The boy cringed as he heard his parents stirring, but it came to nothing, as they promptly fell back to sleep. As quietly as he could, careful not to wake his parents, he slipped out of bed and began to make his way down the staircase.įortunately, the carpet muffled his footsteps, but it was not thick enough to hide the loud groaning creak of a loose floorboard. The boy, being as curious as he was, wanted desperately to find out what it was that making such an anguished noise.
#Pocket potions by mud in my blood full#
It sounded as if it was the whimpering of an animal in pain, yet it was so full of human emotion. The little boy was straining to hear a high-pitched noise that was being blown in through the cracks in his bedroom His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. In the room next door, a small boy lay wrapped in blankets and duvets. A dark-haired man was sound asleep in bed beside a delicate woman with river of golden hair. The soft breathing of the sleeping family drifted under the doors and crept down the staircase. A feather-duster was dancing over the many strange ornaments that lined the mantelpiece, and in the corner came an odd, click-clacking noise as a pair of needles began to knit a scarf. In the kitchen, a brush covered in soapy water was washing the dirty pots and pans all by itself. There was no telephone to been seen, but instead a grubby pot of peculiar grey powder. The small family that lived there had no heating, instead a merry-fire that crackled away in the living room, warming the entire house. The inside of this old and crumbling cottage also seemed as if it had been stolen from a fairytale. The gutters were clinging onto the three remaining brackets, a couple of slates had slid from the roof and were now lying shattered on the ground, one of the wooden pillars holding the front porch up was rotting and the chimney was stained with thick grey soot. In fact, the whole house looked a little worse for wear. The door looked as if it had seen better days, for it was leaning slightly to one side, a split zigzagged across one of the panes of well-scrubbed glass and the black paint was starting to peel. A winding stone path led to its front door, weaving through the close-cut grass and slicing a way through the bursting flowerbed, full of an assortment of brightly plants that were spilling out onto the lawn.
Nestled amongst the pine trees in a dip between two hills was a crooked white-bricked house, one that looked as if it had been taken from the pages of a storybook.