My heartbeat was taking up all the space in my body. There was no room for air, no room for thoughts.

“I mean, you're right,” I continued. She glanced up at me and I blinked at her image. The brown eyes looked like a strangers’ now, not the same girl I had just walked around with for three hours. Her hands seemed fidgety and unstable, not the ones that fit perfectly in mine.

“Oh,” she said. “I see.” The way she said that made my heart lurch. Although my heart was beating faster than ever, it stopped for a second. And I went numb. My brain and my hands and thoughts and everything. Went numb. I offered a smile emotionlessly at her when she looked down. It all felt so surreal.

"Not that it's important now, but I thought you should know."

"I guess." She sounded unsure. "But you're over me. I'm sorta annoying and weird anyway. Right?"

"Well," I hesitated. How could I tell her I still loved her. And her "annoying" texts every hour about anything. Her quirky hoodies and dedication to soccer. Her ridiculously curly hair and sweetness. Her personality and every line on her hand. All our memories and how she made me feel like I was on fire, alive and truly here.

Her face said it all. I couldn't tell her.

"What do you think?" I asked her instead.

"Honestly, I liked you too." She shrugged. "But I got over it. I love you still, I mean, but you've already broken my heart so I can't pretend this relationship will ever be okay."

My heart leaped, cracked, repaired itself, and shattered all in the span of a few seconds.

"Would you ever-" I picked up all the courage I had.

"No." She interrupted. The pain in her eyes cut into mine. "No."

Looking back, she was right about one thing. Our relationship would never and will never be okay. It's healing, reforming and growing. But it isn't okay.

If she had said yes, maybe we would've been that couple. The one who has movie marathons on snow days and eats too much junk food together. The one that does all the cheesy things and holds hands just because we don't want to be apart. Yes could've led us down so many paths and opened so many possibilites. It could've changed us and opened the world. But sometimes, "No" can also change the world.

For ages we had been without lives of our own. The whole of consciousness was open to the world and nothing divided us from the rest of creation. Then of a sudden, of a chance, of a time we looked and saw them somehow. How long they had been or to what end we knew not, just a line where none had been. We had flourished and they had not. Perhaps it was but one summer, none of them knew that we knew. It was here something began to change. It happened over fathomless compeers. The cyphers of a divisional revision without forewarning were being writ ever more deeply into our minds as we plotted. As their species moved forward, they began crossing borderlines whose very actuality they never imagined. At night we looked upon the stars with deep distrust and watched as they looked up at a sky filled with stars and felt themselves small and fragile in the vastness but part of. Soon they began to see everything in a way they never had in older times. When he died we found ourselves around the body as if there were something we should do that they had never done before.

And they saw us do this. For the first time they knew that every single thing that had been known was different.

I love the word different, she said.

Why?

Cause were all the same.

You know watching tv makes you dumb.

no it doesnt

‘New’ murmurs to me,

leave the damp fog

of all you every knew.

Sip the amber whisky,

ride on golden steed.

Allow tired memories

to sink below horizon.

The future lures you

with crooked fingers,

wagging promises

over the vista.

Sojourn with me,

taste cutting edge,

seal the ancient

into zippered pocket.

Fall over my cliff

but you cannot,

not ever,

walk backwards!

Eenie, Meeny Miney Moe,

Esmeralda is a hoe.

She likes to holler,

let her go,

Give her money,

let her hide.

Don’t ever let her

come inside -

common sense

true and tried .

Open your door,

kick her outside.

Don’t tell your wife,

she won’t abide -

say it’s not true

everyone lied,

if you want to

keep your bride!

Pillow my orbs with eyelashes,

cradle serenity in the darkness,

sprawl on downy cushion of moss,

observe stars painting moonlight,

candles glowing in solitude.

Bar the doors to angst and pain,

substituting vistas of peace,

studded with luminaries of silence,

oscillating ocean winds soothing core,

laid-back songs of fragrant breezes,

naked feet beating soulful retreat.

Spreading joy on rich black earth

in an embrace of enveloping dark,

stillness in the caverns of shadows.

George shot through the open doorway, fell to his knees, and slid across the slimy wooden deck of the ship.

He lifted his head to catch his bearings and was greeted with the sight of about a dozen, open mouthed, pirates who were stood completely still having immediately stopped whatever task they were in the middle of performing. It was as if he had gate crashed a game of musical statues.

