Brown Fox was at it again. The whole forest could smell the steaming strawberry pies in the morning air. Grey Squirrel and Tawny Owl looked at one another and frowned in dismay.“What was he told?” said the Wise Stag to the gathering of deer and doves at the Great Glen.
“He must only ever bake custard pies!” declared the audience. And the Wise Stag descended the Fallen Oak and made his way to Crabapple Orchard.
This is Wren's story. The story of his young days in a once proud and green forest. A forest where he still nests to this day - old and withered. It remains a sorrowful shadow of its past glory. It is the tale of how a cunning fox and a slippery eel plunged the whole forest into fear and paranoia.
Wren was a watcher. He'd watch the ducks migrate and return each year. He'd watch the leaves fall and grow once more season after season. On this particular day, of this particular year, he was perched on the collapsed fence which surrounded Crabapple Orchard - drawn there by a strange aroma in the air. He was watching the Wise Stag banging his head against the door of a huge oak tree - the property of a 'Mr. B. Fox Esquire', as the mailbox read.
“Come out, Fox!” shouted the Wise Stag. The Stag's followers - the doves and the frogs - stood at the edge of the orchard in anticipation. “What... were... you... told?!” He continued to shout, while still pounding on the solid door.
“Just a moment!” came a distant voice from within the huge oak. The Wise Stag brought a stop to his pounding and stepped back a little. He waited patiently. Wren saw the old Stag sniff the air, and noticed that the curious smell that had tempted him there had vanished.
His distraction was broken as a series of unlocking and unbolting sounds were heard from the oak tree and its door was opened.
“Do come in, my dear fellow.”
Wren leaned forward on his perch, but couldn't make out the figure standing in the doorway. The voice was new, but friendly, and he determined that it must be that of Mr. B. Fox Esquire.
“There's nothing wrong, is there?” asked the voice. And the Wise Stag pushed his head into the doorway, looking from side to side, while four or five of his frog followers went inside and three of the doves circled high above the top branches of Mr. Fox's dwelling.
Wren waited and watched for some time before the frogs re-emerged from the huge oak. And as he waited he also saw more and more animals arrive at the scene. Among them were two figures he did recognise: Grey Squirrel and Tawny Owl. He felt a little more at ease seeing these familiar faces, standing shoulder-to-shoulder talking to the Wise Stag.
“This ought not to have happened, Stag!” Wren heard the Owl say.
“This time he must be taught a lesson,” added the Squirrel.
Wren watched the Stag closely. He didn't give a reply to the other two animals, but just bowed his strong head in thought.
The door of the huge oak finally swung open once more and the frogs seemed to spill out. The doves came down to land and Stag called them over to him. They were in conference for a short time, during which Wren began to feel a little shaky. The tiny bird could now see what Mr. Fox looked like.
He stood in his doorway, arms folded, glaring straight at Grey Squirrel and Tawny Owl. For their part, the other two animals in question were not going to allow him to win this particular staring contest.
“This time you're safe, Fox!” came Stag's ailing voice, at last breaking the tension in the orchard. “But we'll want to return regularly to view your kitchen.”
Brown Fox seemed to consider his position, looking back at Owl and Squirrel, and in the end gave his reply, “Very well, Stag.”
And that was that. Crabapple Orchard returned to the eerie quiet which Wren was accustomed to encountering there. The crowds dispersed. Fox closed his door - bolting it securely from the inside. And Wren began to consider where the day would take him next.
As he prepared to head for the dried-up river-bed to the east of the forest to look for worms, he heard a rustling in the hedge next to where he was perched.
“Quite a show he puts on, old Mr Fox, isn't it?” said the strange creature that emerged from the bush. “But give him time, we'll see more grander sights than that in the days to come.”
Wren froze instinctively, but had to know what the creature was.
“I'm a monkey, my boy,” said the creature, sensing the tiny bird's question. And he sat down beside Wren on the decrepit fence.
