‘Wake up!’
The voice swam towards Torben from what seemed miles away. It echoed in his head as he slept, intruding on his thoughtless dreaming and shattering the private world that he’d retreated to.
‘Wake up,’ the voice repeated.
Where was the voice even coming from? In his mind, Torben was striding across the fields back in Bywater, trying to sow seeds into plough furrows, but the land undulated constantly, throwing him off balance, making it excruciatingly hard to even walk, let alone get on with the task at hand. And then, there was that horrible piercing voice that wouldn’t stop echoing around and around. It almost sounded like the tone that Mrs Amos had addressed him with every morning, rattling his door and shrieking like a harpy for him to get up and work.
‘Wake up!’
This time
