Christopher Wild

The girl in the pic­ture said that her name was Kayleigh, but I knew she was lying. So, I called her Dilly Dilly after the song, Lav­ender blue dilly dilly, Lav­ender green. She didn’t like that. Whenev­er she was get­ting on my nerves, I would just say, “Yes, Dilly Dilly,” and she would stop get­ting on my nerves. She would stamp her feet, and stick out her tongue, and then frown like an old man think­ing. She insisted that her hair was red, but it wasn’t. It was bright like the sun, sparkled like the stars, and smelled of the ocean.
Mum bought her pic­ture for me at a car boot sale. Paid fifty pence for it. She could have paid twenty five pence for it, but the smal­lest thing she had was a fifty pence piece, and she said that she felt guilty ask­ing for change.
The man selling the pic­ture said, “Thank you.” And gave her a wink and a smile, and then he looked ever so stern, opened his eyes wide like the lights on the front of his car, stared mum right in the eyes, and said the darned­est thing.
He said, “Be care­ful with that ‘un, she’s trouble all right.”
He then turned to the woman look­ing at the egg timer next to me and said, “That’ll be a pound love.” Bright as a but­ton as if noth­ing had happened.
I shivered des­pite it being the hot­test day of the year.
Mum bought the pic­ture because she said it would look good hung on the wall above my little yel­low desk. And she was right, it did. The pic­ture was of a girl, sat on a swing that hung from a large oak tree. The tree was in the middle of a field of Blue Lav­ender. Appar­ently it had been painted by some loc­al celebrity artist. That’s what the man had said. But I figured that they couldn’t have been that good, because the pic­ture was selling for twenty five pence at a car boot. I think the man would have told mum that it had been painted by Mon­et if he had thought he could have got away with it.
Much later in my life I did find out who the artist was, but that’s anoth­er story alto­geth­er. It wasn’t Mon­et by the way, just in case you were wondering.
It was many weeks later before Dilly spoke to me. I was sat at my desk doing some maths home­work. Maths, I hate maths, all those num­bers, give me the hee­bies. Any­way, all of a sud­den I heard this voice, quiet, but smooth like the purr of a kit­ten. She said, “They are com­ing you know.”
She was always say­ing things like that. She didn’t use that voice of course, because that was not how she soun­ded. That had been for dra­mat­ic affect. Nor­mally she just soun­ded like any oth­er girl. At least like you’d expect any oth­er girl to sound like.
Let’s do an exper­i­ment shall we. Stop what you are doing, and turn the telly on. Flick through the chan­nels until you can see some children’s chan­nel with a kids pro­gram on. Wait a while until a girl appears and starts talk­ing. Can you hear her? Well, that’s how Dilly sounds, exactly like that.
But hang on a moment, I’m get­ting ahead of myself. How rude of me. Just like me of course. Bab­bling away without think­ing. Let me start again.
My name is Anna­belle, Anna­belle Cloud. I’m ten years old. And I have dreams. The oth­er chil­dren call me the Day­dream Believ­er, like the Mon­kees song. If you don’t know who the Mon­kees are then ask your mum or dad, they prob­ably know. If they don’t then watch Shrek, they sang the song “I’m a believ­er”, actu­ally that won’t help you either, because they didn’t sing the ver­sion of the song in the film, so for­get that then.
I have adven­tures. I have adven­tures in my dreams, and dreams in my adven­tures. And they all star­ted the day my mum gave me the pic­ture of Dilly.

I nev­er fully under­stood the trav­el­ling. I tried to ask Dilly about it, and she told me that she was a con­duit, or a portal, or a talis­man, or some­thing like that. Actu­ally, she told me that the pic­ture was the talis­man, and that she was just trapped inside of it. That’s and inter­est­ing story in it’s own right, and I’ll likely tell you that one later.
I just think about her as being the key. She unlocks doors that I can travel through. And when I can smell the ocean in her hair, I know it’s time for a jour­ney. Some­times I start the jour­ney before I smell the ocean. I think I’m hav­ing a nor­mal dream, and then, all of a sud­den, the ocean fills my nose, and I know that Dilly and I are going on a trip.
She told me about the chil­dren, and the twelve Dream Stones, and how they were usu­ally the talis­man of choice, and that she was an anom­aly, and she was­n’t really sure if the guard­i­ans knew any­thing about her.
I met the chil­dren once, well I met Grace. She was lovely. But their story is a much big­ger story, and not mine to tell. So hope­fully someone will tell you that story soon. But again, I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

I like telling stor­ies, love writ­ing. I try to write down everything that I can remem­ber from my travels. I’m like a travel writer.
Mrs Popple my teach­er says, ”When writ­ing a story, you must make sure that you show and not tell.”
I think that is really odd state­ment, because I’m writ­ing a story and not mak­ing a film, so I’m always going to tell you the story. Appar­ently, it’s about how you tell the story that turns it into a show. You the read­er, or the listen­er, needs to think they are in the story and not just being told about it, even though I am just telling you about it.
It doesn’t make much sense to me really, but then few things do. So I am going to apo­lo­gise before hand, and just tell you my stor­ies any­way, and you can listen, that is if you have the audiobook ver­sion, oh I do hope they make an audiobook ver­sion, if they do I won­der who they would use to nar­rate it? Oh, that’s so grand, they could have some really fab­ulous act­ress to be my voice. You will get lost in the lovely lilt of her, or should I say my voice. It sounds really nice by the way. It sounds like Rasp­berry Ripple on Vanilla ice cream, on a very hot day. All smooth and sugary.
Oh, but if you don’t have the audiobook, and you are read­ing this, what will my voice sound like in your head. That’s a tricky one. I don’t think Rasp­berry Ripple really helps you does it? You know what, just pick a voice, I don’t mind which, just make it a fab­ulous one. Hmm, be care­ful though, because if they make a film of my stor­ies, the act­ress might not sound like the voice in your head, and then you will be all of a quandary, because my voice will be so import­ant to the telling of this story, that you won’t be sure that you want to go and watch the film, because you might think that the act­ress will spoil in. You’ll be like to your friends, “That act­ress, well she’s noth­ing like Anna­belle Cloud, I don’t know why they cast her.” But one of your friends, you know the one, the one that knows lots about films, they’d be like, “No, she’s per­fect”. And you know what, that friend is right, because she is per­fect. The film will be great, so make sure you go and watch it.
Oh, dear, I’ve done it again. I’m waff­ling. I have a habit of doing that. What I really wanted to say was, I’m going to tell you these stor­ies, and there might be some show­ing in it, and there might be some telling in it, and for that I am sorry. But hope­fully we can all get along majestic­ally and have a good time.

So back to Dilly. Dilly has become my friend. Actu­ally. She’s prob­ably my best friend. I know that she can be hard to live with some­times, but most of the time she is ok. We have our argu­ments every now and then, but don’t all friends do that?

Related Posts:

• Of June Bugs and May Beetles
• The Dreams of Anna­belle Cloud
• e‑Dreams
• Lily Wood Trail
• June 10th