H
Hansagan
As above....how is it flowing, does it make you want to read more, etc...Cheers in advance
CHAPTER ONE
Christopher Spud was only eight years old when he decided that he was going to stop having an imagination. It hadn’t been a decision made lightly, but four years later, on the cusp of his teenage years, he felt that it had been a good one, the past four years having proven to him the trouble that imaginations could cause.
Prior to his momentous decision, Chris had been just like any other boy, although possibly a little more bookish than most. He had a thirst for knowledge that was matched only by his capacity for memorizing minutiae and trivia, which he loved to display while watching quiz shows with his parents in the evenings. He had never excelled at sports at school, preferring the cool darkness of the computer lab or the seemingly boundless knowledge contained in the library. Life had been simple then, before the day his parents had come into his room while he was in the middle of building a scale model of a German AV7 tank ( First German tank to be used in battle, April 24th, 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux)
“Chris, we’ve got some news” his father had said.
“Good news” his mother had added quickly. A little too quickly, Chris realized in hindsight.
“Sit down son” said his father.
“I am sitting down” replied Chris, frowning slightly.
His mother had elbowed his father in a playful manner, as if sharing some private joke.
“Ah, yes. Well, good, because we have some news”
A wide, almost manic grin had spread across his fathers face. His father used to smile a lot more, back then.
“Oh, I’ll tell him!”
His mother had kneeled down in front of him as he sat at his work desk, completely befuddled. She smiled gently, taking his hand.
“Chris, sweetie…my little bookworm…you’re going to have a little sister!”
Chris had leaned back in his seat, almost reflexively. His elbow dropped onto his desk, landing on a tube of superglue and squirting the contents onto his half finished AV7, jamming up the tracks far more permanently than the mud of any WWI battlefield.
That was the beginning. Things had gone downhill since then.
Six Months, one week and three days later, Keira Graham Spud was born. At first glance, Chris decided that his family surname had never been more appropriate. She had a thick crop of the dark hair that his whole family shared and a pair of wide silvery eyes that stared back up at his own brown ones in an unfocused manner. Occasionally, to Chris’s horrified amazement, one eye would wander independently of the other, as though it wasn’t yet properly attached or she was trying to peer inside her own head. Tiny fingers writhed and clutched at the air like a wizard performing an arcane ritual. Despite his best efforts to find her ‘cute’, ‘adorable’ or ‘precious’, Chris decided that the thing she most closely resembled was some form of root vegetable in a bonnet. She had arrived home early that morning with his exhausted looking Mother and Father, and for the rest of the day relatives that he hadn’t seen for years and in some cases didn’t know existed had dropped in to stare into the bassinet and pronounce her the most perfect baby ever. With a small pang, Chris remembered when people had fussed over him like that. It didn’t seem that long ago.
“Chris!” His father’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.
“Can you get your Auntie Dora a glass of juice?”
Chris nodded and made his way to the kitchen, forcing a smile at Auntie Dora, who was in fact an old neighbour from a street they had lived in years ago. Even he could tell by his parents increasingly weary attempts at small talk that she and her thick Scottish accent had overstayed her welcome, but she seemed oblivious.
Pouring a glass of OJ from the fridge, Chris caught sight of his reflection in the kitchen window. At a cursory glance, he didn’t look any different. His thick mop of dark hair still fell into the serious dark eyes that people constantly told him would drive girls mad when he got older. (Not that he could see the appeal in that, girls seemed generally mad enough already.)He wasn’t any taller, although he was tall for his age. His small chin still displayed a disappointing lack of manly stubble. No, he didn’t look any older, but he certainly felt it. Seven and three quarters old and already replaced.
“Do ye remember Jan? Her wee lass has gotten into University, studying Marine Biology, now thar’s a fine thing… Oh, thank you Christopher dear…”
Chris smiled automatically at Auntie Dora and glanced briefly at his mother, concerned. He didn’t know all of the details about having babies, but a few months ago the family had been watching a nature documentary which showed the process in some detail. His mother must have caught his openmouthed look of shock, because she had quickly changed the channel. He had brought it up later with his father who had answered his concerns briefly and with only the hint of a smile playing around his lips.
“Your mothers not a giraffe son” He had said “The baby won’t need to survive a two meter drop”
Chris knew his mother wasn’t a giraffe, but looking at her drawn and exhausted face now, he knew that however a baby was born, it was hard work, and both his parents were too polite to state the obvious.
“Auntie Dora” He said quickly, before his brain talked him out of it. Truth be told, he had taken it totally by surprise, and it had very little say in the matter.
“Mum and dad are really tired now, I think they need to sleep”
I can’t believe you actually said that! Yelled Chris’s brain. We’re both in trouble now!
Auntie Dora blinked at him. His parents stared, surprised but(hopefully) not angry.
“Of course they are dear” said Auntie Dora. “ nae, yer right laddie, I should be off, it’s just been bonnie to catch up..”
“No, its been fun, but…we are a bit tired”
“Of course!”
“Come around anytime Dora, it’s great to see you”
“And if you ever need a babysitter…”
“We know who to call.”