It meant nothing to Wren. He may not have been a monkey, but the young bird had never seen one before, so who was he to question the other's claim?
“What do you make of it all, my young friend?” asked the monkey.
“I... I'm not sure what's going on really,” he replied, clearly unsure of himself.
“Well, don't worry about that,” assured the monkey. “He's got the whole forest puzzled.”
“What was that strange smell?” wondered Wren out loud.
“It's a long story, that one,” said the monkey. “Perhaps your mother will tell you about it sometime. But I will say this, I've smelt that aroma before and it wasn't very sweet then either. Why do you think the Owl and the Squirrel looked so serious?”
“Well,” Wren was thinking as he spoke. “They didn't seem to like Mr. Fox very much.”
“Very well observed, my young friend. But it is somewhat more complicated than that - you see they could have prevented this happening again last time, but Stag intervened.”
Wren wasn't following the story very well. It had all happened before his time. And the way the monkey told it, it seemed to have happened a very long time ago indeed.
“It's always difficult to know how far to go,” continued the monkey, but Wren was now recalling what his mother had warned him about talking to strangers in the forest, and so he bade a hasty goodbye to the monkey, breaking the creature off in mid-sentence.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Well, just remember this, young Wren. Always observe from a distance. Never get involved until you are absolutely sure of which side of the forest you want to make your nest... Observe and wait...”
The monkey creature's words rang around Wren's head as he pulled the worms out of the cracked earth of the river-bed that afternoon, and they still hung in his mind when he reached home that evening.
“What's a monkey look like, Mother?” asked Wren that night as they settled down to roost.
“Why?” she enquired suspiciously.
“You always told me not to answer a question with another question!” he said.
“So I did,” she replied. “Well, they have hair all over and use their feet like they use their hands. There used to be one in the forest before you were born.”
His mother watched to see Wren's reaction. His eyes lit up.
“He used to say he'd escaped from the asylum of the big predators,” she continued. “But no one really listened to his ramblings very much.”
“Oh,” was all Wren managed to say. He was very tired.
But as he drifted off, he caught his mother’s words as clear as the morning sky: “I don't want you going near Crabapple Orchard any more, Wren. It's going to get a little bit crowded there soon, so stay clear of it.”
The coming days and weeks were quiet in the Great Forest. From time to time, Wren would see lines of frogs escorted by doves flying high above, heading towards Crabapple Orchard, but Wren dared not go there for fear his mother would find out.
His mother and the other parents of the forest would have probably not noticed if their children had wandered off, as they were constantly being called to the Fallen Oak, where the Wise Stag gave long and boring speeches.
He questioned his mother routinely each evening at roosting time, about what the meetings were about and what the strange smell had been that odd day at Crabapple Orchard.
“Youngsters shouldn't worry themselves with that sort of thing,” she would say. She would also quickly change the subject of conversation and was always careful not to answer any of her son's questions with a question of her own.
Wren slowly put it all out of his mind and began to play like a young chick once more. But his playful days were soon to be brought to an abrupt end. It was on one particular day of the new season that he observed a group of blackbirds and sparrows gathered around Grey Squirrel's fern home. They were soon taking off in flight, Squirrel wished them a good day's “work”, and Wren found himself leaving the worm he had been throwing around and was following them at a safe distance.
He stopped his pursuit at the edge of the forbidden orchard, cursing the fact that he was too young to be allowed any further. But he discovered a good vantage point high in an elm tree at the edge of the “no-fly zone”, as his mother called it.
The group of birds seemed to stop and hover around Brown Fox's oak. And then, as Wren watched in horror, they began diving and squawking and dropping caterpillars into the field behind the huge oak tree. Wren could hear the Fox shouting and saw the stones he threw up at the attacking birds.
Wren couldn't make sense of it all. What could make one animal want to harm another?
Eventually the birds made their return flight back out of the orchard. Some were bloodied. Some were grinning. And Wren followed them again, cautiously.
They landed at Grey Squirrel's fern, where he waited with Tawny Owl.
