Portrait of Jean Abercromby

(Inspired by painting of same name by Allan Ramsay & Day Dreams by Alfred Walter Bayes)

He wants to paint my portrait. I suppose it was to be expected, I did marry a painter. I feel… unusual. I can’t quite describe it. It’s the way he looks at me. It’s different now. I’m no longer his Jean, his forever love, his sweetheart. Something has shifted in his gaze. I catch him staring; while we’re eating breakfast or talking, or when we make love. He looks at me with a cold determination, just for an instant. It’s as if he is weighing me up, sizing me, turning and analysing me. I am no longer a heart, a mind, a body. My flesh is merely a colour. I am angles and lines. I am shadows and light. I have become his subject.

Yesterday he brought me a posy of delicate, wild flowers. He said he picked them from the edge of the woodland that borders our estate. He wrote me a love letter and brought me tea with honey. We talked and kissed and sat on my tiny settee until late afternoon, when I dozed off, as I often do on an afternoon. I awoke a little later to find him sketching me in his little book. He had pulled my gown over the settee and placed my posy next to me. It was then that I realised how perfectly the flowers in my posy matched the flowers on my gown; red, white and blue with green leaves. Should I have felt flattered to find my husband drawing me while I slept? Perhaps. But there was that keen look again, that steely eye, that firm mouth. This was not a loving husband seeking to capture his beloved’s image to treasure. This was something else.

He smiled at me and put down his tools. ‘You are beautiful’ he whispered. ‘A vision. The afternoon light is your best. Tomorrow you will sit for me, in my studio. I am ready to paint you.’ He took my hands in his, putting aside the love letter I still held, and kissed them. Then he led me into the garden and we walked through the willows and along the riverside. There was a faint mist floating just above the water. It drifted silently towards us. It touched my skin as I stood at the water’s edge. I shivered. He drew me closer to him with his damp hands and held my shoulders. ‘You need a shawl’ he murmured. I smiled at him. ‘A lace shawl, yes, and a pearl choker around your neck. I have one. Yes, yes, and you will wear your blue dress.’ I turned back to the misty river, and felt my skin grow cold.

The trail of war

(Inspired by painting of same name by Sydney Carline)

As I walked over the fields, kicking up dirt with my scuffed tan boots and tripping over the hard rocks that jutted out of barren earth, I came across an eerie thing, an old abandoned playground.

It lay a few fields ahead of me, but I could see it in the dimming daylight; all bent and wonky. Rust-coloured climbing frames and a broken roundabout. As I came closer, I felt my pace quicken. I realised I was excited. It was just so absurd. In this wasteland of dirt and emptiness, of unploughed fields, of nothingness, here, was a children’s playground. In a field, miles from anywhere, with juicy green grass, the only grass I’d seen all day, here it stood, silently. Seen only by me and the heavy white clouds sitting so close above, that looked ready to drop like a feather-heavy duvet and smother the whole scene.

I felt my feet running, almost skipping towards this mirage, but then I noticed something, something wrong, something I couldn’t quite place. The climbing frame, it wasn’t a climbing frame, it looked like, no… a propeller? I stopped running. I stood still, suddenly a little scared.

Be the Butterfly

The searing summer sun shines through a wall of windows and into the eyes of a young woman seated at a round reception desk. She squints. She closes her eyes for a minute and her face seems serene. The phone rings. It startles her and she grabs it quickly to stop the noise, her eyes now open wide. As she replaces the receiver, she pulls at her high collared shirt and adjusts the long sleeves, which stick to her skin slightly. She stops abruptly and pretends to be writing a note as a woman walks down the stairs above her, across reception and through an internal door. Her head lowered; she says nothing. The receptionist resumes her fiddling with the shirt, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and switching on a small, white, plastic fan. Another woman descends the stairs, but this time stops to chat. The conversation is stunted, awkward; the woman’s eyes are probing, quickly darting back and forth from the receptionists face to her blonde hair, to her shirt. The receptionist blushes, worrying that the woman has noticed how sweaty she is in the stifling shirt. The woman is wearing a cotton vest; her light brown hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, exposing her neck. She stands with her hands on her hips and laughs a little too loudly. When she leaves, the receptionist rushes to the toilet to splash herself with cold tap water and to hide for a while. She looks at herself in the mirror, the fluorescent strip lights only exacerbating her insecurities. She presses powder on her pale face and sprays deodorant inside her shirt. She stares in the mirror and frowns, then opens the door and returns to her desk.

