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Also by Michael Morpurgo
Arthur: High King of Britain
Escape from Shangri-La
Friend or Foe
From Hereabout Hill
The Ghost of Grania O’Malley
Kensuke’s Kingdom
King of the Cloud Forests
Little Foxes
Long Way Home
Mr Nobody’s Eyes
My Friend Walter
The Nine Lives of Montezuma
The Sandman and the Turtles
Twist of Gold
Waiting for Anya
War Horse
The White Horse of Zennor
The War of Jenkins’ Ear
Why the Whales Came
For younger readers
Animal Tales
Conker
Mairi’s Mermaid
The Marble Crusher
On Angel Wings
The Best Christmas Present in the World
CONTENTS
The Sleeping Sword by Bun Bendle
16 Arthur, High King of Britain
BEFORE I WROTE MY STORY
Before it happened, before the world went black about me, I used to read a lot. I’ve tried Braille, and I am getting better at it all the time, but reading is so slow that way. So now I listen to my audio tapes instead. I’ve got dozens of them on my shelf. The trouble is I can’t tell which is which, so I’ve put my three favourite ones side by side on my bedside table. That way I can find them more easily.
Left to right, it’s The Sword in the Stone, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Arthur, High King of Britain. I’ve listened to those three so often I can say bits of them by heart. But it’s Arthur, High King of Britain I’ve listened to most often, not because it’s the best – The Sword in the Stone is probably the best – but because Arthur, High King of Britain begins and ends on Bryher, on the Scilly Isles, where I live. I can picture all the places so well inside my head and that helps me to feel part of the story, free to roam inside it somehow, to be whoever I want to be, do whatever I want to do.
And that’s my trouble at the moment. There’s so much I can’t do now that I used to do without even thinking about it – you know, ordinary things like going down to the shop, hurdling over mooring ropes, playing football on the green, watching telly, seeing my friends whenever I felt like it, messing about in boats, diving off the quay with them in the summertime. I can still go swimming, but someone always has to be with me. That’s the worst of it, really. I can never go free like I used to.
It’s not so bad at home. I’ve got a sort of memory-and-touch map of the house inside my head, every room, every doorway, every chair. And, provided my father doesn’t leave his slippers in the middle of the kitchen floor – which he often does – and provided no one shifts the furniture or moves my toothbrush, I can manage just about all right. I really hate it if I trip or fumble about or fall over. No one laughs, of course they don’t. In a kind of way I wish they would. Instead they go all silent and feel sorry for me, and that just makes me angry again inside.
And there’s so much I miss – all the colours of the sky and the sea, the blue and the green and the grey, the black and white of the oystercatchers. I can’t picture colours in my head any more, and I can’t picture people’s faces either, not like I could. So, like the oystercatchers, everyone’s a voice now, just a voice. I’m getting used to it, or that’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. I should be after two years. But it still makes me angry when I think about it, the bad luck of it, I mean. I try not to think about it, but that’s a lot easier said than done.
That’s what’s so good about ‘reading’ stories, and ‘writing’ them, too. I’ve made up lots and lots of short stories. I love doing it because I can be whoever I like inside my stories. I can make my dreams really happen. I’m the maker of new worlds. Inside my dreams, inside my stories I can run free again. I can see again. I can be me again.