“Well?” they asked of the returning heroes.
The blackest blackbird went over to the sandstone rock which lay beside Squirrel's home and began to scratch with his beak and talk very fast. Wren tried to get closer, hopping from tree to tree, until he was satisfied he was close enough to hear the speech.
“We circled in close formation and then began our run,” said the blackbird. “These strawberry patches were the first to be taken out. The caterpillars will devour them in a matter of days.”
The detailed etchings continued as he spoke.
“As for the oak itself - his stronghold - five sparrows managed to get inside and turn the kitchen upside down. We think that we have ceased production for at least a week or more.”
“Then, we will need additional flights!” said the Grey Squirrel.
“But we must get Stag's blessing before we carry out any further action,” reasoned the Owl, and the gathering left immediately, taking the path to the Great Glen.
Wren hopped onto a branch of the Squirrel's fern and squinted at the rock drawings.
“What do you make of them, young Wren?” came the familiar voice of the monkey as he swung down from a nearby tree.
Wren, quite unusually, wasn't taken by surprise, but instead remained fixated upon the sandstone. “What were they getting so excited about?” he asked, giving the monkey a question straight back.
“The forest is about to be changed forever,” replied the monkey.
“Brown Fox is a pie maker,” he explained to Wren as later that day they watched hordes of animals arrive in the Great Glen for the meeting that Wise Stag had called.
“Some years ago Fox deliberately used strawberries which had gone bad in his pies and a lot of animals in the forest suffered from stomach aches for a long time.”
“That smell!” said Wren, looking up at his friend. “It was strawberries!”
“The last time a meeting of this sort was called,” said the monkey, “it was decided that Fox could no longer be trusted to bake any kind of pies but custard pies.”
“But they still allowed him to make pies of some sort, then?”
“Very good, my young friend,” smiled the monkey. “You're beginning to catch on to the ludicrous nature of this whole situation.”
“But he's a grown-up!” said Wren. “How can one grown-up tell another grown-up what to do?”
The conversation was stopped there. For the Great Stag was standing on the Fallen Oak, and when he stood there, everyone knew he was ready to speak.
“My friends and neighbours…” He was beginning a long speech, thought Wren. “..some action has been taken by some members of our community which, although I cannot condone it, has brought a very grave problem to light.”
“May I speak for myself in this mess?” came the voice of Brown Fox, from the edge of the Glen.
“Very unexpected indeed,” said the monkey to himself.
The gathering all murmured as Mr. B. Fox Esquire walked through their ranks to the Fallen Oak.
“I have come here today to clear up a misunderstanding which I know you would all like resolved as well,” Fox bellowed.
“What about the smell?” asked Wren of his friend.
“He'll get to it, I'm sure,” replied the monkey.
And so he did. Fox explained that the familiar smell of strawberries everyone was so sure they could smell that day was indeed that of the forbidden fruit. But not of burning strawberries, rather of cooking them into something,… something nasty.
“How else was I to dispose of the old crop of strawberries?” continued the Fox. “After all I needed my field clear to grow the winter-berries I was planting for you all!”
Everyone except for one or two owls and squirrels seemed happy enough believing Brown Fox.
“I suggest,” echoed Brown Fox's voice, now in full flow, “that you hold a Marking Procession to decide whether or not you believe me or not.”
A murmur spread through the crowd of animals, growing into a constant rumbling as they discussed the proposal. Wren could hear a few of the birds on the lower perches of his tree.
“We live in a free and fair forest, after all,” said a Finch.
“And the will of all animals is fair,” concluded another.
The frogs and doves persuaded the Wise Stag to agree to the motion.
“I suppose this will decide it,” said Wren happily.
But the monkey looked concerned. “I don't like this situation at all.”
And before Wren could ask him if he was going to join the Marking Procession, the monkey swung away through the tree and out of the Great Glen.
“Pawns, all of them!” he shouted as he went. But Wren wanted to know the outcome.
