Veronica Knox's Blog

THE CLEARING of TROUBLED THOUGHTS

When you get caught between the moon and the Bermuda Triangle, Winnie the Pooh says the best you can do is believe in magic and ‘proseedcake’ in all haste.

On the third of May in 2024 as I sat in the moonlight under a thinking tree listening to the silence of the stars, I heard the braying of a donkey and followed it to the Hundred-Acre Wood of my childhood dreams.

“Well, you took your sweet time,” a gruff voice said. “I thought you’d never come. My name is Edward Bear until it wasn’t. And you are?”

“I prefer to remain anonymous,” I said. “I expect I wandered here by mistake.”

“What kind of mouse?” Pooh asked.

Slowly other animals emerged from the trees ushered forward by Eeyore, the newly crowned Philosopher King. “Nonsense, Minx,” Eeyore said staring deeply into my eyes. “You called me. Now, write down exactly what I say and don’t dawdle. I haven’t got all day. Once upon a midnight clear a bear of little brain came across a young man seated in the same spot where you’re sitting now. He had ink-stained fingers and wore a starched lace collar, faded blue jeans, and a T-shirt sporting a lifeless portrait. His name was Edward de Vere, and his pseudonym was William Shakespeare.”

Pooh scratched his head and had a deep think before mumbling to Edward in a growly voice. “Is that collar as dreadfully uncomfortable as it looks?” he said.

“Ah, finally someone with a real question,” Edward said, “You’ve no idea. My answer is a resounding YES. This collar is the bane of my afterlife. I took it off a long time ago, but whenever I meet a stranger it grows back, larger and scratchier than before. He pointed at the face on his shirt. “This is me and not me. Is it a curse or a gift. That is the question.”

“It’s a curse,” Pooh said without hesitation.

The full moon continued to paint my midnight tree in silver shadows that trickled down from its crown and followed its spine into the underground branches called roots. And so, in a clearing of untroubled thought a kinship of Edwards was born.

“Come along, Pooh there’s a good chap, Mr. Edward doesn’t have all day,” Eeyore said. “And bring Piglet with you.”

“Oh, but he does,” Pooh said smugly. “He’s been lost for hundreds of years, and I found him.”

“Ah,” Eeyore announced. “Satori. Nice. Very nice. A moment of clarity in a dark period of human chaos. We haven’t had much Satori around here for a good long while. Better late than never I always say. Owl swears by it.”

The chirping of crickets filled the silence which as it turns out is much friendlier than it sounds. In my literary world the sound of crickets represents failure and abandonment, and I said so out loud. 

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Pooh said. “True silence is the absence of thought that happens when you forget to think, Satori is no small feat.”

“I have small feet,” Piglet piped up. “Speshly on Saturdays.”

Without a word of a lie this story is truer than true.

‘SHAKESPEARE AT POOH CORNER’ is a fantasy for adults:

An author grieving the untimely death of his wife raises telepathic newborn twins by transforming his childhood fears of bears into a supernatural story of hope and magic.

CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER

The ‘St. Albans’ portrait of Edward de Vere by Marcus Gheeraedts

Enter a new ‘Corner’ where Eeyore is king, and Pooh and Shakespeare navigate a forest labyrinth haunted by old ghosts faced with new challenges – a fanciful read with serious historical implications.

‘SHAKESPEARE AT POOH CORNER’ contains dozens of ‘Pooh-isms’ and Lewis Carroll’s glorious ‘nonse’ words originally allowed to run free in Alice’s extraordinary adventures behind the looking glass. Descend the rabbit hole beyond the mind to a fantasy world where a changeling princess seeks the life she was denied, and Edward de Vere, a victim of treacherous Elizabethan politics had his literary legacy cut short in 1604.

Yet, happily, against all odds, the 17th Earl of Oxford’s canon, all but trashed under a bogus name and centuries of ersatz Stratfordian ‘Bardology’, continues to spin unabated towards being restored to its rightful creator. 

Be prepared for a story that begins with an open door leading to a world that defies time and space. Pray leave your logic and day-to-day cares on the doorstep and explore the forests of unearthly delights where sentient trees, immortal nature spirits, and talking animals reveal a sinister secret hidden in plain sight.

a fanciful read with serious historical implications

THREE TIMES A STORY

In 1550
a boy wonder is born in the English countryside
of Hedingham in Essex who changed the world
but lost his soul.
 
