The Glass Marble

(An experiment exploring a child's perspective).

All the kids in the village knew where Collin was, but no one would listen, none of the grownups, not the police and not even Mr. Kirk Patrick our teacher at school.

Collin hadn’t listened either.

It had all happened last Wednesday. Everyone knew if you walked or even accidently touched Old Fred’s grave something terrible happened. Well, Collin was new here, and he’d just laughed. We’d all urgently explained and implored him not to do it, but he just didn’t listen. Collin had brought it upon himself.

He’d placed his foot directly in the center of Old Fred’s grave and to make matters worse it was almost dark, everyone knows night time is the worst time!

We’d all gasped; we all knew for sure he was done for, so we ran, we ran as fast as we could, we ran home.

The police had questioned us all, but the last we’d seen of Collin was at the grave yard.

No one else had seen him since, and STILL no one listened.

We all knew Old Fred had been a toy maker from at least a hundred years ago, probably more, and we all knew the legend well.

A bad kid had broken into Old Fred’s toy shop and smashed a little train he’d spent weeks making. Old Fred had hated children from then on, and wanted revenge. He’d turned a school full of children into tiny, clockwork soldiers. Of course he’d been hung for it, or maybe it was the firing squad.

In a way I felt sorry for Old Fred, I’d been pretty mad when my three year old cousin had scribbled all over my new poster, I’d wanted revenge then too, so I definitely knew the feeling.

It was up to us to find Collin and get him back, so we’d arranged a meeting in Red’s den.

Red’s den is an awesome place we’d built last summer, down by the stream in Red's back yard. We'd found bits of broken, but perfectly good fencing, out by Mr. Hives factory. We'd carried that back through town and Cory had even dragged an old, green window frame out to Red's. We rolled a tire from Cratchet's farm back to our place too. We were laughing that day, none of us could believe our luck, that we'd find an actual tire! Grownups are crazy, they throw away the coolest junk ever!

We all sat in a cramped circle to discuss our plan. The dark brown carpet smelt like old socks and my wet dog, Frank, but it was only slightly damp and really if you ignored the smell, in perfect condition. Red's den was truly the coolest place on earth.

We all knew where Collin was because Big Brian had seen a blue, glass marble roll from Old Fred’s grave, out into the road. We all knew what Old Fred had done and we all knew that Collin was inside that marble.

Red had the best idea of where to look. We’d roll another marble out into the road and follow it.

Red always has the best ideas, he's very scientific.

It meant going back to Old Fred’s grave, it was dangerous, but someone had to, we couldn’t rely on any of the grownups.

That afternoon we tossed another marble, similar to Collin’s marble, out into the road. We were careful not to touch Old Fred’s grave, but as an extra precaution we left our sneaker laces on one foot undone.

We raced after it as it tumbled and bowled along the edge of the tarmac, travelling at quite a speed down the incline. Big Brian couldn’t keep up, red faced and out of breath, he’d had to stop and collapsed on the road.

We honestly thought Big Brian was a gonna.

Cory had shouted out to him “Don’t worry Big Brian! I'll keep up!” and suddenly we all knew Big Brian was okay because he gave a thumbs up!

Cory is our schools number one track runner, so we waited with Big Brian, ready to find out where the marble had gone.

We watched Cory stop running far ahead. The marble had raced and tumbled and rolled and then, disappeared down the drain.

Collin was in the storm drain.

We all silently returned to Red’s den, how were we to find Collin now?

Everyone looked at Red, he was the scientific one, surely he’d know. We watched him push his small, round glasses further up his nose and gave him time to find a solution. He was fast. “We look at storm drain maps on the internet guys” he said, looking at each of us straight in the eyes. Everyone was relieved; we could always rely on Red.

We couldn’t follow the marble any more so we knew from now on it was down to pure detective work.

We searched on the computer at Cory's house and traced the storm drain all the way past Mrs. Appleby’s old, white farm house. It became a little confusing once it arrived in town, splitting into all sorts of tunnels, but eventually we managed to figure it out. It passed the store where Big Brian’s Dad gets his motorbike magazine, and travelled behind the brick factory, where it emptied into the river. Who’d have realized all of that was underground? I was certainly surprised.

Once the important detective work was finalized, Cory showed us all his new racing game. He easily beat us whilst we played it, probably because he’d had the most practice and a really cool, black Ferrari.

Before going home, we arranged to meet after breakfast in the morning, we now knew where to start our hunt.

Mist was still rising from the river the following morning and in places it smelt fishy. The air was cold and damp and mud sucked at our boots making the smell stronger. Big Brian remarked that the smell was similar to his bathroom at home, after his toilet had become stopped up.

Everyone laughed at me because I’d had to wear my sisters pink boots, mine had strangely gone missing again, but I didn’t care, it was more important to find Collin. It was strange though how often my stuff went missing and then just reappeared under my bed or set neatly out on the porch. I did throw some rotting weeds at Red when he called me a girl though.

We all tried to recall class the previous week, when Mr. Kirk Patrick had taught us about rivers, and where they deposited stones and small pebbles. We figured since the glass marble was sort of like a pebble, Collin had probably been DEPOSITED.

Knowledge was indeed important, just like Mrs. Couch our principle was always telling us.

We concentrated on searching for places the river had left areas of silt and small pebbles, sure that Collin was somewhere along the bank.

The sun slowly rose, burning off the last of the mist as we kept hunting. We arrived at the place in the river where the banks rise steeply to both sides like cliff faces, a lot of sediment from the river ends up there.

We were hopeful the marble would be there too.

Big Brian led, and we thrashed our way through some dense reeds and waded through thick mud to reach the place.

There was certainly a lot of silt and pebbles here, even sand and some washed up tree limbs.

Suddenly Big Brian gave a shout “I see something!” and there was Collin, in his pale, blue coat, lying next to the cliff face. He was unconscious and his face was bloody.

Immediately we sent our fastest runner for help. Cory left quickly and Red removed his favorite jersey and tucked it carefully under Collin’s head. I put my black anorak over his motionless body. Red said we shouldn’t move him.

We waited quietly and patiently next to Collin, until Red spotted something glistening in the sand. A blue, glass marble, smashed into pieces.

None of us were surprised.

The ambulance arrived and Collin went to hospital, everyone said he was very lucky we’d found him, another night and he might not have made it. But grownups never listen, it wasn’t luck, it was detective work and believing old Fred's legend.

Collin never did remember how he’d ended up at the cliff.

The grownups say he must have fallen, but we know the real story. Never, not ever, touch or stand on Old Fred’s grave.