Tuesday 11 April 2023

Untaken by Allison Symes, sour wine

There was a legend about the well in the garden.

The water had no special properties. The bucket was replaced several times.

Its garden was where the real legend lay. This garden was found hidden amongst a high thorn hedge which was hacked down by a young man keen to get to a castle he’d heard was in the middle of it.

The reason why he was keen was now lost in the mists of time though it struck those in the nearby village as being odd to go around expecting to find a castle in the middle of a hedge. It was presumed the young man enjoyed his drink too much.

For sure there was no castle now, and the rude villagers were long gone, but the well had been one of several which serviced it. On this well wall were symbols of a shiny red apple and a portrait of a far from happy young man on an unequally unhappy looking horse. By the well was a broken sword and thorns were beginning to creep up around it.

Some said the young man in the picture wasn’t just a portrait. That somehow he’d been shrunk and made to stay on that well wall as a punishment for trying to get to the now vanished castle planning to take what didn’t belong to him.

 

About the author

Allison Symes, who loves quirky fiction, is published by Chapeltown Books, CafeLit, and Bridge House Publishing. 

Website: https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

Books: http://author.to/AllisonSymesAuthorCent

Her flash fiction collections, From Light to Dark and Back Again and Tripping The Flash Fantastic, are available in Kindle and paperback.

Her Youtube channel, with videos, is at https://www.youtube.com/@allisonsymes 

 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)

No comments:

Post a Comment