In 1928
after a great war in the Shadowlands, a man
living in the Ashdown Forest of East Sussex, England,
 created the Hundred-acre Wood.
 
In 1963
 twin girls are born across the Atlantic.
One of them was born to rule an enchanted forest.
The other was born to stop her.

EEYORE KNOWS

‘Shakespeare at Pooh Corner’ is the tale of an enchanted place where the forests of Silvany, the realm of Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and Christopher Robin’s ‘Hundred-acre Wood form a Bermuda triangle of secrets where trees reason and disbelieving is treason.

Who wrote the works of Shakespeare?

A changeling princess knows; Pooh and Piglet know; Owl is positively adamant; And Eeyore, the donkey born to be a cheery philosopher king, knows.

And now that you know how ‘much ado there is about fiction, the art of telling lies’, you can decide.

Meanwhile the controversy continues and one fine day, the truth will out.

SHAKESPEARE AT POOH CORNER

CHAPTER ONE SOMETHING MAGIC THIS WAY COMES1968

“Remember tonight
for it is the beginning
of always.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI

THE INFERNO

There was no need to check the corners in our house for demons. Mother’s dark shadow crept through the house without her. She told me trees ate naughty children who didn’t do as they were told and threatened to leave me in Jabbers Walk if I didn’t grow up.

When I was five, no-one knew I could speak, let alone read. But I was fluent in the language of odd ducks. I read pictures, shapes, colors, voices, and faces. My mother’s face told me I was a mistake. She secreted me behind closed doors, but one door wasn’t enough.

I endured Mother’s insults thrust upon me in the world I dubbed the Shadowland where every event foreshadowed inevitable suffering.

But between waking and sleeping I imagined colorful shapes dancing around me out of sight that vanished whenever I dared look, and the sweet music accompanying them stayed, consoling me for hours until I almost believed I was cherished.

One morning, I woke to the first of four events that changed my life. Threatening voices stormed for a long time, followed by a slamming door, and the next day I found a ‘tooth fairy’ book under my pillow.

I guarded it all day, and when it was dark I opened the door to ‘The House at Pooh Corner’. Inside was a summer’s day. A warm breeze heady with pine wafted my hair into a halo. Birdsong drew my attention to the mouth of a green tunnel leading into a comforting forest painted with fingers of sunlight. I ran into it and never looked back.

I would be remiss if I neglected to paint you an accurate mind picture, lest you envisage me left standing alone in a forest clearing of Christopher Robin’s Hundred-acre-Wood with a pile of stuffed toys to play with. It was nothing of the sort. Eeyore, Kanga, and Tigger were life-sized animals, but Pooh, Piglet, and Roo remained plush toys which meant Piglet often traveled in my pocket with Pooh bumping along behind us.

I must have stepped into the Hundred-acre Wood when Christopher was away at school because I didn’t meet him that first day. A hippopotamus-shaped donkey named Eeyore greeted me – a larger-than-life philosopher king, and wonder of wonders, not the least bit sullen, although his droopy-ears couldn’t help but give him a woe is me persona.

Pooh Bear was never the brightest bulb on a Christmas tree and his best friend, Piglet was an anxiety attack waiting to happen. But it’s less common knowledge that Christopher Robin, the golden boy, became a bit of a dark horse or that Tigger was a tame Bengal Tiger with a twisted sense of humor.

Surprisingly, it turns out toys can be subject to accidents which explains why Piglet was a nervous wreck. The timid little chap had been mauled by a neighbor’s Jack Russel on his first day at Cotchford Farm. When I met him, forty years later, his sweet little face remained a tad squashed from the incident. And if that wasn’t enough, after his friend Roo was lost on a picnic in 1930, Piglet became the unwilling recipient of Kanga’s regular doses of strengthening medicine and cold baths.

Kanga, a near-sighted kangaroo earthmother believed fervently in the medicinal benefits of Extract of Malt and never noticed when her son, Roo grew long pink ears.

