Source A: The white shape over the allotments

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

Nadia Karim

At first the balloon refused to leave the ground. It lay across the field as a pale, wrinkled shape, while three people held it down against the wind. We had arrived before breakfast to watch the launch, but the balloon looked less like a machine that would rise into the sky than a sheet someone had forgotten to fold.

For forty minutes, the launch team tested the ropes, checked the small instrument box tied beneath it and waited for the gusts to weaken. We waited too. The crowd became a line of hands in pockets and shoulders turned towards the hedge. Every few minutes, someone asked whether it was ready. Every few minutes, the answer was no.

Then the wind dropped. The fabric lifted with a long, dry whisper. The ropes tightened. The white shape gathered itself. A voice counted down, and on the last number the people holding it stepped back.

Up.

The single word seemed to release the whole field. The balloon rose above the hedge, pulling the instrument box after it, and the crowd broke apart in every direction. We followed the lane, then the track beside the allotments, keeping the white patch between the trees. Someone shouted, 'Keep it in sight!' as if the balloon might hear and deliberately hide.

It moved more quickly than it had any right to. One moment it hung above the roofs; the next it had crossed the road and was floating beyond the water tower. Shoes slipped on the bank. A bicycle fell against a fence. The receiver in the van crackled with voices, and the people on foot answered with pointing arms and breathless instructions. The launch had become a journey, and the journey had become a race against distance.

At the top of the hill, the balloon disappeared. The crowd stopped so suddenly that the silence seemed to swing forwards. For several seconds, we could see only cloud and the thin branches of the trees. Then the receiver gave a sharp burst of sound. The instrument box had separated, and a small orange parachute was descending into the meadow below.

We ran again. This time the excitement was quieter but no less urgent. We reached the meadow just as the box touched the grass. The balloon itself was already gone, a white mark travelling towards the far hills. We had followed it as far as we could, and stood holding the returned box as though it were proof that the sky had really taken something from us.

How does Karim use language and structure to make the balloon launch and the chase that follows dramatic for the reader?

Support your answer with detailed examples from the text, including brief quotations.