Her afternoon alternates between half-hearted chatting with women who stop by to waste time and hours of staring at the trees outside the door. She watches them move in the silent breeze, a breeze she cannot feel. Her fan is a poor substitute.

She smiles and welcomes each visitor on arrival. She brings them a drink and talks about weather, and laughs at the same jokes she hears every day. She bids them goodbye when they leave with warm-hearted wishes. She packs up her things and walks home at the end of the day in the thin lines of shadows wherever she can.

In the coolness of night, she sits in the dark, on a large wooden bed. She stares at strings of tiny round mirrors that hang from the ceiling. She pats her wet skin with a coffee coloured towel, then looks at herself in the dressing-table mirror and cries. Her whole body stiffens as she lets her towel fall and twists her torso around to see her back in the reflection. Two ivory coloured wings protrude from broken skin, so delicate, diaphanous. She pulls at them. She scratches and tears at the surrounding skin. Her husband enters the room quietly, and watches her for a moment, then comes to sit on the bed beside her and takes her hand in his, holding it for a moment, before letting go to pick up a tube of cream from the dressing-table. He rubs the cream on the wounds. She winces, not just at the pain but also at the sight she sees in the mirror. She studies his face as he tends to her, searching for a hint of the disgust she’s sure he feels, of the repulsion he must be suppressing. She closes her eyes to escape the image, to escape the panic that threatens to overtake her. Hot tears leak from her closed lids with every gentle stroke of his fingertips. She weeps silently. He puts away the cream, then turns her around and wipes away her tears, which only creates more. His tenderness touches her so deeply she can hardly bear it. But she does. This ritual is a nightly one. She has had this affliction for many years.

When they first fell in love she was normal, or at least she looked that way. She even wore halter-tops, her long hair swaying and tickling her back when she walked. One night she felt a strange sensation, a burning, throbbing feeling. She went to bed in pain and dreamt of butterflies, trapped inside her body, fluttering under her skin, drowning in her blood. When she woke the next morning, she had wings. Only her husband knows.

She used to beg him to try to tear them off, but he refused, so she did it herself; just once. In a hot bath one night, she contorted her body to reach them and ripped and tore at herself, screaming in agony. She finally fainted from the pain; slumped over the side of the bathtub, immersed from the waist down in crimson water, with tattered translucent gauze floating on the surface. The wings grew back, slowly and painfully. She didn’t try again.

So now she just covers them up and hopes no one notices anything strange. She goes to work and pretends every day, except for the really bad days when she calls in excuses, then hides inside and cries.

It’s late one afternoon, another hot and humid, hellish one; she is setting up a meeting room. She drags the tables and chairs into place and begins to secure the heavy panels of the room divider that she has pushed aside for the meeting. She is running late; the room is filling with women, they’re watching her, waiting to take their seats. As she struggles with the metal winch, it jams inside the lock. She twists and tugs at it in desperation, everyone is looking. In one forceful pull, she frees the winch at last, but the panels start to rock and swing and grind. A screw falls from the ceiling rail and she lifts her head to look, the panels start to shift and groan, then tumble onto each other like deafening dominos. She leaps out of the way but moves too late and the pile of panels throw her to the floor. More embarrassed than hurt she lets two older women help her up and checks that no one-else is injured. Uncomfortable she tries to move away from the old woman still holding her by the arm. She turns to tell her she’s just fine and notices the woman’s look of shock. The woman is reaching out fingers towards her back. She shudders and then she sees, her shirt is ripped and soaked with blood. She cranes her neck to look and horrified, a sob escapes her. She cannot breathe. Her shirt is hanging from her back, her skin is cut and there, in this room of women, all gaping in undisguised terror, her nightmare is realised, her wings exposed.

