Cadwaladr by David R Graham

David has responded to the trigger horse 

Cadwaladr

Just before dawn, the owls up in Fullers Wood called to each other as young Mordicai followed his father across the cobbled, shadowed filled, yard. Mordicai was cold and sleepy, but he would not miss this day for any amount of warmth or sleep. 
His master, Lord Kendrick Griffin, was leaving to join the King’s crusade to relieve Jerusalem. 
Mordicai’s father, Jared, along with many more squires and men-at-arms, would be accompanying Sir Kendrick on his long journey. 
They would be away for a long time.
With his head bowed, Mordicai held a spluttering torch high and clutched his shawl to his throat as he followed his father between the stout wooden doors beneath the high arched entrance to the inner chamber of the stable block. 
This was the first time Mordicai had been allowed into the forbidden area. 
This was the first time his eyes would behold Cadwaladr.
Lord Kendrick’s war horse.
Forewarned by his father, with bated breath, Mordicai moved to the shadow of the circular chamber. Holding the torch aside his attuned senses inhaled the comingled stench of horse dung and the sweet smell of hay. 
Muttered voices rebounded off stone.
The click clack of hooves on stone.
Flicking light appeared from a high tunnel. 
The sound of iron striking stone rang loud.
Two squires entered the chamber.
A dark form filled the tunnel.
Then, led by two burly grooms, Cadwaladr entered the chamber. 
Standing tall, black as a moonless night, wide-eyed Cadwaladr pranced and rippled with barely supressed energy.
Spellbound by the size of the creature, with hoof beats ringing loud in his ears, Mordicai bit down on a cry of awe.
From the darkness Mordicai watched his father and the grooms and squires saddle Cadwaladr, place a coat of chain mail on the mighty horse, and drape that with a white caparison bearing large red crosses. 
Even as he watched the war horse being prepared, Mordicai heard jangling, metallic footfalls descending a flight of stone stairs. 
Then, led by two squires, Lord Kendrick entered the chamber. 
Clothed from head to foot in chain mail, and comparisoned in a white gown and long cloak with red crosses, his Lordship stood tall and broad. Upon his head he wore a round helmet and against his thigh hung a long sword.
Cadwaladr, seeing his master, tossed his black head, and pranced and whinnied, eager to be off.
Lord Kendrick mounted the horse and led him beneath the arched doorway into the outer courtyard. 
The sun was up over the courtyard. 
To the sounds of the readying baggage train, Mordicai watched Lord Kendrick holding Cadwaladr on a tight rein  as the horse pranced, its hoof falls echoing loudly as man and beast passed through the castle keep. 
In their wake rode Mordicai’s father, Jared, and nine other squires and grooms. The combined hoofbeats of their mounts drummed loud as the party cantered across the timber drawbridge and unto the open countryside.
Mordicai’s mother, Bronwen, laid an arm across his shoulder as he watched his father ride off into the distance. 
Mordicai was not to know that he would never see his father again. 
When the party had fallen below the horizon, and the baggage train was preparing to set out, Bronwen, patting Mordicai’s shoulder, said, ‘Shall we go and have some hot milk and honey and bread cakes?’

Cadwaladr bore Lord Kendrick to Dartmouth. From where the party took ship to Lisbon, and from there to Marseille, and from there, to Rome. From Rome they took the long sea voyage to Acra. From there they journeyed through the Holy Land to Jerusalem. 
On that long and arduous trek across central Europe Cadwaladr carried his master through several bloody pogroms against the killers of Christ and other heretics to the true Cross. 
 
Besieged for many months in Jerusalem by Saladin’s mighty Arab army Lord Kendrick’s horse Cadwaladr, although weakened by hunger, was itself one of the remaining sources of food. 
Lord Kendrick, unwilling to allow his horse to suffer such an ignominious end, and in defiance of his fellow knights, refused to surrender, chosing instead to go up against the enemy one last time. 
Aware that he was being readied for battle a new energy surging through Cadwaladr emaciated frame. 
The gates were thrown open.
Resplendent in full battle dress, horse and rider cantered forth. 
Before them stood the serried ranks of the enemy horde.
Hearing Lord Kendrick draw his sword, Cadwaladr, snorting and whinnying, pounded the hardpacked sand with his iron shod hooves.   
Raising his sword aloft Lord Kendrick cried aloud. 
‘FOR THE CROSS OF CHRIST! GO CADWALADR! GO!’
In response, Cadwaladr reared high, snorted and whinnied aloud, flailed the air with his forelegs, dropped down, and leap forward into a ground eating gallop.

