The Glory Walk

By Lynne Roberts

'What's the Glory Walk?' Kate asked.
'It's when you show off your talents,' Angelica replied. 'Only I don't have any talents.'
But it was Angelica's unknown talent that had pulled Kate and Phoebe through time and space to a strange planet, and now she was refusing to find a way to send them home again.
This book deals with the problems of blended families, friendship and self confidence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynne Roberts
• Release date: Feb 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927241066

Lynne Roberts

Lynne is a writer, musician, dance teacher and porcelain painter, among other things. She lives on an orchard in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand where she breeds donkeys and collects grandchildren. Lynne has written copious numbers of educational teaching resources from pre-school through to tertiary level. She writes story books and fantasy fiction for children and poetry for children and adults, always with a strong vein of humour. Lynne also writes musicals for which she composes the original music.

Book preview

The Glory Walk

By Lynne Roberts

Published by Liberty Publications at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts

ISBN 978-1-927241-06-6

Smashwords Edition, License Notes


This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

Contents

1. Life is no Picnic

2. Space Monsters

3. Aquarius Base

4. Fair Exchange

5. Whirling Whirbles

6. Meeting the Master

7. Spurls and Stitches

8. Losing Hope

9. Back in Time

10.Floating and Flying

11.Friends at Last

Chapter 1. Life Is No Picnic

‘Slow down, Kate, and let Phoebe catch up with you,’ called Phillip. ‘She doesn’t know the tracks the way you do.’

Kate ground her teeth in frustration. ‘Oh, I mustn’t get ahead of Feeble,’ she muttered savagely. ‘I can’t walk at the speed I want to. I have to wait for her.’ She crossed her arms and stood stock still on the bush track, tapping a foot impatiently as she waited for her step-sister to reach her. ‘I’ll give her until the count of ten.’

Kate had reached seven when Phoebe rounded the bend and walked calmly up beside her. She was cool and unruffled in a clean white T-shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was neatly tied back in a ponytail and she wasn’t even out of breath. Kate felt this was grossly unfair. She gave a despairing look at her own rumpled T-shirt. It had once been white but many washes later it was a creamy pink, the legacy of being washed with a pair of red socks, and it was decidedly grubby. Kate had tied her own brown hair in pigtails that morning but she could feel wisps of escaped hair sticking damply to her forehead. Without speaking, she began walking up the track again.

The track was steep. Not so steep as to be classified as a climb, but certainly a walk that made the back of Kate’s calves ache the higher she went.

‘This is a stupid idea anyway,’ Kate said moodily, but Phoebe didn’t bother answering. Kate sighed to herself as she quickened her pace, determined to be the first to reach the top of the hill. If it hadn’t been for Phoebe doggedly walking behind her, she might even have enjoyed it. It had been ages since she had been up here. She and her father used to go tramping regularly after her mother died. They would pack a picnic lunch and her father’s sketch book and head off for the day. Her father would find a spot that appealed to his artistic eye and begin the rough outline of one of his paintings, sketching in the background and filling pages with details he would use later. Things such as a rock covered with patterns of moss or the pattern of light and shade dappling a tree trunk beneath a canopy of branches. Kate would sail leaf boats in trickles of streams or crawl into hollows beneath fallen trees and pretend she was a forest fairy living in a leafy house. She collected leaves and pieces of bark and even twisted twigs and bore these treasures home at the end of the day. But those days were gone since her father had re-married and she had to suffer the unwanted burden of a sister.

‘It might not have been so bad if she had been a heap younger,’ Kate thought sadly. ‘Or even a whole heap older.’

But to her dismay, Phoebe was the same age. The brief hope that they might have been friends was extinguished the first time they net. Her admittedly grudging overtures were met with polite but definite rebuttal. Phoebe was remote and uninterested in anything that Kate did. Her slim long-legged build was in complete contrast to Kate’s more solid dumpiness. But the worst part, as far as Kate was concerned, was that she was expected to share her bedroom with Phoebe.

‘Flaming Feeble,’ she muttered under her breath.

Kate had accepted it as inevitable when her father said he was marrying Anna, and that she and Phoebe would be living with them. She liked Anna and she and her Dad had been going out for six months during which time her father had been back to his old cheerful self again.

‘Is Phoebe having the studio?’ she had asked.

Her father looked at her in blank amazement.

‘Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea? That’s where I do my painting. Phoebe will be sharing your room.’

‘What?’ howled Kate. ‘She can’t. It’s my room. It’s not big enough, anyway.’

‘It’s plenty big enough,’ her father said briskly. ‘You’ve always had a spare bed in it for friends to stay so it won’t make any difference.’

‘But friends are different,’ Kate wailed. ‘I need my privacy. I don’t want to share. Why don’t you give her the studio and paint somewhere else, or