- Joined
- Nov 13, 2012
Margaret Mahy: "Shock Forest and Other Stories" - Five magical & marvellous short stories: 'The House of Coloured Windows', 'Rooms to Let', 'Shock Forest', 'The Bridge Builder' and 'The Travelling Boy and the Stay-at-Home Bird'.
Our street had a lot of little houses on either side of it where we children lived happily with our families. There were rows of lawns, like green napkins tucked under the houses' chins, and letterboxes, apple trees and marigolds. Children played up and down the street, laughing and shouting and sometimes crying, for it is the way of the world that things should be mixed. In the soft autumn evenings, before the winter winds began, the smoke from chimneys rose up in threads of grey and blue, stitching our houses into the autumn air.
But there was one house in our street that was different from all the rest, and that was the wizard's house. For one thing there was a door knocker of iron in the shape of a dog's head that looked at us as we ran by. Of course, the wizard's house had its lawn too, but no apple trees or marigolds, only a silver tree with a golden parrot in it. But that was not the most wonderful thing about the wizard's house.
The real wonders of the wizard's house were its windows. They were all the colours of the world - red, blue, green, gold, purple and pink, violet and yelllow, as well as the reddish-brown of autumn leaves. His house was patched all over with coloured windows. And there was not just one pink window or one green one, either, but several of each colour, each one different. No one had told us but we all knew that if you looked through the red window you saw a red world. If you looked through the blue window, a blue one. The wizard could go into any of these worlds whenever he wished. He was not only the owner of many windows, but the master of many worlds.
Our street had a lot of little houses on either side of it where we children lived happily with our families. There were rows of lawns, like green napkins tucked under the houses' chins, and letterboxes, apple trees and marigolds. Children played up and down the street, laughing and shouting and sometimes crying, for it is the way of the world that things should be mixed. In the soft autumn evenings, before the winter winds began, the smoke from chimneys rose up in threads of grey and blue, stitching our houses into the autumn air.
But there was one house in our street that was different from all the rest, and that was the wizard's house. For one thing there was a door knocker of iron in the shape of a dog's head that looked at us as we ran by. Of course, the wizard's house had its lawn too, but no apple trees or marigolds, only a silver tree with a golden parrot in it. But that was not the most wonderful thing about the wizard's house.
The real wonders of the wizard's house were its windows. They were all the colours of the world - red, blue, green, gold, purple and pink, violet and yelllow, as well as the reddish-brown of autumn leaves. His house was patched all over with coloured windows. And there was not just one pink window or one green one, either, but several of each colour, each one different. No one had told us but we all knew that if you looked through the red window you saw a red world. If you looked through the blue window, a blue one. The wizard could go into any of these worlds whenever he wished. He was not only the owner of many windows, but the master of many worlds.