Horse and rider were mere metres from the enemy ranks when, unseated by a lance, Lord Kendrick heard the cry go up.

‘DARAR LA AL-HASSAN!’
 
‘DARAR LA AL-HASSAN!’

‘HARM NOT THE HORSE!’

‘HARM NOT THE HORSE!’   
https://medium.com/@husnazainab/another-yusufs-tale-saladin-be48539c2384

Where is my child? by Patricia Graham

WAR                           
 
Artillery crashes into my space
Lashings of cruelty disturbs my life
The petrified faces of the innocent I see
Will this never end?
 
My world is full of noise,
Men shouting, gun fire booming above my head
Women and children screaming, running
No peace, no calm, hopelessness surrounds me.
 
Where is my child, where is my child?
The sound of despair in my ears
Blood sweating from the brow
I’ve never seen such outpouring of fear
 
How peaceful this land used to be
Shopping, music, laughing, being free!
Now darkness and grey smoke-filled air are the norm
What future can war possibly bring?
 
But, it is twilight I see
Flowers, trees, and buildings tall
Breathing in bomb free fresh air 
Ah, I shall dream of peace, tranquillity
And the enemy shall fall.

Gradient

A study in light, color, and form. Created in studio with a collection of damaged lenses that I’ve acquired over the years. Each is available as a 18×24 inch giclee print on archival paper.

PURCHASE

My Special Place by Angela Campion

Angela's lyrical response to the trigger Silence   

As a child I spent many happy hours in my special place, In my own company. It was my sanctuary away from the realities of a sick mother, busy father and three brothers. From home it was barely 800 yards away but once over the hill felt like a million miles.
    The border between our home, the family farm and our neighbour’s farm was a brook, a tributary of the river Trove. Just off the lane, a few yards from the bridge that crossed the brook was a small steep sided spinney. This was my playground where I built dens amongst the trees on the higher, more level ground and dams in the brook. Sometimes there was nothing better than just listening to the murmur of the water as it tumbled over my attempts at dam building, or the wind whispering in the trees where I'd built my mansion. The dam would create a pool deep enough to cool my feet on a hot summer day while the den provided shade or shelter on rainy days. 
    Once building work or running repairs were complete I'd wander. Upstream was a fallen tree that forded the brook protecting me from crocodile infested waters one day, became a gymnasts balance beam or cowgirls trusty stead on others. This magical tree just happened to have fallen next to a ford which livestock or farm machinery could cross. It was also shallow enough for me to drive my pony and trap anywhere my imagination wanted to go.
    Hunger would lead me back to the den where lunch would be stored away from hungry bears and wolves. In reality it was more likely to be a harmless squirrel after my apple or packet of crisps with its blue paper twist of salt hidden in its depths.
    Lunch over, I might venture downstream in the open pasture where the black and white Friesians would be quietly grazing, chewing their cuds or venturing to the watering hole nervously watching out for hungry lions and hyenas. 
The ground here was always wet created its own dangers, no deadly creatures lurking just Welly sucking mud. Many a day saw me washing feet, socks and boots in the brook if I'd landed in a hoof hole instead of on a tuft of dry grass. The risk was worth it for this side of the brook pretty flowers grew, delicate lilac milkmaid amongst the tussocks while vibrant, bright shining kingcups flourished at the water's edge as did the tall bulrushes with their velvety flowers while cotton grass swayed in the gentlest of breezes on higher, dry ground. 
    A heron might be standing like a statue, waiting poised to strike should an unlucky minnow, bullhead or frog pass by. A flash of blue catching my eye would be the only evidence of a kingfisher, flying upstream like a jet, looking for its next target. The more sedate snipe with its long thin beak could be seen probing for tasty morsels in the boot sucking mire, so long as I was very quiet and still. Like most things everything seemed brighter in the sunshine, none more so than this drab brown bird. When the sun caught its back, it displayed the most wonderful markings in every shade of brown from gold to bronze. All these amazing things for me to see but none where as magical as the lapwings. The acrobats of the sky, dipping, swooping, wheeling and turning, changing colour with every movement. From black to white then the most dazzling greens while continually calling peewit, peewit. Hence, it's other names, green plover and peewit. As if it wasn't beautiful enough when on the ground it also revealed a magnificent crest. 
    If peckish, I'd pull reeds from the water's edge, remove the outer leaves, wash off any mud and nibble on the sweet, tender inner shoots.
    Back in the spinney I'd be entertained by blackbirds and thrushes rustling in the undergrowth or by tiny wrens hiding in brambles out-singing any competitors while a robin would sit so close singing so quietly that I'm sure I was the only being able to hear it. At the water's edge wagtails, mainly pied but occasionally grey, would be bobbing. Bobbing their heads, knees and tails while darting along the ground or in the air hunting out unfortunate insects as they too searched for food. 
Almost to the minute, without fail, at three in the afternoon I watched fascinated as the cows, one by one, followed each other in single file, unbidden, to the milking parlour. It wouldn't be unusual to find me following to watch them queuing to taking it in turns to be relieved of their produce. The rhythmical sound of t tch, t tch as every last drop of precious milk was gentle squeezed from each distended udder was mesmerising. 
    Not every day was a perfect summer's day but no amount of wind, rain or fog could put a damper on my adventures, in fact it could add to the excitement. Giant leaves became umbrellas  as I pushed through the Amazon jungle keeping a look out for deadly tree dwelling snakes. My dam would be enhanced to create Niagara falls in the swelling waters that came after a rain. Maybe I'd just take shelter in my caveman’s den and watch nature take its course as I tried to light a fire with damp matches and damp wood to keep the wolves and bears at bay.
The walk home was reluctantly made when hunger said it was time to go. With one final task to perform, I'd climb down the steepest, shadiest bank on the far side of the bridge to where the tenderest, pepperyist watercress grew. The perfect accompaniment for Marmite sandwiches. 
    It was never silent, for if the birds weren't singing or the wind whispering in the trees and the cows weren't chewing their cuds or raindrops falling, there was always the sound of the brook merrily following its course to the Tove.
    The only silence was in my mind a quietness of the soul where everyday worries were forgotten as my imagination ran wild. 
             

