Bramblewood

By Christopher Best

Life is hard for Maria, living alone with an older brother who barely notices her. But a discovery one night in their antique shop, as she’s planning her escape, sends her off on a wild adventure to Bramblewood. A bizarre crowd of woodland characters waits there to welcome her; the Parliament of Owls, Tawny Blare and Garden Brown among them, beady-eyed Bullstrode Frogley, their Slime Minister; and of course Maria’s Lady-in-Waiting, a beautiful cobalt blue parrot named Hyacinth McCaw. But the arrival of a group of orphaned weasels begging an audience with their queen is only the start of Maria’s troubles. A chance remark by Lady Hyacinth leads Maria on a journey of self-discovery that can only end when she finally returns home to confront her brother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Best
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301475919

Christopher Best

Christopher Best is an author and composer, working in the South West of England. He has written two novels and several collections of short stories. His music work comprises over fifty compositions for a wide variety of media.

Book preview

BRAMBLEWOOD

An adventure for children and grown-ups

By Christopher Best

Copyright 2020 Christopher Best

Smashwords Edition

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‘Highly Commended’

King Lear Chairman’s Prize 2020 for short stories

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 - A Horse and a Verse

Chapter 2 - The Lady-in-Waiting

Chapter 3 - Queen and Parliament

Chapter 4 - Maria’s Decree

Chapter 5 - The Ancient Law

Chapter 6 - Thoughts of Home

Chapter 7 - The Return

About the Author

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Preface

When children ask me to make up a story, I often start by asking them each to name two objects. I then try to work a storyline around these objects, giving me a starting point and them some shared ownership of the tale. For this story, created for my lovely nieces Leyla and Ffion, I was given a standard lamp, a rocking horse, a toad and a blue parrot…

…Bramblewood was my response.

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1

A Horse and a Verse

Being eleven was proving to be something of an ordeal for Maria Petrova. It was hard enough living thousands of miles from where she’d grown up, but having to spend the past year alone with her older brother was something else entirely. Even as children the two of them had never really got on, but Andrei was now nearly twenty. Twenty going on fifty, Maria would say. All he ever did was talk politics, read newspapers, answer telephones and spend hours rearranging the dusty, dingy old junk shop downstairs. He said she should be grateful; that antiques were their bread and butter. With their mum and dad gone, it was now down to him to run the business. If she wanted food on the table; if she wanted new shoes for school, then she should stop moaning and do her homework, or clean the house and make dinner. Andrei never seemed to have time for his sister. He showed her none of the love a brother should. After all, how can you love someone you hardly ever see?

There were times when all this made Maria very miserable and lonely. Of course, she had a few friends at school, but many of the girls made fun of her because of her accent, because her uniform was second-hand, because she didn’t have the latest gadgets like Playstations and mobiles with apps, and wasn’t part of something they called the twitter. Even the friends she did have never came to her home. The whisper was that all those dead people’s belongings had put a curse on the house. Maybe they were just being stupid, maybe they only meant the things in the shop, but Maria couldn’t help noticing that these rumours only began after her parents had met with their accident.

When things really got on top of her she would scream and shout and beat her fists on the table. More than once she threatened to run away and leave Andrei to sort his own blasted washing up and ironing. Let him mend his own stinking socks, sew his own buttons! He in turn would cruelly point out that she had nowhere else to go, and this of course was true; she knew she could never really leave home for good. But she did have one place of escape, about which Andrei knew nothing; a refuge for those darkest of moments, a safe haven she kept hidden for her own dreaming.

Maria had found this place in the spring. Behind the