***

Both Thymus and Holcus had fallen asleep beside the fireplace as they quite often did, regardless of the time of day. But when a tremendous crashing noise came echoing down the chimney, they both awoke with a start. In fact Thymus, who was closest to the fireplace, was so startled that he shot up into the air and across the room as though someone had just stamped on his tail. And lucky he did because a great fall of soot came tumbling down and landed in the fireplace, before issuing a sooty black cloud into the room.

'Lightening!' exclaimed Holcus, as coughing, and choking, and blinking the soot from his eyes, he got to his feet. 'We've been struck by lightening!' But just then there was another crashing sound and more soot came down the chimney followed by a huge bat-like creature that Holcus thought must be some kind of demon. It was as black as night and as it landed headfirst, in the fireplace, it wailed like a banshee and clawed at the hearth with its scrawny talons, and its two pale eyes flashed with a terrible malevolence.

'Be gone, you evil spirit, you incubus, you demon of the night!' cried Holcus, as he peered at the creature through the soot-filled air. 'How dare you come down my chimney, unannounced? Be gone!'

Covered in soot and looking quite demon-like himself, Holcus reached for his magic crook and pointed it at the terrible intruder. In his younger days he would have instantly remembered the correct magic spells to ward off such an evil creature and send it on its way, but his memory was not what it used to be. But as he tried to remember the words, the creature got to its feet and, trailing its great black wings and more clouds of soot, it fled across the room and sped down the staircase and left the house by the kitchen door.

Thymus jumped up onto the windowsill and peered out. The garden and the adjacent fields were in shade, as a large black cloud hung overhead, and the ground was wet from recent rain. But almost immediately, as Asperula, with sooty hair and a torn black cloak, hurried away from the tower, the clouds vanished and the sun shone once more.

'Bless me,' exclaimed Holcus, as he reached into the fireplace and lifted something from the soot-filled hearth. 'How ever did you get up the chimney?' He blew the soot from the old spell book, and watched as the face on the front cover began to smile at him. The spell book was glad to be back with its master.

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Asperula's Rainbow is one of fifteen stories set in the enchanted land of Astrantia. To read more Astrantian Tales visit: http://www.abctales.com/story/ian-hobson/astrantian-tales

Story 2

A Saxon's Tale

©2007 Ian Hobson

10th Century AD

After another night in the open and a morning's weary travel, we bid farewell to the others from our group and left them to take the western track towards the main settlement. We headed north and followed a steady uphill path, taking a short-cut over the hilltop. Edglaf walked ahead of me carrying my axe and a sheathed sword he had taken from a dead Dane. I carried my grandfather's sword and the water; we had no food left. The wound in my side still felt very sore, but it was healing.

The battle had not gone well. We had outnumbered the enemy by almost three to one, but they were mostly seasoned warriors, not woodsmen and farm workers like us. My son, Edglaf was barely fifteen years old but, like me, he worked Lord Athelred’s land, and Lord Athelred was sworn to Lord Byrhtnoth, so we had no choice but to go and fight as ordered. Besides, the Danes were here to steal the land, our livelihoods, and our women too.

Before the battle I’d sharpened the sword; it was old and heavy but well crafted, and the only weapon we owned. It was a big sword, made for a big man: my grandfather. I gave it to Edglaf, telling him to stay at the rear. I was in the middle behind Lord Athelred’s men at arms, but in front of other men less able, or less willing, to fight. I carried my axe: I was a woodsman and better at wielding an axe than a sword.

Edglaf stopped just short of the crest of the hill we were climbing and waited for me to catch up. During the battle I’d taken a spear thrust below my left armpit; a glancing blow that had cut through my leather jerkin and grazed my ribs. I’d swung my axe at the spearman, splintering his wooden shield and breaking his arm, but still he made ready to thrust again. That was when, to my surprise, I found Edglaf at my side, swinging my grandfather’s sword like he was born to it and killing my attacker with a thrust to the throat.

