"The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
- Roald Dahl
The sky was grey and so very large. Piercing into the large grey sky was a tall grey wall. Fat black birds swept over the top of the wall cawing in shrill, angry yells. They had dim yellow eyes that revolved and stared. Inside the tall grey wall was a city. His name was Greyscale and he was noisy and dirty and filled with pushing wind and strangling fog. Inside Greyscale, there was a building. Shiny and grey and slick on the outside, and warm mahogany reds on the inside- like suddenly the world turns form black and white to colour!
Inside this building was a boy. He was small, and pale with wavy brown hair the colour of tree trunks. His eyes were bright green like sparkling emeralds, and his smile could melt the stoniest of tempers.
“I’m going to be a book writer!” he called out to his nanny in the next room. The lumpy lady walked into the nursery to find the boy had strewn paper all over the room.
“Oh what a mess you’ve made!” she scolded, beginning to pick up the paper. The boy looked sheepish and then made a grab to stop her.
“Wait! You can’t!” the lumpy lady paused as the child clutched her hand. “You have to keep them in order! If you pack up my pages they’ll be all messed up!” she sighed affectionately,
“Son, there nothing written on these pages.”
“Yes there is! Yes there is! You just can’t see it because an evil witch came in before and made a spell, and put it on my pages!” he cried excitedly jumping up and down, his black and grey stripy socks slipping as he did so, causing him to pull them up awkwardly.
“Oh really, well young master perhaps you should read to me whatever is written on these pages, before I pack them up.”
The truth was, the boy didn’t know how to read or write as books were only for adults- children weren’t allowed to fill their heads with the events of the world, they weren’t to know about the great wars, or tyrannous leaders that left the world to decay. The boy was safe inside the room, in the building in the city, in the walls. He needn’t know about those things, which is why he didn’t. But the old woman humoured him, he wouldn’t be around that long anyway and that saddened her.
She pulled the little boy into her arms on the red rug, surrounded by mahogany walls and yellow and blue toys. “So, little one! Tell me a story.”