Goldie sat on the couch with her Mom and watched her knit. She planned someday to have Mom teach her how, but for now, she'd rather just play by herself. She'd never really minded being alone. Not really. Even though Goldie's friends have cousins and she's never had cousins that she's known, her days were best spent by herself reading a book. How could she get involved with all the characters and the story lines, the mysteries would be harder to solve with someone constantly standing over her shoulder and possibly reading the exact same thing that she was reading. It'd be a travesty. A royal travesty. There'd just be no way for her to pay attention. And characters in books absolutely NEED attention.
She'd been watching Mom knit for about an hour. Her stomach started to gurgle and growl, she'd not had breakfast yet! She'd forgotten to go find her breakfast after she'd gotten over the scare of getting the wind knocked out of her. Plus, crafts were interesting to Goldie. She'd never been able to figure out how to do things like knitting, or even braiding. She was still working on her braiding skills. Sometimes she remembered how to do a simple braid in her hair. Mom was usually pretty proud of her when she remembered.
Mom would say, "Goldie, your hair looks so great this morning. Did you do it yourself?"
And Goldie would giggle because she knew that Mom knew that there wasn't anyone else in the house to do her hair unless she or Mom had done it. Although, sometimes Goldie would imagine that fairies would fly into her room in the morning, just before she woke up, kind of like the tooth fairy would, and braid her hair into a lovely, intricate knot. Not a real knot, because Mom would freak out, but the kind of knots that go into a person's hair.
And the fairies would run their fingers through her fine hair and they would say how lovely it is. That it deserved flowers, and then they would go outside and pick flowers to put in her hair. Then, when the fairies were done, Goldie would wake up with her hair absolutely perfect and Mom would say, "Goldie, your hair looks great this morning. Did you do it yourself?"
And Goldie would be able to say, "No, Mom, actually the garden fairies did it before I woke up this morning. I woke up and I looked in the mirror and my hair looked just like this! Flowers and everything." And Goldie would dance around the room and show off how well the fairies braided and knotted and upswept her hair. She'd love to experience that. So far she'd never met a fairy in real life. She would always imagine fairies, but if anyone ever asked her "Goldie, have you ever seen a fairy in real life?" She would have to say no.
That was sad to Goldie, so after she'd eaten some breakfast, finally, she decided to go on a search for fairies. And she'd bring Cat with her! To do that, she was pretty sure she'd need to get Cat off of the roof.
Unless he was down already. That would be so much easier.
She skipped into the front hall. Should I check the back yard first, or the secret room? She wondered.
She thought for a while, because, even though the secret room was really cool she still wasn't sure what the creature was that jumped in front of her and caused her to fall from the desk. How could she go back in there if the creature was still there?
Actually, why shouldn't I go back in? It didn't actually attack me. It just jumped up. And actually, it wasn't even inside the room, it was outside the window. On the roof... Plus, that's where I found the fairy dust. Wouldn't it make sense to start my fairy adventure inside that room. Wait. The creature was on the roof. On the roof! Maybe it was Cat all along!
She jumped up and down in the front hallway, clapping her hands.
She reached her hands over her head and bent backwards in an attempt to start a back flip, but, when that failed, she settled for a nice sommersault.
"Haha!" She yelled.
She noticed Mom and Aunt Wilma leaning out to look at her and quickly mounted the stairs up to her room. Slamming her bedroom door so that everyone knew it was her room she'd just gone into. After a moment of thought, she opened the door up wide. "Mom!" she yelled.
"What, Goldie?" Mom's voice was just one big sigh, like she was tired of talking.
"I think I'll take a nap and then go fairy hunting!" Goldie called down. She really didn't want to take a nap. She was just using that as a cover while she backtracked into the secret room to try and get Cat to come on her adventure.
"OK. You do that," said Mom.
"OK, Mom!" Goldie had worked her magic. She was an expert at convincing Mom that she was doing one thing when she was really doing another. (Or so she thought, the author happens to know that Moms are much smarter than they seem when you're a seven year old.)
Once, when Goldie was younger, she told Mom that she was so excited for Santa, she was going to go to bed early on Christmas Eve. She went into her bedroom and put on her pajamas and she waited, and waited, by her bedroom door until she heard Mom click off the hallway light. After that happened, she opened the door a crack and peeked out into the living room. The white lights on the Christmas tree were glowing bright, but there weren't any presents yet, so she shut her bedroom door again and waited, and waited, until she heard the shuffle of footsteps on the living room floor and rustle of papers and jingle of bells. She was so excited to see Santa, she swung her door wide and looked again out into the living room. This time, there were presents under the tree and there was Santa standing by the tree. She could tell that he had heard her because he froze with his back to her.