As a young man I had fought beside my own father, but never with such ferocity. It was Edglaf’s first battle and his first kill, and I was proud of my son, but also a little worried: he killed another Dane that day - before the battle was won and the Danes defeated – but with just a little too much eagerness, I thought, though I had also killed another. I prayed to God that he would stay with the land and not become a warrior like my mother's father.

As Edglaf stood and watched me climb he looked so like his mother. It was more than sixty days since Eadwynne had wept as we left, begging us not to go. But as I kissed her, and our daughter, Leofwynne, I promised her we would return. I made the same promise to my mother, but there were tears in her eyes too.

‘Wound still hurting?’ Edglaf asked.

‘A little.’ I rested for a moment, taking in lungfuls of fresh clean air, and pondering on what I would say to the widows of the two men who had not returned with us. Then we walked the last few paces to the top of the hill together; and there below us was our valley. It was a relatively new settlement, a half-day's march from the main one. I looked first for the tall trees just beyond the foot of the northern slope, and then for the clearing just below. It seemed that a mist shrouded our small dwelling, and I couldn’t make out its shape or see the yellow of the thatch. Then dread filled my heart as I realised that what I had thought was mist was smoke; and, my wound and tiredness forgotten, I began to run down the wooded slopes with Edglaf following.

***

We passed other dwellings as we crossed the valley floor; all of them smouldering ruins. Then we came across the first body: old Wiglam, I'd known him since I was a boy. His throat had been cut and his clothing ripped open. He was a poor man; I doubt that his attackers had found anything on him of value. His dog lay nearby, its head almost completely severed from its body. There were more mutilated and half naked bodies beside the bridge that I had built over the stream; we knew each of them well, especially the midwife, Silfled, and her second husband, Alfere, my cousin. He had lost an arm fighting the Danes five years before, yet by the look of his wounds and the bloody ground, he had put up a good fight. Downstream I could see the remains of a butchered cow and two sheep; all three had had hind or fore quarters hacked off and carried away. A smell of wood-smoke and death hung in the air.

I slipped my grandfather's sword into my belt and took the axe back from Edglaf, and then we hurried on. We had no time for the dead; we thought only of those we hoped would still be alive. Our dwelling was on slightly higher ground and we were both panting like dogs as we reached it. At one end the thatch was still burning, as was the oak beam above the entrance.

Ignoring the smoke and the heat, I staggered inside but immediately turned back. Just a few blackened timbers remained standing, the rest had fallen in and still smouldered and glowed with each breath of wind. No one could have survived such an inferno.

'Father!' Edglaf was running towards the tall trees, his sheathed sword flapping against his leg as he ran. I stood for a moment and then, as I saw what he had seen, I raced after him.

It was my mother, Elgiue. She lay beside the nearest tree with her head in a pool of blood. Edglaf had stopped a few paces short of her but I dropped my axe and ran past him. 'Mother!'
I knelt and cradled her head in my lap. There was so much blood, she was surly dead, yet her eyes flickered and then opened. 'Godwin?' As she whispered my name, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

'Mother,' I gasped, 'where are Eadwynne and Leofwynne?'

She looked up into my eyes and said just one word, ‘Danes,' and then the life went out of her, and she was gone.

'Mother!' In my grief I began to rock back and forth, still cradling her head. Edglaf knelt beside us with tears in his eyes.

'Men come.'

At the sound of another voice, Edglaf was on his feet and drawing his sword, but he slipped it back into its sheath as he recognised Maccus, the halfwit. I was a tall man, as was my son, but Maccus was at least a head taller than us and broad in the shoulder too. He had lived with Silfled, the midwife, for all of his nineteen years and called her Mother, though he was not truly her son. She had taken him in when his real mother had died giving birth to him and his father had rejected him because of his disfigured face.

'Wait!' At the sight of Edglaf's sword Maccus had started to back away. I laid my mother's head gently back down on the bloodstained earth and then stepped in front of Edglaf, showing Maccus my empty hands. 'We are your friends, Maccus. You have nothing to fear.'

