The Eternity Ring

HOW LONG IS FOREVER?The Eternity Ring is short novel - neither a children's book nor a book for adults - it's simply a story. I think it's more of a novella really but it's the same kind of length as Ted Hughes' The Iron Man and that's officially a novel... there are worse places to take your cues from.I wanted to write a story that was fun and could be taken exactly as it appears but also one that if you chose to look deeper into, reading between the lines you would find a much different story. This is what fell out of my pen.Here's a synopsis:The Eternity Ring is a tale of a twelve year boy who grows up under the influence of a man he fleetingly met only once - but why should a meeting that hardly even happened influence every single day of an entire life? Maybe all you have to do is live long enough to find out.And here's the first few paragraphs as an excerpt:They say that he used to be a spy but that must have been a very long time ago because now, he simply looked like an old man. And he was an old man, certainly over eighty. He wasn’t bent though. He stood up straight and proud even though his clothes suggested he had long since fallen on hard times.I had been reading on the edge of the lake - that old Erich Kästner classic Emil and the Detectives in case you’re interested - when I first spotted him. There was nothing else to do out here in the summer holidays, but that was fine by me. In my bag, I had a towel and already wore my swimming trunks under my trousers. Swimming in the lake and reading was all I had to look forward to for the next two weeks. That and eating ham and pickle sandwiches that my mother made for me every morning before she went to work.I had seen him a few times before in the village but that was nothing special. Everybody in the village had seen him at some time in their life. Nobody though, and I really mean nobody, had ever spoken to him. At least nobody that I knew or anybody that anyone I knew had either.He looked as though he was striding towards me with purpose. I buried my head further in the book and read the part about the pinholes for what must be the hundredth time. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he was simply working his way around the lake. Maybe he was looking for something to eat or something that he had lost because he was certainly looking for something.I let my eyes follow him for a while, head down and looking up through my eyebrows and hoping he couldn’t see me. It occurred to me that if he had once been a spy, my stealth would be rather in vain.He stopped and sat on one of the old wooden railway sleepers that were dotted around the lake every so often and I wondered what sort of a spy he might have been. Was it possible to have different kinds of spies? All I really knew about spies was from James Bond films and as much as I hoped real life spying was actually like that, even at twelve years old I could guess that it probably wasn’t - aside from the part where you got shot at if the enemy ever found out who you really were. I thought that might be quite likely.Shortly, he took his long coat off and laid it on the floor. A large black bird appeared by his side and appeared to be quite comfortable sitting next to him as they both looked out across the water. I envied him. No birds or animals ever came near me, so I watched with much curiosity as the two of them relaxed against the backdrop of the great hills. I dropped my face properly into my book again, not wanting to disturb him and more so, not wanting him to see me looking. I actually read to the end of the chapter before I looked up again. When I did he was rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and more birds appeared, perhaps six or seven more - some to one side of him, some on the other. I blinked and in that super-short moment of time in which my eyes were closed, the number of birds had doubled.

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