Westfield Road Cemetery: A Tale of Rabbits by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
Westfield Road Cemetery: A Tale of Rabbits
It was Tansy's idea to leave the little warren at the edge of the farmland, but she could not have done anything about it without Willow's help. She it was who had recruited most of their followers, and who thought of crossing the fields to the iron road. 'Banks,' she said, by way of explanation. 'Sooner or later, those things all end up in a valley.' 'But they're so fast!' said Tansy. 'Any rabbit stepping in front of one wouldn't stand a chance.' Willow was dismissive. 'Let's hope none of them are stupid enough to step in front of one, then. If you leave them alone, they don't take any notice; they just go whizzing past you. They're like hrududil, in that respect.' She was right, as usual, and it didn't take long for the rabbits to get used to the tremendous noise and stop going tharn, although that had been better than bolting for non-existent holes. At least none of them was stupid enough or unlucky enough to bolt in front of a train. The question was where along the
The Missing House by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
The Missing House
I must have been very young indeed when I noticed it, because I'd only just learnt to count to twenty (and I was, though I say so myself, an intelligent child). 'Mummy,' I said, as we stood four doors down from our own house. 'There's no number thirteen!' 'Some roads don't have a number thirteen,' she said, as if this were perfectly acceptable. I was outraged. 'Why not?' 'Because it's an unlucky number.' The older one gets, the less sense the world seems to make. What on earth was an 'unlucky number' supposed to be? Further investigation made a nonsense of what my mother had said. In every residential road I visited, I looked for numbers twelve and fourteen, and then for number thirteen. It was always there, either between those two or on the other side. Why was our road the only one with no number thirteen? There had to be a real reason; I was sure of it. Then, after I was put on 'free reading' at school, I began to think there might be a real, supernatural reason. The
The mice were getting ready for Christmas. It had been small trouble to chew a little Christmas tree for themselves from the bottom of the big one by the staircase in the big hallway, and the merest stick from the garden did for a Yule log, and Wendy frequently sewed, which meant snippets of things with which Dusk and Dawn had made decorations.
'What clever little crafters your children are,' they heard someone remark to their mother, and they felt proud and puffed up for the rest of the day.
All the network of skirting and stairwells looked magnificent. The problem, of course, was food. The mice lived on this and that throughout the yea
How the Panda Became Red by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
How the Panda Became Red
There was a time when thousands of little black-and-white pandas lived in a pine forest, and beneath them grew all the bamboo they could eat. In fact over the centuries they did eat it all, while the forest grew old, until only a few pandas were left starving in one dying tree.
One day Trot, the youngest panda, climbed to the top of the tree and saw a bamboo forest newly grown on the other side of the river.
'Why can't we go there?' she asked.
'Because it is inhabited by bears,' said her father. 'Bears eat smaller animals alive.'
The more Trot looked at the bears, the more she thought they did not look dangerous, so one day she used wha
Where ravens feast on mortal sin,
The world ends at a clifftop inn
Whose greeting is a fleshless grin
From pirates' gibbet at the door.
This lonely structure is adorned
With bodies of those men unmourned,
With sign proclaiming Ye be warned,
And always room enough for more.
Our story, though, tells not of this,
This feared, this known, this bland abyss,
But rather of the promised bliss
A spyglass offers to these men.
For if, once fear has gripped his mind,
Our pirate's hand, then eye should find
The spyglass hidden just behind
The rotting gibbet post, well then...
Well, then he runs, or jumps, or flies,
(That is to say, the fellow tries,)
En
The Ghost of Emily White by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
The Ghost of Emily White
The cemetery never changed, or at least not very much. The trees and hedges were trimmed every few years, and when Scott was six, they started turning off the water butts in the winter because the pipes froze, and so did the streams that the local boys used to make by overfilling the water butt at the top of the part that sloped. The weather changed, of course, and the plants and the animals with it. Sometimes a new grave was added. When Scott was ten, his grandmother was buried there.
Sometimes he popped in to see her on the way home from school, just as he always used to. He missed being able to see and hear her, but it wasn’t s
The Girl in the Pantry by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
The Girl in the Pantry
Joe had always been frightened of Grandma’s kitchen. It was the only house he knew of that had a pantry, and in the pantry there was a ghost. This was certain. Whenever he stayed overnight, he heard someone running to and fro inside its walls, beating on the door and crying with the voice of a little girl.
Once, he had dared to open the pantry, thinking that perhaps one of his schoolmates who lived nearby was doing it to scare him. When he opened the door, there was nothing to be found but a chilly, unsettling feeling. It was the cold of the entire kitchen, always there but not worth thinking about, until
‘There is nothing worse than going to school by tube!’ said Alice.
James had no reply. They were hanging onto a pole in the middle of the carriage, swaying and bumping into each other, and into people on their way to work. The train smelt of sweat, coffee and clothing. The only passengers to acknowledge each other were those in school uniform. The rest stared through each other, or over each other’s heads, expressionless and silent.
‘The next station is Southgate.’
‘I’m never getting a tube again after school’s finished,’ said Alice. ‘Well, not in the
NaNoWriMo 2013 Excerpt: Mr Andrews by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
NaNoWriMo 2013 Excerpt: Mr Andrews
Susie seemed to sense Imogen’s misery on the eve of the start of term, and spent the whole night on her bed, curled up against her legs and sending a comforting warmth through the blankets. Imogen went to sleep to the sound of Susie’s snores, and with the MDF smell from the dolls’ house filling the room. She was glad to be reminded that she had a wonderful cat and a magnificent dolls’ house to come to, but this did nothing to dispel her terrible fear of Mr Andrews.
In the morning, Mrs Clark gave Imogen a lift to school. It was only a five-minute walk, but Mrs Clark was working that morning, and she g
Rose's First Year by ThornyEnglishRose, literature
Literature
Rose's First Year
Rose was a present for Mrs Wakefield, who took her home in her pot and then placed her on the edge of a patio, in a garden overgrown with weeds.
‘What’s this, what’s this?’ the weeds chattered. ‘A garden rose! What will become of her?’
It was not the garden that Rose had imagined going home to, but it was a garden nonetheless. She gazed out over the lawn, longing for the earth. She wanted to dig into the ground with her roots and climb up the fence with her stems.
Rose waited and waited until Mrs Wakefield came back with Mr Wakefield, a little girl and a ginger cat.
‘Just look at what the chil