Tomorrow's goal is 2,636 words. And, to find a reason and rhyme for this novel.
Cat bowed his head in a quick gesture of apology. He had been a little too harsh. He shouldn't have rolled his eyes. She, though they were approximately the same amount of months old, was much, much younger than he. Cats mature much more quickly than human children do.
His ears suddenly perked up. He'd heard a creaking noise, just for a second. He turned to look at the rocking horse. He was sure it had just moved. The horse wasn't alive. It was just an object. He'd checked. Mostly because some of the things in this room that seemed like objects weren't. He'd met a few of them before. Sometimes they'd reveal themselves for a reason that seemed pretty necessary. This might be one of those moments.
Cat padded over to the inanimate horse. He sniffed it and the floorboards around it. He was picking up the scent of a creature he didn't recognize. His tail began to move as he plodded nervously around the rocking horse.
"What is it, Cat?" Goldie had moved closer to Cat without him noticing. She was standing in the center of the room on top of the carpet colored like fire. Her hair was darker than her name might make one imagine it would be. If cat knew how to shrug his shoulders, he would have. Instead, he walked over to Goldie's feet and rubbed in circles against her ankles. But, when she knelt down to pet him, he ran back to the rocking horse.
He knew of a door back here in the wall that she likely see from where she was standing. He'd hoped to make her follow him. Now that they were on an adventure together, might as well see it through.
Goldie followed Cat right up the back wall of the room. At this point, she was pretty sure she was standing directly behind the angry sailing ship. Wait, the ship wasn't angry. The wall was angry. That's right. Dark, angry red. She touched the head of the rocking horse. It didn't have eyes and its mane was made of wool yarn and braided down to its seat.
She heard an odd noise and looked down to see Cat pawing at the base of the back wall. There was kind of an indent in the wall, about the size of a door, but there was no door to be seen. She pressed herself against the wall and felt around the cavity, as high as she could reach, feeling for a knob or a lock or a handle of any sort. She found nothing, but Cat was still scratching at the wall, so she lay down on the cold floor to try and see what Cat saw. At this level, she noticed a musty smell.
She'd been in someone's basement that smelled just like this. She and one of her friends, Kari, were at Kari's grandma's house. Her grandma had asked them to run down to the basement and find some canned cherries. The basement was made from dirt. It smelled like earth, like plants, and maybe like mold. They searched along rows and rows of canned fruits and vegetables until they came upon the cherries. Goldie was glad that Kari knew what they looked like, because if she had been sent down there on her own, she'd have just assumed that the cherries were jars of eyeballs. She thought cherries were supposed to be red. These were brown and kind of goopy looking. She wasn't sure she'd be able to eat them. Maybe they weren't even good.
Maybe they really were eyeballs and they were going to bring them upstairs to Kari's grandma and she'd say, "No, you sillies, those are my canned eyeballs. You don't pour a great batch of cream over canned eyeballs! Go find me some cherries." And she would laugh and laugh as they ran back downstairs and hunted once again for the right version of canned stuff.
But, it turned out, they were cherries. Kari knew what she was doing. Her grandma spooned them each out several cherries into bowls and poured some of her fresh batch of cream on top of them, sprinkled some sugar on top of that, and even though they were brown and ugly and looked like eyeballs...they tasted amazing. Goldie asked why the cherries were brown and Kari's grandma said it was just because they'd been soaking in sugar water for a long time. She said if Goldie soaked in sugar water for a year, as pretty as she is, she'd look brown and yucky too.
Goldie was sure that there was something behind this wall, she just didn't know how to get there. She pushed Cat aside and put her face up the the wall. She closed her left eye and squinted through the other. There was space there, just like there would be below a door. It has to be a door. She stood to her feet again. Cat waited beside her while she figured things out. Instead of feeling around the door frame, she tried to find a button or pully somewhere on the wall near the door. She wasn't tall enough to feel as far up as the top of the door. The rocking horse could add a bit of height. She pushed it against the wall and stood up on it. She held on to the wall, because she didn't want another incident to occur in this room before she knew what was behind the wall. Well, really she'd rather not have another accident at all. Ever again. Maybe that was possible. Was it possible to never get hurt again? She wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure it was possible not to die, but it was something she planned to aim for.