It was a simple proposition. Each animal would, over the next week, come up to the Fallen Oak and scratch their mark on one of the sides of the tree to show their support for or against Brown Fox. Nothing could be simpler - and Wren for once thought he understood a grown-up's game.
“Before you begin,” said Brown Fox, after the rules had been explained to everyone.
“I want to ask one of you to come here and sit next to me, to prove that I am indeed your friend.”
The gathering wasn't sure what to make of his request. After a short silence, a few began to edge forward.
“I would like our young bystander there to come sit by me!” Fox’s voice echoed around the glen.
Wren froze. All of the animals were looking straight at him. He thought he could not be seen this high up. He had no choice but to go. He flew cautiously to the Fallen Oak and to the side of Brown Fox.
“I am not cruel and I am not out to deliberately harm any of you,” said Fox, putting his paw on Wren's shoulder. “You see, this youngster - the smallest in our forest - isn't afraid of me, so why should any of you be?”
The owls and squirrels had gone by now, and Brown Fox soon made his exit too. Most of the animals still present didn't need the whole week to decide which side of the Fallen Oak they would mark. And once they had made their mark, they passed by little Wren and smiled in thanks for helping them decide.
Soon the Wise Stag was declaring that they had all been mistaken about the smell in the air that morning, saying, “This is a great week for harmony in the forest.” And he also said that the Fox had requested that since his kitchen had been so badly damaged, the frogs need no longer make their visits there. This too, the Stag declared, was a “fair request”.
And that was that. For the summer at least. Autumn brought rain and with it came dark clouds.
Wren was growing older now, and had seen his friend the monkey infrequently since the time of the Marking Procession, all those many days before.
It was on one particular day, of one particular season, that the small bird was at the river-bed, which the rains had now filled back up. He was waiting for the worms to come out of their flooded holes, when he discovered what a 'pawn' truly was.
“So you fooled them all, didn't you,” came a voice which Wren could just hear.
“Yes, I suppose I did,” replied the friendly voice of Mr. B. Fox Esquire. “And now it is your turn, is it not?”
“Very well,” the other voice replied, and then the dialogue ceased. All that Wren could hear was the sound of the rain and a splashing noise which eventually faded.
Wren could do nothing but wait to see what the other's “turn” would be.
Three more seasons passed and still nothing out of the ordinary happened. Wren had, by that time, concluded that he either imagined or dreamed that rainy afternoon at the river-bed.
The reappearance of his friend the monkey, however, did make the bird wonder.
“You have grown, my friend, if not in stature, at least in character, and I see it!” said the monkey, sitting down on the lowest branch of the elm at the edge of Crabapple Orchard, which was now Wren's regular perch.
“Where do you go when you disappear like you do?” Wren asked the monkey.
“Oh, here and there.” And that was all he said about that.
The two friends walked back to the Great Glen and stopped at the Fallen Oak, seeing the now moss-covered scratches the animals had made.
“You must always remember that this is a fair thing,” said the monkey.
“I always think of the Procession as a game to let us animals feel as if we have some influence over what happens in the forest,” said Wren, sounding like a gloomy grown-up.
“Fox wanted to get his own way,” reasoned the monkey. “He would have used any means to get it.”
He had, and Wren knew this all too well.
The monkey taught Wren how the Marking Procession was the key to a truly fair forest. It wasn't a new-fangled idea by any means. Some said that it went back to the early days of the forest, perhaps even to the time when the forest was but a single acorn.
“But its great age means that it is vulnerable to attack and manipulation,” added the monkey. “And it sometimes allows cunning Foxes to walk freely in our forest, because of a fear of being too harsh.”
“So, that's why they allowed him to make custard pies, then?”
“Not really,” replied the monkey. “They just still love the taste of custard, but one day they might grow out of it.”
At that moment a line of toads wandered into the Great Glen. The monkey disappeared quickly, leaving Wren to greet them.
“You look tired, my friends.” Wren was getting more and more confident at talking with the animals of the forest on the ground.
