Fourteen year old Ned, stood listening intently, as his mother questioned the old sailor who sat on the quay mending his net.
“You may laugh Maam but on that day the strangest things have occurred upon the pier. People have even gone missing. So for safety it will be closed tomorrow.”
At break of dawn the next day, a spirited and curious Ned stood before the locked iron gates that lay beneath the archway that led onto the pier. He quickly calculated that he could not climb over. But soon spotted the rail that passed the side of the entrance. Undeterred by the narrowness and the fall, balancing like an acrobat, he carefully worked his way past the archway and jumped down onto the pier. Standing in the middle he let his eye follow the broad planks that ran like rail tracks towards the theatre that lay at the end.
A white light suddenly exploded like an enormous fountain in the dawn sky. Flocks of ghostly holiday makers appeared going to and fro. From amongst the throng, a short dark figure advanced towards him. A girl, no more than ten wearing a beret and a peculiarly old fashioned coat. Twelve paces away, she stopped and taking a camera from her pocket carefully took a photo of him. The camera flashed followed by a clicking sound and a picture emerged from the side like a ticket.. With a strange smile on her wan e face, she came came forward and handed it to him.
Ned stared at it. It was not the pier! Instead a boy sitting on top of an enormous iceberg, legs dangling over the edge. It was him, Ned. A polar bear sitting at his side.
He looked up and to his astonishment, the girl and all the visitors had vanished but the planks beneath his feet began moving frantically forward like a high speed escalator, faster and faster sending Ned hurtling forward to the core of the bright light.
When everything him began to slow and reform, Ned found himself in a thick coat and fur lined hood, staring into the ice blue waters of the Arctic Ocean, Noschoska the bear panting heavily by his side.
Liked the set up sentence which leads to expectation of a story. You have a great way of making up names, places and atmospheric settings. You had a harder challenge re taking us from the photo and a pier to your iceberg but I think you pulled it off.
ReplyDeleteOne for the grammarians.. is it acceptable to start a sentence with But?
Very good - you’ve used the photo as a crucial plot element, a sort of gateway into another reality. Presumably to find his way back to his mother Ned will need to re-encounter the girl in a year’s time. It’s reminiscent of Chekhov’s Black Monk - a short story you might like. Characteristically entertaining and imaginative. But you need to pay attention to sentence construction - for example in the sentence ‘He looked up and to his astonishment, the girl and all the visitors had vanished but the planks beneath his feet began moving frantically forward like a high speed escalator, faster and faster sending Ned hurtling forward to the core of the bright light.’ - this might be better rendered ‘He looked up, and to his astonishment, the girl and all the visitors had vanished, but the planks beneath his feet began moving frantically forward like a high speed escalator, faster and faster, sending Ned hurtling forward to the core of the bright light.’ I’ve added some commas, but to improve it further it might be an idea to split it into two sentences.
ReplyDeleteAs far as starting a sentence with But or And is concerned, this is absolutely fine. It's not so much a matter of rules but of creating sentences with style and rhythm that are unambiguous, so that the reader is never confused as to what you are saying.