Written by �anna Cullen James Wilder was highly annoyed. His mother was being mean to him today. �You can�t go out until you�ve helped me around the house,� his mother ordered. James thought this was extremely unfair (possibly illegal) and responded very badly to her orders. �I�ll run away!� he shouted at his mother, jumping up and down in the hallway. �I�ll run away and you�ll never see me again,� said James. Then she would be sorry, he thought, she would wish she had never been mean to me and made me do all this rubbish work, when I want to be outside. Unfortunately Mrs Wilder didn�t listen to her son�s threat and ordered James upstairs to tidy his room, which looked not unlike a hand-grenade had been thrown into it and no one had bothered to clean up the mess. So James stomped upstairs huffing and puffing and all the while wishing he was outside in the morning sun. James loved being outside. The indoor world was just too clean for a boy like him. His sister Nico, well she loved it indoors! Always playing with dolls or putting on dresses and makeup, she pretended to be a princess. James knew that this made Nico a silly girl, although when there was no one around, he played at being a Prince or a Wizard, which really isn�t very different at all. Outside was where James played the most though. He ran around in the little forest on the hill behind their house inventing dangerous adventures for Prince James to battle through. Sometimes he charged his imaginary horse up and down for so long he was covered in mud and very tired when he finally found his way home for dinner, dragging his mucky feet behind him. But the little forest where James played wasn�t just a group of trees on a hill, oh no! This forest had a story of its own. A long time ago before people lived in houses and drove cars, wore fashionable clothes or even had electricity; this forest was called �The Crossing.� So it was on that day, when James wanted especially to be outside in the fields and the forest that our story began and James Wilder ran away from home. Again Mrs Wilder was washing the dishes when James slid down the drainpipe at the back of the house, ran down the garden and leapt over the gate. She saw him go, she always did. But he was a 13-year-old boy, and she could never stop him running off if he wanted to. As long as he came back in time for tea she wouldn�t really mind. As it happens from time to time, when coincidences, events take a turn towards the abnormal as a crossroads is reached and there are no traffic lights or cosmic police to stop incidents colliding into each other and making a huge mess of things. James was not heading out for his usual jaunt or off to play in his usual haunt. Today, things were going to happen. Big things and small things too had been travelling through the night and were arriving at the forest at the same time Jacob was heading for the woods. They hurried there from all over the land and a weirder more stupefying array of �things� a person could not imagine. Some had tentacles or wings, this had gills and that had fins. A few had eyes that stood on stalks, or many legged, the ones that walked. One had a beak like a flightless bird, the other pointed teeth that curved. Frozen water, made of Gas, one hopping wildly through the grass. This mad collection of �Its� and �Odds� were gathering excitedly in the woods. And James was drawing ever near, unsuspecting, without fear. Events were conspiring, adventures were about to be undertaken and from now on, everything was going to be different. Chapter 2 Emmmbble? James sped up the hill and into the forest not slowing down until he was standing in a ring of cedars beneath a gynormous green sycamore tree. Up amongst the branches of the 100-foot giant there was what looked like a tangle of branches and creepers. But the tangle was hollow with enough space for a young boy to loll around in planning with his generals or casting spells with his fellow wizards. Only James knew of this hideaway amongst the branches of the sycamore tree and he always called it �Raven�s den�, but he couldn�t remember why? The greatest and most amazing thing about Raven�s den was the fact that it was a real secret, from everybody. Not a soul knew of the little hideout that James had made in the huge old tree and as everybody knows there is nothing better than a real secret hiding place. There were two windows in the den. The way in was through the western window, which was really the door and the eastern window looked out over the valley to the sea. Inside the Den it was dry and warm, two very important qualities to consider when a young boy is spending hours on his own eating wild berries and plotting against his imaginary foes. This is where James always went when he was sad or angry or just wanted to hide away and play without disturbance. On this day James was angry, angry with his mother for making him work, for keeping him from the forest, and for making him angry. He hated her and never wanted to go back there again, never! In Raven�s den James sulked. With the sun peeping in the western opening that looked out over the backs of the houses, and the smells of the sycamore tree itself hanging in the air, James began to feel sleepy. He sat down to relax and enjoy the view out of the eastern opening, which was the most wondrous view you could ever imagine. |
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