I drew a picture of Aunt Wilma's house. Enjoy.
While the room was dusty, just like the rest of the rooms in Aunt Wilma's entire house, it didn't seem unused. It wasn't scary like she'd have expected a hidden room to be. Light and mysterious wasn't usually how the books described secret places. They were usually dark. Very dark. This room was light. If it hadn't been used for years, then Goldie was pretty sure angels must live here. The floor was wooden slats with a carpet in the middle, just like in Goldie's room. This carpet was red, yellow, and orange and it reminded her of sitting by the warm fireplace at her house in the winter. She stepped to the center of the room and looked up at the ceiling. No sharp chandelier weapon to fall down on top of her, so good news there. On this side of the cabinet passageway, there were two cabinet doors, a hook on each door locked it against the wall, so the doors would stay opened. She unhooked one of the hooks and swung the small door shut. It closed with a small click against the wall, like there was a hidden magnet mechanism in the cabinet to keep them from swinging outward unless pushed. The outside of the door was painted white, like the walls. She opened the door and hooked it back to the wall. She faced the room again. There wasn't a bed in the room, instead, a couch took the place along the wall where, in Goldie's room, the bed rested. Against the window with the frilly white curtains was a writing desk. Goldie crossed the room to examine the desk. On top of desk was a lamp. The lamp shade was white with hand painted cows around the bottom edge, nibbling on a tiny strip of green grass under their feet. Goldie poked one of the cows on its nose and giggled.
She ran her hands along the desk. It was smoother than she expected. There was one drawer. A long skinny one just below the desk top. She pulled at the drawer and it opened, but just a crack. She frowned and stuck her fingers into the small space to try and assess what was keeping the drawer from opening.
Sometimes, in Goldie's dresser back home, a rolled pair of socks would find it's way in the way of the drawer's track and keep it from coming open all the way. Usually, she could reach her hand inside and tug the socks out of the way and cause the drawer to open more...
This desk drawer, though. It didn't want to come loose. She moved the old desk chair out of the way and rocked the drawer from side to side, trying to get it to budge, but it hated her, so she pressed her palms against the drawer to shut it, then pulled the old wooden chair back toward the desk so she could use it as a step stool. She sat with her tail end on the desk and her feet still on the old wooden chair. She noticed a rocking horse in the far corner, opposite the window and to her left.
"Oh!" She pointed one finger toward the rocking horse and the other hand over her mouth to stifle her exclamation. She didn't want to wake the sleeping angels, which were obviously the owners of this room. Sleeping angels, though, not Weeping Angels. Weeping Angels are an entirely different and very scary breed of angel. A sparkle floated through the air and glinted as it floated into the ray of sun that shone through the window. "Oh," Goldie said, again, her hand was still covering her mouth. She moved her hand closer to her face. It was covered in glitter, like real life fairy glitter was covering her hand. Goldie started to giggle as she brought her fingers to her lips and blew puffs of silver glitter off of her hand and into the welcoming room.
The fairy dust flew through the air, and as she watched it sparkle and shine, she smiled. Tinkerbell must have been in the desk drawer. When Goldie opened it, she helped the trapped fairy escape. This was how Tinkerbell had repaid her. She'd given her a ticket to Neverland. A beautiful ticket to Neverland.
Goldie hopped down from her seat on the desk and walked the circumference of the room, running her hand along the wall as she went. Each wall had a picture smack dab in the center of it. All the walls except for the one with the window. But, there, Goldie though, the window must be equal to a picture.... or even better because outside changed, but inside paintings tend to stay exactly the same all the time. Each of the paintings on the wall depicted a different angle of the same type of scene. It looked like a kitchen where a family had gathered. The children and the dogs were playing on the floor and the mom was cutting bread while the father sat in a rocking chair smoking a pipe. Each picture was similar to this scene. The colors changed and the room changed and the people changed, but the mom stayed there, cutting her bread and the dad stayed and smoked his pipe. The painting really weren't that interesting to Goldie, but she decided that each of them needed a light like the stormy sea painting at the end of the dead end hall. Because that light basically brought the entire painting to life.
She turned and crawled onto the desk to the window. She lifted the curtain and ducked her head under to look out into the back yard. It looked rather beautiful from up here. When she was playing down in the yard, it felt like playing in a box. It wasn't even fenced, but still felt like a large box. "You may stay in the cut grass, but you cannot go beyond into the Forest of No Return," her brain had told her when she was playing that she was a lost princess by herself the day before the funeral. There wasn't a fence in the yard, but there were gigantically tall trees behind the house, just past Aunt Wilma's old shed where she says she keeps the riding lawn mower, but Goldie was pretty sure it was the entrance to a dungeon where dangerous monsters were kept. Dangerous monsters from the forest.
