Stephanie watched miserably as the rain
poured down outside. She had been
planning to go with her brother Thomas to fly their kite in the nearby park but
there would be no chance of that now.
Their parents were arguing again.
She could hear them now, shouting at each other. Her mum who she lived with had dropped her
off at her dad’s place where he lived with Thomas. Her dad wanted Stephanie to stay for two nights
but her mum was insisting she could only stay for one night.
Why couldn’t they stop fighting? They argued so much and they didn’t
understand how it made Stephanie feel to see them being unkind to each other. She glanced at her brother who was busy
reading one of his favourite comic books.
He glanced up at her and rolled his eyes.
‘OK, OK fine. Just be stubborn about it, Annie, like you
always are. Once again, you win,’ the
children could hear their dad saying.
‘There’s no need for immaturity, Dave,’ their
mum said snootily. ‘You know what
happened last time I let Stephanie stay here for a long weekend – she ended up
covered in cuts and bruises.’
Thomas snorted with laughter at
that. Stephanie frowned. She hadn’t forgotten that incident, falling
badly off the swing at the bottom of her dad’s garden and everything hurting. Stephanie could hear her parents’ murmured
words, then the front door slammed.
‘Well at least they’ve stopped shouting,’
she said, watching her mum leave as she looked out the window.
She and Thomas stayed where they were
and didn’t bother to find their dad.
They knew he’d come and find them and it would be the same as usual – he
would tell them that he was sorry they’d had to hear him and their mum arguing. It made Stephanie wonder why, if he was
really sorry, her parents didn’t stop arguing.
But he didn’t come and find them immediately. Thomas carried on reading his comic and every
now and then Stephanie would hear him laugh when he found it funny. She tried to concentrate on the book she was
reading but she couldn’t, so to give herself something to do, she watched the
rain running down the window pane and tried to count all the new spots of water
as they appeared.
Later their dad did come and apologise
for arguing with their mum. That night he
took the children out and bought some fish and chips, even though he and Thomas
had had some the night before. Stephanie
knew it was because he felt guilty but she didn’t mind. It was just nice to be with him and Thomas.
Once dinner was over, Dave left
Stephanie and Thomas to their own devices.
They tried to play Monopoly, but were soon bored. To play a good game of Monopoly you really
needed more than two players. There was
nothing on TV; it was only showing repeats of programmes that they’d seen
before. So they went back to reading. Soon Stephanie was fed up with reading her
book but it was still raining and there wasn’t much else to do. She could see Thomas fidgeting. He made an impatient sound and Stephanie stopped
fiddling with her hair and waited expectantly for him to say something. Maybe he would have an idea for a different game
they could play.
‘I wish all adults would disappear,’ he
said moodily.
Stephanie was disappointed that he
didn’t have an idea of what they could do, but she agreed with him. Sometimes grownups could be such a pain.
‘Me
too,’ she said sighing.
That night as she lay down on her bed, Stephanie
felt a hard lump underneath her pillow.
Puzzled, she turned the bedside lamp on and lifted her pillow up. She was surprised to see a pen. It was a fountain pen and looked really
old. It was black except for a gold band
around the middle. Maybe her dad had
left it there. He could be a bit
scatty. But why would he leave a pen
under her pillow? It puzzled her. Stephanie didn’t know why but for some reason
she decided not to show it to her dad, but to Thomas instead, then and there.
It took a few knocks on his bedroom door
to wake him. But eventually the door
opened. Thomas looked sleepy and rather
grumpy.
‘What?’ he asked impatiently.
‘Look at this,’ Stephanie said
excitedly, ignoring his grumpiness and showing him the pen lying in her palm.
‘It’s just a pen,’ he said shortly.
‘Yes, but what was it doing under my
pillow?’
‘How should I know?’ Thomas said. Stephanie began to turn away miserably. ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘Give it here and let me have a look.’
He let her follow him into his bedroom
which he would never normally do.
Walking across to his desk, he sat down, switched on his lamp and examined
the pen.
‘It looks old,’ he told Stephanie.
‘Why don’t you try writing something
with it?’ Stephanie said eagerly.
‘All right, but I don’t think it’ll
work.’
Thomas opened his notebook and began to
write. He and Stephanie were stunned at
what happened next. Instead of Thomas’s messy handwriting
appearing on the paper, a beautiful script emerged from the pen. It was as if the pen was writing by itself. The two children were mesmerised by what they
saw. Then something strange
happened. As Stephanie watched the
writing appearing on the paper, everything around them began to change. Their surroundings went blurry and Stephanie
felt as though she were spinning. She
tried to speak but no sound came from her mouth and she couldn’t see Thomas although
she could feel his hand in hers.
Frightened, she screamed but again there was no sound. But it didn’t last long. All at once the blurriness disappeared and
Stephanie saw Thomas standing next to her looking dizzy. Then as their surroundings came into focus, Stephanie
realised with a shock that they weren’t in Thomas’s bedroom anymore. Her mouth hung open in amazement.
‘Where are we?’ she said.
‘I don’t know but we’re not at Dad’s
anymore.’
They were standing on lush green grass,
greener than anything they’d seen before.
They were in a beautiful meadow, covered with tiny flowers of many
colours, some pink, purple and yellow.
The flowers seemed to be giving off light, Stephanie noticed, almost
like mini suns. But unlike the sun, it
didn’t hurt her eyes to look at them; in fact she felt soothed by them and less
fearful.
They could hear the sound of bumble bees
droning around them and Stephanie saw some settling down on the flowers to
collect the pollen. In the distance they
could see enormous mountains which had snow on the top of them. But before they had any more time to look at
their new surroundings, there was a sudden huge explosion like a bomb going off
near where they were standing. Stephanie
jumped and clutched at her brother’s arm.
She hated loud sudden noises.
‘I want to go home,’ she said in a small
voice and began to cry. She was even
more worried when there was the unmistakable tramp of feet.
‘Come on, Steph, we’ve got to hide,’ Thomas
said urgently, pulling her away from the sound of marching and across the
meadow. But it was huge and there was
nowhere to hide. The marching was
getting closer. Thomas propelled her
towards the longer bits of meadow grass.
‘Lie down quickly,’ he commanded her. She did as he said and they both lay
quivering with fear in the tall grass. The
children heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Then they stopped. Stephanie knew they’d been discovered.
