EMPIRES CHILDREN: CHAPTER 1

Some of you asked for a teaser – so here it is.
Chapter 1 – hope you like it! If you do – you will LOVE the rest of the book.

May 1957 Watakälé, Sri Lanka

Eight-year-old Shiro Rasiah skipped down the dirt path leading from her house to the tea factory.

‘There once was an ugly duckling, with feathers all stubby and brown. And the other birds said in so many words – get out of town.’ Her sweet, high voice spiralled into the majestic hills of central Sri Lanka, robed in the emerald green of tea bushes. The aroma of fresh picked tea leaves blended with the fragrance of fermenting tea wafting up the hill from the tea factory in the valley.

This was Shiro’s playground and her father’s livelihood.

Shiro loved everything around her. The mountains that made her feel so tiny. Eucalyptus trees with their leaves that smelled like the oil her mother rubbed on her when she had a cold, wildflowers that clung to every nook and cranny, the dragonflies that hovered over her head, even the bumble bees buzzing around the lilies that lined the moss and mud path she was on. She raised her hands above her head and swung round. She was no ugly duckling. She was a ballerina, like in the storybook she was reading with her mother. She was a star and this was her stage. Every tea bush and butterfly her audience. The rush of the water in the nearby stream echoed the applause she heard in her head. She stretched out one foot and bowed. ‘Thank you, thank you.’…..

Read on –  EMPIRES CHILDREN. chapter 1