Words for Wednesday - 30 January -- Unicorn Farm 18

This week's prompts are once again provided by Lissa at The Memory of Rain.
 

1. last day
2. zealot
3. homeward
4. listen
5. midnight
6. always

and/ or

1. start
2. wicked
3. holiday
4. castle
5. infinite
6. goodbye


This time I have used the first set of prompts - not because I can not use the other half, but this instalment has grown too long as it is. 

Following the example of  River at Drifting through Life, I've collected all the stories of Susan at the Unicorn Farm, that I've written so far as a part of the Words for Wednesday-challenge in a page called Unicorn Farm.

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.

A couple of weeks have passed since last Thursday's  chapter.  
Flash backs are indented and purple for ease of reading

The last day of January was as rainy and dreary as the rest of the month had been. Susan was despondent. Her teacher had berated her for not knowing the meaning of the word 'zealot', and now, walking homeward in the never ceasing rain, all she had to look forward to, was to listen to Linda's bragging over her good notes in maths. Maths was the only subject in school, Susan never really excelled in, she was always in the lover half of the class in maths, not bad, she just could not get herself to spend more time than necessary on numbers and fractions.
Much to her parents' chagrin she was way better than Linda or even them at languages.
"Give me languages," she thought, "or history, or even that dang-blasted Social studies, but maths ...Why can't mum and dad ever acknowledge all my good notes in English, German or even Latin. When Linda for once has scored an 11 all the world has to know. It's just not fair!"
She hung her wet coat on its peg and went straight to her room. She was the first person to be home. Dad was of course still at work, Mom was too - or maybe shopping, Susan couldn't remember if today was one of her short days or not. Alternating Thursdays she had to stay long hours to cash up after paying the workers at the shipyard. Where Linda was, was an open question. Only she herself knew, but their parents did not care very much, as long as they were home for dinner - or gave due notice, and were home at eight o'clock. As long as they did not get into trouble, they were free to spend their days as they liked. Susan liked the freedom it gave her to visit the library, to read up on her magic, to roam the nearby woods in summer, to go by bike to nearby cities as fancy took her, or just spend the whole day in her room, reading and eating candy. But today the house felt strangely abandoned.
Susan was restless, there was no new letter on the pillow. The last she had heard from Heidi was last Sunday. There was really nothing new. Neither Torben nor David had been back at the Farm as far as the twins had been able to find out. Actually nobody was at The Farm at all. Either Tue or Lis went there at least twice a week to check for signs of life.
Things were at a standstill. None of the siblings were able to recognise the foreigner from the airport, even though Stellan's photos were excellent. They did not want to bring their parents into it.
The only consolation to be had was what her granny's Dutch friend always said when someone was worrying: "Slecht nieuws heeft vlugge voetjes" (Bad news has quick feet - no news is good news).

Susan opened Spells and Cantrippes for Daily Use, but she did not read, slowly she realized she was reading the same two sentences over and over.
She was thinking of Percy the ghost girl, even though she was not around. Susan had remembered to put fresh flowers in the little room in the attic. Mum called it their guest room, but to Susan, and to Linda when she was in the mood, it was the door to another space and time.

Susan vividly remembered the summer's day when she had discovered the hinges behind the tapestry.
She, mum and Linda had been cleaning the room after dad no longer needed it for a darkroom.  Mum said they should make it into a guest room for when Granny came visiting. Susan and Linda had wanted to make a playroom up there. The room was eminently suited for both purposes, On the right hand  side of the room, as you entered the door there was a window, now uncovered and sparkling clean, letting in lots of light. Between the door and the window a small shell formed wash basin gleamed. Susan had spent long time scrubbing all the chemical stains from dad's developing of films from it. The tap even worked and mum had screwed up a hanger and had sewn towels matching the light yellow paint. Susan was dusting and cleaning the tapestry on the wall opposite the door, as she found the hinges. The top one was level with her nosetip.
"O look, here's a secret door!" Susan had exclaimed. "Let's open it."
"I'm sure you're wrong," her mother had said, "it is probably some old holders for photographs of your father's."
"No," Susan persisted, "there's one more down here, and I can just feel a crack between them. I'll go and get a knife." She went down into the basement, where her father was cutting wood for some mysterious project of his, he was clever with his hands, and made improvements in the home now and again. Susan borrowed his Stanley knife after promising only to cut away from herself and not let Linda play with it.
Susan carefully cut through the tapestry following the crack firs between the hinges, then from the lower hinge down to the floor, the from the upper hinge up, turning to the right she could just reach the top, and finally down even further right. She even asked Linda if she wanted to cut a little bit, surely that was not playing. Finally the door was free, but it was locked! "Well," Mom said, the tapestry on the door has to go." "Oh, no!" Linda and Susan said as one, "then the door is not a secret door any more."
"Come, let's see if we can find the keyhole." In the end Mom found it. She cut a neat hole in the tapestry just uncovering the keyhole. Underneath the tapestry was an old newspaper. Susan read the words 'midnight', 'paintings' and 'exhibits' on the consecutive layers. Then the keyhole was uncovered. Susan took the knife back to the basement and returned with a bundle of old keys. One of them just had to fit.  And one of them did, the most ordinary one, one of the not rusty ones. The one used for drawers cupboards and so on. Susan silently swore to dismantle and reassemble the lock so that one of the other, less common keys would fit.
The inside of the door was glued over with old newspapers, Mum looked at them. "Look, she said, They're all from 1942 or '43. It was those cold winters during the war." The owners must have isolated the room by glueing those papers on the inside." "I remember that. Susan said. Mom looked at her. "I mean ... of course I do not remember the winters, I was not born then, but Granny showed us photos of her walking to Sweden on the thick ice, patting the ferries that lay stuck and frozen in the middle of Øresund."
"Yes, I saw those as well. Impressing." Mum said."
"But what's in there?" Linda said.
"How did he get to the inside of the door?" Susan asked simultaneously.
"Linda go fetch my bike lanterns in the basket," Mum said.
"He came in from the other end, Susan," Mum said. "When we put up the fireplace in the big room, we covered the other end of this room up."
"So you knew it was there?"
"Yes and no," Mum said. "I never really thought about it, I thought it was just a small room, not that it reached all the way in behind this room. But obviously it does"
Linda returned with the bike lights, they were not that bright, but they all looked into the triangular space beneath the roof.
"There's something over there!" Linda said.
"Go and get it," Mum said. Linda got in with Mum holding the light aloof.
"Eww!" Linda said, "it's just an old bag filled with cobwebs and bottles."
"Oh, the milk bottles," Mum said. "That's where they went. I always wondered where i put them. When milk no longer came in bottles, I put our stash away instead of cashing it. I liked them and thought they would make nice vases. Bring them out here."
"But they're filled with cobwebs," Linda protested.
"I'll get the vacuum cleaner," Susan said and ran down the steep stairs.

There had been no more treasures hidden in the small triangular space, but now one of the milk bottles stood on the table in the guest room and Susan was careful to fill it at least once a week

How she met with Persephone the ghost will have to wait for tomorrow and the other half of the prompts.