By: Hugin

The castle stood on the edge of the cliff. For centuries it had stood there, and it was as strong and majestic in ruins as it had been in its glory days. Instead of the hustle and bustle of busy servants, and the dancing and feasting of the earls and their guests, there was the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the sea birds who nested high on the ruined tower.

Standing alone on the cliff edge, she was reminded of how few centuries had passed between that time and now. It seemed only a breath away to her. She could imagine it all as though she was witnessing it there and then, and the busy and inexhaustible chattering of the birds simply made it more real.

But it was an eerie place to wait for someone. There were dark, long evening shadows everywhere that she looked and, whenever a bird flew overhead, the shadow seemed to block out the light for a moment. Why had she arranged to meet him there? And why was he so late?

She glanced up at the sun and then tried to blink away the bright lights that hovered in front of her vision. He wasn’t going to turn up, she decided, listening to the silky sea song below her that rippled its merry music as it brushed into the cove. He wasn’t going to turn up. She would have to keep waiting.

The shadows grew longer and longer, and she began to think of the many troubling things that the evening could bring with it. Where there had once been fires, there were now just patches of darkness that led up to blocked chimneys. Where there had been dancing and merriment, there were now only long grasses waltzing in the wind.

She knew in her heart that she had waited long enough for him. And she knew, deep down, that he was not coming. But she would give him just a short while longer. After all, she thought to herself as the chill wind picked up around her, she had waited five hundred years – another day in eternity would make no difference.

By: everylittlething

Sarah crossed and uncrossed her legs as she listened to the music.  She was aware of a connection.  She recognised notes in sequences she had never knowingly heard before.  She was able to predict the theme as it developed.  Sarah’s face tingled until the tingling even reached her eye sockets.  Hot like a boiler house, then cold as an icy morning in pyjamas.  The music settled Sarah into a trance-like state.

This was the first performance of a recently discovered piece by William Starling, a composer from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, apparently well-known in his day.

That night Sarah woke up and whimpered as she lost control of her dream.  Something was trying to tell her why the music affected her the way it did – but it had gone.  Sarah felt cold – as if she were standing beside someone’s graveside.

Work was hectic and so the dream and the concert faded.  Over the next few days Sarah would think of that evening but it did not consume her as she had expected it would.

After three weeks Sarah drove north to a school friend’s wedding – a novel affair from the steps of a gypsy caravan, with the guests sprawled on woollen rugs in a semi-circle around the happy couple.  She left as early as she was decently able and drove to a church a few miles on the other side of the village.  This place had turned up in Sarah’s genealogy, so she was delighted when she found it unlocked.  She went inside.  The building had the usual musty smell – old stone, old wood, old hangings and carpets.  Sarah read through memorial plaques to named strangers and then – one she recognised.  A shiver went through her – it was her own name:

SARAH JANE ELIZABETH GREEN
1757 – 1836

Sarah ran her fingers around the letters and down the lines of the numbers, curving with the eight and remembering her childhood delight when she perfectly formed that number for the first time.  The oddest thing was that there was nothing else written there.  No family.  No proverb.  Nothing to paint a mental picture.  It was clear that, at the time of her death, the lady had been fairly old.  Sarah picked up a handful of faded petals – they appeared to be wild roses – and put them reverently on the small ledge beneath the plaque.  She couldn’t see a vase nearby – the petals must have blown in.

Closing the heavy door behind her, Sarah walked back through the churchyard.  She went slowly.  She was curious.  Sarah thought over her research.  No one had ever turned up before with exactly her name.  Once in her car she switched on the engine and, having switched it off previously without pushing the radio button, Classic FM spat out the title of the next piece to be played.  It was the piece from the concert which had so moved Sarah almost a month ago now.  She sat in the car and listened.  When the music had finished she switched off the radio and started back towards the motorway.