On Writing – POV Point Of View

POV Point Of View by Kevin Murphy, with a challenge.

I should think I learnt about Point of View at school.

Only since 2012 have I been reading particularly in order to improve my writing. That is after I had written my first novel – I just wrote it from the hip – straight out, as a fantasy of my own, so in the first person. It is in the form of Journals two years apart. In the end, I decided to intertwine the two to show what ‘I’ learnt from the first year’s experience. This all came naturally – I knew what I wanted to write and also the time line. It had no flashbacks in the writing … I fabricated the sense of flashback by intertwining the second year after all was written – forward and back in time. It was an enjoyable process and a most satisfying feeling to have sat down and simply written a book.

I wrote it in the first person and only had my own thought s and observations to go on. But I am not omniscient, so that book is flawed. I now know better from having read and watched how stories are told.
I decided to write a crime mystery for my second novel. I have a favourite model – Case Histories by Kate Atkinson – and wanted to avoid as many clichés like the start with Police arrival at a crime scene, but to have a good deal of story before the arrival.

Page 69 became ‘magical’.

For this, I decided to adopt the third person POV so used pronouns SHE/HE, HER/HIS, THEIR /THEIRS, and IT of course, as in ‘it bit me’. I also wanted to tell the reader how characters felt, so the narrator must be like a god – all-knowing – and have full access to all the thoughts and experiences of all the characters in the story. I understood that this is using the third person Omniscient.
However, because it is a mystery, and the reader must be allowed to make up their own mind from clues, the narrator does not tell the reader everything.

I did not intend to write my next book, I wanted to find out what in the end I had to research myself – I had to write the book I needed in order to tell the experiences people had of the WW2 POW camp system. As an aspiring creative writer, I needed to do this in an original way, but I am still telling a history. So I had one character writing in the first person what he found out from others – so other people’s own stories – as he found it on a timeline, with some recall of memories of his own.

The book I wanted to write next is my magnum opus, the great work I have wanted to write for forty years. It is a fictionalised story of my love life, or an autobiographical novel. But wanting to be original, I also needed an original POV. I chose to have an observer, Liam, writing about my experiences, and connecting them with his own. I tell some of my story to him as Tack in an exchange of emails. Liam has a life of his own, which, though his relationship with Tack ended just a year after they left school together, until the first email arrived decades later. So I have three different points of view: Liam’s first person; Liam and Tack have second person memories of each other so can say second person – you; both write their own first person; each writes of the other as him.

