Untitled Novel Day 9 - 34,547 Words to go!

The door opened with a light click and when she reached for the light switch, she remembered it had burnt out earlier. The sun was still high in the sky, so there'd be no need to flip on the light anyway.
On second thought, she reached for the switch. Since this was a fairy hunt, she would have to look for any clues which might lead her to finding the mischievous little sprites. Are sprites the same thing as fairies? She'd have to look it up in the dictionary sometime, but for now, she was going to say yes. Fairies, although secretive, seemed to like drawing attention to themselves. Who was to say they hadn't fixed the light bulb and they were now just waiting in the corner, or outside the window... yes, she would bet they were waiting outside of the window and looking in. What better place to hide than directly between herself and the bright sunshine streaming in through the slightly cracked curtains? They were just waiting out there, watching her. That is, if they had indeed made the light bulb work again.
She pushed the switch to the on position, watching the ceiling where she remembered the light being.
Nothing.
Not a single flicker. So the fairies hadn't fixed the bulb. Dang. Goldie sighed and her shoulders drooped slightly. This was proving to be harder than she expected. Normally, when she went on hunts for things, the things, people, animals, or objects that she was hunting would appear out of the blue in front of her eyes. Like, once when she was hunting gold. She just walked into her back yard at home, picked up a shovel, dug a small hole in the ground, which Mom was not happy about, I might add, and voila. There was gold! Although, when she brought it to Mom to show her, Mom had said it was actually a quartz crystal. But, Goldie didn't mind because the quartz was pretty. Maybe even prettier than gold. She brought the gold...I mean quartz...to her bedroom and put it into her jewelry box. She decided as soon as she found it that she would make a pretty piece of jewelry out of it when she was older and knew how to do things like making jewelry.
Goldie had also hunted her neighbor's cat once. It wasn't that hard to find him. She just hopped over the fence that marked the boundry between her yard and her neighbor's and the cat came right to her. That cat's name is Tobyn. She missed Tobyn. Boy, was she glad that she only had a little over two days left at Aunt Wilma's. Oh, but when she leaves here that means she won't be able to visit Cat, anymore. She'd forgotten that.
Goldie quickly stepped into the dark bedroom and shut the door behind her. As soon as the door shut, the secret entrance to the secret room swung open of its own accord and light poured into the room. Goldie heard giggles and screeches, just like those of small children who were amused by some silly animal. Once, Goldie met a horse at the fair and she made the same sort of sound when the animal bent his head down and started nibbling at her shirt with his lips. Goldie's heart leapt. Laughter in an empty room? It must be the merriment of the fairy kind. She crossed the room silently and peeked out the window into the back yard, just to make sure there were no children out there, playing catch with a dog.
The back yard was empty. It made sense. There were no other kids around and Aunt Wilma's house wasn't in the middle of the city where random children could just appear in the back yard unannounced. Plus, Aunt Wilma didn't seem to know any children. Well, except for me. Goldie tipped her head to the side and pursed her lips. She hadn't talked to Aunt Wilma much, but she liked her hair. It was white, but kind of pink, like a puff of cotton candy on top of her head. It looked almost edible. But, Goldie knew it wasn't. She'd tasted hair before and it was really just kind of blah. She really liked that Aunt Wilma doesn't have claws, like Auntie Till. Plus, she thinks that Goldie is creative. Goldie loved that.

I wonder what sort of things that fairies like? Should I give them a gift? What would make them happy? I would never want to make them mad. Goldie turned from the window to face the not-so-dark room again and she noticed a tiny sparkle coming from the side of the bed opposite the bookshelf. She walked to the bed and let her eyes adjust. There was a night table on the other side of the bed and on that night table was a mirror. A small one, a compact, open on the table, dusty from disuse. She skirted the bed and picked the mirror up. Upon closer inspection, she noticed the outside of the compact was encrusted with jewels. Something told her that this compact was her key into the fairy world, if she ever found it.