She was startled by a monster-like creature jumping up from below the window and hitting the glass. She threw the lacy curtain off of her head in a frantic effort to hide from whatever horrible beast might be after her and fell entirely off the desk. She managed to miss falling onto the chair and landed on her back on the hard wooden floor. When she tried to breath, she couldn't. She gasped for breath and clutched at her neck. She balled up her pony shirt in her desperate fist and pushed herself up from the floor. Staggering slightly, she made her way to the hole in the wall that led back to the dark, abandoned room. She barreled her way through the cabinet doors, choking on sobs. She was able to breathe, now, but her back still hurt and her head kind of, now that she was over the initial scare of not being able to breathe.
After carefully closing the cabinet doors and walking through the mostly dark room, she made it out into the hallway.
"Mom?" she called, as she moved toward her own bedroom. She wasn't sure how long she'd been in the hidden room, but it could have been a long time. She opened her bedroom door and looked inside. Mom wasn't there.
"Mom!" It was somewhere in between a wail and a yell. A child's cry not to be messed with by any person who didn't know how to care for a kid. This was a cry of the desperate, of the scared, of the lonely. That cry must be answered by a mother or a father. But, Goldie was answered by Aunt Till, the owl aunt.
"What's the matter, honey?" asked Aunt Till with a concerned look on her face.
Goldie paused on steps and stared at Aunt Till. She sunk to her knees in dispair and said, "I just want my mom."
She cried into her hands as horrible thoughts ran through her head. Mom had just used this funeral trip as a reason to go on vacation and leave Goldie behind with her aunt. Mom was probably at the airport right now and Goldie had no way to her. She couldn't drive. She wouldn't have her drivers license for probably ten years. What would she do without Mom? Why had Mom left her behind? Plus, she just remembered she didn't eat the breakfast that Mom had given her while she was statue. Now she's going to starve, too, because Mom isn't here to feed her anymore. If Mom had left her with these two old lady aunts, she'd never be able to forgive her. Of course, since Mom had left her behind, it probably meant that she didn't love her anymore. Although, she'd read a lot of stories where Mom's had given up their babies to other people because the baby's life would be better for it. Goldie guessed that could be the case here. But, no. No, there was no way. She couldn't be abandoned. She wondered if Cat had been abandoned.
"I'll get her for you, hun, just a sec," Aunt Till just disappeared around the corner into the living room. So Mom hadn't left. She'd just been unable to hear her call. Goldie jumped to her feet and rushed down the stairs after Aunt Till and into the living room.
Mom was just standing up to come to her, when Goldie reached her. She wrapped her arms around Mom and started to sob hysterically.
"What happened?" Mom asked, prying Goldie's arms from her abdomen, so she could look at her face. "And why are you covered in glitter?" She rubbed at Goldie's face with her fingers, trying to get the glitter off. It was no use, though. Glitter does not come off easily.
"I think I almost died, Mom," said Goldie.
"Well, how'd that happen?"
"I fell down and landed on my back on the floor, Mom, and I couldn't even breathe. I thought I was going to die right there. I was freaking out!" Goldie put both of her hands to her head.
"You know what that sounds like to me?" asked Mom, getting down to her knees so she could talk to Goldie eye to eye.
"What?"
"It sounds to me like you got the air knocked out of you."
"The air knocked out of me? Like, the floor punched me and knocked me so hard that I didn't have any more air left?"
"Yep."
"Oh." Maybe it's not so dangerous afterall. "Is that something you can die from?"
Mom tapped her lips with her finger, "Mmm, I don't know. I've never heard of anybody dying from getting the air knocked out of their lungs."
"Oh, ok." Goldie sat down on the living room floor and drew a circle on the carpet with her finger.
"Now, where did all this glitter come from?"
"I dunno." Goldie shrugged her shoulders. "It's fairy dust, Mom. It was in a drawer or something."
"Oh, really? I hope you didn't make a mess with it."
"No..." Goldie thought back to when she'd blown the glitter off of her fingers in the hidden room. That didn't count as messy, did it? No, she didn't think so.
"You know if I find a glitter mess, you're going to have to clean it up, right?"
"Yes, I know that Mom. But, I told you, it's fairy dust. Real life fairy dust because I released a fairy from it's magical prison."
"OK. As long as there's no mess."
"No, Mom."
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