A Unique Story

By Susan Upchurch

Tia is a young girl and she is feeling lost and lonely, she has gone to
live with her Aunt after the loss of her parents.
She fi nds what she believes to be a horse in the forest. Then she fi nds
this is not a horse, but that mythical creature, a Unicorn, which has been
captured and tied to branches to stop it from escaping. She has to help
the Unicorn to escape the clutches of its captors, and then has to help the
Unicorn to escape to another World.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477111093

Susan Upchurch

I am the youngest of four children and I was born in Tooting, London. The family moved to Bermondsey when I was eleven. I have always loved making up stories for my children and grandchildren. I told this story originally to my eldest granddaughter, and my mother said I should write it down, which I did. Gradually this story was added to as each new grandchild came along, and now it is complete. I would have loved my mother to see it in print at last.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Susan Upchurch. 304004-UPCH

ISBN: Softcover    978-1-4771-1108-6

Ebook    978-1-4771-1109-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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DEDICATION 

This book is dedicated

to my wonderful family.

To my mother,

who always told me

to use my imagination

and then write it down.

To my daughter and her

six daughters, and

to my son and his son.

All said I should

never stop believing

I could do it

CONTENTS

1 A Unique Beginning

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

2 A Unique Experience

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

3 A Unique Future

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

4 A Unique Finale

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

1       A UNIQUE BEGINNING

CHAPTER 1

The sun was shining on a green, lush valley. Birds sang as they gathered twigs for their nests and flew around in peaceful enjoyment. The scent of flowers hung in the air and bees droned as they danced from one flower to another gathering pollen to take back to their queens. The sun was shining today, and all was calm and peaceful.

Tia Mason was a little girl of just ten years old, and was quite small for her age. She had long dark hair, which she hated to have brushed, so she usually wore it in plaits, or tied back with ribbons, so it didn’t get tangled too often. She was nearly always to be found wearing trousers or shorts, and a tee shirt. Her aunt despaired of getting her to wear a dress, though she did make her wear one for school, but this would be swiftly changed out of when she got back home.

Tia lived with her Auntie May in a little cottage, which nestled at the edge of a large forest. She had lived there since her parents had both gone missing when their plane had disappeared, reportedly crashed, two years previously. Although just a few pieces of wreckage had been found, none of the passengers on board the plane had been found, only the pilot who was unfortunately killed and was still in his seat in the cockpit.

Tia adored her aunt, who had been her mother’s older sister. She was somewhere in her late fifties, and she was quite short, but also she was nicely rounded, with rosy red cheeks. She had long hair that she always wore tied on top of her head. This had once been a dark brown but was now peppered with grey.

Auntie May was a gifted artist and loved nothing better than to spend most of her time in her little studio at the back of the cottage, painting floral or scenic pictures. Sometimes she would do portraits when they needed extra cash, but she preferred to do the floral ones best of all.

At the back of the cottage, was Auntie May’s other speciality, her pride and joy was her little garden. One part was full of colourful blooms that wafted their scent through the windows on the breeze. The other part was made over for her little kitchen garden and she was very clever at growing most of the vegetables that they needed. Tia enjoyed helping her aunt in the garden, but she enjoyed going to the forest even more.

Her aunt had been married a long time ago, but had never had any children of her own. Her husband, Tia’s Uncle Tom, had long since passed away and Tia hardly remembered him at all. Aunt May had been living on her own in the cottage for as long as Tia could remember.

Tia had been away at school, when the news of the crash had filtered through. Auntie May had come forward straight away to take care of her and take her in, and she had been living with her ever since. She wasn’t able to afford to go away to school any more, so she went to the local school a small distance from the cottage, but now she was on holiday from school, and so was able to spend most of her days as she wanted, in the forest.

The cottage backed on to the large forest that Tia frequented. Tia often went there to find new specimens for her aunt to paint. She would often take a picnic lunch with her and spend all day there, looking at the trees and flowers and sitting and listening to the gentle wind drifting through the trees and the sweet song of the birds high up in the tops of the trees. She would breath in the subtle scents of the leaves and the flowers they produced.

She would sometimes walk to the stream that ran some way inside the forest, and sit on a rock and dangle her feet in the ice cool water and listen to the sound of the water as it danced over rocks and stones.

Today, Tia was getting ready to go to the forest again, and it was a beautiful day, with the sun shining, and a little breeze dancing through the trees. Although her aunt had plenty of flowers to paint at the moment, she was hoping that Tia could find her some unusual leaves or oddly shaped twigs that she could add to her collection to paint, as her picture required more body she told Tia.

Tia stroked their old Tabby cat, Tiggles, as she lay on the large window ledge sunning his self. Tiggles spent most of his time on that ledge, only venturing outside when the need arose, which didn’t seem to be very often.