She snapped the compact tightly shut and put it into the pocket of her jeans. She'd have to remember to put it back when she got back from her fairy hunting adventure. After making sure the compact wouldn't fall out, she crossed to the secret entrance to the secret room and slid on her back through the small opening. Before she'd made it all the way through she noticed an etching on the "top" of the cabinet wall. It looked like it had been scratched into the surface of the wood by a sewing needle or something else small and sharp. It showed, in incredible detail, a man standing in the middle of a ring of mushrooms. A fairy ring. Beside it, in a horrible scrawl, were the words "Help me." The last three letters became longer and lower as if the person or thing writing them was in a terrible hurry, or falling, or climbing down stairs as they wrote. It made no sense, yet all the sense in the world in Goldie's mind. She lay on her back, staring at the cabinet ceiling.
"I wish I had a camera," she said, outloud, to nobody in particular. The words sounded kind of echo-ee in the cupboard. She raised her hands to her eyes and pretend she had a camera. Pointing it at the etching, she clicked her tongue to imitate the shutter and took a picture for her mind. No one would see it but her, but that was OK. As she snapped the picture, those high pitched giggles began again.
Does that mean I'm doing something right? She wondered. Or wrong?
She shimmied the rest of the way through the cabinet and stood to her feet. She felt an instant change in feel of the room. As if everything had been in motion and suddenly came to a stop. The desk, the windows, the couch, the rocking chair, the paintings, the little cows on the lamp shade. It was all a little...off. The desk chair was pushed out slightly from the desk, like someone had stood on it recently. Well, I suppose that could have been me, Goldie thought.
But she had the particular feeling that the chair had gone down with her when she fell. Could she have righted it before she left? She'd shut the cabinet doors behind her, so, it wouldn't be surprising, but she had no memory of it. She put her hand on the desk. It felt warm, probably because of the noontime sunlight. She tried the long drawer underneath the desk, rocking it from side to side as she pulled. This time it came loose with relatively little energy. She heard the flutter of little butterfly wings as she pulled the drawer further and further out the of its fissure. There were two or three blank sheets of letter stationery inside and a few old stamps, along with tons and tons of fine silvery fairy glitter coating the drawer's red felt lining.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Goldie reached into the drawer and scooped out a palm-full and sprinkled it onto her head. She'd already let go before she realized the fairies might not be particularly happy with her taking advantage of their magical fairy dust. She brushed her palms off over the open desk drawer and tried to shake the glitter back out of her hair. She knew it was of no use, but she tried.
When you're on a fairy hunt, you don't want to offend the fairies before you've even met them. Though, honestly, it's better not to offend the fairies at all, but offend them before you even get a chance to learn how NOT to offend them, and you'll never get another chance.
Goldie prayed the adventure wouldn't end before it'd really begun. Maybe they'd see it as a compliment that she wanted to be like a fairy? She could hope. She would hope. She carefully slid the drawer shut and pulled the desk chair out further, so it could give her a leg up as she climbed to the desk top. She moved over the desk on her hands and knees to the window.
First thing she did was look and feel to see if there were nails between the sill and the window.
None that she noticed. That was promising. Next, she looked for a lock. There was a little metal doohickey between the two panes of glass. She pulled on the clasp, and it unhooked.
Perfect, she thought. Then she tried to tug the lower pane upward. It wouldn't budge.
At this point, Cat had noticed that she was at the window and jumped up from where he'd been lying to see what she was doing. As she pushed and pushed at the window, he shook his head slowly side to side. Goldie was getting frustrated. When she saw Cat shake his head she yelled, "If you're so smart, why don't you get in here and do this yourself!"
She was surprised, though, when he actually obliged. He moved closer to the sill and grabbed the bottom of the window with his claws, trying to pry it open from down there.
"Oh," said Goldie. "Does it go this way?" She gave a slight shove on the bottom of the window and it swung out with ease. She hadn't noticed the hinges outside the window till now. Cat had jumped down when she pushed the window out, but he leaped back up and right into the room as soon as the window opened. She was pretty sure he was rolling his eyes at her. Great way to start an adventure. Cat wasn't going to be a very great adventure buddy if he didn't get rid of the attitude.
"I have to learn some things, OK?" she said to him. "But, no matter what you think, I am not stupid."