{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK IV} The Day of Death

The Faraway Tree

 

6:  The Faraway Tree

 

 

 

The people left soon after that.  I was glad.

Funnily enough, neither Mama nor Gama ever mentioned them again.  When I did, or I asked questions, they both pretended that the people  never came, but I knew they were lying.

So, I've had two stories from when I was four, and one from when I was five.  Really, I should tell one from when I was six, but right now I can't really think of a good one.  I might remember later, and add one, but for now, no.

I do know, though, that when I was six I first learnt to play chess.  I think both Mama and Gama taught me, because I can't remember one of them doing it specifically.  I'm fairly certain it was a cold, dark evening, and Mama and Gama decided to play.  I asked them what they were playing, and then if I could play too.   Mama said it was too complicated, but I retorted that I liked complicated, so Gama insisted on them teaching me.

Wow.  I've written a chapter on one year of my life, and a paragraph on another.

Anyway, I'm going to skip to when I was seven, because I've got a good story coming up, which is definitely of relevance and interest.  Hope you don't mind.

It was a sunny, warm day, and I was reading a book outside.  My favourite book was an Enid Blyton, 'The Faraway Tree Stories'.  It was an edition with all three books in one.  If you haven't read it, it's about three children, Joe, Beth, and Frannie.  Or Franny.  They call her Franny on the blurb, and Frannie in the actual book.  They move to the countryside, and find an enchanted forest (not so abnormal for me).  It was full of elves and pixies and goblins and things, (slightly more exciting for me) and at the centre, had a huge, extremely tall tree, called the Faraway Tree (hence the title).  The tree was so incredibly tall, it went up to the clouds.  At the top of the tree, on a rota, different magical lands came with the clouds which the children could go and visit.  And because the tree's trunk was so wide, there were different floors inside all the way up, like a box of flats.  In each floor lived a different elf/pixie/fairy/etc.  Oh, and there was a slide, inside the tree, swirling down all the way in the trunk until it came out right at the bottom, called the slippery-slip.

Okay, I know it doesn't sound hugely exciting now, but it was enough to fill five hundred and eighty-three pages, three stories, and a seven-year-old girl's daydreams for some time.

It was by far my favourite book, because it was about a forest and a tree, not a boarding school, so I could actually relate to it.  I read it again and again, but never got tired of it.  Seriously, it got to the stage that I had memorised the first thirty-two lines, and there were so many creases in the spine you couldn't see the title, but I didn't care.  I kept on reading it.

So, one day, (I seem to be saying 'one day' and 'so' a lot) I was reading that book for the sixty-seventh time (or something like that) up an oak tree, fairly near the house.  Gama walked by.