Stories for advanced level students, equivalent to CEFR C1.
When we last saw our hero-in-training, Norm, and his ghostly teacher, Elric, they were walking at a sensible pace through the forest to recover the King’s lost pegasus. After several hours of walking, filled with Elric insisting they (quietly) play a variety of childish word games, they arrived at the cave where the creature was hiding.
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Once there was a boy called Norm who lived with his stepmother. Like all stepmothers, she was wicked, and she spent all day shouting at Norm.
‘It’s freezing in here! Where’s the firewood? Oh, if only Sabrina were here!’
Sabrina was her own daughter, who had died the day Norm was born, the same day that Norm’s father abandoned them in the dirty little hut where they lived. So Norm grew up under the thumb of his cruel stepmother, never allowed to play with other children, go too far away from the house or even to have time to himself.
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Once upon a time, there lived three dragons on three mountains. They were brothers, and each ruled over their own mountain. One was black, called Ba, one was red, called Ra, and one was green, called Ga. In the middle of the three mountains lay a small kingdom, ruled over by a human king, but the dragons paid little attention to this.
Within the kingdom, however, the dragons caused much anxiety.
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Once upon a time, there was a talented cello player. She loved her cello like a son, and practised on it for hours every day. Sometimes, she concentrated so hard that she could practically see the notes floating in the air around her.
But one day, as she sat down to practise before breakfast, she was met with a rude surprise: as she put the bow to the strings, the cello spoke.
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Once there was a witch called Marabella, who lived in a deep, dark forest. As with most witches, she was not actually evil, but she did magic, and so the people were afraid of her, and whenever there was a storm, or a bad harvest, or a child got sick, they said, ‘It is the witch’s anger!’
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The easiest victims were the businessmen and marketers. They had built up a wealthy, comfortable life with numbers and deals, and no longer needed to keep the old superstitions and gods alive, those backwater things. So when the monstrous gentleman and his assistant visited their huge buildings and smoky caves, they hardly noticed that something was sucking the most intimate and important aspect of their beings from them.
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A dark cloud descended upon the lake late that afternoon. Quentin and the others had breakfasted on the terrace, enjoying the spring sunshine, and gone for a walk along the winding paths that spotted the hillsides, and by the time they got back, the cloud was hanging there, spitting rain threateningly.
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