“We ought to be, young one,” replied a wrinkled and warted toad near the front of the line. “We've been walking for a long time.”
They explained that they had been forced to leave their pond far to the edge of the known forest by a group of eels who had poisoned the water.
The Wise Stag soon arrived and began organising local ponds for the toads to temporarily use - much to the dismay of the frogs and newts there who didn't particularly like toads.
Soon the local ponds were full to the brim. And still more and more lines of toads arrived from every direction, each telling the same tale of being forced out of their ponds by the eels.
As before, Tawny Owl and Grey Squirrel became the loudest voices among the chaos.
“We must act now before this gets out further out of hand, Stag!” said the Owl passionately. “This sort of thing shouldn't be allowed to happen in our forest,” added the Squirrel.
There were those, of course, who said that the toads' ponds were too far away to concern them, that they had little right to interfere in the outer edges of the forest. They were mostly the Foxes though, and the majority of support was with Owl and Squirrel's plan. Their biggest supporters, it had to be said, were the frogs, but probably only because it would mean that they could get rid of the toads.
And that was that.
The blackbird and sparrow sorties were once again used against the ponds which the eels were rumoured now to inhabit. The birds were gone for a long time each day - the ponds were too far away for Wren to follow them, but he and the monkey occupied their time each day watching the continuing lines of toads arriving at the Great Glen - all from the safety of the upper branches of their tree.
“They say that resources are being stretched,” said the monkey one day well into the crisis. “The birds are exhausted and the damming of the ponds isn't really working.”
Wren listened as always to the monkey's reports, but was worrying in case he would be asked to join the daily flights.
“You needn't come here every day, you know,” said the monkey to the young bird countless times a week. “Why don't you ever go exploring and flying just for the fun of it any more?”
But Wren rarely answered him any more. And there were days when he didn't come to their high elm perch, but those days were mostly spent in the safety of his mother's nest, from which he hadn't been able to drag himself when he awoke from nightmares of whispering foxes and eels in a dried-up forest.
“Do you ever dream of leaving this forest for good and going to another?” asked Wren of his monkey companion almost every time they met high in the elm tree.
“There is a time for dreaming and there is a time for keeping your mind firmly fixed on the real world, young one,” the monkey would always reply. And that was always that.
It was early on a summer evening when the balance of the forest was upturned yet again. The ponds around the Great Glen were alive with the sound of the dusk chorus of the toads. The frogs and newts sat as usual covering their ears and routinely moaned to one another about their situation. But Owl and Squirrel smiled contently at the sound coming from the ponds.
Their smiles, however, rapidly turned to expressions of confusion as the chorus was drowned out by a sound which had at first been a low hum, but grew to a huge roar when its perpetrators were revealed.
The Wise Stag, grazing in a nearby clearing, raised his strong and ageing head, and twitched his ears to detect where the sound was coming from.
The monkey, who had been sitting high up in the elm perch, could see Brown Fox smiling quite contently and dancing around in his kitchen to the tune of the humming noise as it spread quickly through Crabapple Orchard. On seeing this, the monkey immediately swung towards the Great Glen.
Young Wren, at the now almost dried-out river-bed - his first visit in a long time - had been taken completely by surprise by the dark cloud which had passed over his head, making the cracked earth look like it had been filled back up by dark, cold water. The sound of the cloud was soon upon Wren too, and he dropped the worm he had been tugging out of the ground. It slithered away back into its hole, and Wren ran for cover.
By the time he reached his monkey friend at the Great Glen, it seemed as though every tree in the forest was shaking.
“They say they are here to make a formal protest against the damming of the eels' homes,” explained the monkey.
“What are they?” asked Wren - and rightly so. For as long as he could remember, Wren had not seen these creatures in his part of the forest. They were strangers.
“Bees,” came the monkey's uncomplicated answer.
The biggest bee, looking drowsy and heavy-laden with the day's collection of nectar, was in deep discussion with Owl and Squirrel, and of course Stag who had hurriedly arrived moments before.
