THE STORM SHIP.
{Check out a note about the origin of this story; the bits in parentheses are ideas for imagery.}

Hannah didn’t like the walk to school.

You had to go all the way up the hill, past the shops with boarded-up windows and the shops with flashing lights.

The street was grey and dirty and all the grown-ups looked scary.

But worse than all that was the old factory.

Hannah hated that place.

It looked like a castle dreamed up by somebody with a really bad headache.

All the walls were wonky.

All the stairs were screwy.

And way up on top there was a crazy old shack.

That’s where the old man lived. 

He was scariest of all.

Hannah always hurried past the factory as fast as she could go, dragging her little brother Jonah along behind her.

One day their dad was with them, and he noticed what Hannah was doing. 

<image of caretaker lighting a fire of scrap wood in the yard with Hannah pulling Jonah along behind a wire fence in background>

‘You know,’ he said, ‘that old man’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s actually a famous sea captain.’

Jonah’s eyes lit up, but Hannah was almost five – far too old for stories. ‘Where’s his boat, then?’ she asked.

‘What, can’t you see it?’ her dad asked.

‘I can, I can,’ cried Jonah.

<Jonah pointing up at shack, where something that looks like a prow is barely visible>

‘That’s not a boat, Jonah. That’s just a smelly old shack. Isn’t it, dad?’

But Hannah’s dad just smiled.

The next day, the storm came. It started even before Hannah woke up, so she could hear it rattling the windows as she lay in bed.

It lasted all morning, turning the sky into orange soup and the windows into waterfalls.

It went on all afternoon, right through Hannah’s favourite cartoons, Jonah’s tantrum and supper.

By the time they had to go to bed, the water was swirling down the hill past the old factory, sweeping up all the rubbish and carrying it away.   

In their beds, Hannah and Jonah lay there listening to noises in the dark, crashes and groans like the world was ending right outside.

The next moment there was an almighty crash, louder than all the others.

The children sat up in their beds.

Then the creaking started.

A steady, rolling creak-creak, it got closer and louder, louder and closer, until Hannah thought whatever it was would come through the window at any second.

‘What is it?’ asked Hannah.

‘Let’s look,’ said Jonah.

‘No, Jonah, don’t.’

But she was too late. Jonah had already flung open the curtains.

And there, right in front of them, was the old man from the factory, standing in the prow of his great rickety boat as it ploughed down the hill on a great green wave of water.

Past the park it went, past the church and the shops and the house where Hannah and Jonah lived, heading for the sea.

There was just time for the children to see the captain turn and look at them.

He raised his cap, waved it once, and was gone.

Into the darkness, into the storm, free.