This week’s excerpt is short and anything but sweet…

“Isabella had squashed and squeezed Pip’s shadow into a feathery shape. She was reaching up now to place it in a brass bird-cage that swung from the ceiling. As she did so, she whined and whinnied the most whicked of Cursery Rhymes:

And now I have your shadow, Pip,
I shall do many wrongs to you.
I’ll cage it, like a raven,
And I’ll teach it to sing songs to you!

 I’ll hold your shadow in my hands,
All feathered, fresh and fine.
And keep it like a pet, because,
Without it… you are MINE!”

Excerpt from Isabella Mawtle’s Immortal Vanishing Cream,
Copyright © Jason Hook 2018

Artwork Copyright © Mervyn Peake