*
…But first the directions… Wen decided to ignore them completely and find the stone by way of Mr Pre-Science-Man which proved to be spectacularly successful only, of course, she did not tell me that this was her plan and just sort of left me in the middle of the wood with the now very grubby looking directions in my hand and no stone in view…
One minute she was behind me conversing in ‘direction-speak’, the next she was not, and was, instead, along with the stone, if it did indeed exist, nowhere to be seen…
*
…She was gone a long time too… long enough, for a prolonged search of the immediate area… and a prolonged retracing of our track… and a prolonged foray back to both the first… and then the second streams, all to have proven fruitless…
And long enough for me to have finally settled down on a tree stump by the path and started contemplating just how to explain the loss of one director of our school… to the other director of our school…
…‘What do you mean you lost her?’
‘One second she was there. The next she was not.’
‘Responsible people do not just go missing in the woods…’
‘…This one did…’
‘Not when they are supposed to be with other responsible people…’
‘I know Ben… it is all my fault… I’m sorry…’
Extract from, The Heart of Albion.
***
Heart of Albion – Stuart France & Sue Vincent
France & Vincent 
Was there an element of teaching the man with the map a lesson involved here?
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Quite possibly…;)
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This is humor in the best of spirits. I enjoyed it tremendously! The thought of the sprite, Wen, disappearing off on her own adventure in the wilderness is quite easy to imagine. And what happened to the beast? Was he off on an adventure of his own too?
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Inevitably… 😉
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Reblogged this on Stuart France.
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I think that is one of the things I love about Sue. One minute she is all serious and contemplative, and the next, like a sprite, she bounds away as if all will be fine and you will, by some stroke of nature or miraculous event, arrive at the same location. This must be immensely fun for all.
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If sometimes quite disconcerting! Anyway, it wasn’t Sue, it was Wen… 😉
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Oh wow, now I AM confused . . . I thought Wen was the other name for Sue . . . You mean there is another person? Maybe I am just dense . . .
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Wen is a literary construct. Sue is a real person, at least the last time I looked… 😉
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Geez, I’d better go back to first grade. I am way too much taking things literally. I am a very straight on thinker, so if someone says something or writes it to me, I tend to believe it unless I know different.
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Don and Wen are characters created for our books, Anne. They are loosely based on Stuart and me, but they are not us. Their adventures with the sacred landscape are our own, as are most of the conversations (though who really said what may change)… apart from the fictional story that develops as the books progress.
It is a mistake to take apparent ‘reality’ at face value 😉
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You wouldn’t be the first or last person to do this… 😉
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Hmmm… 😉
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I am sure glad I am not the only one. It’s hard to be a grain of sand if there are no other grains of sand around . . .
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There’s more than enough sand to go round… 😉
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See, this IS a perfect world after all (chuckles).
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