Actual amount written: 3,647
Still need to write 1,346 more to catch up for the days I've missed.
Goldie pulled back the curtains and swung them into their little metal holders (these must be called something, I don't know what) on each side of the window as she continued to watch Cat traipse around the roof. Maybe he'd flown up there. Maybe Cat was a magical beast from a far-off land and he only walks around in the form of a common house cat to keep people from noticing how amazing he really is!
She tried to put her foot up on the window sill and pull herself up with her hands against the jamb, but it was a high window and she wasn't quite strong enough to pull herself up. She could rest her chin on the She turned from the window and surveyed the room for a possible boost up onto the window sill. The bed was too far away and the bedside table was holding a lamp and other breakable things. Mom would kill her if she messed up Aunt Wilma's house. That wouldn't do.
Ah! The ornate quilted chair by the bookshelf! It'd work perfectly.
She looked out the window again. Cat was just scampering beyond the next bedroom window that jutted out of the roof and out of sight. She jumped to try and get a better look at where he was going but only succeeded in knocking her forehead against the glass.
"Ow," she clenched her teeth and pressed her palm against her head.
When her head had finally stopped hurting, she walked over to the chair and put a hand on each arm rest and pulled with all her might. She grunted a little. This chair was pretty heavy and it made a horrible scraping sound as it moved over the wooden floor. Goldie was pretty sure it was fighting back, because every time she pulled it a little farther, it got heavier. And, every time it made that scraping noise, it sounded more like the chair was saying, "Noooo," in a deep, grating voice.
"Come on, chair," Goldie said, stopping to pat the chair on its quilted seat. "I'm going on an adventure. Don't you want to help me?"
The chair didn't say anything. "I am not going to get hurt or anything. I just wanted to see out the window and find Cat." Goldie studied the chair a little closer. The quilt blocks on the chair's upholstery were shaped like flowers. Roses, she thought, but possibly tulips. The fabric colors were black and white, but the stitching changed colors, like one of those pretty lights people like to put in their garden's. She noticed shapes on the seat of the chair as she followed the stitching along its path. First a cat, then a cute little house with a smoking chimney. After that a little girl holding a flower, then what looked like a duck. After that, the shapes repeated, each in a different color than the time before. At first she only noticed the little shapes but then as she continued to follow them along, she noticed that on the back of the chair there was a gigantic sized house with a smoking chimney and on the seat of the chair, the biggest shape was the cat.
"Now, you are a really cute chair! I wish I had a chair like you," she said, stroking the top on the backrest. "Ah, well. Come on, let's go to the window together." After that, Chair was nice and stopped trying to go in reverse while Goldie pulled her along. The chair had stopped groaning quite as much and protested only slightly. It was a chair, after all. It needed to stand up for its rights because no one else ever seemed to. No one cares about the chairs in need. No one cares if the chairs want to be sat on. It was a hard life being a chair.
Goldie finally made it all the way to the window and after she'd place it just so, with its armrests facing the wall, she climbed up onto the seat and looked out the window to where she'd last seen Cat.
"Where are you, you darn cat?" she whispered as she knocked her knuckles against the glass, hoping he'd hear the noise and come to investigate. She'd be able to pull him into the window and maybe they could play princesses or something. Whatever Cat wanted to do would be fine.
When he didn't come, she pulled the window lock to one side and pushed against the window glass. As hard as she tried, she couldn't separate the window from the sill. It wouldn't budge a single inch. She studied the window. Maybe I locked it, she thought, so she switched the lock back the other direction and tried to push the window up again. Still nothing.
