It has begun. Two days in and so far I have exceeded my required word count on each day (I'm currently at 3,812 words). I am very aware, however, that I haven't been at work for the past two days, so it's the coming week that will show me what I'm made of.
The hardest part is usually getting started and I did struggle initially, but I think I've found the tone now. Let's see how we get on!
The excerpt below is currently intended to be either Chapter One or part of it. No working title yet, but I'll think of something eventually. Hope you like it...
Alfie sees something
‘Alfie Bird, you get back over here this instant!’
Alfie Bird jumped and looked round guiltily. It was a look he’d perfected through many years of practice and at 12 years old it was his go-to look. He wasn’t yet sure what he was supposed to have done wrong, but when his mother used his surname it usually meant she was pretty cross. Not as cross as she could be, or she’d have used his full name, including the dreaded middle name. When she used the middle name he knew he was in for it and no reasoning or pleading that he hadn’t even been there would help. He always found it best when being told off to start from a position of denying everything and work from there, but when the middle name was used he’d learnt to hold his tongue for fear of making things worse. Adults could be so irrational.
His mother was glaring at him from the other side of the ropes while trying to hold on to his little sister, Polly. His mother was a slender woman, with short, dark hair, a tiny nose and a tendency to wear lots of layers because she was always cold. Polly, by contrast, had a mop of wild, blonde hair, a runny nose and as usual was wearing her favourite scarf, regardless of the warm weather. She was a late starter, learning to walk at almost two years and was constantly running off into places she shouldn’t be. She was straining at her mother’s hand and trying to run under the rope towards him.
Trying to run under the rope towards him.
Alfie looked around, bewildered. How had he got here? He was standing well inside the roped off section, somewhere he shouldn’t be, and he had no memory of crossing the rope at all. No wonder his mother was angry at him.
He ran across the grass towards her and ducked under the rope.
‘Sorry, M-’
‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’ she said, pulling him close, her voice low.
‘Doin’?’ Polly echoed, grabbing his trouser leg and grinning up at him.
‘It’s a good thing nobody else saw you or we’d probably be asked to leave,’ his mother said. ‘This is a national monument-‘
‘World Heritage Site,’ he said, then wished he hadn’t.
‘-and it’s roped off for a reason,’ her voice was getting lower. ‘We came all this way because you insisted you wanted to see Stonehenge, so don’t make me take you home.’
‘But I didn’t-’
‘Don’t try to pretend you didn’t know it was off-limits.’
Alfie honestly couldn’t remember stepping past the ropes, it was something he was still confused about, but he looked up at her with what he thought of as his best puppy-dog eyes. ‘Sorry, Mum. I shouldn’t have done it. I promise I’ll be good.’
She looked at him, holding his gaze.
‘Good,’ Polly said, slapping his leg.
They both looked down at her, her brow creased in mock fury, her lips pursed. Alfie felt his lips twitch involuntarily and heard his mother’s soft snort before they both burst out laughing. He could almost feel the tension draining from her body and started to relax himself.
‘Oh, what’s so funny?’
Polly launched herself at their father, who’d just wandered up behind them, an easy grin on his face. He caught her under the arms and swung her up in the air, to delighted squeals.
Alfie’s mother gave him a peck on the cheek as he threw Polly over one shoulder and ruffled Alfie’s brown hair in exactly the way he didn’t like.
‘Dad!’ Alfie complained, pushing his hands through his hair and trying to get it right just by feel.
‘Polly has just been telling her brother off for going somewhere he shouldn’t,’ said his mother, waving an arm in the direction of the giant standing stones.
His father saw where she was pointing and then looked at Alfie, eyebrows raised. ‘Cool, must look awesome from over there. Could you-’ he recoiled as his wife prodded him, hard. ‘I mean, you should know better, young man.’ He smiled and winked at Alfie.
Alfie grinned.
‘Nicholas.’ Alfie’s mother looked exasperated.
