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NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE
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6M p8 |
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The Wishing Stone
A Fantasy for Children
By Edwin Mowforth |
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Characters in order of appearance.
Marbles (real name Mirabelle) An innocent but durable girl, about 8 years old; wears spectacles.
Rufus Marbles’ cantankerous and accident-prone dog, of assorted species. Becomes more of a nuisance when Marbles and the others are granted the gift of understanding animal and bird speech. Watches too much TV.
Benjamin The elderly and dilapidated driver of the elderly and dilapidated school bus. The whole business is his fault.
Centigrade A very large winged and fire-breathing dragon that Benjamin happens to keep in an old barn next to his bus garage. Fortunately even-tempered, but not always a consummate flyer.
Firemen More enthusiastic than experienced; a good thing in this case.
Paddy Finnegan A poacher who does not approve of dragons in his garden.
A Trawler Skipper Nervous of low-flying dragons
Sea Birds Of all shaped and sizes, including the Great Auk, who is not impressed by Rufus’ insistence that he is Extinct.
Dispin Bluebell A rather delicate Unicorn, later becoming a flying horse (a Pegasus) and then an ordinary horse. A short but eventful career.
Tumbles A very clumsy polar bear
The Great Wizard Becoming Father Christmas at the appropriate time of year. Suitable jovial and magnanimous.
Tinkerbell The rebellious servant of the Great Wizard. Responsible for Benjamin finding his Riddle in the first place.
Synopsis
Benjamin, the old school bus driver, has been muttering about his coming Great Adventure for so many years that nobody takes notice any longer until Marbles, riding home on the bus with Rufus, mentions to him that she has found a four-leafed clover.
Benjamin is at once very excited, as this is apparently a keystone of his Adventure, but he takes it from her only in exchange for a jelly baby which he assures her has the ability to make a wish come true. To please him she takes the sweet and idly wishes Rufus could talk — which he duly does, and continues to talk in a rather sardonic way all through the ensuing tale.
Benjamin tells the tale of the magic jelly babies — he started with four, but wasted the other four on, among other things, inadvertently acquiring a large dragon called Centigrade, - and after an adventurous brush with the local fire brigade due to the dragon’s incendiary propensities Marbles, Rufus and Benjamin are obliged to escape by flying on the dragon’s back to Greenland in pursuit of the clues in a Riddle that Benjamin found with his jelly babies.
The quest takes them to a colony of sea birds including the Great Auk, who didn’t know he was supposed to be extinct, and then on via a glacier to the North Pole, involving on the way a Unicorn called Dispin Bluebell who in turn becomes a flying horse — a Pegasus — and finally an ordinary white horse because he infringes the magical rules governing his status
At the North Pole they do indeed find the wishing stone, but there also they meet the Great Wizard, with his clumsy polar bear Tumbles and his rebellious servant Tinkerbell, and the three adventurers are persuaded that on the whole they had better leave the Wishing Stone in safer hands,
(About 20 000 words) |
