Words for Wednesday - 3rd Instalment -- Unicorn Farm 20

As she finally returned home Susan felt frozen solid. She wanted one thing only. A roaring fire. She did not turn on any lights, she just crept up the stairs, opened the door to the attic and went into the big room. There she lit a fire in the open fireplace and plopped down in front of it. She had a stack of back issues of readers Digest laying up there. The railman living around the corner subscribed, and when he and his wife had read them, Susan got the old issues. She also sometimes got other books from them. This one was a book called Kitchen physics, Household chemistry or something like it. She was reading about the physical properties of honey, two forces, adherence and coherence played specific roles in the way honey behaved. Susan tried to make the strange words sound right and stick to their meaning, but she was tired after her long march through the snowstorm, and the fire was warm and cosy.

She was just beginning to drift off as a tiny voice reached her ears: "What have you done to my bottles?"
"Your bottles?" Susan answered, not yet quite awake. "What bottles are you talking about!" She sat up. Who was talking? Susan was all alone in the house.
"My bottles, they were so shiny and pretty. You took them away. Just as your mother took all the pretty things from my room and then she tore down my room." Susan saw a foggy, white figure floating next to the fireplace.
Susan shook her head violently: "Pretty thing? Your room? Sorry. Who are you, and what are you talking about?" Susan slowly realized she was all alone in the house, speaking with a ghost.
"Do you remember the attic when you were very little? There was one more room back then, between the chimney and the small room you made pretty the other day? In that room were pretty things. My pretty things!"
"Oh, now I remember. Yes the very narrow room with the shelves. I best remember the smell, a musty, not unpleasant attic smell; it always reminded me about adventures, travels and far away places. There was shelves, as I said, and a big cupboard, wonder where that went. There were some corals, big sea shells, things like that. My father once told me they were from when he sailed the seven seas." Susan looked at the wavering shape and added in a distrustful voice: "Was that your room?"
"Yes," the girl-ghost said and began crying. "And now you've taken away even the shiny bottles." Susan's pile of books began shaking and the topmost ones fell to the floor.

"No!" Susan said, "please don't cry. My Mother only took the bottles away to clean them, they were dusty, full of old cobwebs. I'll put them back tomorrow, when I find them, and hang pretty things in the smallish room. Promise."
"Can I move in there?" the girl-ghost asked. "I like it very much in there, and you've taken all my pretty things away." She began crying once more, and this time the pool cues came to life, and began shaking in their holders.
"Stop that!" Susan said sharply.
"Stop what?" the transparent girl asked. She stopped crying and looked questioning at Susan who was kneeling on the floor holding on to the cues for dear life.
"Every time you start crying, you break something." Susan said. If you promise to stop, I'll put all the pretty things I can find, into that little room tomorrow. Then you can move in there ...Only not when Granny comes visiting, I don't think she likes company, but she only comes two or three times a year for some days. And I'll come as well, I like the small room. It's so neat, and Linda don't often come here any more."
 "Irritating sisters, I understand. By the way, I'm Persephone, you can call me Percy if you like."
Susan got up and smiled. "Hello Percy, nice to meet you!" she said.

A loud noise from downstairs made Susan jump. When she opened her eyes once again, Percy was gone and she heard her mother's voice calling from downstairs.
Susan quickly threw mattress and blankets away from the fireplace and ran downstairs

Susan returned to the here and now and realized that her legs were cramped from sitting for too long in  the same position. She stretched, and felt an almost irresistible urge to go and sit in front of the fireplace in the attic again.

"Well why not!" she thought, "even if I'm not as cold as I was then, a fire would maybe take my mind off this dripping rain. She slowly gathered her books, hiding all the magic things, you newer knew just when Linda returned and started nosing around, or Mom wanted to tidy. She would take no risks with the magic books or worse, her wand.   When the needles and pins had left her legs, she unlocked the door to the attic - not that anything secret was up there, the door was old, the latch worn, and it was an unpleasant task to get up in the middle of the night to stop it from banging.