Piglet had unwittingly been the wrong size to stand up and be counted or even recognized by Mother Kanga and automatically moved up the ranks like a soldier on inspection taking a step sideways, sideling casually and ever so unobtrusively to fill the space of another recruit who had momentarily stepped out of line, to go AWOL – a term I thought referred to Wol, a distinguished owl of letters with a frightful grasp of spelling but a sublime take on life being a moment-to-moment mystery requiring deep thought to resolve. Wol lived in a treehouse – a wise oracle with a shingle hanging outside his front door that read:

Ples Cnoke If An Anser Is Reqrd
Ring The Bell If An AnsR Is Not Reqd
 
– WOL

Piglet didn’t step up to fill Roo’s place, the irrepressible Tigger bounced him there in a concerted effort to fabricate the whitest of lies to protect Kanga from the truth that her son was missing after wandering off … perhaps carried off forever.

Wol advised telling porky pies was often the best one could hope for in a tight corner, and he said it so wisely, I believed it was true. But pork pies being a particularly discomforting thought to a piglet added another fear to Piglet’s growing list of dangers. Heffalumps were at the top. Being left alone after a picnic was at the bottom even though Pooh’s sixth sense radar often pinpointed Piglet’s exact whereabouts.

In any case, I had little to do with what eventually happened. It turns out the ‘be careful what you wish for thing’ is a double-edged dream. A door had saved my life, but it also set me further apart from children who were considered normal ducks.

When I turned six, I studied hard, intending to stay six forever. I reasoned, not unreasonably, being six years old at the time, that all my senses were six-ish. But I remained at sixes and sevens for the most part.

Eeyore taught me to stand firm against all opposing forces that threatened my happiness until eventually, time languishing in the Hundred-acre-Wood with a loving family gave me the confidence to defy my hapless mother.

The fuzzy caterpillar on the tip of my finger smiled and reared up on its front legs to study me. We were busy having a polite conversation when Mother arrived bearing the dreaded daily orange drink pretending to be juice. Being thirsty was not enough incentive to drink the ghastly stuff that always delivered a sugar rush with an aftertaste of what I imagined was hemlock.

I stared into Mother’s eyes and tipped it slowly, deliberately, into the grass, crushed the paper cup, and threw it in Mother’s face.

The grass screamed, not best pleased from being poisoned, for which I was mortified and later apologized profusely. The traumatized caterpillar fled as fast as its hundred-acre legs could go.

After that, events moved fast. Mother slapped my face, hustled me into a coat, and marched me, soldierly fashion through Jabbers Walk to a surprisingly benign forest inside the eye of a psychic storm.

I did my best not to grow up anywhere but as the best of intentions rarely applies, and time being a relentless taskmaster, the best thing to do, according to Wol, was to lie. I told a whopper by pretending I was monumentally stupid.

As a six-year-old who refused to age, I was, as you might expect, stubborn as a donkey for survival purposes in an exclusive clubhouse where no adults were allowed. The me who cast a shadow, opted to stay in the Hundred-acre Wood until the sun burned out. I sorted out what was real and what had I imagined that orangey day when I leaped from the cruel frying pan of Mother’s child-eating trees to the shelter of a leafy glade where I met a talking tree named Lucy.

Neither event was entirely fictional, but both were mystical.  

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THE LAND BEFORE SNOW

IF TIME STANDS STILL ANYWHERE, IT’S AT BEDE. IF GHOSTS HAUNT ANYWHERE, IT’S IN BEDE HALL.

But ghosts are nothing compared to the challenges haunting a curmudgeonly building with a desire for eternal life.

BEDE HALL WAS ALIVE BUT EVEN IN BEDE, IMMORTALITY WON’T LAST FOREVER!

History comes and goes. Empires rise and fall, civilizations flourish and cultures collide. The laws of probability converge and stir up trouble. Geological time advances. Volcanoes explode and cool, seas flood and subside and turn to ice. Ice melts. Species evolve and mutate. Land rumbles into hills and valleys, and grass grows over everything. And in spite of the flowering of art and the inevitable clashes of war, science advances and retreats, Bede’s heart continued to animate each new age, according to its true nature.

From first to last, Bede Hall reigned over the ashes of its ancestors: from a sacred henge built of trees to the great hall of a Saxon lord and a succession of fine houses each grown more grand with human progress.

But before all of it… before Bede Hall inhaled its first thought as a stone pyramid, before Snow was born, it was a primordial hill emerging from a timeless sea. A mound of muddy memories, sheltering the seed of a dying civilization where humanity could sprout anew.

