The Snow Queen
A Tale for Christmas
This is the last newsletter of the year.
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Have a wonderful festive season. On with the story…
‘Come on!’
The ball hit the ground, and it was up to him to move to return it, and bring it in under the control of his school shoe.
They weren’t suitable for this, they were too chunky and even to function skillfully, but they did the job in righting the ball and knocking it back to the front of the boys. They were walking down to the kebab shop for lunch – going all the way to the furthest eatery, for the best food, because the end of term was coming up and they feared detention less.
‘Gonna do a Kinkladze,’ said Rio, rolling the ball a little along the pavement as they walked but then, as they came to the main road, kicking it up to his hand so it didn’t run off.
‘Are you coming Dean?’ Tone called back.
The three others were some way ahead of him now.
‘I’m coming,’ he called, but he doubted they could even hear him.
Soon he was quite a long way back watching them walk down the tree-lined avenue to Masha’s Kebabs.
It was then that he saw it.
To his left a lane ran out from the road, rather a long one, with a gate and a stack of slate slabs on each side but no other identifying sign. The ground was a mixture of cobbles and moss. He stood looking at it; when he turned back to the avenue his group had moved still further on.
And to be honest he was a little out of breath. He’d started smoking weed recently, and it wasn’t doing him much good. He’d become slower and less able to chase after other people. He’d become one of the young and unfit. It wasn’t admirable – this time last year he was still running the 1500 metres for school, finishing seventh of fifteen, but that seemed a long time ago now. In a year they were starting A-Levels.
All of which meant that he’d felt that, as he stood by the side of the road, going down this lane was a better option than following the others. They’d be heading back this way again soon, and he’d have a cool story to tell them. Plus there was a potential boost for him in their eyes if he did find them a new route or even a new place to hang out.
He thought about what he was doing as he moved along the lane and a sense of fear and imminent danger rose within him. He came, at the end of the way, to a small tunnel, where water dripped down from dank cracks. There was a small doorway on the right. He wanted to turn back and go out the tunnel now; he was oddly scared.