As she drove through the country lanes wild roses made confetti for the hedges.  The road became very bumpy.  Surely it wasn’t this bumpy on the way in?  Sarah slowed down and parked at the entrance to a meadow.  The remains of a cottage stood in the corner of the field.  It was even less than a ruin and more a hint of a building.  By its side were three old trees.  They appeared so venerable they might have been the dwellings of dryads.  Clambering in and out and around the trees were wispy pink wild roses.  Sarah leant on the wooden gate and watched soft eyed milking cows slowly trimming the grass.  They weren’t the usual dairy herd – black and white with hollow sides and grotesque udders – these looked more like Jerseys – yet not quite.  This was the rural idyll.  Reluctantly, Sarah got back into her car and, stopping only once more at a service station on the motorway, she drove straight home.

The next day was Sunday and Sarah rose early.  Filling in her diary, Sunday being the only day she wrote in the mornings, and this so that she would have plenty to write on Monday evenings – always  slow nights – she wrote:

“Rose early . . . ”   She paused and gazed through the window at the children across the road as they played around their father, struggling to wash the family motor.

“Rose early . . . early roses . . .wild roses . . . what was that lovely word the country folk used for wild roses?”

The kettle whistled on the hob.  Sarah made up a cafetiere and took it over to her computer, enjoying her coffee as she checked her mail.  She wandered onto her genealogy site and found she had a message:

“Hi, see you’re researching the Greens of Berston.  I know we genealogists don’t always put our findings up straight away so I’m hoping, in spite of seeing nothing about her on your tree, that you may have some info on Sarah Jane Elizabeth Green of Eglantine Cottage.  She was the sister of my 4 greats grandfather.  There are curious stories about her – before and after her death.  Wonder if you have any FACTS.  Please forgive this intrusion but if you feel you’re able to share anything you may have on Sarah please would you get back to me?  Kind regards, Tom.”

Well now, what to do?  Music.  Sarah found the CD she had bought at THAT concert and played the enigmatic track which had been on the car radio yesterday.  She sipped her coffee and reread the message.  She began to type:

“Sorry Tom – don’t have much but found a plaque in St. Mary’s, Berstoft, about 4 miles north-west of Berston.  It read simply: SARAH JANE ELIZABETH GREEN (1757 – 1836) What are your stories?  Regards, Sarah. ”

She cleared away her coffee things and went for a shower.  Half an hour later she returned to the computer and found, immediately, what she had hoped to find:

“Hi Sarah, many thanks for getting back so promptly.  Apparently Sarah Jane Elizabeth Green was a bit of a local legend.  Special lady with special powers – wonder she wasn’t burned as a witch – but a very good woman – an early vet – animal doc. – whatever – called on to tend sick animals, deliver calves, lambs etc. when there were problems.  Spent her life serving her community – never wanted for anything as people paid in kind.  I didn’t have her dates (thanks for those) but knew she had died unmarried around the time of V’s accession.  Thanks again Sarah. Keep in touch.  Regards, Tom.  PS  Don’t know your view on such as these but spooky things occurred after her death – like wild flowers blooming around her cottage at odd times of the year.  Did think I might drive over there and see if I can find it – would be great to see wild roses flowering just now since they’re supposed to be rosehips by this time of the year.  Ha! Ha!  Oh and there’s a family legend telling of a love affair she had with a wealthy farmer – gentleman farmer – country squire – who hired a composer to write a piece of music for her – half when the composition was started and the balance upon completion – wanted it to be called “Eglantine” because she loved wild roses so much.  Sad ending I’m afraid – our Sarah never heard her music as the farmer died before being able to make the final payment.  Cruel world eh?  Tom.”

Sarah felt strange.  HER world – ordered and straightforward as it had been for some considerable time – was now slightly bizarre, a little mystifying.  It was as if someone had muddied the earth around her family tree and trampled blossoms into the mud.  How sad.  How odd.  How disturbing.  How Sarah wanted to return to the place where she had stopped the car just yesterday, and then to the church.  The question was “how deep should Sarah allow herself to be immersed?”  While she considered this, she congratulated herself that now she knew the answer to one question,

“What was that lovely word the country folk used for wild roses?”

