Author: Molly Penney

By Helen Kent

HIGHLY COMMENDED in October 2026 Competition

I am surrounded by a metal fence. Chains and props cut into my body. They say these will protect me and for their sakes I pretend it’s true.

I have had many names but, if you remember me at all, it will be as The Major. A title that once belonged to a man – not a bad man, but a man nevertheless. Those trying to save me understand that my kind are always part-male and part-female, yet still they give me his name.

When I was young they were as inconsequential as the mist – while we grew in strength and number.

Then the raids began. The tallest and the strongest were taken away to make ships for their wars. Good neighbours disappeared and yet it wasn’t until he began his perambulations that I understood the extent of our losses.

He introduced himself as Major Hayman Rooke. He told me he was working on a warning for his people, to be published in the year of seventeen ninety-nine. A Sketch of Sherwood Forest would recognise us as hallowed, noble and majestic. It would lament that more than twenty-seven thousand of us had gone.

When he died we were around ten thousand strong. Now, we are fewer than a thousand. And, when spring comes, in this year of two thousand and twenty five, there will be one less. I know they see me as an emblem of their land and they will stand around my fence to mourn. I know they will marvel at everything The Major Oak must have experienced in the past millennium. But I do not know if they will look deep inside and ask what they could have done – what they still can do – to save themselves, and to protect us.

Judges’ Comments: The death of The Major shook many this year, with much written about it. And this piece brings us fully into the grief of this death from the tree’s perspective, not shying away from it but pulling us into the magnitude of the oak’s age, humankind’s exploitation of nature as ‘resource’, the subsequent devastating ecological loss we face and – most importantly – asking of us the question of what we’ll do in response.

By Michael Hopkins

THIRD PLACE in October 2026 Competiton

The bush grew beside the door of the old chapel.  The red bricks were weathered and mottled with lichen, their colour softened after more than two hundred years until they had begun to blend into the countryside.   No-one knew how long the quince bush had been there.

I went armed with gloves, secateurs and a large bag.  The thorns were plentiful and vicious, snagging my clothes and catching at my skin as I reached between the branches.  Somewhere above, a blackbird scolded, then fell silent.  I pushed deeper, feeling for fruit hidden behind leaves and thorns.  By the time I had finished, thin lines of blood marked my arms among the scratches.

The quinces were hard and heavy in the hand: the colour of Golden Delicious apples, but shaped like large, knobbly pears, their skins unexpectedly smooth.  Wasps had found a windfall already split on the ground, taking what I hadn’t reached in time.  As the bag filled, the quinces knocked together, releasing their fragrance.

At home, cutting them took effort, the knife resisting the dense flesh.  Their aroma strengthened as I chopped: apple and pear, with something floral and almost spicy beneath.  As they simmered, the kitchen filled with perfume and the windows clouded with steam.  The hard golden fruit collapsed into a cloudy orange liquid.  I strained it, and what emerged was transformed: clear, deep ruby juice, glowing as the light caught it.  Cooked again with sugar, it became jelly, sharp and honeyed on the tongue.

The chapel steps are hollowed, generations of feet having worn shallow troughs into stone that has outlasted them all.  Moss has thickened in the mortar between the bricks.  Yet beside the door, among its thorns, the quince bush still produces its improbable golden crop each autumn, indifferent to who kneels, who reaches, who is only passing through.

For a while, the scratches remained on my arms.

Judges’ Comments: This scene brings with it such a sense of traversing ecological time while also moving with the cycles of the seasons. We’re invited into the intensity of the zoomed in moment – being amongst the thorns, the scents, the tastes of the quinces and jam, the bloodied scratch – to the incomprehensible zoomed out moment – the centuries-old bricks being reclaimed by the countryside, the aged quince bush who has witnessed so much, the worn chapel steps.

By Stephen Hodgson

HIGHLY COMMENDED in the September 2026 Competition

The salt stung Edith’s cracked lips. She stood where the sand meets the cold of the North Sea, her clothes heavy with damp and her cheeks moist with tears.

Beyond the crashing grey foam of the Northumbrian coast, the horizon remained empty, a flat grey line.

Three moons since those hateful ships had crested the same seas. She had seen the sail first and then the dragon-head. Three moons since the steel, the fire, and the frantic screams of the villagers as the men from the north raided.

Her twelve-year-old daughter, Hilda, had been one of those taken.

Every dawn since, Edith had stood on the shingle, frozen by a desperate, agonizing hope: that the next sail on the horizon would bring her child back.

“Edith.”

A hand, heavy and warm, settled on her shoulder. Alfred stood beside her, his breath plume-white in the bitter morning air.

“She is not coming back,” Alfred said gently, his voice competing with the roar of the tide. “The sea only takes. It does not return what is stolen.”

“They might sell her back,” Edith whispered, her eyes fixed on the distant grey water. “They might demand a ransom. A silver arm-ring. A bushel of barley. Anything.”

“They are not like us, Edith. These men from the North have no compassion. They will have sold Hilda by now (or worse, he thought to himself). She is gone from us.”

Alfred turned her gently away from the water, forcing her to look at their rebuilt timber hut. “Hilda would not want you to turn to stone on this shore. Our hearth is cold, and the village needs its weaver. Come home, my love.”

Edith looked down at her hands, raw from the freezing wind. Tears broke again, hot against her cheeks. “No, I still feel her. She lives on in my blood. I cannot return until I know for sure. I will stay a little while longer.”

