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Post By Rhiannon Mon May 28, 2007 at 04:55:35 pm EDT |
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How I Annoyed a Pin Cushion Pirate – an exciting follow up to The Trouble With Daffodils. | |
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Isn’t sleep a strange thing? You forget your body and dive deep into the depths of your mind, exploring the pathways of thought and imagination, and slipping beyond the boundaries of conscious thought, spiralling ever further into yourself on a seemingly endless journey where each precious second lasts for an eternity and every step is a self discovery. Then you wake up, pulled from the depths of what people call dream and into the hard cold world. And you forget, all that remains of your journey is a brief and echoing half-memory and a feeling of satisfaction and readiness to face the new day. These are strange ideas to entertain and thoughts to pursue but they are mine and part of what makes me who I am. I am me if you were wondering, I think things that no-one else thinks and I make potential come alive. I live in a wild, uncontrollable world with strangely blurred boundaries and ever changing rules and I am certain that I would be less of a person should these facts not be true. My name is Teresa. I wasn’t sleeping of course. I was kneeling by my window and watching the thunderstorm. Well more than just watching. I had opened the window as wide as it would go, the wind was tearing through my hair, the rain all but soaked me, the sound washed over me and all my senses where alert and focused on the storm outside. Many people would not understand why I did this, it is not something that is easy to explain. Somehow I felt free. Washed away in the startling unpredictable nature of the storm I was caught in my own twist of emotions echoing the wild surroundings I had put myself in, there is nothing like that. Suddenly I sensed it. What I felt sent shivers down my spine and I stepped back from the window shaking, trying to make sense of what I had somehow perceived. Someone was manipulating potential, and it wasn’t me. I tried to calm myself, why should I worry at the discovery that I am not the only one who can awake the dormant potential, surely it would disturb me more to be told that I am the only one. But no, I felt it, sinister in the ghost of what I had glimpsed for a moment with a sense I did not know I had. This was not the free flowing awakening that I had always caused. This was cold and calculating shaping to specification. Something in this potential scared me as no other potential ever had. This was evil. I froze for a moment in horrified realisation what I had sensed was nearby, what I had sensed was inside the house. My first instinct was to shy from the door and hide as best I could from the shadows of the night, I forced myself to stay where I was, to breathe normally, to think. I would not run, I would not hide, I am not a child to hide beneath the bedclothes when dark things come my way, or foolish enough to think that doing so would make me safe. I am thirteen years old, I won’t let myself be frightened. Calling on all my reserves of courage I stepped towards my bedroom door and turned the handle.  In the night little things become sinister and when you are scared this happens even more so. A pigeon called from outside then was gone in a flapping of wings. A breeze blew through the shadowed hallway. A streetlight outside went out as its bulb gave up. The door to the living room was slightly ajar. A floorboard creaked beneath my feet. Wincing I held my breath and tried to calm my racing pulse before pushing all fears to the back of my mind and focusing my minds eye on the sinister shaping that I would really far rather avoid. I silently pushed open the living room door and turned to face the shelves at the back of the room and see what I was up against. By his side was a sickly green terrapin of impossible to distinguish species, the saddle on its back was an obvious indicator of its role. The pirate was kneeling over the pin cushion and packing the pins from said cushion into a black handbag. Numerous similar handbags were slung across his back and fastened on his mount. If it were not so menacing the whole scene would have been highly comical. As I stared at the corrupted shaping the pirate stopped his work and listened, his beast sniffed the air, as one the dreadful two turned to face me, a chill filled the room. “This is private property,” I managed to say, “You’re trespassing.” The pirate broke into an evil grin and with a laugh that contained no humour at all, he spoke in a voice that sent he shadows whirling in nightmarish spirals, “I am a pin cushion pirate, Pirate Rider 38, you can not stop me, little awakener.” “I can try,” I told him, pleased that I was managing to keep the fear from my voice. “Then you can start screaming now,” the Pirate Rider 38 snarled, swinging himself onto his mount and reaching for his sword as the two leaped forward with impossible speed. Fear overtook me and I dodged just in time, acting on instinct I reached out into the nearest potential and let it loose, a vase full of flowers suddenly erupted into shining light, sending shining silver green tendrils out to sweep across the room. I glanced back as I hurried into the hallway away from the pirate, he and the flower-thing where struggling against each other, however each time the Pirate Rider 38 slashed out with his corrupted blackness at the shining silver thing I had awoken it shrivelled away, I would not have long till the pirate would be after me again. My thoughts spun wildly as I tried to focus. I had viewed potential as a wild, free thing that followed its own unpredictable course, yet the pirate was shaped deliberately and carefully, potential spun and forced into a set pattern, was all had ever known no more than fallacy? No. I could feel the screaming wrongness about the Pirate Rider 38, the unnatural twisting of potential to a corrupted shaping that should not be, the absolute evil that surrounded the pin cushion pirate. Time was running out, I cast around in desperation, wondering if I should awake another potential to fight the pirate, even as the idea crossed my mind I knew it was no good. The pirate was a knot of cold calculation, nothing but the most powerful of potential could stop him, I could not fight him by randomly awaking the dormant potential around me. Inspiration struck me like a breaking wave. Had I not sensed the pirate and his beast? Why should I not also sense the non-corrupted potential as well? Focusing as best I could I reached out with that other eye I had not known I possessed and finally saw the world as it was. The potential show in rainbows light, glowing shining sparkling, all unique, I felt about me for the most powerful of all. There it was, all about, wild and strong, barely dormant at all. As the Pirate Rider 38 began to chase me once more I turned and ran for my room, kneeling again by the window, I reached out once more into the storm beyond. The storm spun and circled as its full energy awoke, but this time I was not a silent observer on the edges, this time I was dead centre, this time I felt the whole thing pivot about me. A wave of force knocked the pirate into the wall, stunning both him and his beast into unconsciousness, seeing this done I forced myself to let go, to allow the storm to move on, to let the potential follow its own path. As the centre of the storm left me I collapsed onto the floor dazed. Pulling myself to my feet I wondered what to do next, as the rain soaked me I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed some paper off my desk and quickly transformed it into a paper boat. Scooping up the Pirate Rider and his mount I unceremoniously dropped both into the makeshift ship I had just created. There was a drainpipe just beneath my window, one with an open top and sloping diagonally downwards, in this weather it was a gushing river. I placed the boat into the rapids and let go just as its unwilling passengers began to stir. “Just consider me your personal travel agent,” I told the rapidly disappearing pin cushion pirate, before pulling the window shut and falling onto my bed and into sleep. Concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Rhiannon Rose Watson. The right of Rhiannon Rose Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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