By: Lydia Crow

Originally written for: 2011 Trees for Life Charity Exhibition.

I can’t remember what he looked like, now. I’ve forgotten the detail of his features. In my mind, his face is as worn and rough as the bark of the trees which he tended until the end.

His hands are as gnarled as old, twisted roots, and just as full of life. For he may look old and weary, but he has the strength of the whole forest running through him.

It wasn’t a forest though, and it isn’t now. But to a child growing up in a kingdom of cliff and stone, that well-tended wood was as large and magical as Sherwood. I remember throwing copper and watching it sink in the water, dappled by the light filtering through the branches above. I don’t even remember making a wish, but perhaps wishes are not necessary in such havens of childhood adventures.

Though he’s gone now, that old man living in his dark, low cottage of another age, and though I never really knew him, I think if I return to that valley wearing my adult shoes I’ll see him there, back stooped and working amongst the trees. His trees, our trees.

By: Craig Forshaw

By: Craig Forshaw

Ellen Book awoke with a start.

Her hand shot out, the lamp switched on.

The shadows were chased back to the edges of the room.

The closet, behind the curtains, under the bed: they hid from her, as shadows like to do.

Even though she was safe in the light, those terrors that get inside still danced fresh within her mind. She held the covers safe to her chin, and calmed herself down, and thought about returning to sleep.

Had she done just that, maybe things would have turned out differently. Whether they would have been better or not, though, remains to be seen.

Ellen was twelve, enjoyed reading, and was bullied at school because she was an easy target. She always thought of a good comeback long after an insult, and she always blushed and said nothing when it did happen. Nobody touched her or hurt her, but their words stung like sticks and stones, and she had shed many tears this past year.

“You’re a book!” was a favourite insult, with someone having noticed she liked reading, and her name was also Book. It was stupid, and childish, and they were always saying her name and noticing her when she wished they wouldn’t.

She didn’t want to be a little girl, any more, and her boy-band posters had given way to rock groups, her books were less about adventures and more about tragedy and doomed romances, her stuffed toys hiding under her bed where they didn’t remind her of her age.

The worst thing, though, was when she did make a friend. Melody.

Melody slept over, and went for a drink during the night.

Then she told everyone what freaks Ellen’s parents were, and that was the end of that.

But right now, Ellen was scared, and she wanted to be reassured.

Her father was away on business, and her mother worked late, too. But Mum Book usually worked at home, down in the basement, where Ellen rarely went when it was dark.

Yet, tonight, she wanted someone to tell her everything was okay.

Her feet slid out from under the sheets first, tentatively, worried that something in the shadows beneath her bed would grab her ankles. She touched the cool, prickly carpet, and quickly moved away from the bed. She turned and looked at her bed.

Nothing moved in those shadows. If there was something there, it was patient.

And that made it much, much scarier.

Ellen edged her way towards the door to the landing, and reached an arm out into the darkness. She quickly felt for the light switch.

Clck!

The light came on, and she stepped out.

The stairs were next. The light switch for the living room was at the bottom, so she would have to journey down into the darkness.

Her first step made the floorboards creak a little, but as she went further down, the only sound was her soft steps, and her breathing. Everything else was that silence that sounds like nothing, but hums in your ears, anyway.

As she neared the foot of the stairs, she could see blue light coming from the windows, and the hulking gloom that coated the sofa and the arm-chair. Black murk, thick and impenetrable, hiding horrors in her head.

There was a small bit of yellow light gathered around the basement door, beneath the stairs, but it didn’t extend far.

Ellen reached the bottom of the stairs, and reached behind the coats that were hung up, reached for the light switch, knowing something was hiding there – a spider with a baby’s face, or the hand of a serial killer, or a slime that would dissolve her hand and work its way up her arm.

