Writers to Writers Challenge #2
I couldn't come up with a title for this story!
For the longest time I couldn't come up with any story at all for this challenge. The parameters were that the story must include barbed wire, a piece of blue fabric, and howling winds. I felt this called for something bleak: the barbed wire made me think of imprisonment or oppression, the blue fabric perhaps a torn bit of clothing from someone who tried to escape over the fence.
Instead, the story that came out of me was of a rather different flavour, an absurd little children's storybook style piece. I find it a bit silly but it's an opportunity to practice the craft and network with other writers on Instagram.
You can read it on Instagram at @selinawriting as well as other stories from the challenge, including Liahona West's winning story from the last challenge, or you can read it here below.
Perhaps you have heard the story of the king whose magicians plucked stars from the night sky to weave into a crown for his bride, or the story of the town so greedy in their share of the moon's blue cheese that they had no moonlight for months, or of the girl who planted rays of sunshine in her garden and reaped sunflowers so bright that her neighbours couldn't sleep at night. But you've probably never heard the story of the lost witch that saved the rainy town of Drumm from losing their homes and crops, because if they'd known I was there at all they would have drowned me in the flood before them.
I blew the wrong direction while trying to fly north. I roared back at the howling winds to no avail and was dropped unceremoniously upside down from a barbed wire fence over a yard of chickens.
"Hullo."
A boy of about eleven years discovered me. His eyes travelled from me to my broomstick tangled in the tree.
"Are you a witch?" he asked. I paused to get a feel for the townsfolk here.
"No, I'm a chimney sweep,” I replied.
"Sweeps don't use brooms like that," frowned the boy.
"They do where I come from," I said. "Can you help me down?"
He obliged, and with a great tear I landed on the ground face-to-face with an unimpressed hen. The boy left and returned a moment later with some needle and thread and a large square patch of blue fabric, offering to mend my cloak.
"It looks like a patch of blue sky on dark clouds," I beamed when he finished. My words seem to have an effect on him, and he looked directly at me with very serious eyes.
"If you are… not a chimney sweep.." he began. I immediately sensed what he wanted.
"The rain," I said, listening to the distant roar of water. "The river.” Blue sky on dark clouds...
"We are downriver," the boy went on. "We have animals we depend on to live."
"Say no more," I said. "Get me another piece of blue fabric."
I retrieved my broom, and when he returned he told me about the blue dress his mother would wear that he loved, and the quilt he was making with its pieces.
"I am honoured that you shared a piece of her with a stranger," I said. “Now she will also save you from the flood."
He looked doubtful, but I didn't elaborate. The wind was changing, and I was already half a night's journey the wrong direction.
Up I went, and with a deft needlework of my own I sewed the blue patch of sky across the clouds until it covered Drumm from the mouth of the river to the southern shore. Then I hopped onto a fresh breeze and went my way, and I do not know if there is more to the story except that neither myself nor the town drowned that day.
Comments
Post a Comment