Words for Wednesday -- 6 February -- Unicorn Farm 21

 The prompts for February are provided by River at Drifting through Life.
 
1. consternation 
2. tourist 
3. attached 
4. fresh 
5. specific 
6. memory 

and/or:

1. advantages 
 2. amount 
3. spray 
4. reef 
5. ouch 
6. living



Once again I wrote a small chapter from my magical autobiography, and once again I took up the additional challenge of using the prompts in the order they were given.

The story continues where it left off last. 

Susan brought Cantrippes for every day use, blankets and pillows with her to the attic. She took the key from the door and hung it on the nail right next to the ovoid hole in the wall. Then she was sure no one came and disturbed her, without knocking. That way she could study Cantrippes ... - now bound in the most boring wrapping paper, she could find - and have time to put it into the stack and pick a regular school book before letting somebody in. No one bothered with old school books.

She looked around in the attic. It was really a boring room after her father's makeover. Well, the fireplace was of course a good thing, but the old, worn out pool table? Then there were some chairs and small tables standing around. Between the rafters were raw plates and big, top-hung windows. How did it look earlier? Susan closed her eyes and thought back. Small windows with a round upper part, the raw underside of red, roof tiles between the rafters, mortar seeping through here and there like icing on a cake, and a naked chimney with an old cleaning hatch. Percy's small, narrow room she could only just remember. It had to be torn down earlier than the rest had been renovated. Maybe when the roof tiles were relaid? The wall at the end towards the neighbour had been raw, red bricks. She remembered her father's pride at the fun waves and curls he had made in the plaster, they were fun to look at, yes; but they were very scratchy if you came up too close. The floor had been weathered boards, differing in length, width and colour, and almost covered in dust. The room had seemed much bigger, home to weird things and stuff, old crates, a dress form, an old cupboard, swings and sleds and skis, and it was only lit by candles.
It was the smell she remembered best. A special attic smell, a smell of adventure, treasures, alien lands and explorations. Now all the treasures Susan had been able to find around the house stood inside the little room. The corals, all the milk bottles, shiny and sorted after size, Susan's own large sea shell, old pearl necklaces, and bright glass ones too, hung on hooks, and small, almost translucent mocha cups stood on the table. Susan didn't go into the little room, she went left to the fireplace. Methodically, she tore the birch bark off the wood pieces, built up a small bonfire with bark and kindling and put on larger and larger pieces until three pieces of firewood burned with gentle, even flames.
She pulled forth Cantrippes ... Much to her consternation a tourist folder had attached to the book.  She laid it aside, it did look brand new, fresh from the press. She wondered how it had gotten there, It was a very specific folder, and Susan was sure she had never seen it before. "Oh, well, memory is unpredictable,"  she thought to herself as she placed the folder underneath the photo of Torben and the stranger on top of her normal schoolbooks.

She was reading about the use of onions in healing spells. Absorbed she just moved closer to the fire for light and warmth as the sun set.
Suddenly she felt like someone watched her. A cold breeze chilled her, and she pulled the blankets closer.
"Why are you having a photo of that evil man ?" Percy - of course, she was a ghost, she would make her feel cold and watched.
"Which evil man do you mean, Percy?" Susan asked carefully.
"Him!"
"Him?"
"Oh!" Percy exclaimed, "I forgot how immaterial I have become. That's one of the advantages of being a ghost. Or do I mean disadvantages? I can not point any more. Mama always told me it was very impolite to point."
"I see," Susan said, even if she did not. "But if you cannot point, how can you tell me which man, you mean?"
"I can draw," Percy said. Susan's pencil rose from the floor and drew a nice circle around Torben's guest in the photo.
"Him!" Susan exclaimed, "bur who is he?" The man shaking his hand, is one of my teachers, but I don't know who he is. It's a friend of mine that took this picture."
"He is bad," Percy said in a quiet voice, "a very bad man. Mama hated him, he did bad things. I always wanted to know what he did, but no amount of asking ever got me anywhere."
"Do you remember his name?" Susan asked, then maybe I could find out something about him.
"No!" Percy said. "I don't remember. "He was French, or maybe Belgian, he had a funny name, but I can't remember it."
"Can you tell me anything at all about him," Susan asked.
"He makes me think of surfing, sea spray suntan, rubber ducks and a reef," Percy said.

"Ouch!" Susan exclaimed, busying herself with putting out one of the blankets, that had caught fire.
"Oh, the joys of living," Percy remarked in an acetic voice before disappearing again. "I'll write you a note, if I remember more. Just take care not to burn it."

Susan went downstairs again. She put the books in place, and looked once again at the tourist folder. It was trying to make the onlooker go to some tourist resort, featuring surfing, fake shark lagunas and reefs, She opened it, and inside were reefs with sun tanned surfers riding waves with lots of artificial looking spray. I  was not a place, Susan would ever like to go, she loved the real stuff way too much. She looked at the address, then she looked once more. It was from a place in Belgium, Fontein der Jeugd/Fontaine de Jouvence, almost at the French border. Did Percy see this folder, did she put it there or was it mere coincidence. Susan did not believe in coincidence. She sat down at her table to write a letter to Heidi and her family.