‘Er…hello,’ he said, red faced.

Suddenly the pirates came to their senses and released one conjoined roar into the breezy sea air. They all jumped, to a man, on top of George forming an untidy pile of arms and legs in the middle of the deck.

George managed to find a gap to squirm his way through and crawl from beneath the teeming mass of smelly armpits and greasy limbs. His freedom was short lived though as another pirate, coming to see what all the commotion was about, grabbed him as he took to his feet. The pirate twisted George’s arm around his back and put a cutlass blade to his throat.

‘Going somewhere are we?’ he said, menacingly.

‘Get up you scurvy bag of scum,’ the pirate shouted at the others on the floor. ‘Go and get the Captain.’

One of them, a tall thin man with thick spectacles, peeled himself off the top of the pile and headed up some steps to the side, onto the upper deck, tripping on every third stair.

After several seconds of loud bumps and sounds of ‘Ouch’, ‘Gerrof’ and ‘Who put that there’, the man came back accompanied by the un-mistakable figure of Captain John Ladybird.

‘What have we here then, a stowaway?’ said the Captain.

‘We found him on deck sir, trying to steal our booty he was,’ said the pirate holding George.

His breath stank as he spoke and George tried to pull his face away. He tried to say something but the sharpness of the blade persuaded him otherwise. Luckily the Captain saw through the pirate’s false claims.

‘I hardly think that to be the case,’ he said, calmly, ‘considering we don’t actually have any booty, as you call it, do we?’

All the pirates looked down at the floor together and, in unison, shrugged and grunted.

‘Well I’m sure if we did, he would’ve tried to steal it, sir…..can’t we just get the cat ‘o nine tails out anyway, just to be sure…..please,’ he pleaded.

All of them nodded their heads and a mirage of toothless grins graced the Captain’s eye line.

‘No,’ he shouted with authority. ‘We shall let the boy speak first and see what he has to offer in way of an explanation.’

Captain John looked directly at George. ‘Well, boy. What do you have to say for yourself?’

George desperately wanted to show the gold coin to the Captain.

‘I have something in my pocket that will explain everything, I think,’ he gargled.

George moved his free hand towards his inside pocket but stopped sharply when his other arm was pulled tighter up his back.

‘Aaaaargh,’ he wailed.

The Captain, luckily, sensed he wasn’t a threat and put his hand out to stop any more of the torture.

‘Colin,’ he ordered, ‘see what it is he wants to show us, if you please.’

A gormless looking, short, scruffy haired pirate walked over and reached into the inside of George’s coat. He pulled something out and hoisted it into the air.

‘Look sir, a gold coin,’ exclaimed Colin.

He examined it more closely, fiddling with it between his fingers.

‘Hang on. This isn’t real,’ he said.

He peeled away at the gold with his dirty fingernail to reveal a chocolate coin. George looked up to the sky, exasperated. He couldn’t believe this was happening. That novelty coin had been there since Christmas.

‘The other pocket,’ he shouted desperately. ‘Look in the other pocket.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Colin, taking a bite of the chocolate.

He again slid his hand into the inside of George’s jacket, this time pulling out the Leprechaun gold.

‘Hang on, is this some kind of joke,’ Colin said, trying to scrape the gold away from the coin.

Captain John suddenly grabbed the rail and hurdled over onto the steps and bounded down to the deck below, snatching the coin from Colin’s grasp.

‘Let me see that,’ he said.

He held it up to the light and inspected it more closely. He turned to the pirate holding George.

‘Let him go, immediately,’ he barked.

George twisted and stretched his sore limb, which had now been released.

‘You, come with me,’ he said, pointing at George, before marching into the inner part of the ship.

George picked up the book from the sodden wooden planks and discreetly removed the bookmark, before following the Captain into what was now just a normal doorway.

*

George stood inside the Captain’s quarters, now minus the reading glasses which had been safely put away. In the middle of the room was an old desk set at a strange angle to the walls with various nautical measuring instruments and charts adorning the top of it, and an equally old chair resting to the side. There was also an old pewter tankard, with goodness knows what murkily residing within it, sliding gently back and forth to the rhythm of the swaying ship. In the corner was a bunk, only a foot or so off the ground, with a stained woollen blanket dumped roughly at its base.

Captain John took a swig from the grubby tankard and immediately pulled a face then shook his cheeks from side to side.

