This is, most certainly, a one-off… but I truly felt the need to share.:-)
I have finished my first novel and it is now in the lap of the Gods and the other lesser lights of the publishing industry. 😛
I have been trying to sort all sorts of things in my head in terms of creative pursuits but I finally ended up choosing the genre and subject matter of my next novel and, quite summarily, set a date for starting it.
I told/promised Janet that it would be today… the first paragraph or so, akin to laying a foundation stone or planting a sapling… you get the metaphor.:-)
The novel will be called 'The Birth Of A Wiseman' and will take place over five days in the summer of 1964, following the attempts of a Grandmother and Great, Great Aunt to test their Grandson/Great, Great Nephew, to see if he has the (suspected) powers to develop into a 'Wiseman' (or 'Dyn Hysbys' in the Welsh). The Welsh idea of a 'Wiseman' or 'Wizard' is vastly different to that of Harry Potter – being far more mundane… but to the simple hill-folk of West Wales, far more important. 😎
Anyway, for one night only and because you are the only people I will ever share it with until the novel is done, here it is. :-0
[b]Chapter One.
Saturday, 18th July 1964[/b]
From a distance she looked more like a porcelain doll than ever. Her face was pinched and flat but not quite flawless; her skin being too tight and too stretched, with a hundred small red spider veins threading out from her nose to her higher cheeks. Her mouth formed a perfect O beneath a dismissively snubbed nose, while her eyes, set dark and harsh, fixed on him, as if by willpower alone her gaze could turn him to stone.
Thomas tried to turn his head aside but the Mrs. Very Reverend, John James Jones had him ensnared. Thomas gave in, raised his ten-year old head in defiance and stared back down the yard. He allowed himself to be scared but he was seldom, if ever, truly frightened. The Mrs. Very Reverend looked the part but in truth she was as frightening as a scrub ewe. Still, she held her gaze, making no attempt to break away or better still, climb into their very compact and very dull brown car.
Almost as if they realized that the Mrs. Very Reverend was not quite with them, the rest of the party gathered about the car, Gwen, Minnie and The Very Reverend John James Jones himself, moved off to the side of the barn. There they examined the profusion of pink-tinted Buddleia that had blown up the mountain from a garden in the village to create a tangle of large, arching cranes that threatened to engulf the small tractor shed.
Thomas froze. She was singing at him. Not to him mark you, at him. Her eyes were locked firmly on his head and she swayed slightly as she sang.
Lo! He comes, with clouds descending
Once for favoured sinners slain
Thousand, thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of His train:
Halleluiah, halleluiah
God appears on earth to reign
Every eye shall now behold Him
Robed in dreadful majesty
Those who set at naught and sold Him
Pierced, and nailed Him to the tree
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing
Shall the true Messiah see
Something in Thomas? heart subsided and he swallowed hard. The Mrs. Very Reverend was a dour and sour, thin-lipped lady indeed? but when you looked under the layers of polly-parrot scripture and Sunday Schooled manners? well, The Mrs. Very Reverend was little more than a superstitious farm girl? and it saddened him to know that she, a full-grown woman, was truly terrified by and of him.
brocho 13 years, 6 months ago.
