Week 22 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

Read the following short extract carefully. The extract focuses on Idris, a blacksmith's apprentice, working alone at the forge late at night.

The Forge

Sparks were the only stars Idris ever wished on. Each one bloomed for a heartbeat above the anvil, gold and furious, before the dark swallowed it whole, and he liked to imagine that every escaping ember was a small, stubborn sun, refusing for just one moment to be put out.

The bellows breathed beside him, in and out, an old iron lung that had outlived three blacksmiths before him, and the coals answered by turning from black to red to a white so fierce it hurt to look at directly. Idris raised the hammer, felt its whole familiar weight settle into his shoulder, and brought it down. The clang rang out across the yard like a struck bell, once, twice, a dozen times, until the glowing bar surrendered its shape and became, slowly, something new.

Smoke curled up through the chimney hole and out into a sky already bruised purple with evening. Somewhere beyond the forge wall a dog barked at nothing. Idris did not look up. There was only the fire, and the iron, and the small, ferocious triumph of making something obey.

Option 1: Write the opening of a description of a lighthouse keeper climbing the tower stairs as a storm gathers outside.

• Remember you are only writing an opening, not a complete story — do not worry about what happens next.
• Concentrate on rich, sensory description rather than on plot or events.