Dear Reader,

Whoever you are, congratulations! You have successfully intercepted my royal letter. And that is quite a feat.

A feast of a breakfast lay before my eyes. Scrambled eggs; not too rubbery but not too wet, streaky bacon, pancakes covered in sticky maple syrup, warm croissants, cereal, fruit, yoghurt. You name it; it’s there.

It’s Samhain. An important time of celebrations for the village, marking the harvest’s end and arrival of darker months. The village buzzed with bonfire and feast preparations. Everyone was excited. Everyone except Gwenni.

Tom pulled out a screwdriver, weathered from a lifetime of use, and waved it in my face. With one foot on the dustbin and one flat against the wall he hauled himself onto the windowsill and slipped the screwdriver into a small notch in the frame.

It wasn’t fair, he hadn’t done anything! Joe stomped up the stairs to his bedroom. Sent to his room “without dinner or devices” as his mum had said. Which was a laugh as he didn’t have any ‘devices’ and a stale cheese barm barely counted as dinner.

I discovered I could travel back in time at about the same time that I realised I was into girls. Finding myself back at the start of the gym class I’d just struggled through proved the former; my all-consuming crush on my best friend.

Bram hissed as they checked the last of the traps. Empty.
Dory knew better than to correct his little brother’s anger. They would need some of that fire to warm them in the coming winter and Dory had none to spare. What Dory felt most was tired.

‘Oi, death girl!’ a familiar voice shouted.
My heart was in my throat. What were they doing here? A couple of lads from my year at school rounded the corner beside the church and up the pathway near where I was kneeling.

The boy arrived at Elenya’s lighthouse a day before her first Rites, sailing through the haar as if drifting over clouds. She watched his approach eagerly from the lantern room.

‘Look at this.’
Maggie moved to see what Kai was pointing at, he was enjoying his new cool status with his big sister’s old iPhone. He was looking at the Magpies and Mochas account, the social media monster that Maggie’s mother had created.

‘Huh!’ said Kelvin Kea, squinting up at the sign by the hotel entrance. He treated the man bashing it in the ground to his best parrot-y stare. ‘We’re New Zealand’s only mountain parrot, if you please!’

When my brother Simon went to university he left me his old fishing rod, a dog-eared copy of Wind in the Willows, and seven pounds fifty in change. At least he left them in his unlocked bedroom, which was pretty much the same thing.

“To sew is to serve” was the first life lesson my parents taught me. I’d chant it to the beat of my footsteps roaming around the city. I’d whisper it into my pillow to soothe […]

I’m on the news. The actual news. Not the here’s a story about some kid making loom bands to save a dog shelter, now here’s the weather news but the actual real-life news. And they ask me why. Why it happened.

I yanked the comb through the tangled mass one last time, but my hair still stuck up all over like a used toothbrush. Flicking a few bits of dirt from my trews and tabard, I checked my reflection in the shard. I poked out my tongue.