The Tale of the Time-Travelling Schoolboy
Written by Ruairi Hopkins-Mcquillan
Illustrated by Alice Watt
Daniel was upside down. Or rather, he nearly was. He’d found that it was quite tricky to get himself completely upside down, so had settled for a strange headstand against the wall in his bedroom. The loud thuds had brought his mother upstairs, but his stern face had just as quickly banished her. She just managed to get out a weak “But… Why?” before she decided against this line of enquiry and instead laid down in a darkened room.
The fact was, Daniel was bored. Mind-numbingly, teeth-achingly so. It was only the second week of the summer holidays, and all his friends were in places like Barcelona, Belize, Benidorm, and other sunny destinations beginning with the letter ‘b’. He’d had to turn to homework for entertainment. After seventeen minutes of reading about what inspired Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (“From my window I could see two beautiful rabbits playing and running on the lawn, they showed me how to live, you see,” et cetera, et cetera…), Daniel turned firmly away from homework, feeling slightly nauseous and more than a little fed up.
“I’m going out!” he yelled, swinging his coat around his head, and sliding down the banister. His mother whimpered in response.
Taking this as a sign of assent, he left through the front door, came back in for his shoes, and set off across the fields behind their house. Daniel enjoyed being in the fresh air. It made a pleasant change from being cooped up indoors with a sister who slept until dinner and no Wi-Fi (Daniel swore it wasn’t him who broke the router). He took the forest path, the sun’s rays percolating gently through the living ceiling above him.
A hill rose steeply in front of him. Daniel felt this hill must have been around since the beginning of time, its solid mass a reassuring presence. And, considering this sentiment, he began his ascent.
It took Daniel a minute to realise that he was falling. He hardly noticed the ground giving gently beneath him. Before he knew it, he was tumbling into darkness, a tantalising window of light shooting away from his outstretched fingertips. A minute, a full minute later, he introduced himself to the floor. They didn’t get on.
The first thing he noticed was that it wasn’t dark down there. Light seemed to be spreading outwards from the corner, not enough to truly illuminate the surroundings, but just enough to inform Daniel that something was there. Wincing, he struggled to his feet and hobbled to investigate.
A strange object stared back at him. It was covered in dust but appeared to resemble a horizontal hourglass. Daniel concluded that it was clearly magical, which was perfectly logical considering the circumstances. He picked it up and blew off some of the dust. Immediately, it began to beep and vibrate violently. He saw on the part he had cleared that it said, ‘Blow here to begin transmission process’. Panicking, he went to let go of it, but saw a glow around his right thumb. The words above it read, ‘Place thumb here to encode DNA’.
Thrusting the thing away from him in dismay, he accidentally twisted the two ends in opposite directions. He was not one bit surprised to see the words, ‘Twist ends to initiate internal drive’. He finally threw it on the floor, clocking as he did a final message: ‘Place on floor to finalise recall’. Beside it, a digital clock displayed the number ‘–120’. Puzzling over this rather unusual chain of events, Daniel hardly noticed as the machine split in half and shot a beam of bright, bright light at him…
Bushes are not comfortable. It’s why tents were invented. As Daniel removed a leaf from his mouth, he attempted to survey his surroundings. Deciding that this was best done from outside the bush, he carefully extricated himself and looked around. He appeared to be in someone’s garden, a low wall holding it back from acres of wild countryside. The strange machine was still in the bush, humming gently. It now displayed a 30-minute timer, slowly ticking away. At the far end of the sloping lawn, a squat house sat. It had two large windows facing the garden. Through one of them, a small room with a desk looked out over the grounds. At the desk sat a woman. Daniel joltingly realised that he recognised her. It was Beatrix Potter. And she was looking right at him.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do; on the one hand, he had travelled back in time. On the other, he had travelled back in time. And he was trampling Beatrix Potter’s begonias. He perfectly reasonably dived back into the bush, feeling the corner of his t-shirt tear in the process.
He poked the top of his head out and looked towards the house. Beatrix Potter was blinking in disbelief. Apparently deciding (rather like Daniel’s mother) that the best course of action was to do nothing, she turned back to her notebook, and tried to ignore the tuft of hair peeping out of her rhododendron. Daniel exulted in his victory and congratulated himself on his quick thinking. Then he saw them. In the corner of the bush, cowering in abject terror, sat two rabbits.
Beatrix Potter glanced up from her notebook. She was still confused as to why there was a small child in her bush and had actually been writing a speech with which to address him (“improper conduct”, “criminal damage”, “frankly weird”). But something else drew her eye. Two rabbits were bolting across her lawn, looking as though they had just seen Mr McGregor. Although clearly in terror, there was something magical about their movements. The idea for a new story began to form, taking shape and spreading its wings. She barely even noticed the muffled cry of, “FROLICK!!” coming from a rustling hedge.
Beatrix Potter picked up a fragment of fabric. Turning it over, she saw a named sticker adhering to the underside. Daniel, she thought.
Daniel was home, and, not unusually, confused. The time machine had very obligingly dropped him off above ground, and not in the damp and nearly bottomless hole where he’d found it. He’d been able to locate an ancient-looking keypad and had input a very strongly worded request. He looked at the title of the book he’d been reading for homework: Notes on The Tale of Daniel the Rabbit. Although he mourned the loss of the pleasing alliteration, he thought the new name was very, very good.
THE END
About Time to Write
ISEB’s 2024 Time to Write competition, launched in celebration of the exam board’s 120th anniversary, was about celebrating the past and looking forward to the future. The innovative creative writing competition was open to all schools everywhere, and asked children of four different age groups to submit short stories written in response to a set theme.
A time machine is found hidden in a cave. Inside, there is a clock with two options: the first, to travel in time 120 years into the past, and the second, to travel in time 120 years into the future. Who finds it, and what happens next?
More than 2,000 children from schools all over the world entered the competition in its first year, with entries shortlisted collaboratively by a pool of judges using cuttingedge adaptive comparative judgement technology, in partnership with RM Compare. This resulted in a reliable, fair and accurate ranking of entries. The top ten stories in each category were reviewed by a panel of judges, including a children’s book author, a children’s book editor from Oxford University Press, a senior researcher from the University of Winchester, and heads of English from Eton College, St Swithun’s School, and St Catherine’s School, Bramley.
To find out more about ISEB’s Time to Write competition, visit write.iseb.co.uk.
ISEB would like to thank RM Compare; the judging panel: Ali Sparkes, Anna Camilleri, Ellen Spencer, Emma Drage, Naomi Anson and Sarah Strachan; sponsors Altec Lansing, AWS, Ingram Micro, Oxford University Press, Scanning Pens and TTS; all who took part in the shortlisting process; and all of the young writers who entered the Time to Write competition.
The four winning stories
A time machine is found hidden in a cave.
Inside, there is a clock with two options: the first, to travel in time 120 years into the past, and the second, to travel in time 120 years into the future.
Who finds it, and what happens next?
When Daniel’s school holiday boredom takes hold, he decides to ditch his book and venture out to explore the woods by his home. Suddenly, he finds himself falling, landing in a bush in a country garden and startling both the owner and a pair of rabbits. Where and when is he, and will his visit change anything when he finally gets back home?
The winning story in the category for writers in years 10 and 11 in the 2024 ISEB Time to Write international creative writing competition.
“A compelling opening with nice detail throughout. Very funny.” The Time to Write judging panel.
