Day 16 / 12:43
Noah’s trying to remember a good time for his journal, like Ms Turner suggested. Use the time to remember bits and pieces of his life, she said, get used to writing about them, and maybe later, when he’s more at ease, he can share some of them in group.
When he was little, some of his best times were lying in bed with his head against Mom’s shoulder, watching her turn the pages in his storybooks, but only after he had looked carefully at every picture and made sure everything was where it was supposed to be: the red cloak of the little girl who traipses (his mom’s voice went all funny when she said that word) down the path into the woods, carrying a basket full of goodies to her long-in-the-tooth Gran, the flowers with the round, white petals in the grass next to the bridge, the clippety-clippety-clop of the hooves of the goats as they trip-trip-tropped over it. The huff and the puff and the blow-your-house-down of the wolf and his hot anger as – plop! – he fell into the pot. This was the wolf who wanted to eat the three little piggies, but they used their clever pig brains to make a plan. So, two wolves. One for the pigs and one for the juicy little girl. And then there were the children – Hansel and Gretel, who left a path of crumbs all the way to a witch’s house and she invited them for a lovely cup of tea and a slice of gingerbread. There was an apple in the stories, bright red and begging to be bitten into, one small bite, and a young girl lies sleeping forever. There was fi-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an English man, only his mom always said ‘the blood of a South African’.
There were goodies and baddies in The Children’s Treasure Chest of Stories and they all came alive when his mom gave them special voices, and cuddled him close when things got a bit hair-raising. ‘Don’t worry Noah,’ she always said, ‘it all comes right in the end.’
And it always did, no matter how wicked the witch, how scary the fi-fi-fo-fuming giant, how bloodthirsty the wolf with the shaggy coat, how sickly green and nasty the troll sitting on a pile of smelly bones under the bridge waiting for the clip-clip-clop and the trip-trip-trop of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Somehow, in all sorts of ways, good got the better of evil.
But Noah’s not 5 any more. Now he’s in a world where everything is dark, everything is dangerous, and safety is never guaranteed.
Every day he checks his lists, ticks the boxes and follows the path, breadcrumb by breadcrumb. And every day the Dark spreads, deepening, blocking out all light.