Page 3 - SAMPLE The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke

told frightening tales of how the people from Farstoke would use a lifeling boy for their own selfish ends, for non-lifeling folk have a terrible tendency to treat lifelings with appalling disregard.
When, through Lonny’s own fault, the family are left with no food and no money, Lonny decides he must risk going into Farstoke to find work. He takes Midge with him, making him promise never to reveal his lifeling secret.
At first Lonny is terrified, but then he begins to meet
the people of Farstoke. He and Midge are persuaded to attend the local school. Lonny learns that Farstoke has its own happier stories about lifeling folk, different from the ones he has been told.They even celebrate a lifeling festival every year, and hope that one day a real lifeling will return to their town. Lonny begins to doubt the tales he’s always been told at home.
Lonny returns home one night to find his father burn- ing his mother’s photograph album, full of photographs from her travels, believing it to have influenced his son’s decision to leave the forest. Lonny is incensed.The very next day he reveals himself to be a lifeling by saving a dying dog in Farstoke, expecting the town to celebrate his wonderful existence.
But Lonny senses a sudden change in his new friends. They no longer see him as Lonny – now they can’t see beyond the lifeling. And when a teacher tries to force him to save his sick wife – an act which would deprive Lonny of half his life - Lonny realises that his father was right all along – Farstoke is a dangerous place.