It is a rite of passage novel and I have studied that genre and seen a number of films and series. They are told from every point of view including Omniscient. I read a very recently successful author’s three books as they seemed to be telling rites of passage.

Now I am only a short way into the third and am shocked enough by the way she has decided to use her POV, that I am sharing this with you.

I read the opening and some clunking which demonstrate just how even such a great writer can struggle.
Third person POV is historically the most popular, second is the least, and variations and mixtures are being attempted by original literary aspirants. There is a another form of third person besides omniscient and it is less popular. I think because in its purest form it is the most difficult: the narrator knows nothing of what s/he is telling except what happens – it is totally objective – almost. It is called Third Person limited.

In this latest of the three books, the narrator observes situations and in the ‘show don’t tell’ rule, she calls the characters ‘the man’ or ‘the woman’ until she narrates how she and we find out what they called – during introductions and comments. Initially I found reading this was difficult, it was strange to me. It had even made me question my belief that she is the rightfully critically acclaimed literary figure, revealed in her academic background, and the very clever first two books. I loved them and they have already been made into TV series.

Therefore, I offer you a general writing challenge – to write a same short piece in different voices – this can be done with even a pure description piece. Try it – for fun and for literary impact. And when you start a new piece, make a conscious decision what point of view you will tell it from.

Here is a mnemonic to help you

 POV         POINT OF VIEW            PRONOUNS

You can determine the point of view of a story by the pronouns
the narrator uses to describe the central character(s).

I, ME, MY         YOU, YOUR             SHE/HE, HER/HIS, THEIR /THEIRS          

First Person         Second                                           Third                                           

                                                        Omniscient: Knows all inc thoughts

                                                                                      or            

                                                Objective –  Knows only what is happening

From the POV of this essay, you don’t need to know who the writer I refer to is, but you may like to know that it is Sally Rooney.

My own published books can be explored by Googling Kevan Pooler – my pen name

AN OCTOGENARIAN’S PANDEMIC by Barrie Purnell

AN OCTOGENARIAN’S PANDEMIC

There’s been some sort of epidemic
So say all-knowing academics,	
A kind of dread Chinese infection
Designed to avoid early detection,
Resulting in oxygen deprivation
For which there was no known protection.
The government and the NHS
Said, what to do we can only guess
But until we can make up our minds
You must avoid contact of any kind,
Wash your hands 10 times a day
Put your going out clothes away,
And for restrictions we’ll atone 
By paying you to stay at home.
Said if lockdown we don’t apply
Half a million would surely die,
But something they didn’t say
Was all of us would have to pay,
All the costs of shutting down
To the tune of 300 billion pound.
I have to think they’ve lost their mind
Paying ½ billion to save a life like mine.

On the news the professor reported
We’d all go mad before it was sorted,
But when I had the time to reflect
Saw on me it would have little effect.
I was allowed to form a bubble
With neighbour who said, it was no trouble
To do a supermarket shop for me
Of fresh food, bread, milk and tea,
And I booked an on-line delivery
Which hitherto had been a mystery.
My hour long visits to numerous clinics
Were now phone calls over in minutes,
And no waiting in a doctors surgery
With ill people sitting next to me,
Covering me in their coughs and sneezes
Spreading their as yet unknown diseases,
And oh what joy when they disclosed
All the dentists would be closed.
No visits from that demanding relation
Requiring clean sheets on each occasion.
My expenditure had been decreased,
From hugging I had been released,
No longer was I considered rude
When I indulged my love of solitude.
I don’t spend weekends in hotels
Or holiday in the Seychelles,
I have nobody to look after
I have no fear of the hereafter.
I thought now I will have the time
To watch programmes on Amazon Prime,
Then there was Netflix and Catch-Up TV
Opportunities spread out endlessly.
The prospect of gardening reared its head
Or I could do DIY instead.
Then there were all those books to read
Which would increase my reading speed,
And when these became less exciting
I could always try to do some writing.