‘So, the stories were true then, what my Mother told me when I was young,’ he said, almost to himself, staring blankly out of one of the portholes.

He turned his head towards George. ‘So, what do they call you then….they do still use names in the future, don’t they?’

‘Yes sir, my name is George, sir.’

The captain nodded.

‘Right then, George. I assume you’re here because you need my help in some way,’ he said, coldly. ‘So, while you’re here you can be of help to me too. I need another able seaman to assist with some of the duties on board. One of them went and died on me recently, most rude it was.’

His expression remained serious. It was clear he wasn’t having a joke with George.

‘Yes sir,’ said George, solemnly.

’Right well, go and see the crew and get yourself better attired for the job. Then, when I think you’re on your way to actually being of use to us, I’ll ask you what it is you need my help for, understood.

He looked back out towards the sea.

‘Yes, but I….,’ said George, desperately.

‘Is that understood,’ interrupted the Captain, sternly, without turning back to face him.

‘Yes,’ George agreed meekly. He realised there was no point arguing with the Captain at this stage. He would just have to play ball for the moment and hope that his mood changed for the better, and that he would soon come to terms with the situation unfolding on his ship.

‘Oh,’ said Captain John, with a sly smile creasing up at the corner of his mouth, ‘do leave your bag here for the time being, I will need to do an inventory of its contents, standard ship procedure, I assure you.’

George hesitated for a brief moment. He was obviously very nervous about letting the contents of the satchel from out of his sight, but again the pointlessness of resisting the Captain’s wishes persuaded him it was a risk he would have to take. He pulled it over his head and laid it down onto the table, before excusing himself from the room and going back above decks to go and introduce himself, properly this time, to the crew.

*

The next few days went agonisingly slowly. Every time he was in Captain John’s presence he acted indifferently to George. Most nights he had laid awake on his bunk, staring at the ceiling above, wondering if he should steal his book back and leave the ship, but to his credit he stuck with it.

The crew, on the other hand, had turned out to be fantastic with him and had become very friendly. They taught him all about life on board and the tasks and duties that went with keeping everything ‘ship shape’.

George was now confident when it came to climbing up the rigging to untie ropes and unfurl sails. He had even taken a couple turns up in the crows nest, although after a while this got a bit boring when George sat there for hours with nothing to look at except miles upon miles of rolling ocean.

In return George taught them about the importance of things like hygiene and washing their hands, especially after trips to the toilet and before preparing food. He explained how important it was to keep the drinking water separate and safe from contamination. At first the crew had scoffed at his suggestions, but when he pointed out that these simple steps would prevent them from getting diseases like dysentery, or as they called it ‘the bloody flux’, they were only too eager to adapt his principles.

There were three pirates that George worked with in close proximity on a daily basis, and had become his closest allies on the ship. There was ‘short sighted’ Sid, the scrawny, thick spectacled one who had fetched the Captain when George first appeared on the ship, ‘Clueless’ Colin, the short, scruffy, pirate who had looked for the gold coin in George’s coat and ‘no nickname’ Pete.

Pete was a podgy, but tall, man who owned a pet parrot that often sat on his shoulder while he polished and cleaned his pistols during his free time. Occasionally Pete would offer to do the cooking for the crew, but they often denied him because the last time he did it he accidentally poisoned them all. Pete also had a tendency, when in the face of serious danger, to panic uncontrollably. Despite all of these characteristics, Pete still didn’t have a nickname because the others ‘couldn’t quite think of anything that had a ring to it yet.’

It didn’t come as a shock to George when he found out that the crew had been through a spell of bad luck recently and hadn’t plundered any treasure in over a year. George took it upon himself to work with them, for only about an hour every day, to develop their close combat fighting skills, boarding tactics and pistol shooting.

Despite the massively positive effect he was having with the men, the Captain still continued to look on and say nothing. George decided it was time he had to do something about the situation with the Captain. They had to talk, but not in front of the crew. He would wait until everyone was asleep in their bunks that night and sneak into the Captain’s room to confront him. After all, it should have been his duty to have helped George in the first place, for the sake of the family.

*

Every footstep George gingerly placed in front of the other on the rough wooden timbers appeared to creak even louder than the preceding one. Despite the friendship he’d forged with the crew he knew they still remained steadfastly loyal to the captain, although puzzling to him as it was, and if he was caught sneaking into the Captain’s quarters in the middle of the night they may develop the wrong impression about his intentions.

