[stylist] Fantasy prompt

[D.W. Hill]

Hi All,
I was debating about whether I should post something either in fantasy or in
the color theme category, and I decided on fantasy. The following is a
chapter from my novel The Heart of Applebutter Hill. The book transitions in
and out of fantasy (I like to call it a high school mystery with excursions
into fantasy). In pure fantasy you can just write with abandon, but going
from a realistic fictional story to something in the fantasy relm needs to
flow naturally. this shows one way I made the transition.
 
It requires a little set-up. Abigail and Baggy are 14-year-old refugees who
were rescued and placed with guardians. Abigail is one of those legally
blind kids who was forced to function without nonvisual adaptations until
very recently. She has a guide dog named Curly Connor -- aka the
"Fluffer-Noodle." The school year is over, and Abigail's guardian has gone
out of town for a month, sending Abigail to the country to stay with the
Blusterbuffs, who live next to Baggy and his guardian, Captain Sodpeg. The
night before this takes place, Mrs. Blusterbuff has an argument with the men
who laugh at her when she tells them that she's seen a cloud near the pond
that hasn't moved in several days. Also, the others are obviously keeping a
secret from Abigail, and all that she can find out is that Baggy and Mr.
Blusterbuff "put something together."
 
Hope you like it. It's a bit late to change anything, but if you want to
critique something to give me some food for thought in my future writing,
feel free.
Donna
***

Chapter Nine

The Cloud Scooper

 

Word count: 2339

 

 

Curly Connor had stationed himself on the rug inside Captain Sodpeg's front
door. He was watching Baggy load the dish washer while keeping an eye on
Abigail, who was relaxing in the recliner.

The Captain was outside on a lawn chair beneath his favorite tree, reading
the Sunday paper. He had prepared a buttermilk pancake breakfast for the two
families. The Blusterbuffs had gone home to make spanakopita for their
dinner meeting.

"What do you say, Curly Connor?" asked Baggy, emerging from the kitchen, "Do
you think we can talk her into a walk to the pond?"

When the Fluffer-Noodle rushed to her and placed his head in her lap, she
countered, "Do you think we can convince him to show us whatever they were
talking about last night?"

"I was planning to, but it's really no big deal," he said, beginning to
worry that she might be disappointed.

With the prospect of a fine, warm afternoon ahead, he packed his old film
camera and binoculars. He put a water bottle, some crackers and dog treats
into another pack for Abigail, who had forgotten to bring her day pack.
Curly Connor was harnessed, and after a quick goodbye to the Captain, they
headed down his stony, tree-lined driveway to Elfin Pond Road.

Elfin Pond was between the Sodpeg and Blusterbuff driveways, on the other
side of the road. Covering several acres, it was an irregular shape. Two
large sections were connected by a narrow channel. The meadow sloped down
from the road to a sandy beach on the north side of the pond. Walking along
the eastern shore, they passed the channel and a huge willow tree before
coming to a rectangular dock. To its left, a row boat was upside down on the
bank. Off shore, two black inner tubes, tied to the dock's ladder, were
drifting in the calm water. Curly Connor guided Abigail down the bank and
paused before stepping onto the dock.

 "Why don't you tell him to find you a seat," Baggy suggested, and she
suspected that this might have something to do with his secret.

Curly Connor chose to walk around the dock clockwise, keeping himself
between Abigail and the edge, a little something he had picked up in subway
training. He crossed in front of her and stopped. Under his nose, she found
the smooth, narrow, closely placed boards of a bench and sat down. Baggy
joined her, and the Fluffer-Noodle sprawled across their feet.

"This is nice!" she said; it was an uncommonly comfortable bench. "Is this
what you and Mr. Blusterbuff made?"

"Well, it's a bit much to say that we made it."

There were two special things about the bench. The wood was from a cedar
tree which once stood across the pond in the woods by the cove. When it came
down in a storm several years earlier, Thaddeus Blusterbuff had milled it
into boards.

"All we did was cut them to size, sand them smooth and bolt them to the
standards."

"Standards?"

"The bench standards. Reach down under the side of the seat."

"Yuh mean this metal thing?"

That was the other special thing about the bench. There were two wrought
iron standards, mirror images of each other. They had been made by Phesty
Mushrot. Baggy had found them in Captain Sodpeg's barn covered in cobwebs
and bird droppings.

"Phesty's the one who knows how to make a comfortable bench. All we did was
fasten the boards to the places he provided. You can't make an uncomfortable
bench using these standards . well, not unless you're a real moron, anyway."

