Tuesday 1 April 2014

The land at the end of the rainbow




That summer the lake was bathed in the most glorious sunshine you could imagine. I remember thinking I had found the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold was the sparkling waters glistening in the rays of the sun. The whole place was like a mystical, magical land where fairies weave their magic and elves got up to mischief. In the evening my grandfather told us tales of the little people and during the day we played in the sunshine hoping to spot them hiding in the long grass or amongst the trees. A long, hot summer of happiness until the day the lake revealed its secret. 
The first portent of doom was the wind that came howling through the forest, rustling the trees with ferocity and whipping the water of the lake up into an old folk dance. The wind scared the sun, which hid behind a long, continuous black cloud that rolled across the sky. Fearing the end of the world we ran back to our grandparent’s house to drink hot chocolate and watch the savage storm wreak distruction on the land of fairies. Grandpa told us stories of the elves being too naughty and needing to be punished while we watch scared by the stories and the roar of the angry sky. 
Within an hour it was over, the scared sun peaked out from behind the clouds, spiders set about rebuilding their webs and we were allowed back out to survey the damage.
Tentatively we tiptoed through the trees back down to the lake. Despite the vigour of the storm, nothing much had changed except the strange figure protruding from the water. We thought we'd discovered one of the little people at first but grandad had told us the fairies were no bigger than our hands while the elves would only reach our knees. This was not little person. This thing was a big person, a big grown up person, but pale and bloated and smelly. 
Kasha's scream brought grandpa running hurriedly down to the lake and even he went pale at the sight that greeted him.
‘Back to the house,’ he barked the only time I ever heard him raise his voice. We ran once again back to the safety of Granny's kitchen. 
Kasha and I never spoke about the man with the bloated face although he visited me often in my dreams. Years later I asked my dad all about it. Wondering if the whole thing had been a dream, It hadn’t. I discovered he was a local, shady businessman, shot once in the chest several months before and left to die in the freezing waters. Apparently they never found the killer although according to my dad he was such a scumbag, the police never really tried. 

4 comments:

  1. ... and it was such a nice title....

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  2. I believed at first you had wrote a story for children..Your intonation seemed to tell about feats of epic or naughty adventures that await an evil witch or fairy ...it's not for children but proved to be one of your great stories for a book of zombies and ghosts..

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  3. would you like to write a story for children with double reading/ meaning becomes an adult content? .. I would love it! .. I challenge you to do one of your experimental stories :-)

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    1. I recommend Vertigo - i don't know what you mean by adult content:) but this story can certainly be interpreted on different levels depending on the age of the reader:)

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