Each of the Hall’s successive constructions grew phoenix-like from the energy of its previous bones. Which meant its latest incarnation was both ancient and new – the oldest and the youngest at the same time.

BUT THEN, FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING, EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT THE SAME TIME IN BEDE.

Within its mystical boundaries, the hamlet of Bede formed an island without a sea. Hadrian’s Wall defended the Hall’s back, the Green Lady’s Forest safeguarded its eastern border, an Iron Age ditch protected it to the west, and a low fence of robbed stone from a medieval monastery defined the southernmost cottage of Bede Village, marking the edge of the old world.

Saltwater breezes from the west and the sweet scent of Lindisfarne’s holy isle to the north, swept through breaks in the ancient wall to play in the Hall’s gardens. Lady Nan told her grandchildren, that on the solstices, it was possible to see a candle burning on Lindisfarne if you put your mind to it.

Bede thrived in its isolation, separate from the bustling world of London, three-hundred-miles to the south. From the air, the old Roman road, Dere Street, still cut a straight grey swath through the forests where Saxons and Normans once traveled as the falcon flies. Long ago, Vikings had pillaged from the eastern shore and Scots had raided from the north,

YET A SERENE POCKET OF CALM FLOURISHED, PROTECTED BY ENERGIES OLDER THAN THE PYRAMIDS.

Faint traces of prehistoric circles, lines, and squares lay etched into the fields. Phantoms of early Bronze Age ditches encircled mounds and barrows that shimmered to life after the rains, and the hillocks of Iron Age settlements played hide-and-seek in the long nettles. Saxon gold shuffled deep under the earth with Neolithic flint arrowheads, dagger blades made of iron, and mosaic tesserae from Roman villas. And all the while, the tips of abandoned cairns poked their noses from mossy hillocks into the sunlight.

For thousands of years, crude dwellings and settlements crumbled into ruins until a maze of grassy banks sectioned the landscape of Bede into a creased map of curious lumps and bumps, covering the secrets of the ancestors.

Long ago, Bede’s natural water features, the sources of ancient power, had been stolen by the Romans for their formal spas and new temples. Springs and streams were rededicated, displacing the old guardians, renamed to merge with a pantheon of Roman gods – immortals ‘borrowed’ from the Greeks without permission. They built forts over the shrines of the green gods and clogged the sacred wells with sacrificial animal bones and amulets, vanquishing the local water spirits to trickle away underground in disgrace.

In time, their abandoned pagan settlements were absorbed by the dark ages and subsided into shallow impressions left in the clay underbelly of the rich topsoil.

STONE CIRCLES TILTED OUT OF KILTER IN TIRED FIELDS, STRAINING VALIANTLY TO MARK THE SOLSTICES.

Emperor Hadrian’s great wall stood as a gallant reminder of the long-gone glory days, keeping out marauders while Bede remained steadfast under an ancient spell of protection.

Left to themselves, the old nature gods silently returned to Bede from the netherworld. The face of the Green Man, overseer of the growing seasons, lord of the harvest festivals and woodland creatures, began appearing again in the barks of trees. Chloris the Green Woman, consort to Jack-of-the-Green, gathered the scattered fairies into colonies and fanned their waning magic into sacred fire. 

THE ELEMENTALS RALLIED THEIR WEAKENED WHORLS OF ENERGIES INTO VORTEXES OF GREAT POWER.

Comets, falling stars, and solar flares revisited the skies above the rumble-grumbles of the earth as it stretched and cracked its skin. Fresh waters bubbled anew from sacred springs. Bede’s Sprites sent forth its water-beetle messengers, the Egyptian scarabs’ distant cousins, to rally the twice-borns. Comeuppances, long overdue blew hot and cold out of season.     

Vengeances lying dormant for eons, slithered from the withered skins of mummified enemies in a fresh colony of eager snakes in the grass. The Green Man retreated, and Bede Hall, savvy to the magnitude of old scores and subtle reprisals, had no option but to train its youngest champions and resident ghosts to prepare itself for war. Meanwhile, Bede Hall alternately languished and fretted

IN A LANDSCAPE WHERE HISTORY REMAINED POSITIVELY ANCESTRAL.

THE POWER OF SNOW

There are three generations of Stratford-Smyths ‘living’ in Bede Hall.