Panic overpowers her, distraught, she tries to flee the room. The old woman stops her. She grips her arm; she blinks to clear the tears that flood her eyes. What torture can they have in store for the freak that walks among them? She still can’t breathe. The room is turning white. The old woman is saying something; she focuses her eyes again and looks. She’s pulling up her skirt. She’s hoisting it up above her knees, has she gone mad? A gasp, uttered in unison, as every woman in the room makes sense of what she’s seeing; a tail, a stripy tail, all gold and black, as if she were a tiger. The room is silent, still. Suddenly the atmosphere is charged with something; something strange and new. Slowly another woman moves, she pushes back her heavy fringe and timidly reveals two tiny horns. She waits for a reaction but instead another woman steps forward and starts to lift her shirt.

In the coolness of night, she sits in the dark, on her large wooden bed. She stares at strings of tiny round mirrors that hang from the ceiling. She pats her wet skin with the coffee coloured towel, then looks at herself in the dressing-table mirror and smiles. She lets her towel fall and twists her torso around to see her back in the reflection. She stares at her ivory coloured wings, so delicate, diaphanous. She touches them. They feel so soft, so sheer. Her husband enters the room quietly; she senses him and turns around. He smiles at her, she laughs and then her wings begin to flutter.

Wandering

A boy wanders woefully down a dusky Sicilian beach, the sun slowly setting over the slumbering ocean. The pebbles beneath his feet are coarse and scratch his skin. He doesn't notice. His thoughts are elsewhere.

'Ciao Giovanni.' He turns his head, sighs, resents the intrusion. 'Ciao Paulo.' He walks faster. 'Giovanni…cosa c'e'? He wonders why he must explain himself to everyone. 'Niente, niente…ciao.' He continues along the now darkening shoreline. He has been rude to his friend, he didn't want to be, but he is in no mood for empty conversation. He is in the mood to be alone.

A girl sits solitary by a foggy Yorkshire window, watching the relentless rain. The radiator beside her is beginning to burn her skin. She doesn't notice. Her thoughts are elsewhere.

The phone rings. She turns her head, sighs, resents the intrusion. 'Dad again.' She checks the caller display and lets the machine answer. 'Hello…it's dad…can ya' ring me back please.' She wonders how a voice can make her feel so threatened. The sound invades her sanctuary and makes her shudder. 'Go away.' She deletes the message. She has offended her father, he knows she's there, but she is in no mood for a confrontation. She is in the mood to be alone.


It's late. The sky is black. The boy can't sleep. His mind is always searching, inside, outside, seeking a solution. The suffocating, sweltering darkness turns his probing eyes inward and the turmoil tires him. He sleeps, and dreams…of a loving father.

He dreams his father appears in the empty doorway, proud and smiling, reaching out arms filled with love and apologies. He is a child again. His father lifts him up and looks at him admiringly. Next he is a man, his father confides in him. It was all a mistake, a misunderstanding. His father is here now and he's here to stay. He is eager to know…his son.

It's late. The sky is grey. The girl can't sleep. Her mind is always searching, inside, outside, seeking a solution. The all-consuming, chilling darkness turns her probing eyes inward and the turmoil tires her. She sleeps, but dreams…of her loathing father.

She dreams her father appears in her doorway, cold and condemning. She is a child again. He berates her for singing, for talking, for making his head hurt. Next she is older, he's shouting again. Suspicious, and bitter, he turns away, ignoring her words. He refuses to listen, he refuses to trust, he refuses to see…his daughter.

This boy and girl are seas apart, but both haunted by one spectre, both harbouring a deep regret and hiding an enormous chasm. Each one estranged in a different way, each one bewildered.



The boy has never met his father. They live in different places. When he left this sleepy town behind, he also left his unborn son. All the boy has is a dirty old photograph with creased edges, of a young, skinny man with dark hair and green eyes. A picture from the past, that he keeps in a creaky drawer and looks at in secret, so as not to upset his mother. He searches the face for similar features but finds none. They share a name but nothing more.

He often wishes he could know his father. Whatever he may be. Nothing could be worse than the emptiness of abandonment.

The girl lived with her father for nearly eleven years. They lived in many places. At first she was his tiny treasure but the novelty became a nuisance. All the girl has are distressing memories, of an angry man with cruel eyes and a scathing voice. Pictures from the past, that she carries with her in a noisy mind and tries to discard; they depress her mother. She used to search his face for similar features but she found none. She realised that his face just like his heart could never be shared.