'Men come.' Maccus repeated what he had said before.

'How many?' I asked. 'How many men?'

Maccus looked uncertain and I thought perhaps the question was too difficult for him, but then he held up both of his hands, spreading the fingers of his left hand and studying those on his right until he settled on just three.

'Eight?' I said.

Maccus grinned and repeated the word, 'Eight, eight men come. I climb tree and watch. Then come down.' His face changed, showing grief, as he looked towards my dead mother. 'All dead.'

'What about my sister, Leofwynne?' my son asked patiently. 'And my mother, Eadwynne?' In the past Edglaf had spent time with Maccus, playing games, fishing in the stream and helping with the harvest, so he knew better than I how to speak to him. 'Are they hiding, Maccus?'

'I hide when men come,' Maccus replied, pointing towards the eastern woods. 'Mother always say hide in woods if bad men come.' He looked uncertain again but answered Edglaf's question. 'Not all dead. Some go with men: Eadwynne and Leofwynne... and Alfere and Wiglem.'

I breathed a sigh of relief; my wife and five-year-old daughter were still alive. The other two, Alfere and Wiglem, were both young boys, sons of Beornwynne, one of the women who lay dead beside the stream. Her husband, Offa, had been fatally wounded towards the end of the battle with the Danes.

Edglaf continued to question Maccus until it was clear that the eight raiders had arrived at dusk the day before, just as Maccus was returning home with some firewood. He was uncertain about what had happened during the hours of darkness, but he had heard screams and said that the men had left at first light with their captives, after torching the thatch of every dwelling.

'Which way did they go?' Edglaf asked.

Without hesitation Maccus pointed towards the tall trees and then raised his hand indicating that the men and their captives must have climbed the hill to the north. Edglaf and I exchanged troubled looks. We knew that three or four day’s journey to the north there was a tidal river, and had heard that Danish ships had been seen there in the past. It was said that some came to trade, but others, often called Vikings, came to steal and to burn, and worse.

I prayed to God that my family had been taken to sell as slaves, and that we could somehow reach them in time. We had some silver that we had taken from the three Danes that we had killed, though it was probably not enough to buy more that one person's freedom. I considered sending Edglaf to the main settlement to fetch help, but decided we could not afford the delay. God forgive me, but I was angry, so very angry, and I wanted to hunt down every last Dane and kill them all.

***

I also wanted to bury my mother, but there was no time. We replenished our water from the stream and cut strips of meat from the butchered cow and looked quickly about for more food. It seemed there was none until Maccus emerged from one of the burned out buildings with some bread that had somehow escaped the flames. He also found a sack to put the food in and then insisted on coming with us. He was a child in a man's body but I was glad to have him along; with his height and disfigured face, he looked fierce enough, especially after I gave him my grandfather's sword.

Edglaf led the way, his keen young eyes picking out signs of those we followed, but the sun had begun to set by the time we neared the top of the northern hill. There was little cover here so we crawled on our bellies until we could see down into the next valley. It was heavily wooded and if there was anyone down there, we could not see them. We hurried on, unsure if we were taking the right path until, in a wide clearing, we found some well-trampled grass where the raiders must have stopped to rest or eat. I estimated that we were only a half-day behind them.

Maccus asked if he should collect firewood and light a fire. I wanted to continue on, but in the growing darkness we could easily have lost our way, so I agreed to the lighting of a small fire close to the base of a fallen tree where it would be screened by its trunk and circular mass of roots. Maccus was proving to be quite resourceful; using a flint he carried, he had a fire lit in no time and rigged a spit on which to cook some of the strips of meat we had brought with us. We ate, and drank a little of the water, and soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

When dreams of my mother rising from a lake of blood woke me it was no longer dark, and I thought that it was dawn and that too much time had been lost. But then I saw that an almost full moon had risen into a clear sky, and so I woke Edglaf and Maccus and we continued on, as best we could, through the shadowy forest.