As Auntie Dora was politely but firmly escorted to the door, she paused briefly to regard Chris thoughtfully.
“Yer a good boy Christopher” She said “Very responsible.”
Chris smiled. So this was growing up. No longer cute and fussed over, but responsible and respected. He could live with that.
The coming weeks, however, were not easy. Keira was a newborn baby, and Christopher soon learnt that that equated to noise. Ongoing noise, at all hours of the day and night, with no respect for homework or worse, favourite TV shows. And, because of his new responsible and respected status, he was expected to help out to a disturbing degree. He did dishes, vacuumed the floor and kept his room scrupulously tidy, although he drew the line at changing nappies. In spite of his help, his parents had a constantly exhausted look about them, stumbling through the in a bleary eyes haze, muttering to each other things like ‘Why did we do this again?’ and ‘I don’t remember it being this hard’.
I must have been a very easy baby, Christopher thought. No-one would be silly enough to go through this twice.
Eventually life took on a semblance of normality as a routine established itself. Unfortunately, that routine still rotated almost entirely around the baby who, it had to be said, didn’t show a lot of appreciation. She had two expressions, crying and confused. She smelt of milk and talcum powder. She couldn’t move apart from uncoordinated wriggling, couldn’t speak apart from a high pitched screaming that sounded like a sheep that had swallowed a helium balloon, and certainly couldn’t help Christopher with a jigsaw or play a board game. In that respect, she had something in common with his parents. They had no time to play with him either.
He was staring into her cot one evening, once again trying to fathom the appeal, when he got his first indication that all might not be normal with his baby sister. She was oddly quiet for a change, seemingly attempting to see something just beyond her range of vision. As he watched, her eyes scrunched up, then widened, and the slightest hint of a smile seemed to flash across her face.
Surely babies don’t smile this early? He thought. Idly, he followed her gaze upwards.
And gasped! Floating in the air, just below the level of the ceiling, were three radiant globes, gently glowing with a warm, golden light. As he watched, they circled slowly around the single electric light in the center of the ceiling, as though performing a dance.
Christopher blinked, glanced quickly down at Keira. She was still focused on the globes, following their movement. Looking back up, Christopher noticed that the globes weren’t perfectly round. They were in fact changing shape as he watched, undulating gently as though they were floating in a lava lamp. They also seemed oddly unfocused and indistinct around the edges, like he was looking at them out of the corner of his eyes, even though his gaze was firmly locked on them. And they were floating with absolutely no visible means of support.
Christopher finally forced a sound past the catch in his throat.
“Muuuum! Mum!”
The Globes vanished. Keira began to cry.
His mother burst into the room, her eyes wide with panic.
“What? What is it?”
Her eyes quickly scanned from Christopher to Keira, narrowing slightly in confusion as she took in the apparently normal scene.
“What?” She asked again, as Christopher struggled for an answer. What indeed? How to best describe what he had seen?
“There were…the ceiling was glowing..like really big fireflies”
His mother leaned against the doorframe.
“Fireflies” It was not a question. Christopher felt his certainty falter under her tired but even gaze.
“Or…maybe…ghosts…”
It sounded lame even as it was leaving his mouth. His mother rubbed a hand across her face, and lifted the crying baby out of her cot.
“Chris…please don’t set the baby off for no reason. We were just enjoying a nice quiet moment”
With that she left the room, gently clucking and cooing to calm down the unhappy potato in her arms. Christopher glanced back up at the now normal ceiling.
He had seen something. He had!
More weeks passed, and the odd apparitions didn’t return, despite Christopher’s constant scrutiny of the bedroom ceiling. He began to think that maybe he had looked up too quickly that night, that the bright lights were all in his head. Or reflections from outside. Or ball lightning. Over time, his anxiety faded.
And was replaced by anxiety for his mother.
Even to his eight year old mind, she seemed a little ‘too’ tired. His father seemed to have bounced back fairly well and was going for morning runs again, but his mother…she spent a lot of time in bed. She looked pale and didn’t smile much anymore. And, in the occasional unguarded moment when she didn’t think he was watching, she looked worried. No, more than worried. She looked scared. His concerns were confirmed when his parents returned from the hospital, supposedly for a ‘checkup’.
His father had called him into the lounge, where he sat on the couch with his arm around Christopher’s mother. Christopher sat down on the carpet in front of them, his face a blank mask. But inside, his stomach was churning. His mother looked white, and her eyes were staring dully at nothing in particular. She was leaning against his father as though she didn’t have the strength to hold herself up. His father cleared his throat briefly and then spoke in a shaky voice.
“Chris…you’ve been a great help over the last few weeks. Your mother and I, well… we’re really proud of how you’ve stepped up son.”
Christopher nodded. The words registered, and at any other time he would have been overjoyed to hear them, but he knew that’s not what he was here for. He waited for his father to get to the point.
“Your mother…she’s not well at the moment. So we’re going to have to ask you to help out for a little bit longer while she’s in and out of hospital”
Christopher nodded.
“Thank you Chris…don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.”
