Page 15 - Sample Flip Builder Project

itself, surrounded itself with sucking bogs and a wide wall of

reed and bulrush. Nor did any child make the attempt,
bottomless being unimaginable yet terrible, a yawning,

lonesome nothingness from which the mind recoiled,
unsated.

On the village’s north side was a swamp, an

everglade of mud, shallow murky water, reeds and fierce
amphibians — great green monsters with bulging eyes and

rubbery flesh which might leap from hiding to unfurl the slimy
carpets of their tongues and roll up children into their bulging

throats.

The rest was forest: jungles of oak, birch and willow
above scratching, snatching bramble with runners to coil

around little legs and drag small bodies into the poisoned
streams that wound invisibly beneath a thick, green blanket

of hostile vegetation.
Giant wild boar would sometimes invade the village

green, snouting through grass in search of child-legs to

crunch between snapping jaws. Rats prowled the barns,
sniffing out young throats. Buffalo grazed the meadows,

quick to stampede and crush any child daring to approach.
It wasn’t just animals and wild nature that threatened

the children. There were wild humans too. Bands of
travelling men and women with their own grubby, snarl-

haired offspring would sometimes camp by the village. They

had no fear of nature’s traps and perils; they were part of
that nature. The villagers would hide their children when the

travelling people came knocking on doors with their earrings

and clothes pegs and dark, penny-hungry eyes. The
travellers were child-stealers, everyone knew. Many a small

boy or girl had gone with the travellers, it was said, never to

2