***

When dawn came, the signs were much clearer and before midday we came to a deserted and ruined settlement where clearly the raiders had spent the night. I had walked this far once before and at the time wondered who had lived there and why they had left. Perhaps they too had been slaughtered by marauding Danes.

It was here that we found the body of a Saxon man. His throat had been cut and his clothes ripped open as his assailants relived him of anything of value. I recognised him as Sibirht, a man I had never liked or trusted. He was from the north-east and had lived in our community for a time, until he was expelled for stealing. We should have killed him, for now it was clear how the raiders had found their way to our small community; they had been led there. At least Sibirht had got his just deserts from the Danes who must have decided that they had no further use of his services.

We kept going. There was another hill to climb, but that would help us to gain time I thought, as a party that included a woman and three children would not travel as quickly. I was right: for late in the afternoon, as we crested another low hill, we at last caught site of those we followed. I could not distinguish which of them was Eadwynne, but there were at least two small children amongst them.

'Men,' said Maccus. 'Bad men.'

I exchanged a worried glance with Edglaf; we were both thinking the same thing: we could easily catch up with them now but what then? We were three against seven.

On the hillside we would have been at risk of being seen, so we backtracked a little and made our way down a shallow ravine until we were able to rejoin the route the raiders had taken. The trees here stood tall and close together, but there was a definite track and, where the ground was soft, we could easily make out footprints, including those of children. We moved quickly, making best use of the last rays of sunlight that penetrated the canopy. I let Maccus take the lead while I, having abandoned the idea of buying back the captives, walked beside Edglaf and discussed tactics. We knew that the Danes would probably stop as soon as darkness fell, and bed down for the night, and that that would be our best chance of surprising them. The birdsong was loud in this stretch of woodland, and a magpie chattered a warning that perhaps we should have heeded because, to our dismay, we had walked straight into a trap.

Six men had stepped out from behind the trees and surrounded us, each holding a drawn sword or a war axe, and I could tell by their clothing, that they were Danes.

‘Saxon, why do you follow us?’ one of them asked as he came closer. He was a big man, with a strong Danish accent, but he spoke our language well. He and two others blocked the pathway ahead while the other three crowded behind us, blocking our retreat.

‘What is your name?’ I asked him, trying not to show the fear that I felt, and desperately trying to think of a way out.

‘What is yours?’ The Dane seemed a little confused. He had addressed his first question to Maccus, mistaking him for our leader, and he had to peer around him to see my face.

But taking his eyes off Maccus was the last mistake he ever made on this earth, because it was then that Maccus drew my grandfather's sword from his belt and, shouting his mother's name, he swung it from left to right with such force that it scythed into the Danes neck, taking his head off in a shower of bright red blood; and as a war axe slipped from his right hand, the Dane's headless body crumpled and fell.

To our credit, and perhaps as a result of our recent experiences in battle, both Edglaf and I reacted instantly. I turned and, striding closer to the nearest Dane, I smashed the handle of my axe into his face and then dropped it onto his sword arm, while Edglaf drew his Danish sword and ran at the two men behind him. Clearly they were more accustomed to taking the lives of women and old men because the youngest turned and ran while the other was too slow in parrying Edglaf's sword as it slashed into his face.

I knocked my Dane senseless with another blow to his jaw and then turned to help Maccus who was trying to keep the remaining two Danes at bay with huge swings of my grandfather's sword, all the time shouting his mother's name as though it was a war cry.

But one of the Danes was an accomplished swordsman and was thrusting at Maccus, drawing blood, and forcing him backwards until he fell over the body of his headless victim. In a rage, I swung my axe at the swordsman, deliberately letting it slip through my fingers; which was something he hadn't expected because the head of the axe hit him hard in the face, and in the time it had taken him to recover I had snatched up the dropped war axe and swung it at his raised sword arm, cutting off his hand and leaving him screaming as I moved past him to take on the last of them.