She often wishes she'd never known her father. However that may feel. Nothing could be worse than the humiliation of rejection.

A suntanned boy, a pallid girl, different, but the same. Each one hurting, sometimes hating, always wishing, things were different. Longing for one loving look, one caring word…acknowledgment. Each one, believing they're alone.


On quiet afternoons, these separated siblings both huddle in corners and scribble in notebooks, unaware of their connection. They pour their hearts into clean white pages and place the words they long to say on a shelf where no one will see.

In the shadowy hours before sleep, when daytime objects become crouching monsters, and the walls sigh and complain from the pressures of holding everything together, the boy and the girl close their eyes and travel to the same place. On a jagged cliff over a stormy sea, they shout their words across the ocean for the wind to steal. 'You don't even know me.' 'Non la conosco.' 'You're hurting me.' 'Mi fa male.' 'What's wrong with me?' Their agony explodes with each crashing wave. Their salty tears return to the infinite depths below them. Finally they scream at the thunderous sky in unison, the question that burns the fiercest. 'Papa…Dad…why don't you love me?'

Night becomes day. The boy wanders down the dawning beach. He wanders and wonders. He turns to the rolling waves and shouts. He feels the wind wrenching at his face and he sends his pain across the water, away, away, away.

Night becomes day. The girl wanders through the relentless rain. She wanders and wonders. She looks into the sky and cries. She feels the cool raindrops washing the hot tears from her face and the water washes her pain away, away, away.

JOI

The music flows into my ears
It travels through my mind
My soul is lifted through the roof
I leave the world behind

I feel the rhythm in my veins
The beat controls my heart
My body is possessed by dance
Now we can never part


I'm walking quickly towards the open double doors. I'm walking so quickly, that I'm almost running. I can feel the hairs on my arms rising up. My whole body is covered in goose bumps. The bitter wind whips around my legs, sending chills up my back, freezing my neck and causing my teeth to chatter. But I don't care about the cold. I don't care that my short, flimsy skirt and midriff top are not the kind of thing a young girl should be wearing on a cold night, in a dark car park, on the side of a lonely road, in the middle of nowhere. All I care about is getting through those doors!

I can see the rectangle of brilliant light shining out into the still, black night. I can hear the throbbing bass pumping out of the walls of the grotty, dilapidated building. I can feel the monstrous beating of the dangerously overloaded speakers, pulsing beneath the ground I walk on. The rhythm is pulling me in like a magnet. I can't fight it. I won't fight it. I want to run. I want to be inside!

I'm there. I'm at the entrance. Familiar faces greet me. Familiar voices call to me. "It's Smiler…. Hi Smiler…. Have a good night Smiler!" I pay my specially reduced members fee, then hold out my trembling hand to be stamped. I hurry up the ramp in my favourite knee high boots. My friends are close behind me, but I don't see them, I don't hear them. All I want to hear is the music. I push open the rickety, wooden door and become immediately enveloped in a blanket of sound.

As I float through the mass of bodies, all moving to the same rhythm, I feel like I have come home. Every way I turn, everywhere I look, a smile beams back at me. A smile from a good friend, a smile from a new friend, a smile from someone I have never seen before. There are no strangers here. Everyone belongs. I have never experienced such an overwhelming sense of belonging as this.

I begin to dance before I've finished walking. My friends appear beside me and we dance like the possessed. For that is what we are! The DJ mixes in another track. He starts with just a hint. A teasing taste of what is coming next. My heartbeat pounds in time to the beat. I begin to sing the next song before it even starts. I beam in the direction of my best friend and she returns the gesture. We both know what is coming. It's one of our favourite tunes. They're all our favourite tunes.

By now my smile has replaced my face. My cheeks are aching, I feel like my mouth won't ever return to its former shape. But still, I can't stop myself. It's contagious. Everywhere I direct my face, another smile breaks out. Such genuine pleasure aroused by such a simple act. I feel loved! As silly as that sounds, it's how I feel. Not one disparaging glance is thrown at me, not one disdainful comment, not one. Just pure and powerful happiness. It bounces from person to person around the dingy room. For that's all this place is. A large oddly shaped room, crudely attached to a smaller room and some cramped and leaky toilets. But the building doesn't matter; it's the people inside. We are one. We are music and movement and emotion. We are the perfect atmosphere.

