Golden Box Book Publishing One Picture: Thousands of Words | Page 75

see them grow. Several streamed past her now in the wake of one
parent. Through lily pads and reeds, endlessly twisting in the eddies,
soft yellowwet and sleek.
Today though there was a red string around her favourite tree. It
began there and then led away to others. Joining them up in red. All
twisty round things like bark and shrub and trunk. It was ribbon and
shiny and she wasn’t entirely sure what to think about it.
Oddly gauche and a little cheap. Mummy would be very unkind
about the fabric.
She really didn’t like this interruption of the green and all the
things that lived, and swam and grew in the park. After all, it was at
the bottom of their garden. With their own gate.
She couldn’t quite work out why it was there or who had placed it
there during the night. It must have been in the night because she has
been asleep. She hadn’t brushed her teeth because mummy had
changed the toothpaste to something that was white and gritty and
reminded her of a quarry they had visited in Wales.
“Don’t be silly Sarah, it’s much better for you. And if you don’t
clean your teeth they will all fall out and then no man will want to
marry you.”
Now.
Under her favourite monkey-puzzle yesterday, mushrooms had
started to grow. No fairy circles of magic yet, but brown buttons that
fallened and burst when you poked them leaving a mess not to step
in. If you stepped inside, you would vanish. Whisked away below
into darkness by fairies that, unlike the dreamy Arthur Rackham
ones, were nasty. Fairies were builders.
And very clever.