Clck!

It was even worse.

The lights didn’t come on.

Ellen turned, but couldn’t see very well.

Did she want to see?

Clck! Clck!

The lights weren’t working.

She stiffened, and then calmed down. Her mind was panicking, but she told herself that there was nothing there. She didn’t believe it, deep down she knew something was there, but she told herself, and repeated it. It was a mantra, and with enough repetition, she tricked herself into thinking it was true, “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there…”

Ellen moved quickly, for the safe zone of the yellow light on the floor, and opened the door to the cellar.

The yellow light was on the wall by the stairs, but the basement itself was black.

Why?

Ellen knew her mother was working down there. The lights should be on.

The yellow light hummed a little, and the hum hung in the air, as if to punctuate the silence, “!”

The walls by the stairs were a menagerie of monsters. There was a man head being melted by acid, and you could see his skull. There was an alien creature, sleek, black, with soulless eyes and sharp black teeth. There was a portrait of a family that had been murdered, the paper yellowing, but the eldest son’s face kept blurring, and twisting, before mutating into something demonic, and then turning normal again.

There were scythes, knives, bear-traps, and limbs, torsos, severed heads.

There were pictures of people covered in blood and smiling.

Then there were the film posters beside them, showing from where these props had come.

Ellen was about to step down onto the first step when she saw a hand reach into the yellow light at the bottom.

She heard breathing, and a pained groan as the hand tried to drag itself forward.

There was the wedding ring her mother had let her try on, once. The edge of a red shirt her mother was wearing. Those grey-blue fingernails.

And blood.

“Huh… huh… hel… help…” came a tired plea, struggling to escape dying lips, barely heard.

Then, the hand vanished.

Yanked away. Sudden.

There was nothing.

Not until Ellen heard a sound from the basement. It was a clakclakclak sound, but something about it she heard as being a voice. Something was talking.

She shook, and felt like she was going to wet herself.

The word, “Mum,” formed on her lips, but went unspoken.

Tears prepared to flood her cheeks.

Then, from the murky living room behind her, came the reply.

Clakclakclak!

She didn’t realise it then, but the only thing that saved Ellen was that she didn’t care what waited in the shadows, she wasn’t curious or brave, she was a scared little girl and she ran.

She ran through the darkness.

She unlocked the door.

She left her home and ran for the neighbours.

And she would always be running from the dreams of shadows, and the cellar, and a hand reaching out of the dark, for the rest of her days.

By: everylittlething

The wind pushed through the gaps in the old house making eerie sounds and demonstrating real power. Cobwebs fluttered in the face of it and dust settled in its wake. There was no one there. Spiders hugged the walls and two mice ran along skirting boards. But no one saw them. The ragged curtains trembled either side of the small window in the scullery. No one shivered. A door from one of the outbuildings was partly off its hinges and creaked with depth as it moved involuntarily to and fro.

The traveller leant against a stout tree trunk and tried in vain to light a cigarette. He looked the old house up and down. He scanned its breadth in the scant light from the moon. He had the measure of it. To him it was stone and wood and turf and twisted metal. Clearly no one was inside. It would seem that no one had been there for a very long time. He wondered how long. He carefully picked his way through tangled garden to the door and attempted to open it. It was not as difficult as he had expected and so he entered more quickly than he had anticipated. He left it wide open.

Slowly and gingerly – not wanting any injury from random obstacles, the traveller looked around the little house. Here a rotten wooden cupboard with fragments of linoleum still lining its shelves, there a small table, white with age, and, everywhere, signs of a hurried evacuation. No food – the small inhabitants would have finished that off fairly sharpish – but crockery and pans in small numbers showed the traveller where someone had cooked and eaten a very long time ago. He lit his cigarette and watched as the smoke mingled with the cloud of memory that hovered there. A loose flagstone came between him and his exit but, instead of walking around it, his mind was jumping in and out of the stories he had read. He remembered people trapped in cottages such as these. He remembered such places coming and going through years – places like Brigadoon. He remembered Silas Marner, George Eliot’s weaver, who had hidden his money as he had hoarded it. He began to work his strong fingers around the loose flagstone. With difficulty he lifted it but found nothing underneath. He put back the flagstone and laughed at himself. He became aware, however , that he was not alone. He looked behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling with something he did not recognise. There was no one there.

