“. . . And excited children would run the streets, announcing the monster’s arrival, and the school master, first folding his spectacles, then replacing a bookmark in the yellowed pages of some long-forgotten text, would shuffel to the schoolhouse, iron key heavy in the pocket of his night gown, children bouncing alongside, beside themselves with anticipation, and he would grip the sweat-blackened rope, the little hands of as many children as could crowd around him joining in the task, and with a slow, grave cadence of his shoulders and back, the school master would sound the bell whose peal proclaimed the arrival of the monsters who lived in the caves in the mountains by the sea . . .”
Published in Nethra, Vol. 10 No. 3, A non-specialist journal for lively minds
Edited by Ameena Huseein
(buy the issue at icescolombo.org)