Stolen Child , livre ebook

MarshallCavendish - Colin Cheong

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171 pages

English

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A search for a dream. Wing Cheong discovers that there are many roads to a single dream. He wants to fly - but his dream is suddenly shattered. As he searches for a meaning in life and other dreams to replace his first love, Wing experiences the trials and tribulations of change - in his family, friends and most of all, himself. A powerful and moving story about growing up, innocence and love, toughness and courage. A search across time and space - from the wonders of childhood to the strident urges of young manhood; from the landscape of the mind to the realm of the heart.

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Publié par	MarshallCavendish
Date de parution	01 juin 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814408776
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0520€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE
STOLEN CHILD

1989 Times Editions Pte Ltd
2003 Times Media Pte Ltd
2011 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
Cover art by OpalWorks
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.
Tel: (65) 6213 9300. Fax: (65) 6285 4871. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com. Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no events be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices
Marshall Cavendish Ltd. PO Box 65829, London EC1P 1NY, UK Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cheong, Colin.
The stolen child / Colin Cheong. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2011.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-981-4408-77-6
I. Title.
PR9570.S53
S823 -- dc22 OCN719409735
Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd
For Matthew and Celeste

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery hand in hand, For the world s more full of weeping than you can understand.
(WB Yeats, The Stolen Child )
P ART O NE
Snapshots
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forest wild;
(Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night s Dream, II.I.22-25 )
1
IT was late afternoon, warm and quiet. The sun s rays slanted through wide, open windows, specks of dust dancing in the warm light. Outside, a tame breeze rustled through the leaves of the mango and rambutan trees and slipped between the tall, dry stalks of lallang grass that grew on the little hills behind the wire fences surrounding little houses. Flocks of sparrows darted about in the pale, open skies, while a canary in a cage somewhere rolled out a single plaintive call and was silent again. The avenue in front of the house was quiet. Row upon row of neat little terrace houses stood along the other avenues and they too were quiet.
From one of the houses along the avenues, the silence was broken by the sound of a C-major scale being played on a piano. A finger slipped and a wrong note was struck, a slight faltering, and the fingers continued.
The boy looked up from the keyboard with a sigh and watched the dust specks floating in the sunlight. The light came through the thin yellow curtains, through tiny gaps in the material, as they moved gently back and forth with the breeze. Like waves, the boy thought as he watched them. His eyes turned to the clock on the piano top. He had been at the keyboard for ten minutes. There were twenty more long minutes to go before his time was up and freedom was his. The hands of the clock were moving painfully slowly, edging reluctantly towards liberation. The clock was a wretched piece of machinery, with a sadistic personality matched only by the metronome. He took a deep breath of warm, sleepy air and began thumping out his scales again.
It was all his kid sister s fault. If she had not wanted to play the piano, this would not have happened. But the little girl had proven herself talented to their relatives and their parents friends, and when the girl next door had got a piano, the kid sister had immediately wanted one too. She got it and within a week, both started to take lessons. The boy had protested, but Mother had waved his protests aside for his own good because she had once wanted to play the piano too. She was not going to let her son miss out on it.
His half hour was up. He was now free. He lifted the lid of the piano bench and dumped in his books with a feeling of great satisfaction. He shot an irreverent smirk at the scowling bust of Beethoven sitting on the far end of the piano top. Then his eyes turned to the metronome, still ticking away the beats. For half an hour everyday, it ruled his life and fingers and caused him great misery. Now, at the end of that half hour, he was once again the master and the metronome was at his mercy. He reached out for it slowly, savouring every moment of his revenge, and silenced it. It was the climax of his daily ritual. And he went out to play.
The lookout sat in the back of an abandoned pickup, waiting for his friends to come back. On the floor of the flatbed lay a walkie-talkie and a pair of plastic binoculars. In his hands, he held a Schmeisser sub-machinegun, permanently loaded and ready, plastic and made in Hong Kong. An empty canteen was slung over his shoulder. It was late afternoon, almost evening. The canteen had been empty since midday and the boy was thirsty.
He had done a lot of fighting that day, all by himself. The abandoned pickup was his prize and the men who had towed it there in their Land Rover - he had killed them all and they now lay dead in a trench a hundred feet away. They had since risen from the dead and driven away.
He did not know if it had been worth it, because the pickup looked like a piece of junk. He had looked under the bonnet - there had not even been an engine. There was only one seat in the cab and the truck s tailgate was missing.
An evening breeze was blowing and the boy enjoyed its coolness as it gently ruffled his hair and dried his sweat. It was a nice evening. Barren ground stretched out before him. To him, it was infinite, stretching on and on, further and further, until Earth met Sky, although in reality, a highway and a secondary forest formed the horizon. But it did not bother him. He was watching the sun as it slowly came down. The sky was yellow and orange and red with streaks of purple in its higher parts. If only I could paint a sunset, he thought. He watched and wished that it would last forever.
His solitude was broken by the sound of running feet. He looked up and saw the returning patrol.
Hi there! a boy called out to him. He waved back and watched as three boys ran towards him.
Hey, what s this? one of them asked.
Enemy carrier. Captured it just now, the boy in the pickup said proudly.
That s great! Let s get in, said Eddie, the biggest and oldest boy in the group. The three boys climbed in.
Oh wow, Keith said. Our own truck!
Got an engine? Mike asked.
No, answered Wings. I checked already.
Too bad, otherwise we could have driven it.
How did you capture it? Eddie asked. You told me over the radio there were troops on board.
I shot one, grenaded three and stabbed one.
That s cool.
What are we going to do with it? Keith asked.
Ya, how we going to hide it? Mike asked. Eddie thought for a moment.
Well, since we can t drive it to some cave
There are no caves
We ll camouflage it, so that the enemy won t find it, he said at last.
They began in earnest. They pushed the truck behind a little knoll. Wings steered because he had captured the truck. They pulled up shrubs and long grass and scooped up handfuls of dirt, all of which they threw on the truck in an attempt to hide it from enemy eyes.
Eddie was nine, a year older than the other boys and he lived next door to Wings. He was strong, brave and had the wisdom that came with age, so he was their leader. Keith lived across the street from Wings. He was Eurasian and had a very pretty older sister named Anna-Maria. He was the best behaved of the lot and was the quietest. Mike lived along another avenue. He was tough, and if there was a fight, he would stay and slug it out, even if all the odds were against him. Wings was the boy who played the piano.
At last, the camouflage was complete.
Not so bad, Eddie said.
Can still see some of it, Keith noted.
Ya, but it looks so bad nobody would want it, Mike said.
Hope nobody even thinks of looking for it, Wings said.
They won t. Let s go home. It s getting late, Eddie suggested. He stuck a candy cigarette between his lips.
When s our next mission? Wings asked him.
Next Saturday, he replied. Their missions were always on Saturdays because they had to go to school in the afternoon on weekdays.
Where? Wings asked.
Behind the football field at Kalidasa. Do your parents let you go there?
No.
Wings mother had set up boundaries for his play area and the best parts were not within them. He could go anywhere within the boundaries of the estate, except the outlying areas, where all the fun was. In fact, he could only ride his bicycle along their own avenue.
The others had not told their mothers how far they were going on their first mission because instinct had told them not to. The instinct had not developed in Wings yet, so he told his mother and was promptly rewarded with a set of boundaries. She would be lifting his bicycle boundary soon and he would be able to ride anywhere he wished, because after some long and hard reasoning, he had finally convinced her that he could look after himself. He also reasoned that if he could ride anywhere, he could similarly, play anywhere. But of cou