Alfie’s father grimaced. He recognised the name usage, too, and wasn’t any more immune to it than Alfie, in spite of being well over 6 feet tall and very well-built. His middle was starting to soften now, but he had played rugby at weekends until Polly had come along. He had always towered over his wife but he knew when he was being told off and knew not to argue.
‘In’clas,’ came Polly’s voice from over her father’s shoulder. He pulled her back until she was sitting on his hip, a stern look on her face. ‘In’clas,’ she said again, waving a tiny finger at him. They all laughed.
‘I consider myself suitably chastened, dear Polly. Am I forgiven?’ he said.
Polly reached around his neck and gave him the tightest hug she could manage.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek before lowering her to the ground. ‘Shall we keep going?’ He took her hand and they started wandering further along the path around the ancient stones.
Alfie’s mother started to follow, glancing back over her shoulder.
‘Alfie?’
Alfie realised he’d fallen into a bit of a daze again, staring at the centre of the stone circle. His hand was on the cordon rope, almost as if he were about to lift it and duck under again. What was the matter with him?
‘Coming,’ he said, and stepped towards his mother.
At that moment, a flash of green light caught his eye. It had come from behind one of the stones on the far side of the circle, he was sure of it. Nobody else seemed to be looking that way, but he couldn’t believe that he’d been the only one to see it.
Alfie wanted to ask his mother if she’d seen it but she was already walking away, so obviously not.
There were people on that side of the circle but they were all acting normally, milling around, posing for photographs. Maybe it had been a camera flash?
The flash came again, this time from behind a different stone. No, not behind, within. He’d been looking straight at it this time. That was no camera flash. Maybe it was part of some new effect or exhibit, something he hadn’t read about.
Alfie shook his head, eyes closed. He’d read everything there was to read about Stonehenge; it had fascinated him from an early age, he’d no idea why. If there was a new exhibit he would know about it. His walls had posters of superheroes and Stonehenge, his two obsessions. He’d watched all the Time Team programmes about the site, even owned them on DVD, something which never ceased to amaze his parents, and there had never been anything about green flashing lights.
He looked up at the nearest stone, a huge, grey monolith, and the world suddenly seemed to go into slow motion. He was aware of people all around him, but at the same time they were distant shadows. Alfie could feel his mother moving away from him, actually feel it, but it was as if she was swimming slowly through the air. A dim part of his mind registered the feel of his father and his sister, further away, warm and familiar.
A calmness came over him, a certainty that this was all perfectly normal, this was meant to be.
A green glow began in the middle of the giant stone, not on the surface, in the middle of it, filaments of light growing from that central point and tracing their way to the edges of the block like bursts of lightning, illuminating everything around with a cool green aura. The grass under his feet seemed to grow, brimming with life, a scent of freshness and promise, and even the air suddenly felt somehow cleaner.
Alfie realised two things at the same time; what he was seeing as a spectacular network of light on the stone block was actually the same flash that he’d seen previously, only very much slowed down (or he was very much speeded up), and he was the only person seeing anything at all. Everybody else was just getting on with the business of visiting an interesting place, but none of them could see what was happening. What was going on?
A figure moved, off to one side, and Alfie stared. His mind was working really fast but his body didn’t seem to be able to respond any faster than anyone else’s, moving as if through treacle, so how was it that the man he could see appeared to be walking normally? He was walking purposefully away from the circle as if he had somewhere very important to be - was he just a figment of Alfie’s speeding imagination, trying to make sense of it all, or was he, as he appeared to be, moving incredibly quickly?
The man stopped, his back visibly stiffening. Alfie couldn’t look away as the man’s head turned, searching. He looked old, with a lined face and a shock of white hair stuffed under a green flat cap, but his bearing was that of a much younger man and he seemed to be wearing a pair of very trendy white trainers.
The man saw him and went very still, his eyes widening as their gazes locked. His lips moved. From that distance Alfie shouldn’t have been able to hear him, except if he’d shouted, but the low whisper reached his ears as if they’d been standing next to each other in a quiet room.
‘You’re here.’
Everything went black.
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