She examined the sill, only to find that the window had been nailed shut and sealed with paint. She left the chair at the window and ran to her suitcase, which was lying open in the corner by the little wooden dresser. She pulled out her pony t-shirt and a pair of jeans that Mom had packed for play. She discarded her nightgown onto the floor and quickly tossed on her clothes. She put on her tennis shoes without socks hoping that Mom wouldn't notice. She almost left the room but had a quick thought. She went to the quilted chair and patted its seat. "Thanks, chair," she whispered. And, away she went, down the stairs and through the kitchen out the back. She leapt down the porch stairs and into the yard, flipping around and walking backwards until she could see that whole side of the roof. She put a hand up to shade her eyes while she searched for the cat.
There were three gable windows facing the back yard. Goldie was pretty sure that the one farthest to the right was her bedroom. The one beside it was the empty bedroom. But, she'd been in there before the funeral and there was only one window in the room, so what room did the third window belong to?
She leapt as high as she could into the air when she saw the little gray cat she called "Cat" sunning himself on the roof of the third gable window.
"Cat!" she called up at him. His ears perked up at her voice, but he didn't lift his head. "Cat! Come down here and play with me, please! I can't find a way up to you."
Cat stood to his feet, arched his back and stretched his little feet out in front of him. His ears mashed against his head as he stretched out nice and long. Then, he turned around and lay down with his back to Goldie.
Goldie stomped her foot. "Are you serious? Pay attention to me! Come down here right now."
When cat didn't even bother to look at her, Goldie jumped up and down in a little frustrated circle. She growled as scarily as she could at Cat, but he didn't budge. "Fine!" she shouted. "I'm going to come to you!" Maybe she shouldn't treat him like that, but he wasn't being very nice either. If people are going to be friends, both parties have to work at it. Cats are people, too.
She bounded back up the porch stairs. She'd noticed her mom in the kitchen window as she climbed them, so she stopped short of the kitchen door.
She slowly reached toward the handle. Maybe Mom wouldn't catch her if she turned the knob slow enough. She turned the knob. A quarter of a turn every fifty seconds was slow enough, she thought. Slowly turning, slowly turning. She closed her eyes and suddenly she was a person cursed to be a statue made from stone. She could only move once for one second every minute. Just once. What would she do? Obviously, turn the door handle, for the next few minutes. What would she do in five minutes? She wasn't sure yet. Slowly turning. After the fouth turn, she felt the door give a little as she leaned against it. She paused for another minute - in real clock time, this minute was more like fifteen seconds, but to Goldie, it was a definite minute. A long one at that. When her next second to move came around, she pushed the door wide. She paused for the next minute with her palm out in the air still in the position where it had touched the door.
"Goldie," Mom's voice floated through the air and into her marble statue ears. "What are you doing?"
Mom's voice was a little bit garbled. Apparently her statue ears didn't work as well as her human ears. She'd have to answer mom when her time to move came around again.
Three, two, one, she counted in her head.
"Nothing," she said in a quick stacatto yelp. She looked at her mom and stuck out her hands in front of her, palms upward and she froze for her next minute of statueness.
"You need to eat some breakfast." Mom held a banana and a granola bar out to her. Apparently, this morning was a day she was able to eat and run. So far every breakfast at this house had been one where she'd had to sit down at a table and eat with other people.
Three, two...
"Goldie," Mom was using her dangerous voice, again.
One.
Goldie reached up and grabbed the food from her mom before she froze again. Mom stared at her for a second before she sighed and shook her head as she turned and walked back to the kitchen counter. She appeared to be helping Aunt Wilma make cookies. They smelled spicy. Aunt Wilma was Auntie Owl's sister. Auntie Till. Auntie Till's sister. She didn't have purple claws, though. It was nice. When she hugged Goldie, Goldie didn't feel like she was going to rip her face off. Other than that one very striking feature, the two old ladies looked exactly the same. Maybe they were twins. She didn't know.