“Of course, they may not be a real threat any more since they lost their stings,” said the monkey. “But their sheer numbers will persuade the Stag to bring a standstill to the damming campaign.”
The monkey's predictions always amazed Wren. But that was what happened - all the animals were scared of what the reappearance of the bees could mean, and - with the helpful suggestion of one Mr. B. Fox Esquire - the Great Glen once again hosted a Marking Procession to decide whether to stop the campaign. And that was that.
The monkey pointed out to Wren the peculiar nature of this Procession - because Fox asked those in favour of stopping the Owl and Squirrel's plans to make their mark on the side of the Fallen Oak which, coincidently, was the same side they had marked in favour of himself only a few short seasons before.
“I wonder if, after the Procession, it ever occurred to Fox to scrape away the moss to reveal the old marks on his side of the Fallen Oak,” asked the monkey on one particular day shortly after that particular crisis was over. It was the last time he spoke to Wren. Not long after that, he disappeared forever.
The question he had posed, however, occupied much of the introverted bird's time from that particular day onwards. He missed his friend the monkey, but that was that. He spent almost every day in the highest branches of the trees at the edge of the Great Glen, watching the Fallen Oak with its scarred bark. His gaze often wandered across the tops of all the trees in the forest, to where the monkey might be, and to where the chaos might not exist.
The pattern of life in the Great Forest had been changed forever. The frogs always complained about the toads who had to take up permanent residence in “their” ponds; the Wise Stag was rarely seen in the Great Glen at all - preferring to spend his days grazing in the nearby clearing and be left alone; Tawny Owl and Grey Squirrel took over the mantel left by Stag - and not everyone was happy with that self-appointed arrangement. The doves had long ago left for another forest; Brown Fox's kitchen was continuously burning unwanted strawberries and many animals were often seen rolling around Crabapple Orchard cradling their stomachs.
Old rivalries re-emerged slowly, but surely. Each animal group began to divide back into their sets - birds against fish; frogs against toads, foxes against squirrels; and the bees, who remained a permanent presence in the forest, were against anyone who came their way - their stings somehow having grown back, reappearing miraculously overnight.
In the middle of all the chaos was Wren. Small and insignificant, unable to withstand the panic which had spread throughout the forest as quickly as the bees had on that shocking day of that shocking season.
One tree was no longer distinguishable from another tree. Fern looked like oak, oak looked like elm. And the whole forest turned as dry and lifeless to Wren as the river-bed did in summer. The rainy season never returned for him.....
“And that was that.”
“Well? What happened after that?”
“That can't be the end, can it?!”
“Did the monkey ever return?”
The whole audience was hanging on the next word of Lieutenant Alex Rennington, V.C., who sat grooming the head of a stuffed chimpanzee toy in the corner of the day room.
But he didn't speak another word. The gathering waited for a while and then, when it was obvious that he was finished, they began to leave.
“Maybe tomorrow, eh, Alex?” smiled Nurse Crowley.
“Isn't there a 'Happily Ever After' ending then?” said another patient sarcastically, obviously disappointed at not hearing more about the Great Forest.
“What would drive a young man like that to have a breakdown on that scale?” pondered Dr. Stevens, pointing out a newspaper he wanted to buy from the clinic shop. “And why create a fantasy world of so many complex characters to escape into?”
“It is a very complicated case,” replied Dr. Peters. “But at this stage, your guess is as good as mine, I'm afraid.”
The shopkeeper handed the doctor his paper and tutted when he read the front page headline:
"THE WORLD AT WAR… AGAIN: THE LATEST PICTURES FROM THE FRONT!"
“I've seen this sort of thing before,” added Dr. Peters, sounding forlorn. “Hope is something he seems to have lost sight of. He'll be here until he's very old if the situation doesn't show some improvement soon.”