Abigail got up and knelt on the dock facing the side of the bench. She found
a filigree of stems, leaves and .

"Ouch! Thorns! . Oh, it's raspberries!"

At the top of the bramble toward the back, a bird had its beak in a cluster
of berries. Along the edge of the back boards, bigger leaves and a thicker
stem, bent at the top, led to the raggedy petals and nubby dome of a
sunflower.

Abigail had assumed that Phesty Mushrot was a blacksmith, because he lived
over the blacksmith's shop at school. She wondered, though, how his bench
standards had ended up in the Captain's barn.

"He did Phesty some kind of favor . I don't know what . You know the
Captain, he's so tight-lipped about everything. I'm surprised I got that
much out of him."

"Did you ever find out what he does for a living?" she said returning to her
seat. The matter of Captain Sodpeg's profession and why he was called
Captain had been a curiosity ever since Baggy had moved in with him.

"Nope. All I know is that there is a room in the back of the barn with no
windows that's always locked. Every now and then, he gets a small package in
the mail and goes out there for hours."

They sat in silence, listening to birds flying back and forth from the woods
across the pond. Then, Baggy took several pictures of Abigail with the
Fluffer-Noodle. He was about to suggest that they take the unit to the edge
of town and walk to the ice-cream stand, when she asked about the sky. It
was deep blue with puffy white clouds.

"Do clouds ever remind you of anything?"

"There's one," he said taking her hand and pointing, "that looks like an old
Volkswagen. And, that one . looks like an ice-cream cone on its side with
the point of the cone squashed. Or, maybe an acorn."

"How can it look like an ice-cream cone and an acorn?"

"Well, you know an acorn's hat . If it was upside down, it could look like a
scoop of ice-cream on a squashed cone."

"Acorns have hats?"

"Sure, next time I see one, I'll show you." He continued perusing the sky
and then added, "There's one over there above the cove that looks like a
boat. When I was a kid, I used to make sailboats out of half a walnut shell.
That's what this looks like . But, the sail is almost horizontal, and it
looks like there's a plough on the front. That's interesting . If I shield
my eyes, there's a sunbeam from the bow down into the trees, like an anchor
line."

In the silence that followed, Abigail conjured vivid images of the three
clouds. Then, Baggy removed his binoculars from his pack.

Staring in the direction of the cove and adjusting the focus, he whispered,
"That's weird." He stood up abruptly and put the binoculars away saying, "I
need to go check something . You don't mind?"

"No," she said feeling too comfortable to move.

She listened to his footsteps as he walked off the dock and continued along
the eastern shore. He walked around the pond to the west side which was more
rugged and woodsy. The rhythmic crunching of twigs beneath his feet stopped
across from her.

After a while, he called, "Abigail! Come here!" You're never going to
believe this! Bring our stuff!"

Curly Connor led her off the dock and followed Baggy's path as though he had
been waiting to be asked. As they walked through the dappled shadows, they
breathed in the cool, woods air, heavy with aromatic pine. Baggy met them
and took Abigail's hand.

She dropped the harness handle saying, "What's up?"

"Well," he laughed, unsure how to explain, "that cloud that looked like a
boat?"

"Yeah?"

"It's more like a boat that looks like a cloud. Come see."

They walked into a clearing which contained two things: the stump of the old
cedar tree from which the bench had been made and the most extraordinary
staircase either of them had ever seen. A dozen flights of stairs were
suspended on golden cords from something high above the trees. The banisters
and balusters were made of the same, stiff, braided cord. Golden mesh risers
connected the treads which were nothing more than milky white cushions.

Walking up the first flight of pillowy steps was actually fun, but the
higher they climbed the more the stairs swayed and wobbled. Abigail grew
increasingly uncomfortable and at each landing had more and more trouble
talking herself into continuing. Baggy, who had great confidence in matters
of balance, did not find it at all challenging. As they passed the treetops,
Abigail noticed a brisk breeze and a bubbling sound which reminded her of
the froth on a giant soda.

"I think," Baggy mused, "that the hull must incorporate a helium balloon.
What's that effervescent sound, though? It reminds me of . something!"

When the stairs leveled out, they were far above the leafy canopy of the
woods, halfway between the bow and mid ship on the starboard side of a
large, white boat.

"You'll have to climb over the side," Baggy said, hoisting himself in, "I
don't think the boy will mind . It's a soft landing."

Abigail handed him the leash, and Curly Connor, who had braved the strange
staircase only because Baggy was in front of him, jumped gratefully in.