Her next move was to reach the kitchen door in one second, so when her next turn came around, she took off at lightning speed and made it almost halfway up the steps to her room before the second was over. It was practically like she was a super hero. Of course, she knew that as soon as she made it to the top of the steps, the spell would be broken and she would stop being a cursed statue. She just had to get to the top. She figured on her next chance to move, she'd probably make it. She'd gotten extremely far the last time. But this second, when she took her first lightning speed bound, she tripped on the stair and had to freeze just short of the top stair, lying face down on the carpeted steps, still in "trip" position. The next minute seemed like hours as she lay there with her eyes closed.
Finally, she crawled up the last step and lay down again on the dusty carpet as the curse that had captured her body and turned her into a statue began to release her. The stone surrounding her body cracked and fell off, turning to dust in the carpet. She stood up and brushed her clothes off. The curse was lifted. She was human again. She stretched out her legs and her arms, kind of like Cat did, except she couldn't seem to get her ears to move. Cat was lucky being able to move his ears like he did. She executed a few well-praticed twirls because she remembered that, before she was turned into a stutue, she was a ballet dancer.
She bounced on one foot into her bedroom with her arms arched over her head. She stopped by the quilted chair. She stepped up onto it and leaned her head as close to the glass as she could, turning so that she could see the far left gable window. It looked like Cat was still up there, although, all she could see was the top of his fuzzy back, so it was possible that it was also the head of a fuzzy gray monster waiting for her to come up to the window so it could scare her. She didn't think that was the case, though.
She studied the windows for another second and then jumped over the arm of the quilted chair to the floor. She walked out of her bedroom door and turned to the right. She counted the doors in the hall. It wasn't hard, it was only hers and the one right next door to hers. The hallway hit a dead end after the second door. There was a watercolor painting of a ship on a stormy ocean lit up by a single focused light. The wall behind the ship picture was red. A really dark, angry red.
She skipped down to the next bedroom door. She'd been in there before and could tell that no one was living there, but, just in case, she tapped on the door and listened. When no one answered, she turned the knob and swung the door inward. The drapes in this room were thick and dark so the sun didn't brighten the room like in Godlie's room with the nice white drapes.
She flipped the light switch up, but as soon as the bulb lit, she heard a quiet pop and the light went back out. Well, nuts, she thought. She slowly tiptoed into the room, anyway. It wasn't so dark that she couldn't see and the sun kind of peeked through the drapes here and there. The room seemed smoky, but Goldie was pretty sure it was just dust because it didn't smell like smoke. Or maybe it was indoor fog. Was that possible?
She ventured further into the room until she was standing almost directly against the drapes. She backed up against the drapes and looked around the room. The window was directly across from the door. She stood very still and turned her head to the left. There was a nightstand and a bed, a lot like in her room. She turned her head to the right. Instead of an empty corner, like in her room, here, there was a large bookshelf with two cabinet doors at the base of it. She walked up to the bookshelf to read the titles of the books. Encyclopedia Britannica. That's what they were all called, all of them with different letters and numbers after the titles.
Weird.
She knelt down on the dusty carpet to look at the cabinet under all of the shelves. On the face of the cabinet doors there was a scene carved. Little gnomes or elf people were dancing in circles, holding hands, in the middle of the forest. There were little fawns peeking out of the forest and one giant black bear just stepping out from behind a large bush. Hopefully he's a nice bear, Goldie thought. She had the feeling he wasn't, but she could still hope. Maybe its teeth were showing because it was smiling. A very friendly bear, maybe. She sighed. She felt kind of bad for the gnome family being all happy in the middle of the forest while the bear stalked them from behind. Then she noticed something else. There was light coming through the cabinet doors.
The carpet puffed more dust up into the air when she leaned back and plopped down onto her butt. She sat there, cross-legged with her hands in her lap, staring at the light coming from behind those two wooden panels. She thought maybe it could be a fairy trapped in the cabinet. It could be Tinkerbell. She was kind of an angry fairy, sometimes, but nice, too. If Goldie let her out, would she help her get to Neverland? She wasn't sure... She might not even stop to thank her. But, maybe this wasn't a fairy. It could be Narnia. Narnia could be a neat place, but she had read the stories and she knew that there were witches in Narnia. Witches were pretty scary. Goldie wasn't sure what she'd do if she met one. She wouldn't want to be turned to stone again. Witches in Narnia could do that. She'd been a statue for too long already today. It had worn her out. But what if all it was was the snowy world where the lamp post rested? Goldie really like snow. A lot.