“You didn’t find it.”

The traveller looked up to see a young woman standing in the open doorway. She wasn’t standing very still. She seemed to be swaying but in a curving sinuous way.

“No. No – I didn’t find anything.”

“And, should you have found it, would you have kept it?”

“I – didn’t know – didn’t know what I was looking for.”

“They never do.”

“Who never does?”

“The men who come – they never know what it is that they seek – but they are all seeking something.”

“I didn’t come here to find anything.”

“No, you didn’t, but there is something missing for you and you feel an emptiness.”

“How do you – - – - – ”

“You will not find what is missing here. Go back and it will be waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“Where did you come from?”

“You seem to know all these things – you tell me where I come from!”

“You come from earth and it is to earth you shall return – but that which you are searching for is not of the earth. Go back and you will feel it.”

With that, the woman turned and it seemed she was blown along through the garden with the dried leaves and clumps of dead vegetation.

He was alone and wondering. He lit another cigarette and walked around and around the old house. It gave him no clue. He wasn’t good at taking advice. He was stumped. The wind was less aggressive now and seemed to whisper to him to leave. He closed the door behind him and stood on the path, taking in the night. His feet led him back the way he had come. It seemed the debris on the way through the wood was blown aside ahead of him. The trees coughed and croaked to him as he walked on and soon he felt a part of it all. Close to the edge of the wood he sat down and breathed in the night. The night breathed in the traveller too. And so they were one. A man whose life had been bereft of spirituality had been admitted to the spirit world.

They found him the next morning when two of the rangers arrived to fell marked trees. They told their story for a very long time. The man they had found had died peacefully and with the most wonderful expression. But the story doesn’t end there. The tree which had been his last earthly resting place was one of the marked trees felled by the rangers. As it passed through the neighbouring trees, to land on the floor of the wood, a cache of acorns and hazelnuts scattered from a crevice within its trunk. They became covered with leaf litter and settled into the earth where many germinated and developed into saplings and then into trees, breathing life into this world – life and spirit.

By: everylittlething

By: Patrick

In a move that slipped under the radar of even the most shrewd economic analysts, yesterday’s launch of the new 6-blade ‘Synthesix’ razor by UK-based company Wilkinson Sword inadvertently led to the overnight collapse of global capitalism, it has been widely reported.

Bemused and shame-faced economists, including formerly smug author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim N. Taleb, were struggling to come up with a cogent explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon. One notable exception was Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the influential Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, who suggested in an interview earlier today that the introduction of the ‘Synthesix’ to an already, in small parts, sceptical consumer market had resulted in what he termed a ‘global bullshit epiphany’, in which people finally in one moment that Levitt likened to ‘a kind of Enlightenment’ understood the cynical mechanisms through which they had been enslaved for so many years. Levitt commented:

“If you consider the field of consumer electronics, for example, there is clearly a significant technological leap from a black and white TV to a colour TV, or from a cassette player to a CD player, or even from a CD player to an iPod. But increasingly, attempts to sell newer forms of technology to the public, based perhaps on size, weight or curvature, have been founded on rather more nebulous technological pay-offs. I had anticipated that the much-hyped launch of 3-D television would bring about something like the ‘bullshit epiphany’ we are witnessing today, but I was somewhat premature in that judgment, as many people have in fact gone out and spent considerable sums of money in order to watch television programmes in a three dimensional format. It turned out that people needed an even more bullshit product to be presented to them in order to bring about this epiphany.”

