Tag: Writing

The Mysterious Arboretum (7)

~ Meg ~ 28 Comments

By Meg Sorick

Last year, I started writing a story for the 10-year-old daughter of a friend. I hope you enjoy it. Find previous chapters here.

Chapter 7

“Mr. V! Did you see that?” Liam asked excitedly. “Look!”

From the depths of the forest flew a tiny winged creature. The teacher and his students instinctively ducked as the flier zoomed over their heads. After a loop, Pella came to a hovering stop in front of Mr. Vogelsinger.

“Teacher!” she cried. “Sandy is in trouble! The professor has her. You need to follow me!”

Mr. Vogelsinger was rendered speechless and stood staring at her with his mouth agape. Pella motioned for him to follow and flew a little way in the direction she’d come. “Please!”

Mr. Vogelsinger shook his head to clear it. “Now hold on just a minute.” He held his hands up for her to stop. “I think you’d better explain…. “ He paused, struggling to wrap his brain around what he was seeing. “You’d better explain… everything.”

“There’s no time!” she cried.

The teacher frowned. “I am not following after a…. “ he waved his hands in her direction. “What are you?”

Pella sighed. “All right, here’s our story…” And she quickly relayed the tale of what had happened to her and her unit as they traveled through this part of the universe. Finishing by explaining how the professor and trapped them to make them do his bidding. “Now will you come with me?”

Mr. Vogelsinger looked skeptical. “I don’t understand. With all your abilities, why couldn’t you free yourself? Surely if you can maintain the habitats of this arboretum, you could move a simple cage to free yourselves.”

“If it were a simple cage, that would be true. But the professor has it rigged with a small explosive device. The explosive device itself is in a container that has a pad that the professor uses to turn it off and on again when he brings us supplies.” She flew in a circle, becoming more agitated. “I’ve tried using the pad myself but it doesn’t work for me. I think maybe another human has to open it. I couldn’t take a chance that I’d set off the device before my friends could get free.”

“Hmm, it might be a fingerprint reader,” Mr. Vogelsinger mused. “If that’s the case, the professor will be the only one who can open it, then.” He cleared his throat. “So that’s what you were hoping to get my student to do for you? Open the container? Good gracious! Sandy could’ve blown herself to smithereens!”

“Well, the professor has her now! We have to hurry!”

This time the teacher sprang into action. “All right, listen up guys. Stay within sight of me but stand back. I can’t take a chance on losing you in this crazy place but I also can’t take the chance on getting any of you hurt. Follow me!”

The class and their teacher hurried to keep pace with the flying alien as she darted along the path and into the trees. They had to follow single file as they wound their way deeper into the habitat. Soon though, they emerged in front of the shed where Sandy and Pella’s friends were being held. Mr. Vogelsinger motioned for the class to wait quietly at the edge of the trees.

He crept to the door and pushed it open. “All right, professor! What do you think you’re doing?”

The professor spun around, shocked and sputtering. “What? Oh! N-n-nothing! Look, your student broke in here and was up to no good!” he blustered, pointing at Sandy in the corner.

“It’s not true Mr. V!” she cried. “He’s the one that’s up to no good!”

Pella flew into the shed and hovered over her caged friends. The professor gaped at her. “There’s another one? Where did you come from?”

She ignored him and spoke to her friends. “You can stop flying now. The teacher is gong to help us!” And at her words, the exhausted fliers stopped their circular flight and dropped to the floor of the cage. Immediately, the ground beneath their feet began to rumble.

The professor cried, “NO!” and made a dive for the container holding the explosive device.

Mr. Vogelsinger stepped in front of him and blocked his way as the building began to shake. “Don’t even think about it!” he ordered.

The professor stopped in his tracks, but as the children waiting outside began to shout, he smiled wickedly. “Don’t you think you’d better go check on your class?”

Mr. Vogelsinger looked from the professor to the tiny imprisoned aliens in the cage. And he realized he had no option….

To be continued…

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Microfiction

~ Meg ~ 30 Comments

Even the wind stilled, as if the world was holding it’s breath.

I wrote this for #1linewed, a twitter event every Wednesday sponsored by @kissofdeath. Since today’s prompt for The Daily Post was “wind” I decided to share it.

The Silent One (by Ivor Gurney)

~ Meg ~ 26 Comments

Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two–
Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:
Yet faced unbroken wires: stepped over, and went
A noble fool, faithful to his stripes– and ended
But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
Of line– to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken
Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,
Till the politest voice– a finicking accent, said:
‘Do you think you might crawl through, there: there’s a hole’
Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied —
‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ There was no hole, now ay to be seen,
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes
Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing–
And thought of music– and swore deep heart’s deep oaths
(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,
Again retreated– and a second time faced the screen.

Image courtesy The Daily Mail. 

About Ivor Gurney…

Born in 1890, Ivor Gurney was the son of a tailor and a seamstress. He showed musical ability and sang as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral, from 1900 to 1906. Gurney began composing music at the age of 14, and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1911. Gurney’s dynamic personality was tainted by mood swings which appeared during his teenage years. They were significant enough to impact his work at college, eventually resulting in breakdown in 1913. He withdrew to rest, after which he seemed to recover and was able to return to college.

Nevertheless, college was once again interrupted by World War I. Gurney enlisted as a private soldier in the Gloucestershire Regiment in February 1915. At the Front, he began writing poetry seriously, sending his efforts to his friend, the musicologist-critic Marion Scott, who worked with Gurney as his editor and business manager. He was in the midst of writing the poems for what would become his first book Severn and Somme when he was wounded in the shoulder in April 1917. After recovering, he was returned to battle, still working on his book and composing music including the songs In Flanders and By A Bierside.  Meanwhile, Gurney was gassed in September 1917 and sent to the Edinburgh War Hospital where he met and fell in love with a VAD nurse, Annie Nelson Drummond, but the relationship was doomed to fail. There is speculation about the possible effects of the gas on his mental health, even though Gurney had demonstrated the signs and symptoms of a bipolar disorder since his teens.  After his release from hospital he was posted to Seaton Delaval, a mining village in Northumberland, where he wrote poems including ‘Lying awake in the ward’. Severn and Somme, was published in November 1917.

Gurney died of tuberculosis while still a patient at the City of London Mental Hospital shortly before dawn on 26 December 1937, aged 47. He was buried in Twigworth, near Gloucester.  125px-Ivor_gurney_grave

On November 11, 1985, Gurney was among 16 Great War Poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” A memorial to Gurney was erected in 2009 near Ypres, close to the spot where he was the victim of a mustard gas attack in 1917, and a blue plaque on Eastgate Street in Gloucester, commemorates his life.

(Source material Wikipedia)