Carefully gripping the corner between the door indent and the wall, she felt the above-the-door area. The horse was pretty unsteady. Her shoes was slipping on the waxed wood. The horse leaned back further and further and her shoes didn't have enough traction to keep her up, but just before she quickly hopped off, her fingers encountered a lump in the wall paper. She jabbed it with her finger and fell to the floor. She was caught off-guard when she actually landed on her feet.
Cat was surprised, too. She didn't even have a tail to help her keep her balance. Not bad.
As soon as Goldie hit the floor, the musty smell grew stronger. A crack had appeared in the wall. It really was a door. This room was amazing enough with it's secret entrance and now there's a secret entrance inside the secret room!
Cat was pressing the side of his cat body against the door. Goldie joined in and pressed her palms against the door and pushed with all of her might. It was hard, as if someone on the other side of the door was pushing back as she opened it. But, eventually, the hinges cried their loudest and the door gave way and swung wide. Goldie leaped back from the opening and hid behind the wall. She peeked out around the corner to survey the next leg of her fairy adventure.
The sunlight which was lighting up the secret room was obliged to light up what turned out to be a very, very small room behind the creaking hidden door. The walls of which were gray wood. The trees the word of those walls were born from grew many, many years before Goldie was born. Probably many years before Goldie's grandfather was born as well. And, now, Grandfather had died. Taking that into account, it was quite likely that the wood which made up the walls of this tiny room, if it wasn't entirely dead already, would die very soon. Who knows, it might actually crumble into dust if Goldie were to touch it.
Goldie's eyes moved from the ceiling to the floor. The floor disappeared half-way into the room and a stairwell began to descend to whatever dark place was below this room. She took a leap of faith that the floorboards would hold her and stepped into the room. Why did this room look so run down. Did no one ever know of this room. Why had the door been sealed off? Had Aunt Wilma done the sealing or someone else who had lived here before she and her family lived here?
Whatever the reason for the door being sealed off, Goldie knew she'd have to find a light before she headed down into the smelly dungeon-like hole. Cat may be able to see in the dark, although, she'd also read that was a false statement. Cat's can only see in the dark as well as humans can, but their eyes adjust quicker. Either way, whether or not Cat could see in the dark was beside the point. Goldie knew that she couldn't.
Cat had walked into the room and was standing on the first step of the staircase studying the pitch black below.
Goldie debated shutting the door. On the one hand, she would be turning her back to a dark place with many hidden secrets, possibly scary ones. Anything could be keeping an eye on her through one of the rickety floor slats just waiting for her to become complacent with her surroundings so they could pounce! On the other hand, it might just be a room. A room with nothing surprising inside. Or maybe even treasure. She was on a fairy hunt, treasure definitely seemed like something she could hope to find on a fairy hunt. Particularly a fairy crown. The problem with shutting the door was that it'd probably take just as much work to open the second time. Likely more work, actually, because she had used all of her strength the last time around.
She decided to leave it. She'd really rather not leave the secret room to find a light, because the longer she was away from the fairy hunt, she was pretty sure the harder it would be to find even a single fairy. The problem was, the room was not exactly full of places to look for a flashlight. The desk was possibly the only item in the entire room with an actual drawer in it. She finally decided to leave the door open. She did not want to push it open again.
She turned to face the secret room, moving to the side so that the wall protected her from things in the dark stairwell. And, as soon as she looked into the room again, she noticed something hanging from the ceiling just above the lamp with the cows eating grass. It was a lamp. Not an electrical lamp, though, and sadly, also not the kind you can rub and a genie will pop out. It was an oil lamp. She'd seen an illustration of an oil lamp in a book she had read pretty recently.
She climbed up onto the desk and removed the lamp from its hook.
"Now, all I need is a way to light it," she said, looking around the room.
No comments:
Post a Comment