To read or not to read- Fantasy
This is a stand alone fantasy novel of a boy who is propelled in a world created by his imagination, filled with wolves, myths and stories. There are strange encounters with characters from fairy tales, these being portrayed in a very different way than may be expected...
Read the opening paragraphs of this novel to decide whether to read or not to read the rest of the book!
Once upon a time-for that is how all stories should begin- there was a boy who lost his mother.
He had, in truth, been losing her for a very long time. The disease that was killing her was a creeping, cowardly thing, a sickness that ate away at her from the inside, slowly consuming the light within, so that her eyes grew a little less bright with each passing day, and her skin a little more pale.
And as she was stolen away from him, piece by piece, the boy became more and more afraid of finally losing her entirely. He wanted her to stay. He had no brothers and no sisters, and while he loved his father, it would be true to say that he loved his mother more. He could not bear to think of life without her.
The boy, whose name was David, did everything he could to keep his mother alive. He prayed. He tried to be good, so that he would not be punished for his mistakes. He padded around the house as quietly as he was able, and kept his voice down when he was playing war games with his toy soldiers. He created a routine, and he tried to keep to that routine as closely as possible, because he believed in part that his mother's fate was linked to the actions he performed. He would always get out of bed by putting his left foot on th efloor first, then his right. He always counted up to twenty when he was brushing his teeth, and he always stopped when the count was completed. He always touched the taps in the bathroom and the handles of the doors a certain number of times; odd numbers were bad , but even numbers were fine, with two, four and eight being particularly favourable, although he didn't care for six because six was twice three and three was the second part of thirteen, and thirteen was very bad indeed.
If he bumped his head against something, he would bump it a second time to keep the numbers evenm and sometimes he would have to do it again and agian because his head seemd to bounce against the wall, ruining his count, or his hair glanced against it when he didn;t want to, until his skull ached from the effort and he felt giddy and sick. For an entire year, during the worst of his mother's illness, he carried the same items from his bedroom to the kitchen first thing in the morning, and then back again last thing at night: a small copy of Grimm's selected fairy tales and a dog-eared Magnet comic, the book to be placed perfectly in the centre of the comic, and both to be laid with their edges lined up against the corner of the the rug on his bedroom floor at night or on the seat of his favourite kitchen chair in the morning. In these ways, David made his contribution to his mother's survival.
To keep reading this book, you can request it from the Library.