I lift my head to gaze at the darting lights above me. The strobe, first white, then pink, then blue, illuminating the faces of the crowd below. I raise my hands and pound the beat into the air around me. I follow the light, entranced by its beauty. My fingers reach towards it as though they could touch its source. I cannot look away. It holds me in a hypnotic state. My only escape is to close my eyes. Once again the music flows through me, lifting my soul through the roof.

When I finally awaken from my lyrical trance, I see a face I know well. Another smiling member of this fascinating club. We hug, as is the custom here and try to talk, though words are hard to find in such a place. Then my friends return, before I realise they had gone and tell me that the night is nearly over.

The DJ announces the last song, though it never is the last! At once the masses chant in unison, "ONE MORE, ONE MORE" and our plea is answered. We dance again, praying for the clocks to stop their ticking, to join instead our soulful beat. But no! The music dies, the lights flash on too brightly and reality floods back into the hearts and minds of every one of us. We gaze drowsily at our new surroundings as though waking from a heavy sleep, then slowly we drift towards those double doors, reluctant to leave, lingering to say our goodbyes, to find our friends and to take one last look around at the now empty, silent, dance floor, before we must brave the chill of the early morning air and the eerie quiet of the new dawning day.

Walking towards our cars across the potholed car park, grudgingly leaving behind our perfect night, a strange hush falls over us. What is it that we have just experienced? What is that strange and beautiful sensation that is still rushing through our bodies? There is only one word worthy to describe it. One word….JOI (joy).

The Autumn Adventure

On a cold October day, the first October day, little Enzo was celebrating his birthday.

Autumn had turned the leaves on the trees into a kaleidoscope of colours. They were yellow and brown and orange and a wonderful shade of red like a burning fire. Many had fallen to the ground to make a crispy and crackly carpet that crunched when you walked on it.

It was too cold to play outside so Enzo stayed in the house and played party games with his mummy and daddy and big sister Romina. After they had all eaten a special tea and a scrumptious piece of birthday cake each, Enzo ran upstairs to his bedroom to play with his new toys.

When he got to his room he realised that among his presents there was a package he hadn’t seen before, but instead of the usual shiny paper and fancy bows it was wrapped in brown paper and masking tape with shipping labels on it from a country he’d never heard of. ‘Perhaps it was there by accident?’ he thought, but no, there was his name on the top, it was for him. He carefully peeled off the masking tape and pulled off the many layers of thick brown paper and eventually uncovered… a little brown wooden box on little brown wooden legs. It didn’t look very interesting. Maybe there would be something good inside?

He lifted the lid slowly, it was heavier than it looked and it creaked like something very old. He felt a cold breeze blow across his face and turned to see if the window was open, he didn’t know why it would be open on such a cold October day. As he turned to look, a blustery gust of wild wind whipped up around him and lifted him off his feet. He tried to grab hold of his bedpost but it was just out of his reach and he could only stare longingly at his little bed as the wind sucked him backwards into the little brown wooden box and the lid loudly slammed shut.

For what seemed like forever, Enzo hurtled down a dark and woody tunnel, caught in a current of air that pulled him towards a strange light. Then, with a sudden thud he landed hard on a bed of dry and scratchy leaves. He dragged himself up and crawled through a little hole in the darkness towards the eerie light he had seen before.

Enzo couldn’t believe what he saw! Bark, branches, leaves, it was true, he was kneeling on a branch of a very tall tree surrounded by many more tall trees, he must have just crawled out of a tree-trunk. The eerie light was the sun shining through autumn coloured leaves, making it shimmer and change from yellow to brown to orange to red.