Auntie May was standing in the small kitchen, putting some fruit in the picnic basket, along with other goodies and a small bottle of homemade lemonade and a small bottle of water too, for Tia to take with her. The kitchen was cosy and old, and always smelled of the delightful scents of pies being cooked in the huge old oven or fruit being boiled for jams. In one corner, beside the Aga stood an old shabby armchair. The little windows had red gingham curtains hanging at them, and they were blowing in the breeze from the open window.

When the basket was ready, Tia gave her aunt a kiss and took it from her, and with a promise not to be too late back, she skipped outside. Auntie May knew she often lost track of time while she was in the forest, and smiled to herself. This was not unlike herself, she often lost track of time when she was painting, or in her garden.

Tia strolled away from the cottage toward the forest, swinging her basket and humming a little tune to herself. She made her way over the stone-strewn grassy areas and on through the trees that grew majestically towards the sky. There were many new shoots appearing, and the further she went into the forest, the thicker the trees grew.

Luckily, Tia now knew the forest as well as she did her own name. Today she was aiming for a clearing, further inside the forest, where she had previously seen some unusual plants and leaves, as they could be just what her aunt needed.

Today, as Tia clambered over some fallen trees, she thought she could hear a sound. She stopped so she could hear a little clearer, but all was silent. Shrugging on, she continued until she heard something yet again, and stopped to listen. She listened intently and at first, she didn’t hear anything unusual and thought it must have been just the wind through the trees, but then she heard it once more. The sound was coming some way off to her right, but she couldn’t quite make out what the sound was, but it definitely wasn’t the wind in the trees.

Deciding that her picnic lunch could wait for a time, she set her basket on the top of a fallen tree and clambered over and began to head toward the sound. It was hard going in some places, as the trees grew quite thick the further she went. Some trees and bushes were hard to get past because of thorns and so she had to take care not to get caught up too bad or she could get badly scratched, or tear her clothes.

She really didn’t want to do that, because the last time she had torn her clothes, Auntie May had decided it was time for her to learn how to sew, so she could repair it herself. It had taken all night and the end result was not very good, so now she was more careful.

As she continued, the sound grew both louder and closer. She thought it sounded like an injured wild pig, it was a kind of high-pitched screeching sound, and this was worrying as Auntie May had taught Tia that wild pigs could be very dangerous, especially if injured or cornered. She decided she would check it out but not get too close, just in case. If it was, indeed, an injured pig, then she would tell her aunt when she returned, and they may go out together with their neighbour, a farmer, to find it and if they got it, Auntie May would ensure it became a welcome addition to their kitchen store.

Tia slowed down as she drew closer to the screeching sounds. She was now as close as she was going to safely get, just the other side of a large leafy bush. She leaned into the bush, carefully pulling some branches to one side to get a better look.

What she saw took her breath away. For a moment, she was stunned, but it didn’t take her long to decide what she would do. She checked that there was nobody around before she pushed her way through the bush, and her clothes caught and dragged on the twigs as she forced her way through.

Ahead of her was a beautiful white horse. It seemed to be tethered by ropes to two branches, one on either side of it, the large ropes were tied round its neck, which stopped it from moving very far. The horse was thrashing and pulling so hard that the ropes were beginning to cut into the horse’s neck and Tia could see red welts beginning to appear on the beautiful white skin. She felt angry for the poor horse.

Fig1.tif

Tia raced as close as she could to the horse, making comforting noises as she did so, and she hoped the horse would realise she was not going to hurt it. As she crooned to the horse, the horse seemed to quieten down, though her eyes were wild with fear. Tia slowly edged forward, holding out the palm of her hand, as her aunt had showed her to do when they visited the local farm for supplies.

It was then that the horse seemed to turn fully and faced Tia directly. What Tia saw then astonished her and for a few short moments, she could hardly breath. On the horse’s pure white head, was a gleaming pearly-white twisted horn. This horse, was not a horse, it was a Unicorn. Tia could not believe her eyes. Unicorns were not real, were they? They were just mystical or magical beings made up in stories, weren’t they? Had someone attached the horn to the horse as a joke?

Tia inched closer still, then realised that the horn on the horse’s head, was indeed real. This horse really was a Unicorn.

Oh, my goodness! she thought, What should I do?

Tia knew in her heart that it should not be tied up like this. Someone was trying to capture this beautiful animal, and that was not right, she knew what she had to do, but would she be able to?

The Unicorn’s eyes were still huge with fear, but it did appear to realise that Tia was not going to hurt it. Tia reached for the rope on one side and struggled to untie and remove it from the animal. She had even more trouble with the other rope, but eventually she managed to untie the knot and removed that rope too, leaving the ropes dangling from the trees. The Unicorn made to race away, but seemed to hesitate, and stopped to look back at Tia, maybe it was saying ‘thank you’, thought Tia. Then it rushed off into the forest and was gone.

Tia was left standing in the forest, her hair dishevelled, as were her clothes, but at least they weren’t torn.