It was now war axe against war axe, and as our blades clashed together I saw that my adversary had only one eye. He fought well, and might have beaten me, but I was so enraged that I seemed to have the strength of two men and needed no help from Edglaf or Maccus as I hacked the man to pieces.

'We have to go!' Edglaf said. 'There's at least one more ahead.' Not wanting to be outdone by Maccus, he had finished off the other three Danes by hacking off their heads with his sword, and he was covered in their blood.

But he was right; there was no more time to loose. I stopped my butcher's work and, weapons in hand, we hurried on in the growing darkness. We wanted to call out the names of our loved ones but thought it better to remain silent, rather than give a warning to whoever was guarding them. It was the right decision because, in the darkness, the one remaining Dane mistook us for his shipmates and by the time he had realised his mistake, Edglaf and Maccus were chasing after him, and his dying screams echoed through the forest as I found Eadwynne and the three children safe and relatively unscathed.

***

It took us almost three days to return to our valley and the gruesome task of burying the dead. We carried home the few goods of value stolen from our small community as well as most of the Danish weapons. We never found the young Dane that had run away from us, and don't know if he made his way back to his ship or not. Eadwynne and I exchanged stories and she wept as she told of the slaughter of our friends and neighbours, but if she was raped by the Danes, she chose not to speak of it, and I chose not to ask.

We have two daughters now: Leofwynne and little Silfled. And we have four sons: Edglaf, of course, though he has left us to join Lord Athelred’s men at arms; and Alfere and Wiglem, our two adopted sons, who seem to be getting over the deaths of their mother and father. And then there is Maccus: I will never call him halfwit again. It is to my shame that more than twenty years ago I abandoned him, but I was young then and blamed him for the death of his mother, my first wife. Perhaps in time God will forgive me.

Story 1

The Black Pointy Hat

©2007 Ian G Hobson

The wizard was having a bad day. He was a grumpy old wizard and he'd gone out for a walk on a sunny morning only to be caught in a rain shower. Then, as he turned back towards home, the rain stopped and out came the sun again. He stood for a moment at the edge of the village where he lived, not knowing what to do for the best, when suddenly a gust of wind came and blew off his hat.

'Drat and tarnation!' he shouted as he raced back along the lane after his hat. But the gust of wind had lifted his hat high into the air. It was a tall black, pointy hat, and the wind had got inside it and sent it whizzing over the fields and over the treetops, like a kite with no string; until eventually the hat came tumbling to earth and landed on a scarecrow's head.

The scarecrow was quite old, having stood in the same field for almost three years, and he was looking rather the worse for wear. His head was made from an old sack stuffed with straw, his eyes, nose and mouth were buttons, and he wore an old coat and a pair of old trousers that had once belonged to the farmer, and his feet were just an old pair of rubber boots. Not that the scarecrow minded how he looked; he was, after all, just a scarecrow, without a single thought in his head. Or, at least, he was until the wizard's hat fell from the sky and landed on it; for the hat had a magic all of its own.

To the scarecrow it was like waking from a deep sleep. He yawned and stretched, which wasn't difficult because his arms were held, stuck out straight at each side of his body, by a thick garden cane that had been threaded through the sleeves of his coat. But when he tried to take a step forward, he couldn't because he was nailed to a wooden post.

'Why am I here?' he asked himself out loud. 'And who am I? And what am I?'

Suddenly a crow came swooping down out of the sky and landed on the scarecrow's right arm. The crow lived in a nearby tree and would often come and sit on the scarecrow's arm, for he knew that the scarecrow was nothing but a pile of old clothes stuffed with straw, though he wondered where the black pointy hat had come from.

'Get away!' said the scarecrow, turning his head and speaking in a voice so loud he almost frightened himself. While the crow, having had the fright of his life, leapt into the air and went flying back to his nest.