Judge’s Comments: ‘A historical tale set in a past of sea raiders, timber huts and a woman’s heartfelt loss. Well drawn imagery that places the reader into a specific moment in time.’

By Maggie Farran

THIRD PLACE in the September 2026 Competition

They carried the ashes down to the beach in a green Waitrose bag for life. It was just before sunset, and they had planned to wait until just before the sun disappeared. Sarah was wearing her bright yellow Crocs, so that it didn’t matter if her feet got wet. Her younger brother, Clive was in his expensive green Hunter wellies. The beach was almost deserted and luckily the tide wasn’t too far out. They stood awkwardly together waiting for the sun to sink. It seemed to take forever.

‘Are you sure this is what Mum wanted? It seems very odd to me’ mumbled Clive

‘Yes, she told me precisely which beach, the sunset thing. You don’t think I made it up just to be awkward, do you? She loved this beach. She used to bring us here every summer when we were kids.’

‘I know, I was there too, if you remember. I used to hate it. All that sand in your clothes and the sea was freezing. You and mum laughing and looking so happy together. I felt so left out and odd. I just wanted to get home and play with my computer in my bedroom.’

Sarah bit her lip, ‘That was fifty years ago, get over it. Look at you now with your millions and your massive house in the country. Mum was very proud of you. She was always telling me.’

“it’s a pity she never told me.’

At last, the sun was almost set and Sarah took the casket holding the ashes out of the bag for life and placed it reverently on the sand a couple of yards from the gently lapping waves. Clive helped her unscrew the lid. They started to throw handfuls of ashes into the sea, until a sudden gust of wind blew the ashes back in their faces. They both started to laugh uncontrollably until sooty tears ran down their cheeks.

Clive gave Sarah a stiff hug.

‘Well, I guess Mum got the last laugh.’

Judge’s Comments: ‘Two siblings reminisce about the past as they spread their mother’s ashes in the sea. Nicely drawn and a very funny ending.’

By Margaret Bromage

SECOND PLACE in the September 2026 Competition

He sits, like the others, his face lifted upwards to better catch the warm rays of the summer sun.  His eyes are closed; his brow unfurrowed.  He seems lost in his own thoughts; perhaps a million miles away on some other distant shore.

But, on second glance: a slight hesitancy as he reaches for her hand and puts it to his lips.  An awareness, as he tilts his head from side to side, to better gauge the sound of the lapping ocean as it dances towards his feet. He is smiling…

I am not adrift when I close my eyes on the shore of the seeing.  I can taste the cool water’s salty spray, as it falls like gentle rain upon my lips.  I can feel the flowing tide and the softness of the sand as they come together to play between my toes.  I can hear the rhythm of the waves, at times a fond caress; at times a thunderous crash and deafening roar.   On this sun-kissed shore – my cares whisked away on a passing breeze – I snuggle in its sweet embrace.  So, wondrous Light:  I grieve thee not.  No endless shade, no bitter tears, no ‘might-have-been’.   I cannot mourn for what was never mine.

There is a magic that all can feel but none can see.  A fleeting sense – when every heart must pause for breath: when dreamers dream, when spirits soar, and when the soul finds solace here on earth.

He leaves, like the others, his arm linked with hers, barely lifting his feet above the warm sand.  He moves with a fluidity and self-assurance that belies his reality.  No banishment for him to solitary isles. He is beyond all walking and will fly. For there is daylight in his heart.  Only his eyes are blind.

Judge’s Comments: ‘A beautifully written tale of a man experiencing the shore, with a lovely twist. Poetic and moving.’

         By Jo Agrell

FIRST PLACE in the September 2026 Competition                                                               

Matthew stands, looking out to sea, relieved to be alone. He sends a pebble bouncing over the waves. A flick of the wrist, the way his dad taught him, the way he taught his daughter many years ago. Maybe she’ll teach her own child to skim stones one day.  

In the holiday cottage, Yas, arms folded, watches him from an upstairs window.

Three weeks ago, ‘That’s it then,’ he said, taking her hand, gently steering her down a chemical-smelling corridor into an oversized lift.

‘Giving up? Just like that?’

‘Not just like that,’ he reminded her. Two rounds of Chemo. Radiotherapy. Blood transfusions. CTs, MRIs. A body punctured with needles.

Yas freed her hand, ‘He said more chemo might delay things.’

Matthew shook his head, ‘Only for a few months.’

‘What about that trial I read about online?’

‘I don’t think so.’

 With a surge of frustration she turns away from the window, stomps downstairs.

Matthew thinks about Yas. All those hours she spends on her laptop googling miracle cures; crystals, magnets, that batty hypnotist with the green hair. Now this holiday on the coast – as though the sea air will heal him! Still, it’s pleasantly mind-numbing, the regular rise and fall of the waves, the spill of cappuccino foam on the shore.

Labouring up the beach, sad, he thinks, the rubbish people leave behind. He picks up a beer can, ice-lolly wrappers, a broken plastic spade. Tomorrow he’ll bring a bag.

            In the kitchen Yas crushes garlic to a pulp. The window is open. There’s a cool breeze on her face, aromas of seaweed and thyme. At the squeak of the gate she looks up. He’s lifting the lid of the dustbin, dropping things inside. For God’s sake, Matthew, litter-picking when you’re dying! He catches her eye, raises a hand. In that moment she feels such love. Something is happening to her. A sea change. Matthew must have what he wants, a peaceful end.

Judge’s Comments: A deftly written story of a man dying of cancer who has come to terms with the end and yet finds time to clean a beach. Poignant yet with a dose of life assuring humour.