THE FOURTH IS THE GHOST OF A NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRL, WHICH MAKES THEM FOUR GENERATIONS SPANNING FOUR DIMENSIONS.

Bede Hall is old. The word ageless barely covers it, and the word timeless is an outright lie. Older than time is closest to the truth. But even then, strictly speaking, the Hall is older than history. The Hall hovers in and out of this world, visiting its past and future which means that

EVEN IN THE BLISTERING HEAT OF AUGUST IT COULD SNOW AT ANY TIME.

As the only daughter of a grand house, young Beryl Stratford-Smyth was assigned a series of governesses who routinely fled in tears after experiencing frights in the cold spot outside a room near the attic nursery. It was dubbed the Winter Room.

WINTRY WIND EMANATED FROM THE KEYHOLE OF ITS BLUE DOOR EVEN WHEN THE REST OF THE HOUSE SWELTERED IN THE EXTREME HEAT OF SUMMER.

And sometimes, when a crying child was heard, the wind took the shape of a blue mist and drifted through the nursery wall… or so Miss Beryl, said.

But then, grownups dismissed Beryl as a strange child whose moonbeam mind was filled with featherheaded notions of magic. She remained bored and out of sorts until she made friends with Bede’s resident child ghost – a kindred spirit, her own age, who ‘lived’ behind the locked door of the Winter Room.

The two were inseparable until Beryl grew up and married a fortune hunting scoundrel. Her responsibilities as a young mother and chatelaine of a grand estate, consumed her entirely.

BERYL’S BUSY JANGLE OF HOUSE KEYS RANG THROUGH THE HALL’S CORRIDORS LOUDER THAN ANY GHOST DRAGGING CHAINS.

And much later as an eccentric grandmother of precocious twins, and because she flatly refused to be called Granny, Beryl accepted the title Lady Nan, a more dignified name in keeping with her position as the family’s matriarch.  

Later still, during the Hall’s ‘troubles’ Lady Nan lapsed into a fog of pleasant daydreams to block her painful memories in a retirement home in a town called Withering. In desperation, Bede Hall summoned Lady Nan like an angry father to stave off the predator developers keen on turning it into an hotel.

BUT IT WAS THE PLAINTIVE CALL FOR HELP OF HER CHILDHOOD PLAYMATE, SNOW, THAT STIRRED LADY NAN INTO HER OLD SELF.

A FORECAST OF SNOW

Prologue for book one of the Bede Series

THE DISTANCE FROM BEDE TO LONDON IS 300 MILES NORTH AS THE CROW FLIES AND 30,000 YEARS AS TIME FLIES.

Sarah Goodman’s kitchen in the village of Bede radiated with spectral light that emanated from a small square hole in the back door – a rotating cat flap called ‘The Royal Opening of the Way’ that permitted entry for time traveling cats from the temple of Bast in ancient Egypt whenever summoned by Bede Hall.

After eons, a mystical feline colony continued to guard the passages linking ages past and future that reside in nine portals of power within the stately Hall and the surrounding landscape.

The flap glowed green and began to rock gently in time to the clock on the wall ticking the last few seconds to midnight. It swung more urgently until it froze, fully open, wide enough to welcome Anubis – a noble Abyssinian wearing a single hoop earring and a wide collarette of gold that cast elongated sparks up the walls as his sleek shadow progressed.

Anubis, fearlessly pushed in, and padded silently over the checkerboard tiles towards the front door.

AT PRECISELY 12:01, ANUBIS SPUN GRACEFULLY, THINNED INTO A LONG GREEN STRING, AND SLIPPED THROUGH THE KEYHOLE INTO A DOWNPOUR OF ENGLISH RAIN.

Outside, he resumed his feline shape and sniffed the air for demons. Satisfied he was alone; Anubis shook raindrops from his fur and waited until ‘The Royal Way’ rematerialized as a luminescent green carpet shimmering with power that levitated an inch above the cobbled street. He pawed it cautiously before streaking down the country lane towards a treeline of oak and willow startling a lean fox emerging from a skeletal hedgerow.

THE FOX STARED AFTER THE DISAPPEARING VISION AND SNIFFED THE DISTINCTIVE SPLAYED PAW PRINTS OF A CAT WITH EXTRA TOES. “GOODNESS,” IT SAID OUT LOUD. “THIS CAN’T BE TRUE. IT’S A THOUSAND MOONS TOO SOON!”