'Well that scared him,' said the scarecrow, suddenly realising that scaring crows was his purpose in life. 'So that's what I am', he said, with new-found insight. 'I'm a scarecrow.' And then, at the top of his voice, he shouted it out loud, 'I'm a scarecrow! I'm a scarecrow!' and all the birds in the nearby trees took to the air in fright.

But one bird was not frightened. This bird was an owl, and she was very wise; and while the other birds were flying away over the treetops, she came swooping down to investigate. 'My, my,' she said as she landed in the field in front of the scarecrow, 'a talking scarecrow, whatever next?'

'Why are you not scared?' the scarecrow asked, looking down into the bird's big round eyes.

'Why should I be?' replied the owl. 'I'm an owl not a crow, and you're just a sack of straw nailed to a post; though that's a strange looking hat you are wearing. Where did you get it from?' The owl swivelled her head, first left then right, as she looked up at the hat, suddenly remembering where she had seen one just like it.

The scarecrow, realising for the first time that he was wearing a hat, tried to reach for it, but with his arms still held stiff by the garden cane, he couldn't. 'I don't know where I got it from,' he said.

'There's more to that hat than meets the eye,' observed the owl; and, with that, she took to the air and flew away.

The scarecrow stood thinking for a while; thinking how nice it was to be able to speak, and be able to shout, and even to be able to think; but before long he discovered something new, something called boredom, because he had no one to speak to and nothing to do. But it was just then that a little girl came running across the field.

As she passed the scarecrow she stuck out her tongue and pulled a face at him. 'You don't scare me,' she said. But then she noticed the pointy black hat and stopped and began to giggle. 'Wherever did you get that hat from?' she asked.

'That's what the owl said,' replied the scarecrow, giving the girl such a fright that she took several steps backwards.

'You can speak!' exclaimed the girl as she stared at the scarecrow's head. She could see it was just a sack stuffed with straw but it seemed to have more of a face than usual. 'When did you learn to talk?' she asked.

'I'm not sure,' replied the scarecrow. 'I think that today is the first time. You couldn't help me get free from this post, could you? I'm beginning to feel quite uncomfortable.'

'I might,' said the little girl as she walked around the scarecrow, trying to see how he was fastened to the post. 'I think there's a nail through the collar of your coat,' she said. She jumped up and grabbed the collar and tugged hard until the material ripped away from the nail and the scarecrow came tumbling down on top of her.

'I'm sorry,' said the scarecrow as the girl helped him to his feet. 'I didn't hurt you did I?'

'No,' the girl replied. 'You don't weigh much anyway. Do you want me to pull that stick out?' The scarecrow still had the garden cane through the sleeves of his coat.

'If you don't mind,' said the scarecrow. 'It would be nice to let my arms down; they feel very stiff.' So the little girl pulled the cane out from the scarecrow's sleeves, and he was so grateful that he jumped up and down, flapping his arms like a bird.

The girl began to giggle again. 'You really are very funny,' she said; before becoming more serious and asking, 'but what will you do now, Scarecrow? Now that I've set you free?'

The scarecrow stopped flapping his arms and looked thoughtful. 'I don't know,' he said. 'This is all very new to me; being able to move, and to think.' He sat down and leaned back against the wooden post. 'Being alive is so difficult isn't it. I mean, having to think what to do next; it makes my head hurt.'

'It's called making decisions,' said the girl as she sat down beside the scarecrow. 'You'll get used to it.'

Suddenly there was a shout from across the field, and when the girl and the scarecrow looked up, they saw an angry looking old man running towards them.

'Who's that?' the scarecrow asked.

'I'm not sure,' replied the girl. 'It looks like, yes, it is! It's the wizard, and he looks very angry. Come on, we better run.' And so the girl and the scarecrow scrambled to their feet and ran off across the field as fast as they could.

'Drat and tarnation!' said the wizard as he reached the wooden post in the middle of the field. He was so out of breath that he had to stop and lean against it.

