THE PREY OF THE TERRIBLE
(Isaiah 49:25) 

By Tessa Harvey


    Sylvie was slowly climbing a hill. Her four children were with her, the two older ones racing ahead, excited, then peeling to return back to her - happy as lambs in spring sunshine. Reaching a safe flat level, she sat them all down, sharing the food and drink, then asked them what they could see and hear.
    "Fairies," said her littlest girl, the dreamer, "and I am a princess on this big rock." She jumped up onto a small flat grey rock. The eldest ones were warned not to jeer or laugh as their mother gently put her finger to her lips.
    "A giant puddle!" yelled the smallest boy, "down there! I walked my hardest, bestest getting up here." He stuck out his little chest proudly. 
"I hear birds and sheep," yelled her older boy, "and see a boat on the lake too." 
    But suddenly a mist came down swirling round them, touching them with damp and chilling tendrils like cold fingers of fear. Her eldest two seemed to separate from each other and fade away.
    "No!" cried the mother, desperately clinging to her two babies with one arm, reaching for her other children with the other. But they were gone. She woke up in the hospital with Abbie patting her back.
"God will help us," she said softly, "I pray, mummy."





















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