SpinDell

By Jon Jacks

Coming across a magically whirling spinning wheel in a wood’s clearing, Beith pricks herself upon a splinter; and instantly forgets why she’s here.
Wandering, lost, ever deeper into the valley, Beith’s efforts to remember are either helped or hindered by the otherworldly inhabitants.
But the Fairy Queen has stolen the boy who’d arranged to meet Beith; and she has no intention of ever returning him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Nov 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463235546

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

SpinDell

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella’s Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch’s Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare

Text copyright© 2018 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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‘Oh, don’t deceive me, Oh, never leave me,

How could you use A poor maiden so?’

Chapter 1

‘Early one morning, just as the sun was rising’

It was February, and the light was at last beginning to return. In fact, it was unusually bright for this time of year.

Beith had long, silver hair; yet it was the bright and glistening silver of youthful beauty, not age.

In the wood’s clearings, where the sun streamed down towards her at its brightest, her hair sparkled, such that as she walked and it flowed about her she could have been robed in glittering fairies.

However, her dress was of green ribbons, decoratively serrated at the edges. It could have been tailored to emphasis the fluid grace of her moves, the slenderness of her body.

Her skin was of the purest white, as if made to reflect the sun at its brightest.

Despite her every move being as smooth as water, as one relaxed amongst her surroundings, anyone seeing her today could be forgiven for thinking she was shy.

For her head was low, and her smile wasn’t as bright as usual.

*

Chapter 2

‘I heard a young maid sing in the valley below’

When Beith at last looked up towards the still rising sun, so that he bathed her face in his warm glow, she managed a sad smile, enjoying his lingering caress.

Yet he was rising still, of course, and she sensed his glow was cooling as he moved away from her.

Lamenting this cooling of his embrace, she thought to express her sorrow in a song; and yet hardly had she uttered the first words than someone broke out into a melody of his own.

‘Down yonder green valley, where streamlets meander…’

It was a tune she recognised, she was sure, unless she was being maliciously fooled. It was a song that had always made a deep impression upon her.

Who could be singing such a melody deep amongst the trees?

She broke into a run, eager to see who sang so entrancingly.

*

Beith broke through the dark undergrowth, coming out into another clearing, albeit one where the sun hadn’t yet reached.

In the clearing’s centre, a spinning wheel whirled, as if powered by an invisible maiden; and the most gloriously coloured wool wildly and freely spun from it as if drawn from nothing but the air.

‘…When twilight is fading I pensively rove…’

Yet there was no one here singing that Beith could see, no matter how hard she peered into the shadows lying beneath the clearing’s surrounding trees.

Besides, the voice seemed to emanate from where the unseen spinner should be sitting; or rather, perhaps, it came from the whirling wheel itself as it played with the wind rushing through its blur of spokes.

The wheel slowed, the melody faltered, halted.

Once again, it could have been that some imperceptible spinster had been disturbed by Beith’s arrival on the edge of the clearing.

Yet, Beith noticed, it was still and quiet everywhere about her.

Not a bird, not an insect, could be heard.

Even the gently rustling wheel had become entirely motionless and silent.

Cautiously, Beith approached the silent wheel that now stood so still at the hub of the clearing.

Naturally, the spinning of the wool had also come to an end. As the wheel had spun the gloriously multi-coloured thread – it could have been the curling bands of a rainbow, had a rainbow not being so relatively short of colours – the yarn had coiled and floated up and up into the air, merrily intertwining as if wishing to create its own elaborate tapestry; but now many of the fibres lay as if forlornly stranded upon the grass, while others appeared to have simply evaporated back into the air from which it had been rapidly drawn.

It was so quiet in the clearing, one might have thought that the Great Wheel of Time itself – rather than this lowly reproduction, this apparently spiritless replica – was somewhere standing frozen.

But no; it wasn’t entirely silent.

There was a beating of a heart, a breathless sobbing, that Beith could hear if she listened carefully, patiently, enough.

Naturally, she thought it could only be her own sadness that she could hear.

Could it really come from so deep within herself, though, that she wouldn’t be aware of her own weeping in any other way but hearing it?

Surely such a thing wasn’t possible.

She held her breath; tried to still her heart.

She consciously ensured that she no longer bewailed his leaving her.

The sobs continued, as did the anguished beat of a torn heart.

She cocked her head, as birds do to pick up the slightest sound, bringing an ear closer to the wheel to see if it still sang, if in a whisper.

Yes; the weeping came from the stilled wheel.

Beith drew closer to the wheel, dropping to her knees by its side, reaching out to reassuringly steady herself by holding gently onto its rim.

‘How can a spinning wheel weep? Why would it weep?’ she asked herself curiously.

‘Why, because I am no longer alive, of course!’ the wheel wailed despondently.

*

‘You can talk? You can hear me? So it was you I heard singing!’

Beith, of course, should have been more than shocked; surely, she should also have been terrified to find herself talking to a spinning wheel!

Yet what harm could a spinning wheel do to her? Even one that talks and sings?

Besides, as the wheel talked, it whirled; and as it whirled, it spun, throwing gloriously hued streamers out into the air as if they were a flock of exotic birds conjured up from nowhere.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ the spinning wheel admitted. ‘That was me! When I saw you, I thought it best to go quiet; I thought you might be terrified to come across a singing spinning wheel, fearing it was bewitched!’

‘Are you bewitched?’ Beith said worriedly, even as she uttered it realising it was a foolish thing to ask: the spinning wheel was hardly likely to answer truthfully now, was it?

It might not even realise it was bewitched!

‘No, no, no,’ the spinning wheel replied in an anxious rush, a rush of colours more gorgeous than ever. ‘At least, not that I’m aware of,’ he confessed unsurely.

His uncertainty and honesty reassured Beith, in its way.

At least, it seemed to her, he was prepared to tell the truth.

And hadn’t he revealed