But as months ran into longer time
I missed the freedom once was mine,
I missed the human interaction
Leading to increasing dissatisfaction.
I wondered if this imposed ban
Affected this old solitary man,
Someone long past his prime
Already living on borrowed time,
How much harder would it have been
If I had been just seventeen?
And here I had to face the truth,
We chose to sacrifice our youth,
They lost out on jobs and education,
On teenage fun and socialization.
My few remaining years protected
By youth, who even if they were infected,
Would avoid serious complication
And wouldn’t require hospitalisation,
But who’d be paying back for many years
The billions spent to keep our conscience clear.
So we mortgaged millions of young lives
To try and help the old survive.
Was this right, we don’t know yet
Or something the country will regret?
Maybe result would have been the same
If they’d just locked up the old and lame,
And supplied any help they needed
Until search for vaccine had succeeded.
Having lived through rationing and the blitz.
The old could surely have survived this?

Each year 600000 deaths are seen
From causes other than COVID 19,
For every 1 that from COVID died
Cancer and heart disease killed 5.
Now on the news a man of 99
Is said to have died before his time!!
What’s new is that now each day, 
Presented in graphical display,
Death is there for all of us to see
We’re confronted by our own mortality.
Everyday more of the same
Until we look for someone to blame
For the extra deaths of an aged few,
As if death was something new,
When we have been able to ignore
The millions who have died before.
Only when that eulogy is read
Over the special one we’ve loved who’s dead,
Do we realise death is always with us
Even if it’s something we don’t discuss.
As mortals why do we believe
From death we alone could be reprieved?
Heart attack, cancer or suicide, 
Broken heart or homicide,
Immortality is our minds biggest lie
COVID ………just another way to die. 

THE EFFORTS THAT WE EACH EMPLOY by Michael Healy

THE EFFORTS THAT WE EACH EMPLOY

The efforts that we each employ

To write a poem you can enjoy

Involves the need to use our brains,

To bring ideas and entrain

These into words without a strain.

 

Read the words and get the theme

The flow of what the poems mean

Discuss the views of friends about it

And, hopefully, they will record they like it

Enough to go on our ‘Retwords’ web page.

 

Recently Retwords has included adverts

Inserted after our work is displayed.

Not a problem I thought, at first,

It helps to fill the web page purse,

Then reading a couple of my own texts,

 

 

And the adverts with which they were matched…

‘Loo Cleaners’ in each of the cases,

I wonder if this is a subtle comment

On all the brain power in my lament

Has it all just gone, for a swim down the Trent!

 

Or is it just flushed with success.

 

                                               Michael Healy

 

FRANKENSTEIN an Alternative Ending

AN ALTERNATIVE ENDING TO FRANKENSTEIN

By David R Graham

Archangel, Dec, 24th 1799,

To Mrs Seville, England,

Dearest Margaret,

I am alive and well, though I had planned it otherwise. Lest these words alarm you, let me speedily explain what has befallen me these last months.

Whilst stranded in the frozen wastes of the North, I entered into a compact with that spawn of the Devil that was the abominable creation of Doctor Frankenstein. May God forgive me, but in my lust for personal glory, I agreed to help manufacture a mate for the creature. Little did I suspect that the creature was playing me for a fool. It concocted its own death. Before my very eyes and those of my entire crew, it was consumed in the flames that were Doctor Frankenstein’s funeral pyre. Then it secretly boarded the ship and I concealed it in my quarters for the duration of the voyage back to Archangel.

Once here, I quickly purchased a suitable building on the harbour, and had it fitted out as a laboratory with all the apparatus and equipment that Doctor Frankenstein had recorded so meticulously in his journal. Then, we set about the gruesome task of acquiring the necessary body parts for the creature’s mate.

Such bloody work was of no consequence to the creature, but, oh God, dearest sister, for me! For me, it was a glimpse, nay, a stark descent into the very bowels of Hell! The places we entered into and the vile acts we committed whilst there, are almost beyond description! How many times was I awash in the gore of human flesh, before my senses could stand it no more!? My very soul cried out in agony and anguish at the terrible depth to which my lust for glory had dragged me.

And the creature knew! All the time we were engaged in our bloody work, it knew the extent of my suffering, and it laughed! It laughed a terrible laugh at what I had become! And in that moment it controlled me! It mastered me! I was powerless! It did not threaten me harm. It threatened, nay, vowed, to destroy all that I held dear in this world if it thought for one moment that I might try to free myself from our terrible compact.