Inside the forest, a green mist replaced the carpet, hovering eerily like low-lying swamp gas. As Anubis waded through it the trees took a step back and the population of woodland creatures pressed forward. Rabbits and mice; badgers and fox, lined the path, respectfully averting their eyes.

Anubis howled a formal greeting that set up a general bustling of fur and claws on the forest floor. Birdsong and chattering squirrels chirped from the tree canopy, and the tree sprites, never at ease with the feline species, slithered out of sight on the highest boughs.

It was nine minutes past midnight when Anubis emerged from the trees before a Roman wall curled protectively around Bede Hall like a dragon’s tail. He landed, light as a phantom, and padded a crumbling span of the 73-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall holding his tail high like an antenna.

Lightning bolts seared the sky in pulsating searchlights. Anubis reached the second time portal as a resounding thunderbolt dislodged an ancient stone and set it rolling towards the Hall’s gates carved with magic symbols.

Inside the gates, a herd of green animals made of leaves, gamboled in their midnight hour of freedom. They halted abruptly as Anubis slipped through the bars. The largest topiary, a sphinx named Sage, bowed its head. The others froze into their daytime positions and waited for their leader’s orders. The smallest, a young hare named Harigold, hopped up and down too excited to remain still.

Anubis returned Sage’s bow. His brief message containing the words mercurial, fickle, and diabolical triggered a renewed display of lightning spikes that singed the treetops.

“MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR FREEDOM,” ANUBIS SAID. “WE’RE NEARLY OUT OF TIME. PASS THE WORD.”
SAGE MUMBLED TO HIMSELF SO HARIGOLD WOULDN’T HEAR. “BUT SURELY, THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE.”

Anubis positioned his back against the moon and stared through the bars at a small window under the eaves waiting for the Hall’s all-clear signal of nine flashing lights before heading to his English wife, Feathers, waiting in the dining room window of the great house.

There was no time for an affectionate hello. Feathers gave her report. “It’s as we feared,” she hissed. “The weather has been fearful of late. Frightful extremes of hot and cold wildly out of

season plague the land whenever the matriarch is dreaming. Your dire predictions bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘changeable as the weather. Word has it the tree sprites are tunneling underground, the bees are in a right old tizz, and Miss Findhorn’s lavender crop is up in arms. The land is wasting away. For the moment, the Hall is holding off the developers. But with the Green Man in hiding and the matriarch in a dithery state, its only a matter of time before it’s sold and falls into ruin. Or worse.”

“This is only the beginning, my dear,” Anubis replied. “The Furies are restless. And by that. I mean more restless than usual. Young Miss Beryl that was, will have to bring her grandchildren up to speed smartish and no mistake.”

“They arrive next week,” Feathers grumbled, “if the old lady keeps her promise and stays awake. She can be rather unpredictable. Bede Hall is not best pleased with her. Even Parks is fit to be tied.”

Anubis’s fur bristled like a hedgehog. “Her Majesty, Bast, has ordered me to return with the Stratford-Smyth family and take up permanent residence. You’ll have to help me.”

A little ghost waving frantically from behind the dining room mirror caught Anubis’s eye and set the two cats caterwauling fit to wake the dead.

“THE PROPHECY IS UPON US,” ANUBIS SAID AND BEETLED OFF TO THE HADRIAN’S WALL PORTAL.

“Goodbye, dearest,” Feathers said to the empty spot Anubis deserted. “I shall alert Parks.”

Anubis closed his eyes and concentrated on the temple of Bast. He raised his head to the full moon, yowled once, shivered his tail wildly, and leaped from Hadrian’s Wall directly into the keyhole of Sarah Goodman’s front door.

The kitchen clock had ceased its ticking, frozen at nine minutes past midnight; the black and white floor tiles were already covered in a drift of golden sand, and the electrics sputtered like candles.

Anubis lifted his head to the familiar scent of lotus incense wafting from the time portal. A warm Egyptian breeze set the cat flap swinging in slow motion like a beckoning finger, gently teasing him to come home. Anubis plunged into the Royal Way. The sand swirled into a howling vortex, followed him, and the flap juddered to a stop.