(word count: 5,045)
©CGAllan, 1999 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First and foremost, I love writing stories with animal characters in them - I was never a "natural" storyteller, I've had to work at it and know I still have a long, long way to go to practice my art… I can still remember at school writing a piece of creative writing at the age of 16 and thinking it was the best ever (something about a cartoonist in World War 2 who is drafted to go to war, and surprise, surprise, he gets his hands blown off - corny, I know!). My English teacher gave me it back without marking it and told me to start over - I thought long and hard and began to "write what I know" - my parents always kept dogs as I grew up so I crafted a completely different story about a dog called "Bracken" and his adventures on an average day roaming around the village he lived in... I got top marks for that and the experience of writing stories with animals as the heroes has stuck with me ever since - just take a look at my Young Kids Stories page to read more...
The idea for this story came from the real-life backdrop at the time being the 2nd Gulf War. It was a worrying time for everyone, and personally, being only in my late teens, I remember having conflicting feelings about what I thought about fighting in a war and the political reasoning behind such an undertaking. I was "of age" to go to war, at that time, to be "called up" if it required (and this was certainly discussed in the news). For this reason, personally, it's a story of the loss of childhood, really... So I although I did write the piece with a specific conflict in mind (the Grey Fox = President Clinton and the Red Squirrel was PM Tony Blair), I was thrilled when close friends read this and they interpreted the inspiration for the story differently – some saw the Cold War and other conflicts – I think this is fantastic and I’m always amazed and impressed how writing can touch different people in different ways…
I always knew I wanted to begin with a Disney-style scene, painted with lush colours and fun-loving descriptions and then descend slowly into the mirky tones and bleak look of the forest/world around Wren/myself by the story’s final twist in the day room of the sanitarium… The monkey is a strange character to have just plonked into a story that's seemingly set in a typical English forest but I wanted to have him stand as someone who was outside of the whole sequence of events unfolding, much like Wren is at the beginning but he of course does not escape being pulled back into it by the end. I also liked the notion of using an ape because of the idea that he's escaped from one of the "human prisons" or deplorable animal testing labs which are still operating in the UK today...
The final twist is meant to come as a shock to the reader, to offer a real jolt in the narrative. I'm always curious as to whether it seems too much "out of the blue" but I always knew the story was going to end like that before I even began writing it. I've toyed with what the headline on the newspaper headline should say at the end a lot - it's the central message of the story - can we ever be rid of war in our time or future times when we look at the mistakes we've made time and again in the past? The story ends on a pretty low point with little hope and so I guess I'm being a pessimist and asserting that we won't ever bring an end to war... Who knows, I may be wrong, but a new memorial to fallen members of the forces here in the UK, recently erected, at least acknowledges that we may still make the mistake of going to war in the future, since they have a section of wall which remains blank, ominously awaiting the names of those not yet sacrificed to humankind's wars against themselves: http://www.forcesmemorial.org.uk/
This time, as opposed to the previous stories on this page, I've used different styles of Vanessa Stafford's artwork to show the changing seasons/nature of Wren's world - from gathering storm clouds to torched earth and then the final mixing of two worlds... I’m as thrilled as ever to be hosting some of Vanessa’s art on this story page once more – these particular ones I think show the breadth of her painting talent and also prove her unique artistic style stretches across many different landscapes types – I could sit and look at them for hours. They take me away to distant places and times, both into my past memories and future hopes, and I think that’s what every good picture should do…
In early 2007 I decided to try different ways to add intrigue and anticipation to my writing for readers and made this post over at my writing journal blog:
http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2007/01/get-in-for-trailers-before-main-feature.html
Then I put a "teaser trailer" on each of my story blogs to prelude the stories that were "Coming soon". Here's what the teaser for "A Story From My Childhood" looked like:
Recollecting here soon will be a brand new tale
of days gone by...
"A Story from my Childhood"
(a short wondering)
by CGAllan
And debuting with it will be more haunting
watercolours from artist Vanessa Stafford...
(Until then, why not read a story from the shelf below?
