Imogen's Adventures in Angel-Wing Forest

By G. N. Bell and Joel Ray Pellerin

I was inspired to write this book after watching my young granddaughter Imogen playing in my garden one summer. From an early age, Imogen began to show signs of having an extraordinary imagination. When in trouble with her grandma over small transgressions, she would quickly say that it was the naughty little elves in granddads garden that made her do these naughty things. Hearing this, I decided to place a few small elves, fairies, gnomes, and pixies in parts of my garden. I have to say that this idea really took off. Imogen began to invent really outlandish stories of the fun she was having in the garden with the naughty little elves. So much so that I began to add other little characters into the garden. As I began to write this book, I suddenly became as much of a child as my granddaughter. I began to create, in my head anyway, lots of different characters and the different things that they would get up to. Every time I would sit in front of my PC to write another story, I suddenly became a child once again. I found myself almost believing in the adventures that I was writing about. Not only was I beginning to believe in the adventures but I found myself being dragged into the stories. It was as if I was really there in Angle-Wing Forest with my granddaughter Imogen. When I had completed this collection of adventures in Fairy Land, I gave them to my granddaughter to read, and she loved them. So remember, people, if you can set aside all your adult thoughts and your adult ways for one day, then you just might enjoy the adventures in Angel-Wing Forest with your own beautiful children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514448410

G. N. Bell

I have known the author of this book for over forty years, and in the year 2008, he had a nasty accident. It happened on a Saturday morning when while taking a shower, suddenly he slipped and broke his back in two places. This accident left him paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair. He spent eight months in hospital, four of which were spent confined to bed. As you can imagine, this was a bad time in his life. When he was eventually discharged from the hospital and returned home, he was at a loss as to what to what to do with the hours of time he now had that were filled with emptiness. Several months passed, and he was becoming more depressed. His personality changed. He became quick-tempered and uncomfortable to be around despite the best efforts of his close family. This new and not-so-nice person was the total opposite to the person he once was. One day his cousin Jan Moran Neil called him on the telephone. This telephone call was to change his life. Janet is a teacher of creative writing, as well as an author in her own right. In this telephone conversation, Janet suggested that he might take up writing as a way to not only pass the time but would also help to exercise and occupy his mind. I remember hearing him tell Janet that he had never written anything in his life, not even a letter. “It doesn’t matter what you write,” Janet told him. Just write the first thing that comes into your head. That was the beginning of a new life for him. To date he has now written four books. This is the first one to be published. I am pleased to say that he is now back to his old self and once again a pleasure to be with.

Book preview

Imogen’s

Adventures In

Angel-Wing

Forest

imogen.tif

by

G. N. Bell

Illustrations by

Joel Ray Pellerin

Copyright © 2016 by G. N. Bell. 732644

ISBN:   Softcover            978-1-5144-4839-7

            Hardcover            978-1-5144-4840-3

            EBook                  978-1-5144-4841-0

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.

Rev. date: 01/18/2016

Xlibris

0800-056-3182

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

Contents

STORY ONE: MOTHER-EARTH’S TIME-PIECE

STORY TWO: A LITTLE WREN CALLED ROBIN

STORY THREE: THE TOOTH FAIRY

STORY FOUR: THE WEE FOLK PEACE GAMES

STORY FIVE: THE LEPRECHAUN’S MISSING GOLD

STORY SIX: THE NATIVITY FAIRY

STORY SEVEN: THE QUEEN’S MISSING JEWELS

OBSERVATIONS…

Imogen’s adventures in Angel-Wing Forest is a collection of short stories inspired by watching my young granddaughter at play in my back garden. As I watched and listened to my granddaughter Imogen as she played, as I thought at the time alone, a thought suddenly struck me. Do any of us adults really know how to communicate fully with our children on a level that they are actually going to understand? Yes it’s true, we are the adults, but that fact alone can be a huge disadvantage for all adults. Being the grownup can be the main drawback in our understanding of what our children are really doing in their play. Here is an example of how we grownups misunderstand certain thing that our children do and use when at play. We see a collection of cushions, or several coats, or even a bundle of jumpers that have been piled high on the living room floor. In our adult mind we see these items as something that our children have abandoned and left for us to clear away.