Once the creature had all the body parts it needed, it shut us both up in the cellar and I was forced to assist it in assembling its mate.

When the work was complete, if such a thing might be called complete, it was a horrible adulteration of the human form! What a piece of work it was! It was not express and admirable in form! In apprehension, it was a ghoul! It was the paragon of abomination!

Again the creature laughed its terrible laugh when it beheld my horror and it told me than that it intended to assemble a cohort of such things and use them to wreck a terrible vengeance on the whole of humankind!

Oh, dearest sister, I knew that it meant every word! Just as I knew that it intended that I should continue to assist it in its terrible plan.

I resolved there and then dear sister, to do whatever I could to stop the creature, even if so doing should cost me my life. Indeed, I had already resolved to sacrifice my life in some small recompense for the diabolical wickedness into which I had at first so eagerly sought to participate. I had to find a way to destroy both myself and the creature. But I had no notion of how I might do so.

For days and nights, as we worked to prepare the doctor’s apparatus that would be used to activate and, God forbid, animate, the creature’s vile handiwork, I racked my stupefied brain to try to devise a means by which I might accomplish my final act of redemption.

But I could conceive of nothing! I was doomed! I realised then, as I worked to connect electrical conductors to the copper hustera that, once the vile thing it contained, lived, I would be of no further use to its creator. It was then, in that moment of stark realisation, that I cried out to my own Creator.

Oh, dearest sister in the world, He heard me! He heard my cry and He answered me! On my own I could not have accomplished all that I did!

In that moment, I was overcome by an all-consuming sense of wellbeing! My wretched state fell away from me and I heard a voice say, ‘And the serpent cast out of his mouth a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.’

Thinking that the creature might also have heard the voice, I turned, but it was engrossed in the doctor’s cursed journal, whilst it awaited the gathering storm.

It was then dear sister that I realised that the voice was a revelation!  A revelation dear sister!  The cellar in which we laboured was many feet below the banks of the Neva. I had to find a way to breach the walls and bring the weight of the river in upon us and all that we had engineered!

I then beseeched the creature that I might go to my toilet and eat some food and rest for a  period that I might regain some strength. So engrossed was it in the near summation of its endeavours, that it let me go.

I worked quietly and quickly in near darkness dear sister and I discovered that the cellar was in fact a dry dock. The doors that held the Neva at bay were very large and seemingly impossible for one man to open alone. But on searching further, I discovered a mechanism that controlled the doors. The screw was large and cumbersome, but I grasped it with the strength and determination that only the very desperate of heart can employ. It turned!

The great doors made a noise like that of Satan ascending from Hell! But the doors opened!

Water rushed in!

Aided by the great press of water the screw turned ever faster!

Even above the roar of the water I heard the creature bellow when it realised what I was about!

I spun the screw once more, then leapt away and concealed myself in the darkness!

The creature bound up and grasped the screw and I thought for one fearful moment that it was going to succeed in shutting off the water! But even its inhuman strength was no match for the weight of the river, as it sought to engulf the cellar!

Bellowing its rage, the creature left the screw and I realised that it was bent on rescuing its creation!

I reached the hustera first! I spun the lid screw shut and haul with superhuman strength on the rope that operated the lifting tackle. How I did it I do not know! But I managed to tilt the hustera onto two of its feet until it teetered on the edge of its dais!

The creature was almost upon me! Its maw was agape with wrath! But the sound that came from its throat was drowned by the roar of the water as it rapidly filled the cellar!

I kicked out at the hustera! It toppled over the very edge of the dais!

The creature caught it! But it was unable to prevent it falling and it went down with it into the swirling water!

Such was the weight of the hustera that I was easily hauled up into the darkness!

Far below me, I heard the creature bellowing in fury! It was still alive!

It was then that it happened, dearest sister in the world!

A miracle of miracles!

A single bolt of lightning turned the very night to day! It struck the conducting rod that the creature had placed on the roof of the building and its great power was conducted, in the merest blink of an eye, down the conduit and into the cellar!

Not even that terrible creature could have survived that bolt of power from Heaven! All living and non-living flesh, in that water-filled charnel house, was consumed in an instant!

In another instant, the horror that had consumed my life for many months was at last at an end.

The water found its level and ceased to rise and its roaring was replaced by utter silence.

It was then dear sister that I heard the same voice say, ‘It is finished.’

 

Your most affectionate brother,

R Walton