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    The Landline Chronicles Book Two: The Thinking
    The Landline Chronicles Book Two: The Thinking
    The Landline Chronicles Book Two: The Thinking
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    The Landline Chronicles Book Two: The Thinking

    By Dallas Sutherland

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    LANDLAND BECOMES ITS OWN SAVIOUR...
    The Greying snakes across Bigriver towards Landland... all the lands are in turmoil. Meah combines her power of thinking with the magical Book of Colours, and joins the Bigriverland army to fight the horrid Firbog. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the white many-headed-winged-thing, returns. Auntie Beryl has become the evil Queen Berilbog – she must be stopped. Many-headed-winged-things soar high over battle-fields, three-humped-beasts-of-war go on the rampage, and, from out of the mists of the greying, slithering Homunculi goad them on.
    Meah’s magical plans are not what Landland needs– Firbog hordes swarm across a dried up Bigriver into Landland, cutting their way through The Scented Forest, all the way up to the tip of Mount Beacon.
    Chaos reigns supreme, Landland writes its own story... but the story is all wrong. Meah looks for a way to escape. Will she find her father, The Biggo, again? Can they win their way home – should they leave Landland and all their friends in the clutches of Auntie Beryl, the Grey Lady?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
    Release dateApr 21, 2015
    ISBN9781310679414
    The Landline Chronicles Book Two: The Thinking
    Author

    Dallas Sutherland

    Over the last twenty-five years, the Author has exhibited a creative bent across a range of industries in graphic design including trompe l'oeil murals, and has lectured in Fine Arts. His education included art history, literature and creative writing. Works include play scripts and short stories. The Greying is his first published novella, with further books planned as part of the fantasy series. He draws inspiration from myth, legend, and fairy tales.He lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia with his partner Kerri, and daughter Ruby.

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      Book preview

      The Landline Chronicles Book Two - Dallas Sutherland

      LANDLAND BECOMES ITS OWN SAVIOUR…

      The Greying snakes across Bigriver towards Landland… all the lands are in turmoil. Meah combines her power of thinking with the magical Book of Colours, and joins the Bigriverland army to fight the horrid Firbog. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the white many-headed-winged-thing, returns. Auntie Beryl has become the evil Queen Berilbog – she must be stopped. Many-headed-winged-things soar high over battle-fields, three-humped-beasts-of-war go on the rampage, and, from out of the mists of the greying, slithering Homunculi goad them on.

      Meah’s magical plans are not what Landland needs– Firbog hordes swarm across a dried up Bigriver into Landland, cutting their way through The Scented Forest, all the way up to the tip of Mount Beacon.

      Chaos reigns supreme, Landland writes its own story… but the story is all wrong. Meah looks for a way to escape. Will she find her father, The Biggo, again? Can they win their way home – should they leave Landland and all their friends in the clutches of Auntie Beryl, the Grey Lady?

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Over the last twenty-five years, the Author has exhibited a creative bent across a range of industries in graphic design including trompe l’oeil murals, and has lectured in Fine Arts. His education included art history, literature and creative writing. Works include play scripts and short stories. The Thinking is is part of the fantasy Landline series. He draws inspiration from myth, legend, and fairy tales.

      He lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia with his partner Kerri, and daughter Ruby.

      Copyright © 2015 Dallas Sutherland

      Published by

      All the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      THE THINKING

      A Series for Believers

      from the pen of

      Dallas Sutherland

      The Landland Chronicles

      BOOK TWO

      One: Book of Colours

      Meah sat on the banks of Bigriver and dangled her legs into the wide stretch of water below. Nestled in her lap, and opened to a blank page, was her mother’s Book of Colours. She had brought along a paint brush, a water jar, three ceramic bowls for mixing paints in, and a small tin of watercolours from The Black Portfolio.

      The midmorn sun warmed her back and sparkled on the surface of the river, making it difficult to see the opposite shore. Meah wished she had a pair of those polaroid sunglasses. But sunglasses were another world away.

      Her Dad, the Biggo, was somewhere in the Scented Forest. The little woodstoat, Spike, had gone with him. The Biggo had given up on writing for the moment and needed some time to think things through – Meah’s questions only sparked more questions, and these he could not answer. How could she be living within the pages of a fantasy story that her father had written – one he was still writing? And was her Auntie Beryl really Queen Berilbog?

