Willie Wish and the Magic Realm

By Neale Payne

Do you believe in magic and fairies? Did you know everything in this world has a fairy looking after it?

Willie Wish finds this out. After seeing his father with a fairy one night, Willie is offered a gift to become a helper to those of the magic realm, a gift that will change his life forever. Follow Willie in his adventures as he helps those of the magic realm to overcome their problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543403824

Neale Payne

Neale Payne was born in 1957 and grew up playing in the bush and the beach. He has had many jobs, from General Manager to handyman, and can turn his hand to fix or make anything. He failed English twice, but this did not hold him back from his goals. Always a storyteller, he finds treasures or adventures under every rock through his imagination. A traveller who turns up when his friends and family least expect it, he is now tackling his newest adventure with writing stories and producing products and toys for the wee people who believe in fairies and magic.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Neale Payne.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2017913882

ISBN:                  Hardcover                978-1-5434-0384-8

                             Softcover                  978-1-5434-0383-1

                            eBook                        978-1-5434-0382-4

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/07/2018

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

756006

Contents

Prologue

The Gift

Moonshine

Night-Time Excursions

Willie’s Thirteenth Birthday

Discoveries

The Cellar

New Things to See

Deciding

Party Time

A Helper

The Bird

Orville and His Special Boots

Trouble at the Billabong

Turtles

For my Grandchildren

Harley, Alaia and Ella

Let your imaginations take you on an adventure

Prologue

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Willie Wish, a small sensitive boy with short blond hair and large blue eyes. He loved all things in nature, and some would say he had a special way with birds and animals which lived in the bush around his home. He was kind, considerate, and well-mannered to all he met. Willie lived with his parents, Evan and Emily, along with his two older brothers, John and Ivor. John was a plump tall boy with freckles all over his face. Ivor was a skinny short boy who was always biting his fingernails. They both had red curly hair and were always in trouble. Like his brothers, Willie always dressed in faded blue shorts and a blue checked shirt, with red braces which held his pants up. The clothes were hand-me-downs from his brothers, which his mum had made. He never wore shoes unless he went to school or church.

The Gift

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Moonshine

W ILLIE LIVED IN a small town called Moonshine. It was surrounded by thick bush consisting of huge ghost and red gum trees. Some were over 1,000 years old, he had been told by the timber cutters, who came to cut the best trees down for buildings in the city, furniture, and railway sleepers. It had everything a boy could want—luscious thick undergrowth to explore; creeks to catch yabbies; waterholes to swim in; gorges so deep that only filtered sunlight penetrated the bottom, making the water droplets on the leaves sparkle like stars; and caves cut by wind and rain over thousands of years, spotted the cliff faces which all the kids would rest in or shelter in from the rain. Some had aboriginal painting on the walls. These were special and sometimes very scary.

The town was small with just a few shops in the wide main street: a general store which sold everything, a big jar of lollies always sat on the counter (and if you were lucky, Mrs Smith would give you one); a barber with red-and-white striped posts out front; a doctor’s office that smelt funny; a post office; the schoolhouse with a big playground which had monkey bars, swings, and a see-saw; a church where all the town folk would go every Sunday, a furniture and toy shop which Willie’s dad owned; and the pub where all the men would go after work for a beer and a chat. On the outskirts of the town, where the trees had been cut down, were now farms growing all types of food. The farmers shipped the produce to the city by barge to be sold in the markets. They also sold it to the locals of Moonshine.

Willie’s house was a small timber building painted white with a green roof. His grandfather had built it many years before, and it had an upstairs and downstairs, front and back porches, and small windows on either side of the front door. Upstairs there were two bedrooms: one for his mum and dad, the other Willie shared with his two brothers. Both bedrooms had big windows that looked out over the backyard to the bush which came right up to the back gate.

Downstairs was divided by a staircase; it made two rooms. One side of the staircase was the big kitchen where Willie’s mum, Emily, would cook the most delicious food in her large wood-fired stove. A large table his grandfather had made sat opposite the stove against the wall. It was big enough to seat a whole football team at one time. The kitchen cupboards were full of jars, tins, and other foods which Emily needed to feed her family and friends when they came to visit.

On the other side of the stairs was a big sitting room. A huge fireplace made of stones filled the whole end wall, these stones his grandfather had collected from the bush behind the house. Two large padded armchairs sat on either side of the fireplace where Emily and Evan would sit after dinner each night, telling or reading stories to the three boys who would lie on pillows on the floor. Scattered around the room on little tables and shelves were vases filled with flowers from the garden, plates, cups, jugs, and many items his dad had made.

The front door was special. His grandfather had gotten it from a ship which had sunk in the river where the timber cutters loaded their timber. It had a large round hole in the centre filled with glass so you could see through it and a big brass door handle. It was painted bright red.

Under the stairs was another door. This led down into a cellar. This door was always locked because the cellar was his father’s room only.

The front yard was full of colourful flowers of all kinds which Emily would lovingly tend. Gardens lined both sides of the flag-stone path leading from the white picket fence to the front porch.

Around back, the yard was huge. It had to be for the large vegetable garden where Evan grew all sorts of vegetables, a large chook pen too, and enough room for the kids in town to play cricket.

At the back gate, the bush started a track winding through the tall gum trees to a cool lush green gorge where a creek meandered down to the most fabulous waterfall. Cool, clean water cascaded over the falls, dropping about five meters into a deep large waterhole. All the kids would swim there on hot days. Around the edge of the waterhole was a track which took you right under the falls without getting wet.

Weekends and school holidays were such fabulous times for all the children in Moonshine. They would spend days in the creeks, swimming in the waterholes, catching yabbies, exploring the caves on the sides of the many gorges, building forts in the undergrowth, and racing billycarts down Thunders Way, a steep road from the woodcutters’ camp. They were always having fun and never bored.

Sometimes strange things happened at the Wishes’ house. Old Mrs Door visited one afternoon for tea. Upset, she told Emily how she did not have enough money to pay her mortgage and wished if she could only find a large gold nugget, her money trouble would be over. Emily told her that everything would be all right. Somehow her money trouble would end. On her way home that day, when Mrs Door got to her front gate, she looked down. There, sitting on the ground, was a gold nugget. Mrs Door told everybody that would listen, it was because she had made a wish at the Wishes’ house. Most people thought it was just an old wives’ tale, but there were others who had made wishes which had come true too. No one knew for sure, but it was always a good story to tell newcomers to the town about the strange things that happened at the Wishes’ house.

Night-Time Excursions

Willie was about ten years old when late one night, he was woken up by a noise, but it was only the large clock in the kitchen striking 2 a.m. He pulled the blanket up under his chin to go back to sleep, when he heard another sound. It was the front door closing with a soft click. Curiously, Willie got out of bed very quietly, not wanting to wake his