The wind was much calmer up here and Enzo thought it sounded like someone whispering. ‘Welcome Enzo, welcome to the Kingdom of the Trees.’ ‘No’ he told himself, “I didn’t hear that, I’m imagining.’ ‘Welcome Enzo’ it whispered again ‘and Happy Birthday.’ Enzo shuffled around in a circle but couldn’t see anyone. ‘You can’t see what’s in front of your eyes’ the voice whispered again. Enzo stared into the trees around him and for a moment he thought he saw a face staring back. He looked again and there it was, two tired eyes, a gnarly old nose and a sappy smile. There was a face… in the tree! As he gawped in amazement, all of the trees began to shuffle and he realised there were lots of faces. He felt a rumble and turned to see that the branch he was crouching on was attached to a particularly old and weather-beaten face. ‘I hope you’re comfortable’ it groaned. Enzo froze in fear. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ the tree murmured ‘we won’t harm you, we brought you here to give you a gift, your final birthday present.’ ‘Yes’ agreed the other trees, all humming in unison, ‘a gift, a gift.’

Enzo sat still in silent shock and listened as the trees all spoke together in creaking whispers. ‘We are the Kismet, the trees of destiny. We gave one branch to a woodsman to make the little brown box that was given to you today. The box is a part of us, and so it returns to us and that is how you travelled here. We are very old Enzo and we know many things. We want to share our knowledge with a boy, who will grow into a man who will use it wisely. Will you use our knowledge wisely Enzo?’ ‘Yes’ gasped Enzo ‘I will, I promise.’ ‘Promise’ echoed the trees ‘good, then we shall tell you, but we can only share one secret each year, it is the way. You must return each year, on the day of your birth to the Kingdom of the Trees, so that you can learn from us and you must keep the box safe, it is the doorway. Do you agree to it?’ ‘I do, I do’ replied Enzo. ‘Then it is done’ the trees rustled ‘the boy is the Keeper of the Doorway to the Kingdom of the Trees.’

At this, the branch Enzo rested on began to shake and he fell, fast, down through the tall tangled tree. Just before he hit the ground a leafy limb caught him and planted him firmly in the earth below, the damp soil covering his feet and legs right up to his knees. ‘Your first lesson’ the trees sang. ‘Always remember to keep your feet firmly on the ground.’ With this a ropy root thrust up beneath his shoes and catapulted him back up through the branches and further still until he was high in the cold blue sky, looking down on the forest of amber treetops. He heard the trees beneath him calling, ‘But never forget to keep your head in the clouds, so that your imagination can soar with the birds.’ He fell down again into the tree he had started in and it quickly formed a cradle of leaves to catch him safely. As he tried to find his breath, the trees hummed again. ‘You must leave us now little Enzo, but come back next October on the day you were born and we will share another secret. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.’ The canopy of leaves above him parted and the sun shone down, lighting up the hole he had first crawled out of. ‘Goodbye then’ Enzo called to the trees ‘…and thank you I guess? I’ll come back in a year.’ He crawled back through the hole into the dark tree-trunk and the wind whipped up again and blew in after him, pushing him upwards like a jet stream through the darkness until he felt his head hit something and out he flew from the little brown box and onto his bedroom floor.

‘What on earth just happened?’ he wondered ‘and what did my lesson mean?’ Then he began to giggle, ‘I am the Keeper of the Doorway to The Kingdom of the Trees, ME! I am the Keeper of the Doorway to The Kingdom of the Trees!’ He danced around his room and jumped on his bed laughing and singing the words.

‘Enzo!’ shouted his sister from downstairs, ‘What are you doing?’ He bounced off his bed and leapt down the stairs and into the kitchen where his mummy and daddy and sister were making hot chocolate. ‘Having fun Enzo?’ his daddy laughed. ‘You’ve been very quiet up there’ his mummy added, ‘until now!’ ‘I was having an adventure’ Enzo beamed. His big sister Romina looked at him curiously. ‘What have you really been up to?’ she quizzed. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you’ he whispered to her, ‘it’s a magical secret. ‘Oh I know all about magical secrets’ she replied, ‘I am the Spring Princess after all.’ Enzo’s mummy and daddy smiled and Enzo and Romina scurried upstairs.

