The Manifesto Of The Townspeople

chapter numero uno

It was dark. I mean, it usually is at night time. But anyways. It was dark anyways, and that's where we begin. Our story, I mean. Not life. Not the beginning of time itself. Just this story. Just this one little fragment of the universe unfolding in a small corner of England, right up north, by the coast.

It was a lovely little seaside town, Cadie thought. And it was. That is, if you liked that sort of thing. Cadie didn't suppose many people did, and that's probably why it was a small town. But, that's not a bad thing. It meant that you knew everybody, and each occupant of each colourful little house had a story.

Stories were a main theme in this town. Not because they were widely told. In fact, it was quite the contrary. For, you see, the reason that stories were so prominent was because they were, to put it frankly, not. A hush hush air of secrecy bedecked the town almost as much as the seashore mist did, which was really saying something, seeing as there was always some degree of mist. Particularly right after dawn, and in winters. That was a thing that rather annoyed Cadie, because she had seen many pictures of beautiful sunrises, but never witnessed one herself as the mist almost always blurred it out into an indistinct cocktail of 'oh, do you think that's a red?'s and 'that colour there looks like it might be dark, I think that's a blue' s.

Cadie could see right out to sea through the little latched circular window in her bedroom. It was right up high, in a little triangular alcove cut into the wall, with the roof giving it leeway enough to just put a window there in the first place. It's always like that with old houses, Cadie supposed. Tall and narrow. No room at the top for a proper window, or it would make the roof flat and that's no good, the rain would just collect and gather and accumulate and collapse the roof in. Which, Cadie supposed, would not be good.

Cadie had always wanted the room at the top of the house. When she was a toddler, she thought it was magical, like a princesses tower or a fairies cave. When she was a teenager, maybe 13ish, she thought it was dreadfully artsy and tumblr, and hung fairy lights and flowy pieces of fabric and Polaroid pictures around the room (she was rather ashamed to admit that she kept those up. Except the fabrics, which all fell down and got caught on things and tore little chunks out of the wall every time they snagged. Also, the Polaroids used to be kept on strings of brightly coloured yarn and hung up across the walls and kept on with pins, and now are kept safely on a pinboard so as not to look like a total geekfest).

Now, however, Cadie liked her room because of the view. When she was a toddler, she couldn't appreciate it quite as much, seeing as she was a great deal smaller than the window would permit her to be, but now you could see all of the rooftops of the brightly coloured houses, and all the way out to the pebbled shore and down down down to the sea, with its choppy waves and misty horizons.

It was during a long look out of that lovely little hatched window (currently still with fairy lights strung around it, but they were thankfully only lit at Christmas now) that our story about stories starts to tell the story, instead of rambling on about windows and secrets and the reasoning behind the room. But who knows, little things make a big difference. Perhaps, Cadies adventure wouldn't have even begun if it weren't for that window and that room and the stunning revelation that she was seventeen, for crying out loud. She needed to start doing something with her life.

Cadie had always liked stories. It was in her blood. Her mother, a hippie who prided herself on her tarot card readings and her crystal gem healings, told many stories. About the wind whispering, about the days of real magic, and about the individual tales of each gem stone. Her father also told tales. About how he met her mother, and later, when Cadie was about seven, she heard him yell at her mother stories about how much he wished he never did, and how all of her crystal gem ballony had ruined his life. This went on for a few months, and then he left. The house walls were thin, and the neighbours heard a few of his stories. And their kids heard these stories too. And spread those stories around school. But anyway. Cadie liked stories even more then, because the stories books told took her away from the whispered stories behind her back.

So. This was it. She was going to make a story collection from the people in her town, and make a name for herself. She could sell it, as a book, and be rich and buy her mum all the fancy gems she wanted, and she could tell her dad to stick it, they didn't need his support money. They could handle it just fine by themselves, thank you very much.