Word hoard 1+2

Word Hoard 1:

'His lips would make a switching sound' but she did not know what to make of it. He was horrible to look at. He was all green and a long tail grew out of his lower back. He was definitely not human but he spoke like one. Where had he come from? She simply did not know what to think. For all she knew he could be an alien of some sort, and she had never met one of those before, that was for certain. All her life she had lived in this small dusty and very quiet village in the depth of southern Australia. She was used to tackling snakes, poisoners spiders of all sorts, but she had never met a creature like the one she was now faced with. He did not seem to notice her confusion. Perhaps he did not realize that he looked entirely out of place? All of a sudden a bell rang and Lucy jumped. It was the church bell calling for the daily meeting. The green creature in front of her got scared too. She was not quite sure whether she thought of it as a sort of man or whether it was more of an animal. Suddenly the man-creature (whatever) opened his mouth and a large white cloud of mist began to emerge from behind his teeth. Lucy was more surprised than scared. In fact, she was rather fascinated. Could he be some kind of spirit?

(The first seven words are from James McAuley's poem 'Because', published in 'Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times', ed. Neil Astley (Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books Ltd., 2002), pp. 286-87.

Word Hoard 2:

(I have chosen the underlined words, 'but human? Not definitely'. I have allowed myself to add a touch of creativity by using punctuation in order to make sense of the phrase. Otherwise the phrase makes little sense when read backwards.)

The little girl looked out of the window. The wind was blowing with strong gusts from the south. This only happened very rarely and Bess knew that it meant bad tidings. Her great grandmother had taught her so. She leaned forward and bent her neck as far back as she could. In the sky the autumn moon peeped out every few seconds from behind fast moving ghostly clouds. She then glanced towards the forest to the west. The dark outline of the pine trees swayed from side to side. Bess trusted her old great grandmother. She had lived a long life and had many fantastic but often also scary stories to relate from her life. As a child the grandmother's parents had gone to America to seek their fortune and the young child was not intended to be part of this adventure. Instead she had been left on the doorstep of an ancient church in the village where she had been born two years previously. A kind vicar had taken her in and he had made sure that she grew up in fairly good conditions. However, when Bess' great grandmother had been only 12 she had been sent to a nearby village to help on a farm. She got plenty to eat but she was also fed spiritually by the farmer's wife. Bess' great grandmother was soon introduced to and taught the skill of predicting the future, decoding the seemingly random position of tea leaves at the bottom of teacups and understanding dreams. Bess had heard lots of stories from her great grandmother about the living dead, invisible spirits walking in the world of the living, and predictions which had allegedly come true.

In the darkness outside she suddenly believed to have spotted something. An agile shape moved hastily away from the pine trees. It was heading in the direction of the house. Bess strained her eyes. It could of course be a deer. Surely it was a deer or perhaps a wolf? Howling was sometimes heard from the woods, but people rarely saw the wolves any more. As the shadowy body came closer, Bess noticed that it was moving on two legs, but human? Not definitely. Something was not right. The advancing shape moved far too fast for a man. Bess stared into the darkness and noticed how her heart beat heavily under her nightdress. She did not know what was approaching, but she felt that something significant – something terrible - was about to happen. She was absolutely certain.