Before following, Abigail touched the side of the vessel. It was smooth and
gracefully curved. The top was a wide, rounded rail which curled over the
outer edge. It felt like a well-crafted wooden boat, but it wasn't wood. It
wasn't aluminum or fiberglass either.

"It's like a big futon," she said, sitting on the edge and swinging her legs
over.

"Yeah, I think there must be hollow tubing underneath to give it its shape.
Maybe the tubing's filled with helium too."

The ship's deck was spacious and entirely empty. Allowing the Fluffer-Noodle
to poke around on his own, they walked up and down the cottony boards
enjoying the gentle rocking motion. High above their heads hung, not a sail,
but an enormous canopy; a thin, white, rippling dome which shielded them
from the worst of the sun's rays.

"Maybe there are solar panels on top."

While Baggy occupied himself with thoughts of what it was and how it worked,
Abigail wondered whose it was and whether it was all right for them to be
there. Baggy reasoned that it was either on the Captain's or the
Blusterbuffs'; the boundary went somewhere through the pond. Since he hadn't
been told to avoid the woods, it had to be OK to look.

"Hey," said Abigail, "Maybe this is the cloud Mrs. Blusterbuff saw."

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing."

"Is there really a plough in front?"

"Oh, there's a plough," he laughed.

She considered this and then said, "Well, then, let's call it the Cloud
Scooper."

After wandering around in silence for a while, Baggy noticed an indentation
in one of the deck boards near the bow. It turned out to be a handle which
he used to pull two seats up from under the deck. He found more handles
which revealed more seats and several tables. When he uncovered a set of
stairs leading below deck, he went down to take a look.

"It's all blocked off," he said in frustration when he returned, "I can't
get a look at how it works!"

Baggy was tucking another row of seats back into the deck when he noticed
the Fluffer-Noodle pawing at a board in the center of the craft. It was a
storage area containing a long, rectangular case that turned out to be a
portable, instrument control panel with a stand.

He set it up in front of two seats. It had an altimeter, two-way radio and a
full color display of their surroundings.

After staring at it for a few minutes, he gave a "Whoop!" of delight.
Rushing to the port side, he leaned over the edge looking toward the stern.
He repeated the process on the starboard side before returning to Abigail.

"Well, it must like your name. It now says 'The Cloud Scooper' on both
sides, in big, sky-blue letters. And listen to this." He read from the
screen on the instrument panel, "'Owners' Manual & Operating Instructions
for The Cloud Scooper, property of Baggy Brichaz and Abigail Goongleheimer
Jones. See the world from your own private cloud. Travel in comfort,
invisible to the naked eye.'"

Now that it seemed apparent that the Cloud Scooper was theirs, Abigail was
anxious to go for a ride. Baggy, however, wanted to read the manual. He
wasn't about to haul up the anchor until he knew for sure that the Cloud
Scooper would operate as promised.

A lever inside the ship controlled the staircase, which collapsed upwards
into a compartment below deck on the starboard side. Baggy let out the
anchor line to give himself more room to practice every conceivable
maneuver. When changing altitude, the Cloud Scooper could go straight up or
down.

 "That's odd," he said checking the instruments, "It won't go any lower than
about thirty feet above the tree tops. You have to moor it; you can't land
it."

He read over the instructions for reeling in the anchor. He would have to
haul it in to see if it worked. What if it wouldn't go back out again?

He suggested that Abigail take the Fluffer-Noodle down to the clearing while
he practiced, but she wouldn't hear of it. In the end, he hauled in the
golden anchor and practiced flipping it around several different branches
until he was satisfied that his skills were up to snuff.

They took a slow tour around the pond. Baggy banked the Cloud Scooper hard
to the left and then to the right, hanging over the edge to look at its
reflection. He was relieved that he could not see the large blue lettering
mirrored in the water.

"Hey, Baggy," said Abigail on an inspiration, "Let's fly to Applebutter
Hill. We could go to the carriage house, and I could get my day pack . it's
got my capo and pick . Nobody's there, Damari went to Mythragopolis to see
her Dad, and I've got my keys."

-- The Heart of Applebutter Hill, a novel on a mission:
DonnaWHill.com
 
Read Donna's articles on Suite 101:
http://suite101 <http://suite101.com/donna-w-hill> .com/donna-w-hill
 
Connect with Donna on
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/dewhill
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/dwh99
FaceBook:
www.facebook.com/donna.w.hill
 
Hear clips from "The Last Straw" at:
cdbaby.com/cd/donnahill
 
Apple I-Tunes
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=259244374
 
 
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