‘You have to promise not to tell!’ Enzo warned her. ‘I promise’ she said. So Enzo showed Romina the little brown wooden box with the little brown wooden legs and they each used one hand to slowly lift the heavy, creaky lid. Enzo held his breath and waited for them both to be sucked in… but nothing happened. He peered into the box and saw only some little brown wooden trays with toy cars and marbles, playing cards and dominoes and a miniature game of ludo. ‘That’s your magical secret!’ Romina frowned, ‘great!’ With that, she turned and marched out of the room. ‘Boys don’t know anything about magical secrets!’

Enzo closed the lid and opened it again but nothing happened. It was just a normal little brown wooden box with little brown wooden legs and inside it were little brown wooden trays with toy cars and marbles, playing cards and dominoes and a miniature game of ludo. He tried it again the next day and the day after and the day after, but it was always the same. “I suppose I’ll have to wait a year’ he told himself ‘until my birthday, a whole year, that’s such a long time.’ So he put the little brown wooden box with little brown wooden legs in the bottom of his wardrobe and he checked it often to make sure it was safe. Sometimes he played with the toy cars or played Ludo with his sister, but he always put everything back exactly as it was, just in case, and he waited, a little impatiently perhaps, until his next birthday.

For only on his birthday, that one special day of the year that is his, will the box transform. Only on a cold October day, the first October day, does the box become magic and transport him to another world, to the Kingdom of the Trees. Only then can Enzo return to the Kismet, the trees of destiny and learn their secrets, as the Keeper of the Doorway to The Kingdom of the Trees. Only in October, for it’s not just any adventure, it’s an autumn adventure.

THE END

The Spring Princess

Once upon a springtime, in the small hours before dawn, a baby girl was born, and her parents called her Romina. Little Romina was so precious that everyone who saw her loved her at once.

Spring soon became summer and autumn and winter followed. Time flew swiftly, as if on bird wings and baby Romina was soon a young girl.

On sunny days Romina loved to play in the garden amongst the grass and the flowers, and she would sing happily for hours. But her favourite thing to do was to listen to her mummy’s stories about a very special princess, who brought sunshine to the world.

Every night her daddy would tuck her into bed and her mummy would come and tell her about the Spring Princess. The Spring Princess was born with sunshine in her heart, hair that smelled like fresh flowers and a voice like a bird’s song. Romina thought it would be wonderful to be the Spring Princess and have all of nature love you so. Sometimes when she fell asleep, she would dream that she really was the Spring Princess, singing with the sparrows in the branches of a creaking tree and spreading sunlight over the garden, to make the daisies grow.

One cloudy morning Romina woke from one of her dreams and told her mummy and daddy that she wished she were the Spring Princess and not just an ordinary little girl. Her daddy laughed and said to her… ‘Romina, when you smile you make everyone feel warm inside and when you laugh the room gets brighter. That’s because you have sunshine in your heart.’ Then he lifted a strand of her hair and placed it under her nose. ‘What does it smell like?’ Romina gasped… ’Flowers!’ Then Romina’s mummy told her to look at the mirror on the wall and whispered… ‘Look at your eyes… do you see that sparkle?’ ‘Yes,’ whispered Romina, ‘I see it’. Her mummy smiled. ‘That’s the sunlight shining out of you, for everyone to see.’

Romina felt so wonderful. Her dreams had come true. But then, she remembered something. ‘Mummy, the Spring Princess had a voice like a bird’s song. Her mummy lifted her up and opened the window. Outside on the fence were perched two small sparrows. Romina began to giggle with glee, and at that a blackbird appeared and swooped down onto the window ledge. ‘You see’ said mummy, very quietly, so as not to frighten the birds. ‘They think you’re one of them.’

Romina’s heart skipped a beat and she was sure she felt it swell. She looked up at the sky and the most extraordinary thing happened. The grey clouds melted away and the sun shone brighter than she’d ever seen it shine. Romina exclaimed… ’I really am the Spring Princess! I really am!’

From that day on, Romina loved to play in the garden even more than she had before. She sang to the flowers, and her new friends; the birds, and had picnics in the long grass almost every day. But Romina decided that the best thing of all about being the Spring Princess, was that now when the day was over and her mummy and daddy called her inside, she never had to say goodbye to the sunshine. Romina knew that if she just started to smile and laugh and make her eyes sparkle, she could spread sunshine all through the house and her mummy and daddy would laugh and sing, because even in winter their house felt like spring!

THE END