Old Miss Sarah’s alarm clock jolted her from a deep sleep. The ears of her house-cats at the foot of the bed twitched madly, threatening to wake them, but the ghost of a young man watching over Sarah’s dreams, lulled them back to sleep.

“BEN IS THAT YOU?” SARAH WHISPERED INTO THE DARK.
“I’M STILL HERE,” THE GHOST REPLIED, GENTLY. “ALL IS WELL. GO BACK TO SLEEP, MY LOVE.”

Nine important events occurred simultaneously. The hands of Sarah Goodman’s kitchen clock spun forward to nine o’clock, chimed nine times, the last tile shone gold for nine seconds before blacking out, the house-cats resumed their purring, the trees stepped forward to resume their old positions, the woodland creatures scuttled off to bed, birdsong commenced, Ben drifted away, and timeworn Bede Hall mulled over a new strategy to defend itself with its venerable gardener, Stanley Parks.

___________________________________________________________________________________

‘SNOW BEHIND THE DOOR’ (book 4 of the ‘Bede Series’), has been shortlisted for the Chanticleer Book Reviews & Media’s 2023 Gertrude Gardner award for middle-grade fiction.

FRESHLY FALLEN SNOW

PAGE ONE OF ‘SNOW BEHIND THE DOOR’

My new name is Snow – a name that suits me
even though there are days I wish it didn’t.

I died a very long time ago or was it yesterday? …I think maybe both.

Apart from a few self-possessed phantoms, I live alone in a house of shadows. My father said they were memories of the past and foreshadows of things that might have been. But that was in the ‘high winter’ when he’d been out of sorts, and as soon as he saw my eyes brim with tears, he enfolded me in a bear hug and told me not to worry because he had plans to capture the happy shadows of wonderful things yet to be… and then he left to find them.

Bede Hall is my family, now. I ‘live’ inside its walls and peer through them into grand rooms full of brightly colored people. I especially like to stand behind the great mirror in the dining room, the twin of the one in my Winter Room, and study the girl named Beryl who looks as lost and moody as me.

If anyone could see me in the gilded frame, I would look like a painting of a nine-year-old girl, sometimes smiling, but intently searching their faces for my father who once lived there.

I’ve learned two things since I arrived here in the House of Reincarnations. My friend, Parks, the old head gardener, who used to be King of the Trees, is a ghost like me, and that fairies are dreadful gossips.

I slip unnoticed into times that overlap and fade into each other, so, I’m never quite sure when it is until I see Beryl, who can be my age or a teenager or an old lady dozing by the fire.

But there are days when all that greets me from the other sides of mirrors are white mounds of furniture covered in sheets, when the dust lies thick as time and it’s my turn to comfort the house. It’s not easy being a child or a great house after you’ve been abandoned.

Snow Behind the Door has been shortlisted for Chanticleer’s 2023 Gertrude Gardner Award for middle-grade fiction

LISTENING TO SNOW

‘Snow Behind the Door’– the memoir of a child ghost with amnesia (book four of my ‘Bede Series’) has progressed to the first short list for the 2023 GERTRUDE WARNER AWARD for middle-grade fiction.

My Bede series was meant to be a trilogy but Snow, the young ghostly presence who floated silently along Bede Hall’s time portals to reunite her lost family, lost herself along the way.

Bede Hall fresh from victory hadn’t noticed Snow slip away to her old sanctuary, the cold spot at the top of the stairs where she barricaded herself behind the Winter Door to sleep herself a reality she could ‘live’ with.  True to her nature, Snow had drifted into being and not-being so often throughout eons of time she had no clear understanding of her place – past, present, or future.

Happily, the Hall bedevilled me into listening to her lonely cries for help.

All Snow knew for certain was that she had been born thousands of years before the birth of her thirteen-year-old father. No wonder she’d suffered a breakdown. No wonder I eventually listened.

Every evening Bede Hall whispered an ancient truth in Snow’s ear: “if you really want something enough, a little thing like dying won’t stop you.”

But Snow’s restless threads from past lives resurfaced randomly as dreams are wont to do – a story she was too afraid to remember.

BUT ‘THE FIRST SNOWFALL IS THE DEEPEST‘ and SNOW’S STORY BEGINS WITH AN ANCIENT HISTORY LESSON that will be posted here tomorrow.