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James Sutherland Books
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Category:
Children
Publisher: Lulu.com/CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1461029929
Type: Fiction
Pages: 116
ISBN-13: 9781461029922
Deep in the middle of a murky swamp on a distant island, live the Bog Hogs. Interested only in slugs, worms and other swampy snacks, theirs is a blissful existence. Yet close by, in the dark caverns of Mip Mountain, the dreaded Miserous One is awakening! Worse still, she is very, very hungry.
Can anyone save Little Boggy and his Auntie Beryl from the ghastly clutches of the Mip? And even more importantly, will they make it back to their snug little holes in time for supper?
A silly but scary tale for boys and girls!
Excerpt
Somewhere out there in the wide, blue ocean, Mip Island lay still and silent. It was not a pleasant island. There were no pure-white sandy beaches, no palm trees, no jungles filled with exotic birds, no tinkling streams or thundering waterfalls. It was dreary and desolate. Even if one of the great explorers had discovered the island, they would have doubtlessly omitted to mention it for fear of being associated with somewhere so dull and dismal.
At one end of the island, there stood an enormous mountain. It was a dark, grey, creepy kind of mountain, and on its rocky slopes, no plants ever grew, nor did any creature wander. The peak was nearly always covered by heavy cloud, but legend had it that somewhere up there among the jagged rocks, there was the entrance to a cave, and that inside this cave, slumbered the Miserous Mip.
No living soul had ever seen the Miserous Mip. It was said that she had been asleep now for at least a hundred years, or maybe even longer. Some of the younger, more foolish islanders laughed at the mention of her name, believing that she did not really exist and was nothing more than a character from a fairy story. Indeed, years would often pass without any sign or sound from the mountain. Every once in a while, though, just when the islanders were beginning to forget about her, terrible sounds would echo down from the mountain’s peak, sweeping through the valleys and forests, making all who heard them tremble with fright. “She is stirring in her slumber,” the wise folk would mutter “The Mip is disturbed in her dreams and The Awakening is nigh!”
At the opposite end of the island, there lay an ancient swamp. Once upon a time, it had been huge, but each year, the summer sun seemed to get hotter and hotter, causing it to gradually shrink and dry up. There was still plenty of mud left in the middle, though. It was a greeny-brown colour (some said browny-green) and like all good swamps, there was a decent quantity of gooey slime and squishy moss, with a horrible smell constantly hanging in the air.
“Not a nice place to live at all!” I’ll bet you’re thinking, but you wouldn’t think this if you happened to be a Bog Hog. Indeed, you would look very indulgently on such a dank, dark, smelly swamp and declare it the perfect place to set up a home. A Bog Hog (in case you were wondering) is a small, brownish creature, about the size of a hedgehog, with a piggy nose and small, beady eyes. They have bristly hairs all over their bodies, rather than fur, and live on a delicious mixture of pondweed, worms, slugs and other swampy savouries.
Bog Hogs were not now as common on the island as they had been in the past. As the swamp got smaller, so did the amount of pondweed and slimy creatures, and without enough of these to go around, a few selected Hogs each year had no choice but to leave the Clan and set out across the Great Sea in their tiny craft in search of other filthy places to live out the rest of their meaningless lives.
There were three very important Bog Hogs in the Clan. The Clan’s Chief was Lord Bogwell, Son of Hogwell. He inherited the Chiefdom from his father, who had, in turn inherited it from his father, and so on. He was kind and well-meaning, but was renowned for his amazing stupidity. Way back in history, the first ever Chief must have possessed some special or brave qualities in order to have become a Chief at all. His son, though, probably hadn’t been quite as special, and his son’s son had perhaps been even less special. This continued through the years until the unfortunate present generation of hogs were left with a leader who was, without question, a complete idiot.
Secondly, there was Greyest Bog, the Older Elder. As his name suggests, he was very old and very grey. His age was estimated at 982 Bog Hog years, which amounts to about 23 in human terms. Like Lord Bogwell, he too was kind-hearted and, unlike Lord Bogwell, he was considered to be very wise. Were he ever to appear on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” it is more than likely that Greyest Bog would get up to at least £64,000 without even needing to use a lifeline, such was his wisdom. Regrettably, due to his advancing years, he had a tendency to speak a great deal about what life was like in “the good old days” when he was a young hog. This was very boring for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot, as life in the Swamp had never changed. Not even the teeniest bit. Everything was exactly as it was the day Greyest Bog had been born. There had never been any kind of social development, nothing notable had ever been built or destroyed. There had not been any new inventions and nobody had ever had an idea worth recording for posterity. In fact, since the very dawn of their history, no Bog Hog had ever done anything interesting or worthwhile. Ever!
The third significant Bog Hog was General Bogstanley. He was very proud and selfish, and enjoyed throwing his considerable weight about. Indeed, he appeared to think that it was he, and not Lord Bogwell who ruled the Clan, and subsequently, the General was disliked intensely by everyone. As Head of the Army, Bogstanley was in charge of just one single, slightly scrawny hog named Geronimo: living on such a remote island, thousands of miles from anywhere, the Bog Hogs didn’t have anyone to fight against and didn’t really need an army at all. However, in order to retain his position as a General, Bogstanley reasoned that he needed to have at least one soldier under his command, and was determined that this would be so, even if this meant that poor Geronimo’s entire life would be a sorry saga of complete inactivity and boredom.
Each of the above characters will play a part as our tale unfolds, but none more so than Little Boggy, a small and timid hoglet who shared a bog hole with his Auntie Beryl. His real name was Lesley, a fact that he always tried to keep under wraps, as the name was nowadays deemed to be unfashionable in The Swamp.
“Stop calling me Lesley!!” Little Boggy would cry when the other hoglets teased him, and he would often scurry back to Auntie Beryl with tears welling from his eyes.
Auntie Beryl was disgusting. Her skin was wrinkled like a raisin, and she smelled of stale sausages. And Stilton cheese. Little Boggy loved her though, and in the twilight hours, when all was quiet, he would snuggle into her huge bosom and listen intently as she told him age-old stories about the Miserous Mip. Most of the stories were scary indeed, and Little Boggy would often have the strangest dreams after hearing them.
Auntie Beryl explained that way back, at the beginning of time, The Mip had suffered a terrible misfortune which had broken her heart. Nobody knew what the misfortune had been, but it was said that ever since, she had cried and wailed unendingly in her wretched, everlasting despair, and that she now existed only to entrap others’ spirits to share in her misery.
“Now sleep tight, young Lesley,” she cooed, tucking him in tenderly.
“Don’t call me Lesley!” came the muffled reply from beneath the duvet.
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