Daily stories

When they chained the sea-thing we all knew it wouldn't hold. A flick of its great winding limbs would break the chains, or else the foulness it exuded would slip it free or eat the links away. It would roar and drive men mad until they loosed it and offered themselves as the first to be devoured. But we were wrong. It sank to the seafloor with the weight of all that iron, and there it lay, whimpering. We watched it there, until it was gone. And that was the end of us.

It was just a snatch, overheard as he passed: "That guy Jamie really butters my crumpets." That had to be good, didn't it? It's the butter that makes the crumpet. But it hadn't sounded good. It had sounded like "that guy Jamie really grinds my gears", or "that guy Jamie really gets up my nose". And didn't those seem more likely? You couldn't trust words. People didn't think about what they were saying. Still, Jamie thought, it's nice to be noticed.

The first day back at the factory was like any other, stamping out thousands of blank brass scoppets. But now I was wondering where all the brass came from, and where all those scoppets went, and how they were cut and what they were used for. I had never used a scoppet myself, nor seen one used: not one of ours, nor one from any other manufacturer. When the bell went, I followed a cart of scoppets out through the back doors. The men pushed it across a rough yard to other workshed. Coming the other way was a load of fresh brass sheets. I set the worn face of my hammer in the palm of my hand. I had earned enough to buy a salve for my aching shoulder.

Carstone said that they could never try him, for he had not twelve peers in all of England. He was right, of course. They held him on remand while twenty-four boys (doubled up in case of accidents) could be raised up to his degree of privilege and sunk down to his level of wickedness. When they were men, they sent Carstone to the rope with laughter on their lips. The nation laughed too, at how we had outwitted him. But on the scaffold, he smiled to see two dozen fresh Carstones loosed upon the world.

Gracie bought me a hot air balloon ride, three hours in a little basket in the sky. I thought there would be other people there, but it was just me and the pilot, and he jumped out a few metres up. I saw him scamper away, getting smaller and smaller. By morning, I was in a new world, with colours I had never seen before. I sent Gracie a postcard, so she could see them too.

It starts with a careful scraping of spade against tarmac, lifting the flattened body from the road. Then a hiss, almost musical, as the special pump gets going. A few moments of silence. The unscrewing of lids. The striking of a match. A crackle like treading on glass. And then a squeak, and a huff, and a snuffle, as the hedgehog pads away into the bushes.

I had one foot on the railway track when the alarm sounded for the level crossing. I could keep on forward or I could turn back, and it was obvious which I should do. I would clear the crossing in a few steps and be on my way. But the way back was shorter, and a train was coming. and those big CCTV cameras were watching me. My back foot itched to go forwards and my front foot yearned to turn back. I stood still as a sleeper but I felt I was spinning. There were lights everywhere: flashing on the signals, spinning behind my eyes, coming down the track.

The sack of iron chain in the storeroom was too heavy to move. You would have to haul the lengths out and around the tight corner to get anywhere. In the bottom of the sack there were a few loose links, and those were all we needed for the job. Someone said we should cut a hole in the sack to get at them, and perhaps we should have. There was a sack of spare sacks in the storeroom. But I wanted to pull it all out, link by link by link.

Grandma had wolf's teeth on the end of her knitting needles. It seemed to make things harder, but she wouldn't take them off. She said she ate up the wool and it turned to socks inside her, and then she wondered why nobody wanted to wear them. But she still smiled when she gave them to you: two rows of little points.

Among the strange things that live at the bottom of the ocean there drifted a little lost starling. She didn't understand that she should be unable to breathe. She didn't understand that the terrible weight of the water should crush her hollow bones. She pulled herself along with her delicate wings, and ate pinprick creatures that glowed softly, and learned the slow calls of the deep. One day there was a shimmer in the darkness, and she swamflew up and up and up until she burst out into a sky thick with her sisters and brothers. She joined that great murmur, but could never quite fit in their wide dark pattern: her belly full of light, her lungs full of saltwater and sea-song.