George was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea, but he was nearly at the Captain’s door. It was now easier to go on than risk turning back and getting caught as he tried to get back into his bunk. As he approached, he noticed the door was slightly ajar and a flicker of candlelight was emanating through the gap. He cautiously peeped into the room, holding his breath, and saw Captain John sat in his chair, facing away from the entrance, staring down at the floor.

‘Come in George, I knew you would come, eventually’ he said.

This startled George but nevertheless he pushed aside the door and slowly crept into the room.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said ‘but I really need to talk with you.’

‘Yes, it’s alright George, I know you do,’ Captain John said, resignedly. ‘I’ve been watching you for several days. The effect you’ve had on the crew is quite exceptional lad, and as for how far you’ve come yourself, well, you would make a very valuable addition to this ship. I suppose I’ve been afraid to talk to you myself because of what it may mean.’

‘Oh…..,’ George mumbled. He was surprised by this. He had thought the Captain was ignoring him because he simply didn’t care about helping him and was only using him for his own ends. He now realised that the Captain actually appreciated what he was doing on board the ship.

George took another step towards the desk, noticing the biography lying in the middle of it.

‘So you’ve looked through the book then I see?’ George hissed. ‘I’m not sure that was the wisest thing to have done, looking into your own future, sir.’

Captain John quickly spun round in the chair, but George could see he wasn’t angry with his comments. On the contrary, he had a sad look in his eyes.

‘I know, you’re right George,’ he said. ‘I realise that now, but looking at the book has helped me to understand some of the many mistakes I’ve made in my life.’

He picked up the book and offered it to George who politely took it from his grasp.

‘Look inside the book George,’ he said, ‘look at the pages from the middle onwards…they’re all blank.’

George flicked through the pages and indeed there was not even the tiniest spot of ink upon them.

‘Of course,’ he proclaimed. ‘From where we are now and onwards none of it has happened yet. The book can’t tell us about events that haven’t occurred because some things may yet change by me being here.’

‘That’s right George. So you see, the book offers me no clues anyway, except to show me how wrong I’ve been in my past.’

They looked straight at each other and for the first time George noticed the anguish and pain etched within the creases of Captain John’s face. He could see the longing for home. The Captain hadn’t chosen to be a pirate; it had been forced upon him, many years previously.

‘Go now, go back to your bed George and get a good nights rest,’ the Captain ordered. ‘In the morning you can tell me all about how we can help you, then we shall hit port and re-supply for the adventure ahead.’

Title: George and the Magic Library – The search for the Phoenix Quill

Genre: Fantasy, Historical Adventure.

Age Range: 11+

Word Count: Excerpt – 2,500, Main Book - 60,000+

Author Name: S J Andrews

Why this is a good fit: Although the book is an adventure story, the research has been meticulous, meaning there will be factual elements, but only on a subtle level so that it does not get in the way of the story. I believe the story will appeal to boys and girls alike as, though the central character is a boy, there are several strong female characters within the story. The story has many twists and turns, with cliff-hangers dotted within the story to keep young readers engaged and wanting to see what happens next. There is also a twist at the end which leads to the possibility and promise of more adventures to come.

The Hook: Characters can magically travel into books and have adventures within them.

Synopsis: George’s parents have been missing for several weeks and now his Grandma has died in mysterious circumstances. Sent to live with his uncle in the country George discovers a family secret at his new home – a magic library which allows the readers to enter into the stories within the books. He must use this magic to put together a series of clues and try to find an ancient artefact known as the Phoenix Quill, which ultimately has the power save his parents.

Target Audience: Boys and Girls between the ages of 11 and 16, particularly fans of fantasy, history and other similar genres, such as Narnia and Harry Potter.

Bio: I am 41 years old and live in Lancaster, England. I am educated to a good standard and run my own digital content and marketing business. I lead a wide ranging and healthy social life and am always attempting to gain new life experiences. I enjoy history and have a keen interest in myths and legends, especially the psychology of how many of the tales come about – I like to then take these two elements and combine them into my storytelling, which is written in a way that children can identify with and understand (I have 4 Children of various ages), but without appearing condescending or insulting to their growing intelligence. I am a firm believer that reading is an important aspect of a child’s education, so the stories they are presented with must be kept exciting and engaging as well as giving them access to new words and information.