The prompts for February are provided by River at
Drifting through Life.
1. bathroom
2. parasol
3. furniture
4. duck
5. phone
6. puzzle
and/or:
1. wade
2. grim
3. barge
4. sporadic
5. pizza
6. burial
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 (except for one little slip).
The story continues where it left off last.
Susan hurried towards the old Lumber yard. The rain was letting off, but still the inclemency of the weather kept people indoors, helped by the fact that it was dinnertime or just after. Everybody were busy in their homes, and Susan only met one young man hurrying townwards on his bike.
She was more than a bit nervous, she needed to go to the
bathroom, but now there was no turning back. She had arrived at the lumber yard and after a quick glance behind her, she turned right and was soon swallowed in the shadows. The enormous walnut tree was a massive presence on her right, and she happily let her fingers caress its wet bark. The thick branches stretched skywards over her head, like a gigantic windswept
parasol. She wove between bushes and lesser trees, and found the portal with practised ease.
But still she hesitated. It was the first time she was going through it alone.
In the end she closed her eyes, clutched her bag and jumped. She felt the familiar, yet frightening sensation of vertigo.
When the world stopped spinning, she opened her eyes again and was relieved to see the old, crude
furniture at the Unicorn Farm. For a moment she just stood there, happy that she had arrived in one piece, attentively listening and smelling her surroundings.
Noting happened. She went to the window and looked out. The rain had stopped, it had not rained as much here as at home, but everything was still dripping wet. Suddenly she felt the loneliness of the place like a physical presence. It was dark, she was far away from home, nobody knew just where she was. Anything could happen ... she felt an urge to get up and run, and quickly she opened the little door. The door to the outside was really low, like in Grandma's kitchen she had to
duck to get through without banging her head on the top frame. Her heart was beating loudly in her chest. The Farm did not even have a
phone, There was just no way she could call for help if anything happened ....
Susan closed the door silently and stood with the back to the building. "Take it easy, now!" she said to herself, "there's no reason to panic. If nobody knows you're here, nobody will come for you. And somebody knows you're here, Susan!" she chided herself. Heidi knew she was coming tonight, as did Tue and Lis, and their parents Sandra and Kai. They were waiting for her at the Magician's Home. She pulled out her wand and made a small ball of greenish light. It soared up over her head and shed its light on the surroundings. Susan drew a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "I'm at the Unicorn Farm," she thought, "I'm an apprentice witch, actually a quite good apprentice witch, Nothing bad can happen here."
Susan slowly began to
puzzle out why he was so panicky. These last few weeks had been extraordinarily taxing. After all the drama with Torben and David in the Christmas holidays, there had been the stress of an new term at school, where the other pupils and even a few of the teachers had been relentlessly bullying her. Not that she minded as much any more, but to be at the receiving end of all that crap every day at school was hard. The weekends had not been relaxing either. Linda's birthday party had not been a total success, but no major mishaps had happened, and Persephone had stayed happy and invisible all through the party. There had been more boring visits with beer drinking friends, and then Stellan's dying friend, although it was nobody close to Susan, Stellan's sadness had still rubbed off on her.
She began walking, letting the green light hover a bit behind her, lighting the way, She had to
wade through a small stream that had not been here before. All the rain, an the smelting snow must have made it. It ran towards the beach, and Susan made a mental note on exploring where it went, A small waterfall almost had to be at the end, where it met the cliffs. Susan had never seen a real waterfall, so even a small one would be exiting.
She crossed the line of trees separating the Unicorn Farm from the rest of the peninsula and extinguished her light. She did not put the wand back in the bottom of her bag, but kept it handy, she was still not quite at ease in the dark, mostly deserted place. The moon had risen. And even though there was not much left of it, it gave off just enough light to let her find the paths through the stubble fields. This time a year the peninsula had an almost
grim air to it. The summerhouses were mostly uninhabited, and the houses where people lived around the year were few and far between.
As she walked on towards the Magician's House she could hear the foghorns in the harbour at the root of the peninsula. Now and then a
sporadic answering hoot from a
barge rose shrilly over the deeper fog horn notes. This was a sound Susan was used to, coming from a coastal town. It felt reassuringly homelike.
Finally, but in reality only ten minutes after stepping through the portal, she stood in the inviting light falling thorough the many small windows of the door to the low, yellow house that was the target of her journey. She rang the bell and Sandra and Heidi opened the door. A warm, welcoming chaos overtook her.
"We're having
pizza tonight," Heidi said jubilantly, "Father just left to get them at the place near the bridge. It's open all year finally. Not just in summer. And you're going to sleep in my room. Come!"
Susan smiled, and let Heidi lead her to her room where a cot had been placed. She put down her bag at a chair and sat on the cot. She felt hungry and happy. It was a wonderful house, and Susan felt at home here.
Kai returned, slamming the door, and they ran down the stairs to greet him. Kai was for once dressed in inconspicuous clothes, nothing of the magician about him now, just a normal father.
While they ate the pizzas and drank a lot of coke and orange juice they just talked and talked.
"We even were at a
burial," Tue said. "Our old aunt Margit, I think you met her last summer, Susan. She died at the first day of the new year. And she was buried at the old cemetery on the mainland." Susan remembered an old, no an ancient lady, with sky blue eyes and wrinkles all over. She had had warm, dry hands and a charming smile as she said hello to Susan, but that was all she remembered.
"She always told us she was going to die on the first day of the new year, but only Mom believed her," Lis added. Susan did not know what to say, and the talk turned to newly plastered streets off the mainland, street lights and schoolwork. Susan just sat and listened, more than half asleep.
"It's time for bed," Sandra said. "You're getting up early tomorrow, and it has been a long day for all of us." Susan was grateful, that Sandra did not mention her, and more than pleased to slip between the crisp, white covers in Heidi's room.
"Tomorrow," she said sleepily.
"Yes, tomorrow," Heidi answered and put out the light.