      Meah was distracted by voices directly behind her. It was Captain Bobb, who was in charge of the Landland Volunteer Defence Folk, the VDF. Meah could not help thinking he was somewhat one-dimensional, one of The Biggo’s add-ons to the story. Of course he was tall dark and handsome and all that a commander should be, and would be able to leap into action when needed. The Captain was dressed in a camouflage outfit complete with metal helmet, and stood on guard nearby with a squad of ten men from the VDF. The Bigriverland army lay encamped behind them, stretched out along the broad river flat, which slid in under the edges of the Scented Forest.

      The greying, along with the dog-like Firbog, had advanced as far as Bigriver and then stopped. No one knew what to do. Should they go on the offensive or wait for the Firbog to cross the river? Meah began to worry about Auntie Beryl again – if what her father said was true, how could Auntie Beryl make things happen here in Landland when she was another world away? Perhaps she was here already – the greying was Auntie Beryl.

      Meah pushed those dark and peculiar thoughts aside and her face began to lighten; a Dwarf scout had arrived two days before with news of the Jive Butter, the stolen Firbog long-ship. Her friends Mermie and Dalff, who had escaped Big City on the Jive Butter, along with the remnants of the Pictish suicide squad, were safe and sound in Landland Village. Meah hoped to be reunited with them soon. For the moment she was happy to sit and bask in the sun, knowing that her friends were safely back in Landland.

      She was trying to be positive about her situation; Landland was a different world inhabited by strange faerie-tale beings and all manner of new things. She knew she was living within the pages of a fantasy story, and that her acceptance of this was also much to do with Fand the Faerie elder. In the Sidhe of the fair folk Fand had bestowed mysterious gifts upon her, some she did not know about.

      Meah thought about her friendship with Josh, the warrior Pictish Priest. He had been gone with Faith Hope and Charity, the white many-headed-winged-thing, for over ten days. Meah wished they would come back. Then, there would be no need to use the thinking; she would fly up high over Bigriverland and find out what the Firbog were up to. As for The Book of Colours, Meah did not know how to unlock its magical properties without her mother, and even if she was successful, what could she do? She was only a thirteen-year-old girl.

      Meah turned to face the Scented Forest. Her mother was gone, but she was no longer sad. Her mother’s spirit had embraced her and it now dwelt within the forest. It was a proper place, one that she would have loved in real life – the real world.

      She turned back to the river. A heavy bank of fog enshrouded most of the opposite shore; dark foliage and river flats swam in and out of the greying, revealing nothing but impending doom. She picked up the paintbrush, dabbed it into the jar of water beside her, and covered the page in a sweeping motion from top to bottom. Next she applied a wash of Venetian red, greyed down with a hint of yellow ochre and ultramarine blue. Her eyes scanned back and forth between the page and the far side of the river. She wielded the paintbrush using deft strokes to outline the riverbank, which had materialised, sunlit, from beneath the greying.

      A mix of cobalt blue and yellow ochre became the dark strip of river mud beneath the bank. A touch of blue over Indian red picked out shadows beneath foliage. She let the wash of colours blur at the edges of the page in order to portray the greying.

      As she worked away, Meah’s thoughts were drawn back to her mother; it was as if the Book of Colours could heal the wounds and, guiding her hand, it also helped with the mixing of colours and where to put them on the page.

      Not content to paint the swirling mists beyond the opposite shore, Meah began to open up the landscape behind the riverbank by teasing the paint away from the page and pushing it towards the edges.

      In her mind she saw rolling fields of green and gold bathed in sunlight. With an addition of yellow to the next wash and hints of blue, red, and sienna, Meah created what she imagined to be there. Immersed in her work, she soon forgot all about the real world on the other side of the river. On her page, beyond the distant bank, a clump of trees emerged standing on top of a low rise. Next, she dotted the landscape with fat, braying cattle. Back down to the river with swirling dabs of the brush and a lifting of colour here and there to provide some sun-drenched highlights, and the painting was almost finished. A final mix of cobalt blue and red provided the detail and the dark depths of shadow on the landscape. At last Meah sat back and scanned the painting, happy in the knowledge that the greying could be pushed aside with the sweep of the

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