Barney's Story

CONTENTS: 1) The woods, 2)Barney's Arrival, 3) Barney Afloat

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have wandered in these beech woods as long as I can remember, scuffing my feet through the rustling shiny bronze leaves and old three-lobed beech nut shells emptied by squirrels before the turn of the year.

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It was under this tree that I scuffed up a mound of leaves to expose this little figure of a man. 

I knew at once that he was special: a tree spirit perhaps? and I wondered whether I shouldnt pick him up, what fate might befall me if I left the wood bereft of him?

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But I DID pick him up - very carefully and brushed the dead leaves away:

His little body was covered in water marks and his joints were stiff as if he had been immersed in water for some time, so I guessed that he had been adrift in the lake that was about a hundred paces from here. I imagined him drifting at the pleasure of the wilful wind that, escaping from the maze of Beech trunks, turned this way, that and whichever way. 

It must have been a lonesome time for him: day-in, day-out the cycle of night, day, moon, noon, sun, rain, birdsong and owl hoots.

At some time, he would have caught a clump of reeds by the shore where, I imagine a passing fox sniffed and nudged and in his inquisitve foxy way, clamped his teeth round one arm and carried him away into the wood.

Then, finding him inedible, and tiring of him as a plaything Fox dropped him at the foot of the tree.