That’s not how our children see this assembled mass of objects that are scattered across the living room floor. Our children see something completely different. Where we see an untidy jumble of various objects, they see a secret hideaway, or maybe a mountain that needs to be conquered before they go for their afternoon nap. You see I have now come to the conclusion that our adult mind-set has become so conditioned, over the years, to only accepting the things that our eyes see before them. We no longer have the capacity to allow our minds to explore the possibilities of what we see before us might become. Unlike our children’s untrained minds, because our children have the ability to see past the obvious. Without a second thought they will freely allow their imagination to remain free to wander down many different paths.

To us a chair is a chair, but to our children a chair is not just a chair, it can be anything that their little minds want it to be. By pulling two chairs together they suddenly become a spaceship on its way to the moon. Then by draping a coat over the chairs, they are instantly transformed into a pirate ship sailing upon the high seas. The more I watched and listened to my granddaughter at play, the more envious I became, because I quickly realized that being an adult I had lost the ability to set my thoughts free from the norm and allow my mind to meander unhindered to wherever it wished to take me. As I watched my granddaughter Imogen playing in my garden, I secretly wished that for just one day, that I could recapture that childish ability to once again allow my thoughts to travel unhampered by adult logic through the craziness that is a child’s untamed mind.

IDEAS…

One thought did occur to me, instead of clearing away what we adults consider to be clutter, why don’t we add to the clutter, by making even more objects available for our children to introduce into their play. This I did. First, I set aside a small plot at the bottom of my garden, I then told my granddaughter Imogen that this plot in the garden was to be her very own little garden to do with whatever she wanted to. Over the next few weeks I left several small plants for her to plant. Then I began to introduce several small characters into Imogen’s little garden, just one or two items at a time. My idea was to allow my granddaughter to develop her own reasons for why these new characters had suddenly appeared in her little garden. Over a matter of a few weeks, several new characters suddenly materialized in Imogen’s little garden.

PLACEMENTS…

Three small impish elves were the first to arrive in the garden. It has to be said that their arrival in Imogen’s garden seemed to coincide with some unusual naughty behavior from Imogen. When quizzed about her little misbehaviors, Imogen would say with a cheeky smile on her face, that she was not responsible, as it was the naughty elves that made me do it. Imogen would say that the elves were so naughty that they wouldn’t stay in the place where she put them. I quickly decided that this was a situation that needed to be rectified sooner rather than later. These three naughty elves were soon to be given names by my granddaughter, the names given to them were, Puck, Kalen and Elvin. So this is what happened next. Within a few days three older and much wiser Gnomes suddenly arrived in Imogen’s little garden. These three Gnomes were also given names by my granddaughter, their names were, Eltari, Orin and Oberon. I can remember clearly the first time Imogen saw them in her little garden, she rushed from the garden into the house shouting loudly,

Granddad, there are three Gnomes in my garden and they have butterfly nets over their shoulders.

Have they now, I wonder what the nets are for Imogen. I asked.

Imogen thought deeply for a moment, then she said.

I think that they must have butterfly nets so they can catch them naughty elves when they are being naughty.

You just might be right with that one Imogen. I replied.

The next mysterious arrival in the garden was one that brought great delight to my granddaughter’s face. It was the grand and very beautiful Fairy Queen herself. On her back she carried the most beautiful pair of glowing wings, which from time to time would begin to flutter gracefully on the summer breeze. This regal being was accompanied by two smaller fairies, although they were just as beautiful and pleasing to the eye as the Queen herself. The instant Imogen saw the fairies in her little garden she hurried from the garden at high speed to tell me all about her new find. In her excited rush to tell me about the new arrivals, she was panting furiously, hardly able to catch a breath by the time she reached me in the living room where I was reading my daily newspaper.

Granddad, she said excitedly, there is a Fairy Queen and two fairy princesses in my garden and I think that they have come to live in my little garden forever.

Really, I said, come show me where they are Imogen.

My granddaughter took a tight hold of my hand and pulled me out of my armchair and out into the garden. True enough, there they were, bold as brass sitting in Imogen’s little garden. Within hours these little fairies had also been named by my granddaughter. From that day forth they were to be known as, Queen Elvena, Princess Breena and Princess Zanna. Who by the way is also the tooth fairy? The next day yet another surprise waited for my granddaughter in her little garden, this surprise was in the form of two little Cherubs. I told Imogen that I had no idea how, or why, the two little Cherubs had arrived in her garden, but arrive they had. It really does seem that there are a lot of strange happenings going on in Imogen’s little garden. In any case, my granddaughter loves each and every one of the new arrivals. The next item to suddenly appeared in Imogen’s little garden was a small wooden house, a bird