Although Levitt’s ‘bullshit epiphany’ thesis has not been widely disseminated, it appears that in a cruder form it has been lurking for a while now. Indeed, Proctor and Gamble, who, through their brand, Gillette, have largely pioneered the move to add increasing numbers of blades to what was already a highly satisfactory product, released a statement earlier today condemning Wilkinson Sword for their hubris and naiveté:

“We realised with the launch of our 5-blade Fusion razor back in 2006, in which we not only added two more blades than our 3-blade Mach3 razor, but also a single sixth blade on the rear for precision trimming, that we may have pushed the public’s capacity to swallow our bullshit to its very limits. However, through a highly skilful and expensive advertising campaign featuring some of the world’s top sporting figures, we managed to persuade an economically significant percentage of the more aspirational male population that this was a worthwhile investment. Indeed, it turned out to be so successful that we then released the Fusion Power, which was battery-powered and emitted micro-pulses to increase razor glide. And I guess we should also mention the Fusion Power Phantom with the darker colour scheme, and the more recent Fusion ProGlide and Fusion ProGlide Power series with re-engineered blades. But be that as it may, we have always been highly respectful of the public and we never even considered adding a straight sixth blade to any of our products. Instead we have focused our attentions on other products to which we could profitably – and ethically – add a number of additional bullshit features, such as fabric softener and dog food. We feel that Wilkinson Sword would have done well to have heeded the increasing public literacy over bullshit products (although given the phenomenal success of Apple in updating their products with bullshit features on a bi-annual basis, we retain a degree of sympathy). Through their impulsivity, naiveté and hubristic desire for increased market share, the world as we know it is no more and we are all out of a job.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the overnight collapse of the increasingly hegemonic global capitalist system has been how peacefully it has happened. Reports have come in from all over the globe of people, most of whom are newly unemployed, walking the streets with inane smiles on their faces and occasionally bursting into fits of giggles. Yet this behaviour has come as no surprise to Jonathan Zeitlin, professor of sociology, public affairs, political science and history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

“In many ways what we are seeing on the streets today is reminiscent of the behaviours of those who experimented with hallucinogenic drugs as part of the counter-cultural revolution of the 60s. Under the influence of these psychoactive substances, people came to understand the absurdity of everything their lives had stood for up to that point and this epiphany induced hysterical laughter in the majority of people (along with a few unfortunate suicides). I think that what we are seeing on the streets today is a similar collective enlightenment, albeit one mediated by the launch of a shaving product rather than the ingestion of a hallucinogenic substance. In many ways, this makes this neo-enlightenment both more authentic and, perhaps, more sustainable.”

In support of Zeitlin’s position, former futures trader Paul Fox commented:

“Like many people I have spoken to in the streets today, the ‘Synthesix’ advert hit me with the force of a revelation, a miracle even. I feel ashamed to admit it now, but I have been updating my TV, laptop, car, and, of course, my shaving products, on an almost yearly basis for a long time now. When I look back, it is difficult not to collapse in hysterical, side-splitting laughter at the new features which seduced me into making the purchases, and then of course show them off to my friends. But at the time, it all seemed so real, so new.”

A spokesperson for the soon-to-be-liquidated company behind the ‘Synthesix’ razor, Wilkinson Sword said:

“While this was clearly not the kind of outcome we had anticipated or hoped for following the launch of the ‘Synthesix’ razor, we would like to think that we will be remembered fondly in the post-capitalist society that we have in no small way been responsible for creating.”

There are some reports that pockets of resistance remain in China, as many of the newly aspirational citizens of the People’s Republic do not seem to find the ‘Synthesix’ range in any way amusing or preposterous and have in fact been showing off their new purchases in public locations, such as gymnasium changing rooms. The full implications of China’s resistance are as yet unclear.

