The exercise:
Write about: the tree house.
Magic or otherwise. Max is polishing those books off pretty much as fast as we can get them from the library. Miles likes having them read to him as well.
The exercise:
Write about: the tree house.
Magic or otherwise. Max is polishing those books off pretty much as fast as we can get them from the library. Miles likes having them read to him as well.
2 comments:
Those books look interesting (for kids; I suspect they're a bit short for adults :) ) and I'm glad that the boys are enjoying them. And you've highlighted one of the things I think libraries are great for: saving a fortune in book and bookshelf costs for parents of kids that like to read! I don't mind buying books, but storing them is something you have to think about surprisingly quickly....
The tree house
Danya looked around, concerned by the loud noise but unworried. The tower had had lots of things that banged, clattered and even wailed as she'd explored it, and doors closed themselves loudly, softly, quickly and slowly all the time behind her. Nothing seemed to have changed, so she continued her exploration.
The strange boxy structure in the middle seemed like the obvious place to go next and the door opened easily as she approached. She didn't know how some doors knew that she wanted to go through them, but they were easily her favourites and she said a quiet thank-you as she went inside. She also didn't know what the boxy structure really was but she considered, from what she'd read while in the tower, that it must be a 'tree-house'. There didn't seem to be a tree supporting it, but it was a small house in a place where you wouldn't expect to find one, and when she looked out of the windows opposite the door she saw yellow-painted tubular steel ladders that led down into darker depths where the floor seemed to fall away, so she was definitely up in the air somehow. She'd never seen a real tree-house, so it was always possible that one side was on the ground while the other was in the air.
She touched the screens inside the boxy structure and some, but not all, of them came to life. Outside there was a loud bang again, like a shot, but now she saw movement as well: something green and red had moved in the dark depths below and the noise had happened at the same time.
The screens that had lit up were angry: she associated the bright reds and yellows of the text on the screen with anger. She read through the text, stumbling in places over still-unfamiliar words, but the gist was clear: the screen was angry that there was too much water in the cellar and wanted something done about it. It was proposing that a pump be activated, though she didn't know what that meant or entailed: the pumps she'd encountered upstairs were small things connected up to other machines and moved air around when she turned them on. Still, the angry screen seemed to know what to do, so she pressed the buttons as it presented them to her and slowly the red text was replaced with green.
A rattling started up somewhere below and a few minutes later it smoothed out into a roar; like the noise of the waterfall in the stairwell but more harmonious somehow; there was less growl and more hum. It was like the water had been taught how to sing, she thought. Then a chugging noise and a sucking noise, and after several more minutes, a definite clanging of metal things. The screens stayed green though, and she liked it when the screens weren't angry with her.
She explored the room thoroughly and finally came across some drawers, shallow and wide that contained thin white pages with fine lines drawn across them. She pulled one out and laid it on the large table in the middle of the room; it covered most of it. The writing on it was in blocks here and there, and was neat, tidy and tiny. As she stared at it, trying to work out what it was saying, it slowly dawned on her that this was somehow a map of the tower. Going back to the drawers she counted the stack of pages and found eighty-two. So either there were a lot more cellars than she had ever imagined, or the tower used to be taller. She decided that the top of the tower must have collapsed when the Lord Imperator died.
The screen nearest her beeped, and suddenly light flooded in from everywhere.
Greg - yeah, thank goodness for libraries. Especially when space in the house is limited :P
I like the angry screens, that's a clever way of handling the alarms/alerts. Still a sense of unease, but it's more in the background now.
Until that ending, anyway.
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