Golden Box Book Publishing One Picture: Thousands of Words | Page 78

toads.
Perhaps she mused, small hand fingering the long key, perhaps the
grown ups were correct. Perhaps they, and the wicked world,
accepted that the clocks going backwards decreed accuracy in the
physical world. Was a scientific fact. And she alone was a dis-
believer and thus misplaced in a selfish time belonging only to her.
A bit like discovering yourself in the mushroom circle.
Disappearing completely as the rest of the world carried on
somewhere else.
Until.
Circles of black. No sounds overhead unless she listened and then
they did. Claws and feathers. Flapflap. Round and above. Above the
water they flew. Making such a racket that the park seemed to
squeeze itself smaller in irritation. Like Daddy. He was always
irritated.
Mainly with her.
The magpies seemed to follow the thread on a route to the north of
the park. You had to count them. It was rule. Like poetry having to
rhyme. And not turning over the corners of pages in books.
She hadn’t really been up there much because her wellingtons
became heavy and after about an hour or so, her calves ached and she
got hungry.
She stopped midway to look more closely at the thread.
It was quite thin. Like the one that new girl had worn to school
before the long summer holidays. And the teacher had said to them
all to be kind because the little girl didn’t go to school because she
travelled with fairground people. Or gypsies. Or some such.
Her mother was calling to her. From back beyond the red thread.