By: everylittlething

The old woman cycled in zigzags along the ribbon of road that gave an edge to the wood.  She was dressed completely in black.  It was a hot summer’s day but even her stockings were black.  The hair was a coil at the back of her head.  Attached by a bungee cord to the back of her bicycle was a baton of bread.  It doubled the width of the woman and her bike.

“Don’t stare Bindy!” the girl’s mother said, “This is France. There is nothing unusual in that.”

But Bindy thought this was a special scenario.  She believed there was a tale to be told here.  She imagined the old woman dismounting at the iron gates of an old country villa and walking her bicycle up a crunchy gravel driveway,  her purchase bouncing with every furrow in the stones.  She saw the woman push her bike into an old stables, remove the baton of bread, and enter the house by a side door.

“Stop the car Dad!  I need to wee!” demanded Bindy’s younger brother.  Their father pulled into a green lane amongst the trees.

During the time they were parked, Bindy was dozing, but at the same time she could hear the birds singing from the branches.  She imagined the old woman of the bread, this time in her provincial kitchen, with rows of glasses on shelves lined with linoleum; with herbs attached to a wooden structure hanging from the ceiling; with a scrubbed wooden table and a black-leaded iron range.  Bindy saw the old lady break a piece of bread from the large stick and put it under a cloth which was spread on a dresser.  Fast-forward to a shared meal with everyone mopping up a casserole from their individual soup plates.  And now  the bread had gone.  The diners had gone.  The woman was gone.  Bindy knew that the diners were playing bowls in the yard – but the old lady was nowhere near.  She wasn’t in the yard.  She wasn’t in her kitchen – nor was she elsewhere in the quiet cool house.  Bindy saw her shuffling along the edge of the garden, then into the trees where she kept glancing behind her and all around.

She reached a pile of logs and carefully moved some branches which were wedged between a couple of them.  The old woman took a piece of bread from the top of her stocking and rammed it into the logs, covering it with the small branches.  Bindy could see the woman turn and start to walk back towards the house.  Then, nothing.

“Bindy, can you wait until we reach a village ?”

“What?”

“Do you need to go?  There’s nobody about.”

“No . . . no . . . thanks.”

So the family drove on until they reached a collection of houses.  To all intents and purposes this was the nearest village – certainly the nearest settlement.

“It looks like the place in that comedy Dad’s always going on about – something about a loo,” suggested Bindy’s brother.

“Clochemerle – he means Clochemerle,” offered her mother.

But Bindy wasn’t listening.  She had recognised an old country villa in the distance.

“May we drive up and look at that old house?” asked Bindy, pointing.

They really didn’t have anywhere special to be so her dad drove along towards the house.  Bindy looked to the left and noticed something moving in the trees.  She couldn’t make out what it was.  When she asked, the others hadn’t seen anything.

They reached the house and saw iron gates opening onto a gravel driveway.  It was so typically French.  Bindy knew this house.  She had been told – no – ACCUSED – of having a vivid imagination – but if only they knew HOW vivid it was and how it connected her with people from the past.

The family left the car in order to stretch their legs.  Bindy wandered back towards the trees.  By the entrance to a field, she saw a small statue of a woman in a long flowing robe.  The stone figure was offering Bindy a baton of stone bread.

“Come and look at this,” she called to the rest of the family.

“What a funny place to have a statue,” was her mum’s response, “look – there is a plaque at the bottom.  What does it say Bindy?  I left my glasses in the car.”

Bindy read the words with a shiver,

YVETTE PRAYT    1880 – 1942
ELLE S’EST TOUJOURS CONDUITE TRES SAINTEMENT

There was no need for Bindy to say anything.  She knew more about the woman of the statue – the woman of the bread – than they would believe.  It puzzled Bindy that she should have been given this insight but she had come to accept it – and be thankful.  In this case, she knew that bread, in its different forms, was the basic food of all nations.  She knew that everyone was entitled to it – and she knew that, forever, people had put their own lives on the line to ensure their fellow men and women had this basic human right.  Bindy knew Yvette Prayt.