Orion celebrates the winner of the 2024 Big Writing Challenge!

The Big Writing Challenge 2024 is organised by London Metropolitan University and is supported by Orion Publishing Group. Running across several months with student writers from London Met’s partner colleges, the project explores and develops the participants’ own writing via a programme of workshops and panel events. Writers submitted their work and three were shortlisted.

The shortlisted pieces were Turning of the Hourglass by Gabriel Chafer-Budeiri from Barnet and Southgate College; What Once Was by Maria-Belle Sabre from Christ the King College and City of the Styx by Abigail Jeffries from St. Bernard’s Slough.

Author and Editorial Director for Trapeze, Sareeta Domingo judged the shortlist again this year and selected City of the Styx as the 2024 winner. Congratulating Abigail, Sareeta described how the story ‘smartly skewered the ways that individual power can affect the very land where we live as well as the people being ruled‘. She went on to say that it was a ‘…brilliantly imaginative fable…’ and was ‘…incredibly impressed by the use of language and how many ideas [Abigail] packed in to such a short tale.’

Congratulations Abigail!

City of the Styx

Castoria was like a town out of a fairytale. Its bridges meandered to form pathways through the village whilst clustered buildings of wood littered the streets, their monochrome umber walls painted the landscape, with thatched pyramid roofs of similar shades towering above their inhabitants. Quaint stores and markets were scattered between houses as if they were pebbles thrown onto an earthen riverbed; grand banners of bright scarlet and marigold draped over their doors, and processions of Castorians queued for the latest wares. A gloomy grey mass hung above the town, but they did not seem to mind the impending showers for their dwellings were fortified with densely packed sticks that they all said would withstand any potential damage. The picturesque arches that connected the various levels were crowded with citizens traversing their daily life, gazing over timber spindled banisters or laughing with friends. Some much larger than others, with stronger teeth and more agile bodies. Some with armfuls of fungi and grasses, stuffing their mouths with fruits and shrubs, either foraged or purchased. 

But all stood still when he arrived. Hordes of beavers all motionless at his advent. With each step in his waddle, he sent echoes to fracture the all-encompassing silence. His sepia furs immaculately brushed, and his head held high, the king of these beavers marched through the empire he had created. Those subservient to him unwillingly praised his excellence, for the despotic leader required it of them, unaware of his own tyranny. One even rushed to him bashfully, laying a minute golden coin in his hand as a harmonious chorus resounded through the village when the beavers slapped their tails on the wooden beams that supported them. Few admired King Castor.

They knew of his hubris, his ravaging, his destruction. They had seen how he established their home: the effect it had on the river and the surrounding environment. Once a mighty scene of wildlife, the woods were now deserted; not an animal in sight, nor any trace of their previous existence – only the dam of Castoria remained. In his quixotic plight, the king had devastated the river, and meagre streams seldom flowed beneath their feet, with copious amounts of human pollution from a nearby settlement threatening the east fortifications of the town, piling high against the ligneous walls. Scarcely any quantities of vegetation thrived around the dam, and foraging beavers were forced to traverse precarious paths to collect food for the citizens. And whenever they returned, seeing him stood before his tremendous palace, they fell forward, arms waving in acclaim. 

Thunder struck.

A violent, heavy deluge overcame the dam, raindrops hammering the defenceless beavers like tiny daggers. This wooden empire was no shield and King Castor was forsaken, his minions hopelessly scuttling for safety – to no avail. The sodden branches creaked; planks began to crack. An incessant pounding of rain swam through the ears of the petrified citizens and the east walls began to buckle. The lower support beams caved in, and multitudes of sticks, branches, and twigs flushed into the current. It was if the world crumbled all at once. There was no use for optimism; no chance of recovery. Colossal towers no longer dominated the landscape, nor were any thatched roofs left to shelter them. Torn fabrics of scarlet and marigold rushed across the surface of the water, accompanied in the wooden wreck only by lonely berries and fungi. Castoria had fallen in a single storm. Its frail foundations offered no opposition to the calamitous waves. Beavers struggled hurriedly to the riverbank, longing to reunite their family once more. They had forgotten him, perhaps asacrifice for their individual continuity – a testimony to tyranny. He had remained until the end, watching all that he had built in its final tides before he plummeted into the frigid waters, clutching the golden disc. 

He only saw darkness. A dreadful, eternal darkness that engulfed him, hearing the muffled shrieks of his surviving subjects whilst he was unable to utter a sound himself. The weighty log which had once formed the entrance to his palace rushed towards him in a mighty wave, trapping his hind leg and immobilising the king beneath the water. He battled the flowing daughter of Oceanus until she conquered the trifling animal, defeatedly allowing her water to pour fiercely into his lungs. 

All was still. Quiet.

Opening his eyes, Castor found himself stood at the edge of an abyss, observing the black surface of water reflecting his saturated fur. No king looked back at him, just another soul obliged to cross the void that stretched endlessly on. A little wooden vessel floated a few feet to his left, and in it stood a ferryman: tall, cloaked, and mortiferous. In his hand he held a lengthy bronze pole with a dim lamp hanging from the top, the aphotic bottom lost to the blackness. He could not pass the coin to the ferryman; how could he? An unfamiliar feeling settled in the depths of his stomach. He knew the fate hidden beyond the river but without funeral rites he could not cross. He pleaded with the cloaked figure – it was no use. He thought such cruelty was undeserved when his actions were always for them – for his beavers. Hopelessly abandoned on the shore, he was forced to recall the foundations of his empire: the ruin of woodland, the spoil of the river, the ravage of other creatures. He had built a home upon ecological devastation, and he had dragooned his kin to carry out his scheme. Now they lay on the riverbeds, some alongside him in this dark expanse and others alive above, gathering their surviving families. Looking around at the deceased who had suffered his tyranny, he saw them truly undeserving of the stasis fated to them. He waddled towards them, clasping the golden disc, and stretched his puny arm out to offer a means of crossing. He watched as the others stepped into the boat and sailed away. 

Castor would stand alone forever.