Orla's Narrative Writing for GCSE English Language

This is Orla's last GCSE English Assignment, one that she was really looking forward to as she loves creative writing. It took a while to decide which of the five prompts to use, but eventually landed on:

‘He who hesitates is lost.’ Write a story to illustrate this saying. 

Orla wrote an extra chapter to her 'Fairytale' story that she wrote over a year ago now:

Mud squelched beneath a pair of heavy boots. Melting ice dripped from the pine trees; there was to be no more snow tonight, as the moon hung in the sky, the singular lighthouse in the pitch dark wood. Buckles and chainmail clicked and clacked as the soldier, wrapped taut in animal skins, marched through the trees. 

He stopped before a stone slab jutting from the ground. Carefully, he undid the clasp of a wooden chain around his neck, and lowered the runic talisman to the stone’s face. The light of the moon met its centre, and it thrummed; the air became heavy with dirt and snow, the smell of pine, the stench of blood. The trees and moss howled and sang. Something ancient filled the soldier’s lungs and heart, and he began to change.The forest calmed, and the mud lifted. There was no longer any hulking man to weight it down – only four lithe paws. A beastly wolf, dirty and scarred, sniffed the air before the talisman, which still hummed beneath the moon. Satisfied, it tore off through the trees. 

The forest was alive with a thousand sounds and smells; the ruffle of wings, the thump of a rabbit’s foot, the scurrying of mice, the rushing of water. The wolf revelled in them all. Hours flew by with the wind and the stars drifted through the sky. The wind changed. Now there was woodsmoke and oil, herbs and sweetnessand sweat. Human smells, the wolf knew. There was a jolt of panic – an instinct to run and hide – but then it remembered the talisman. 

The human was near the talisman. A new instinct, to run and fight and protect, flared in itschestand the wolf tore through the trees once more. The sharpness of the hunt flooded all other senses. The human’s feet – light, doe-like – thundered through the earth. Its breathing was laboured. Its heart hammeredwith the desperation of a wild thing. It was right to be afraid, the wolf knew; a wolf would always be faster than a human. But just as the wolf closed in, teeth and claws bared, the human stopped. It turned around, and the wolf hesitated. 

A young woman, blonde hair, a white dress caked in muck, thin pointed ears. She clutched the talisman tight in her hand. Fire raged in the wolf’s chest;‘the human has what is ours,’ it scrabbled and clawed and snarled, ‘we are powerful, and we are deadly.’ But the wolf did not move. It knew this woman by a name it could not think, and remembered her in memories witnessed by another pair of eyes. 

A foreign kind of thought, alien and guilty and sad, filled the wolf’s mind. ‘Protect,’ the voice, the solider, said. ‘It is our duty.’ The woman whispered an incantation to the wind. The air buzzed and whistled, and ina flash of light, she was gone.