Annabel spun the rattle between her fingers without thinking about it, and the sound of bells followed her as she walked, so familiar that she no longer heard it. The thread was woolly and loose when she was let into the garden. It was the only time Annabel saw the worry return to her parent’s faces. Cookie stood by the chair each time to hold Annabel’s wrist with one pudgy hand, and the rattle with the other. Father had to be there to carefully snip it with silver scissors, and Mother had to be there to thread the new one through the eyelet at the end of the rattle. It was always such a business, changing the thread. Cookie had looked at it that morning and declared that it would have to be changed that afternoon, which made Annabel sigh. The thread around her wrist had seen one too many baths and was brittle and tenuous. It was understood that this was a Great Privilege, and that Annabel was Not To Wander Off.Īnnabel didn’t mean to wander off. When she was old enough to know the faces around her as Father, Mother, and Cookie, Annabel was allowed out into the garden to walk, her tiny silver rattle tinkling at her wrist. The only time it was silent was when she held it under the water in the bath.

By the time she was two, Annabel was used to the tug of thread about her wrist and the tinkling of the rattle when she moved. They wouldn’t let her take the rattle off, even when she cried for hours on end. The clever brown one tied a sparkling rattle to a thread around her wrist and went away, and after that, the rest of the faces looked less worried. Annabel remembered the worried faces bent over her in her mother’s arms, and the long, clever, brown face that came later when all the others had gone. Peter said that was rubbish, but Peter was always inclined to think that no one was quite as special or clever as he was. But if you just want to know when each new book will be released, sign up here!Īnnabel was certain she remembered being born. Gingell at or sign up to The WR(ite) Newsletter to hear all the latest news. Thank you for the meals you cook, the housework you do, and for putting up with the weekends where I disappear into my headphones and ignore everyone and everything, including you.Ĭover by Jenny at Seedlings Designs Studio A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend: Memento Mori (coming July 2017)

Blackfoot by W.R. Gingell