'Was I right?' the owl asked as she glided gently down and landed on the top of the wooden post. 'Was that scarecrow wearing your hat?'

'He was,' replied the wizard, looking very downhearted; which is not surprising because he was not really a wizard; he was just an old man who happened to own a magic hat; except that now the scarecrow had the hat, and its magic too.

'Oh well, never mind,' said the owl. 'I suppose you'll just have to buy a new one.'

'But I'll never find another hat like that one,' said the old man as he sat down and leaned against the post. But he was talking to himself, because the owl had flown back to her nest.

***

Meanwhile, the scarecrow and the little girl had crossed two fields and climbed over a wooden stile and into a lane. 'Where are we going?' the scarecrow asked as he ran along the lane following the little girl; but before the girl could answer, one of the scarecrow's rubber boots came off and he stumbled and fell.

'Come on,' said the girl as she grabbed the scarecrow's rubber boot and knelt down to stuff his trouser leg back into it, 'if we don't hurry the wizard might catch us!'

But it was then that she saw the scarecrow's foot. 'Look!' she exclaimed. 'That's a real foot sticking out of your trouser leg!' She pulled off the scarecrow's other boot. 'Another one,' she said. 'You have two real feet!'

The scarecrow sat and looked at his pink feet and wiggled his toes. 'You're right,' he said. 'I've got real feet. They must be real, because they're cold without my boots.' He reached for his boots and began to pull them back on.

'You've got hands as well!' the little girl shouted. 'Where did they come from?' She was even more amazed than she had been when she'd discovered that the scarecrow could talk.

'I don't know,' the scarecrow replied. 'But it's jolly useful, having hands.' He finished pulling on his boots and then got to his feet. 'I feel like a new man,' he said.

'You are a man, look!' The little girl was pointing to the scarecrow's face. 'You have a real face, with real eyes, and a nose and a mouth!'

'Well I never!' exclaimed the man, putting his hands to his face and feeling his nose and his mouth and his eyes and his ears. 'This morning when I woke up I was a scarecrow, but now I'm a man with a face, and hands, and feet, and everything. What can it mean?'

'It must be that hat,' said the girl. 'It must be a magic hat. Even your clothes have changed; they're not old clothes any more, they're new ones!'

The man looked down at his smart new coat and trousers and then removed his hat and examined it. 'It's a funny hat isn't it; kind of tall and pointy.' He looked inside the hat. 'What's this?' he asked as he found a label inside and showed it to the little girl.'

She read the label. 'It says,

IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO DRAGONFLY COTTAGE

Oh, but that's where the wizard lives!'

But then the man put the hat back onto his head and began to laugh. 'Of course it's where the wizard lives,' he said, 'because I'm the wizard and this is my hat. What a confusing morning this has been... Well, it's been very nice meeting you, little girl, but I must be getting home now, it's well past lunchtime and I think there may be rain on the way. Goodbye!' And with that, the smartly dressed young wizard turned and strode off along the lane, and as he reached a bend he turned and waved, before he disappeared from view. So the little girl shrugged her shoulders and ran off towards home.

***

A little while later a farmer came striding across his field, taking the same short cut that the little girl had taken. 'What's going on here?' he said. 'Someone's stolen my scarecrow.' But as he got nearer to the wooden post he saw that someone had left him a new one.

'Well I never!' he said as he looked at the new scarecrow leaning against the post. 'You're an ugly old thing.' Then taking him by the collar, the farmer lifted the scarecrow up and hung him firmly onto the nail. Then he threaded the garden cane through the sleeves of his coat and stood back to look at his handiwork.

'Oh yes, very ugly,' he said, 'but you'll do just fine. And just in time for the planting season.'

'I don't understand,' the old man thought to himself as the farmer walked away. 'This morning I was a wizard but now I'm a...' But he never finished his thought because, well, scarecrows can't think, can they?

THE END

Ian Hobson, Guiseley, UK - Artist & Writer

Invitation - November 2009

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