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Fantasy StoriesEdited by Mike AshleyForeword: A World of Wondersby Mike AshleyAre there things that you believe in that your friends or parents don't? You know, like monsters or dragons or trolls? The imagination is a wonderful thing. Even if these things don't really exist (and who knows? they might have once) you can conjure them up in your imagination and to you they're as real as this book. Do you remember that moment in Peter Pan where if even just one person believed in fairies, then Tinkerbell came back to life? That's the power of the imagination. If you believe, anything can happen.And that's what you'll find in this book - tales of the imagination. Adventures into worlds of fantasy where anything and everything can happen.What do you want to believe in? A way through to another world? You'll find plenty of those like 'The Door to Dark Albion' or 'The Bone Beast', although beware - that other world might be rather more dangerous than you'd hoped, as you'll find in 'The Closed Window' or 'The Hoard of the Gibbelins'.Where are these other worlds? Maybe they're in the past, as in 'Atlantis' or 'A Pattern of Pyramids' or 'The White Doe'. Maybe they're a mirror world, as in 'The Last Card' or 'Mirror, Mirror . . .' or through a painting, as in 'The Dark Island'. Or maybe they're all around us and we just don't know. Try out 'The Invisible Kingdom' or 'The Secret of Faerie' or 'Troll Bridge' and you'll see what I mean. We breathe in wonder all our lives, but don't always realize it.You'll find many of our best fantasy writers in this book. You may have seen some of their work elsewhere. Diana Wynne Jones has written many fantasy novels and short stories, and her story here opens the book in more ways than one. Have you heard the story of the newspaper publisher who, when asked whether he should print the facts or the legend, said, 'Print the legend'? That's what stories are and that's what Diana Wynne Jones showed. You might like to check out other books by her, such as Charmed Life, Archer's Goon, Fire and Hemlock and The Magicians of Caprona.Joan Aiken should be no stranger to you, as the author of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea. And I'm sure you'll know the works of Edith Nesbit and Garry Kilworth. Garry has very kindly provided his own personal introduction to the book.J. R. R. Tolkien is the biggest-selling fantasy writer in the world and I wouldn't mind betting that The Lord of the Rings has been read by more people than any other fantasy book. You'll find here an extract from The Hobbit, which is the book that takes place a few years earlier than Lord of the Rings, and tells of Bilbo's quest to help the dwarves recover their gold from the dragon Smaug. In this extract Bilbo has an encounter with some murderous trolls.You probably also know the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which introduces us to the world of Narnia. C. S. Lewis wrote other books about Narnia and one of the most exciting is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which takes us on a journey beyond Narnia.You'll find that in most of these stories the main character is on some kind of quest, searching for something, whether that's treasure, fame, safety, knowledge, understanding, a way home... almost anything. Some might be successful, but even if they don't achieve their aim, they all learn something en route. Get ready to start your journey. I hope you have some fun and enjoyment, and find something at the end of it. Good luck.Mike Ashley January 1996Introduction: Into Your Dreamsby Garry KilworthWe are living in an age of marvels. Those of you who read this anthology of short stories, each dealing with some kind of fantasy, are surrounded by real wonders. I am talking of television, film and computers. These three forms of entertainment can entrance us with visual stories. In the case of interactive computer games, we can even become involved and influence the outcome of the tale. We can follow the quest for treasure, or take part in it, become one of the searchers. This can be a wonderful and exciting experience.However, because these forms of entertainment are quicker and easier than reading, they can just as swiftly become boring. Thus fantastical new creatures are in demand all the time; even as we grow tired of last year's wizardry we are looking around for something fresh to enchant us. Once it was Ninja Turtles, then it was Jurassic beasts, after which came Power Rangers. They come and they go, absolutely magical for a time, but losing their lustre and glamour as quickly as they captivated us.However, there are some fabulous beings who have been with us far longer than these fleeting wonders: creatures who bewitched our great-grandparents and their great-grandparents before them. They still fascinate us because no one has ever been absolutely sure they have never existed. They come out of the darkness of the distant past, from a world without machines, and they haunt us on the edge of our memories. In our sensible moments we tell ourselves that fairies, giants, dragons, elves, trolls, hobgoblins and all the other mythical figures of fantasy stories are not real, yet they must be important to us in some way or they would not be there at all.If we did not need such creatures as giants and fairies, if we totally stopped believing in them, we would not write or want to read about them. We would cut them out of our stories and forget them. After all, if they do not really exist, what would it matter if we burned all the stories in which they appear and wiped them from our minds?It would only matter if we felt we would lose something valuable by doing so; something we cannot properly name but know is important to us; some magical world just out of reach, some place just behind the shadows, some half-forgotten land where strange beings sit and ponder on whether humans are real creatures or whether they have been invented by storytellers.When we open the pages of a book such as the one you have in your hand, we are going in search of those creatures. (At the same time they in turn are searching for us, for they need you and me as much as we need them.) We go on a voyage of discovery, into their various worlds, looking for excitement and adventure, not knowing whether around the next corner the heroes and heroines with whom we travel might meet some adversary. Sometimes our companions have to use magic, or trickery, or even force to overcome the odds. We are tied to them through the story, so their fate becomes our fate for the unfolding of the tale. We need them to succeed in their quest because we are with them and want to win too.The quest does not need to be a physical one, travelling over land and sea, over mountains and through forests, to reach the desired object. It might be a spiritual quest, where the hero or heroine goes on a search for something missing within themselves - love, kindness, happiness - and becomes a better person at the end of the trail. Always, though, something wonderful happens on the road. Some marvellous creature shows us the path, or lights the way in the darkness, or gives us the strength to find courage in ourselves.I have always loved reading fantasy stories because they come from deep within us, below our everyday ordinary thoughts, from some misty hidden sea of dreams. They take me closer to the soil, to the roots of the natural world, to the pungent woody, mossy, mushroomy, leafy mould out of which we first came on to the earth. Never, in this age of technology, has there been a more urgent need to cling on to the creatures who live in the hollows or rocks, in the dark holes of trees, in the remote valleys and high mountains. These things are inside us, unlike the technological wonders which remain outside, and we can only find our way down to them through tales of wonder.What you hold in your hands at this moment is a map and guidebook to such a place.Virtual reality is with us; we cannot send it back whence it came, nor should we want to. Everything has its place in the world, whether newcomer or with us since the beginning of time. All should be treasured equally and we should not put aside one because the other has arrived. We need new fantasy fiction just as much as computer games. There are dark forests in our souls, full of fabulous beasts and strange beings, and we should go inside and look for them occasionally.That's what these stories are for, to help you find your way into your dreams.Garry Kilworth, 1996The Green Stoneby Diana Wynne JonesThe heroes were gathering for the Quest in the inn yard. It was chaos. Since this was my first Quest as recording Cleric, I was racing round among them trying to get each hero's name and run down my checklist with them. They tell me more experienced Clerics don't even try. Half of them were barbarians who didn't speak any language I knew, large greasy fellows in the minimum of leather armour, with a lot of hairy flesh showing. Most of them were busy waxing and honing at a variety of weapons: gigantic swords, whose name they insisted on telling me instead of their own, monstrous cudgels, ten foot spears and the like. Every one of them was also shouting for provisions and equipment and running about for last-minute extras. There was a constant tooth-splitting din from the grindstone, where a squat person with a long grey beard was carefully putting a surgical edge on an axe blade as wide as his own shoulders.'Rono?' I screamed over the din at a tower of muscle in a leather loincloth. 'Is that your name or your sword's name?'He was in a bad mood. He had been waiting half an hour for his turn at the grindstone. He glowered and fingered what looked like a sh...
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