"Hey, Santa," she had said.
Santa's voice was kind of like a really gruff woman's voice. Goldie hadn't expected that.
"Yes, little girl?" he said.
"Santa, do you ever get presents? I mean for yourself?"
"Well, uh," said Santa. "Sometimes, uh, yes. Sometimes my wife gives me presents for our anniversary!"
"What about for your birthday?" asked Goldie. She was suspicious. Santa's body looked an awful lot like a woman.
"Uh, yes. Yes, I do get them for my birthday, as well, little girl." Santa turned so that Goldie could see his profile. And it was then that Goldie realized that Santa was equal to Mom. And that was OK. Even though Goldie liked to imagine things, she didn't like to be lied to. No one had ever told her that Santa wasn't Mom, so it made sense that he was.
"Well, I'm going to make a present for you and put it under the tree. OK?"
"OK," said Santa Mom.
"I'll leave it there in about 15 minutes. Will you make sure to come back and get it before you go back to the North Pole?"
"Of course," Santa growled in his deep woman voice.
So Goldie ran back to her room and shut the door. She smiled. She knew a secret that Mom didn't know she knew. She wanted to make something special, so she sat down at her little red Playskool easel and painted a picture of herself and Santa standing by the Christmas tree. They were holding hands. At the top of the painting, she wrote, in her best childhood scrawl, "I love you, Santa." And she meant it.
Goldie ran out to the Christmas tree and she used a clothes pin to clip the painting to the tree, where it stayed all night, until Mom got up in the morning and saw the painting there, clipped ever so carefully to the tree. What Goldie still doesn't know is that Mom cried when she saw it and she hid it away in a stack of Goldie's other paintings and drawings that she was saving to show to Goldie when she was older.
Goldie shut the bedroom door quietly this time and tiptoed across the room to the quilted chair, which had been sitting mostly forgotten by the window all day. But, the chair didn't mind, actually. She hadn't seen the sky since she was very young, when Aunt Wilma's children used to traipse around this very room and use the chair in almost the same manner that Goldie had been using it. She would take any bit of attention she could get. Chair remembered those far off days before she'd been a quilted chair. She used to be a leather chair, but slowly her leather began to crack and get old. When her leather covering was replaced by the quilt with the little girls and flowers and cats and houses, she felt like it was too young for her. She was an old chair. But, when Goldie had said she looked cute, the chair had smiled to herself. Goldie hadn't seen the chair smile, but if she would have, it would have made her happy.
Goldie stepped up onto the chair, once again, and peered out the window. She was pretty sure Cat must be out there still. He'd been out there all morning, there was no sense in him getting down and enjoying the grass now, since he hadn't all day. So, yes, he must be on the roof still. Crazy magical beast cat such as he was, it made sense that he probably flew up there with his retractable wings. He has retractable claws, why not wings as well? Retractable wings. What an idea! What if all cats had retractable wings? It'd make so much sense why they always want to be in high places and how, when humans are around, they can never get down from their high places. It's because they don't want to admit to having wings, because they're magical.
She studied as much of the roof top as she could see, but wasn't sure he was out there...oh. Wait. Just below the window to the secret room - it's so silly for a secret room to have a window. It makes no sense. Just below that window, lay Cat. She was wondering if he had died and fell down there when he hit the window glass earlier. What a cliche thing for a winged cat to do anyway, hit a window, dumb as a bird. She shook her head. It made her laugh just thinking about it.
Cat wasn't dead, though. He stood and stretched out his legs. When he saw Goldie in her bedroom window, he beckoned her with his tail. He was using it kind of like the way a person does when they beckon, they put an arm in the air, palms facing themselves and sort of scoop the air toward themselves a couple of times. That's what Cat's tail was doing. Goldie tried to work the window open again, before she rememebered it'd been nailed shut.
She sighed. Back to the secret room she'd have to go. She hadn't even thought of checking to see if that window was nailed to the sill as well. She hoped not!
After tiptoeing back to the door to her bedroom, she opened it quietly and peeked out to see if anyone was out in the downstairs hall. The coast was clear, so she snuck out the door and closed it with only the slightest click. She creeped through the upstairs hall like a cat burgler and twisted the knob on the dark bedroom one door over.
If it's misplaced at this moment, I'm sure there will be places to move it to later.
- Elise
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