Goldie didn't know what to do, so she stood up and reached to the highest shelf she could and grabbed one of the Encyclopedia Britannicas and pulled it down. It was heavier than she expected and she lost hold of it. It's pages crackled when it hit the floor and, once again, a poof of dust rose up from the carpet. She knelt down beside the book and turned it over. The page it opened to was an article about fairy rings. A real-life mystical fairy ring made out of mushrooms. She knew what fairy rings were about. If you stepped in one, you'd be captured forever by fairies. She read the entire article and the next few involving fairies after it, then closed the book again and left it on the floor.
She got up onto her knees again and pondered what she might find if she opened the cabinet doors.
Aw, heck. She might as well just try it. What in the world could be bad enough that opening a couple of cabinet doors would cause the end of the world? Probably nothing. Although, she guessed it could be something terrible, like Pandora's box. No. No, it couldn't really be like that, because if there was a Pandora's Box nearby, you'd think there would be a big warning sign that say, "HEY. DON'T OPEN THE CUPBOARD. YOU'LL LET A BUNCH OF BAD STUFF OUT INTO THE WORLD." She looked around again just to be sure. Yep, just as she thought, no big warning signs anywhere in the room. This was definitely not Pandora's Box.
She put each of her hands on the cupboard handles and slowly pulled outward. She could feel the light from inside lighting up her face and her chest as she opened the cabinet wider and wider. At first, the only thing she could make out was the light. Bright white light. But, as she stared into the cupboard, shapes became visible inside of the light. The cupboard itself was empty. The back of it had been cut out to form a sort of passageway into another room in the house. That room was just another bedroom, only even dirtier than this one. The curtains were white, though, just like the ones in Goldie's bedroom.
Goldie placed her palms on the inside of the cupboard and debated crawling through. She moved her weight from her knees to her palms a few times, trying to work up the courage to shoot herself through the small hole. She was scared the cupboard doors might close and she'd be lost forever. She still wasn't sure that this wasn't a passageway into the past and she was going to get stuck in some part of time before even her mom had been born. She wouldn't like to be stuck that far away from home. She was too young to be on her own just traipsing around in the past like she owned the place. No, if she was stuck in the past, she'd probably end up a beggar child on the streets of London. Even though she lived in the United States, she was sure that'd be a thing that would happen if she was left on her own. Then again, it's never been proven that time travel is possible, so even though in Doctor Who this passage would probably lead her through a tear in time, it wasn't necessarily something that would happen in this very room. She was not in a Sci-Fi movie.
She'd worked her courage to the bone and almost shut the cabinet doors. She'd be in Aunt Wilma's house a couple more days and she'd be able to investigate further any time she wanted to, but then she heard footsteps coming down the hall and panic set in. She quickly leapt into the cupboard and pulled the doors shut behind her with the convenient inside handles. She breathed as quietly as possible, but could barely hear the footsteps until they were right up next to the cupboard. She heard a groan as whoever it was, she assumed Aunt Wilma, but maybe a monster, bent over to pick up the Encyclopedia Britannica she had left on the floor and deposit it back onto the book shelf. They were so close she was sure that they would hear her breathing or at least hear her heart beating. It was like a drum in her ears. After about an hour in Goldie-time, the person left the bedroom, clicking the door shut behind them. Goldie let out her breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding until now and pried her white knuckles off of the inside handles. She rubbed her hands together and flexed her jaw which had frozen shut out of sheer anxiety. Well, since she was here, she might as well check out the place while she was at it. She crawled backward into the room, slithering out of the tight cabinet area.
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