His mother jerked her head up quickly to look at his father, the first time she had moved since he’d sat down. Some unspoken communication passed between them, and she turned to Christopher, smiling weakly.
“I love you sweetie…you’re such a good boy”
Christopher nodded again, while unasked questions screamed in his head. What’s wrong with you? Why do you need to go to hospital? Are you going to die?
But he didn’t ask any of these. He just got up quietly and went to sit in his room, surrounded by his incomplete models.
Over the following weeks, Christopher found himself retreating more and more into his imagination. As his mother grew weaker, he imagined himself as a great doctor, discovering the miracle cure for whatever was wrong with her. He imagined that he found a magical lamp, and the genie inside gave him three wishes (Full health for his mother, riches for the family and a volume control for the baby). He imagined that aliens with advanced medical technology came down from space and made his mother better, back to how she was before Keira was born. But none of these helped in reality. And then one day, one awful, rainy day…she went away. And Christopher imagined he had a miraculous healing power in his hands, that all he had to do was touch his mother and she would come back, and everything would be normal again.
But as he took her hand while she lay in her bed, and felt how awfully cold it was, heard his father softly weeping next to him, and heard the suddenly hated baby, the ungrateful, demanding baby who had taken his mother away crying in the next room, reality threw cold water in his face.
And so he decided not to imagine anymore.
CHAPTER TWO
“Chris! Can you go and get your sister for dinner?”
Christopher shuddered inwardly. Of the many daily chores he had to do in this house that had become more of a prison, this was surely his last favourite. Reluctantly pulling himself away from his current model, (A Hawker Harrier Jump jet, first operational vertical takeoff fighter aircraft) Christopher stepped out of his darkened room into the corridor, carefully locking the door behind him. Locks were very important nowadays. No-one wanted a repeat of the day that Keira got into his room and got her hands on his models. Actually, she didn’t even need her hands…
It was small consolation to know that he hadn’t been mistaken four years ago when he saw the floating globes in his sister’s room. He knew now that that was the first manifestation of what his father like to call ‘Keira’s little parlour tricks’. They had become more frequent as she gotten older, and had moved on from indistinct floating objects. The ‘parlour tricks’ had gotten bigger…much, much bigger.
Christopher walked down the hallway, paying no attention to his surroundings. Truth be told, he could have walked though the gloomy house blindfolded, since it had changed very little in the past four years. After he had become a sudden widower their father had very little time, energy or inclination to engage in home renovations, and so the house remained trapped in a sort of time bubble, a snapshot of sorrow. The only major changes were negative ones.
He passed the lounge, wistfully noting as he always did the darker spot of carpet where the television had been. That had gone last year, another sign of Keira’s gradual stranglehold over the house and his life. That, and the large fence that surrounded the house, blocking out any view of the street, the world in general and most of the available sunlight. His home had become a fortress, him and his father playing the part of guards and prisoners. All because of her, and what she could do…
He stopped outside her room, taking a deep breath. What would it be tonight? Setting his jaw with a steely resolve, he pushed the door open.
And stepped into a lush, green wood. Birdsong of all kinds assailed his ears, and sunlight glittered through the tall trees that stretched out as far as he could see into the distance. A gently undulating path of cobblestones wound its way from the doorway, as though inviting him in.
So. The Magical Fairy Forest. He hated this one.
Being very careful to keep the door open behind him, he started down the path, hoping that she hadn’t wandered too far.
“Keira! Keira! Dinnertime!”
No response. He continued walking.
It was only on closer inspection that the true nature of the forest revealed itself. The greens were a little too green. The tree trunks were all the same shade of rich brown. The sky was a perfect flat blue. The sun…yes, the sun was literally a yellow glowing ball in the sky. It even had a ruddy cheeked friendly face on it, which winked back at him as he glanced at it. He looked away scowling. The whole effect was one of walking into a child’s painting, which of course was exactly what was happening.
A couple of small glowing figures flew down from a nearby tree and flitted around his face. They were beautiful little female figures, with delicate gossamer wings, and they waved to him in a friendly manner. He swatted at them irritably, but they dodged his clumsy swipes easily, flying away and giggling like small bells. Really annoying small bells.
Fairies, he thought angrily. One day I’m going to remember to bring the bug spray.
As he wandered through the forest that looked like a Walt Disney fever dream, he marveled again at the sheer scope of his sisters ‘powers’. His rational mind told him that he was still in her room, but the distance that he had already walked should have taken him a respectable distance down the street. Yet he had come across no obstructions, hit no wall. He had no idea how this worked. It made no sense, and on a fundamental level, that really annoyed him. And the longer he had to spend here, the more annoyed he got. So he stomped through the Magical Fairy Forest, ignoring the Faries that clustered around the treetops waving and giggling and the occasional woodland creature that bounded across the path and threatened to trip him up. He stomped and fumed.
“KEIRA!”
Finally he heard the sound of flowing water and headed towards it. Pushing aside a large fern frond he finally caught sight of his young sister.
The forest opened out into a natural clearing , revealing a large lake being fed by a crashing waterfall. Keira was sitting on an outcrop of rock overlooking the water, in the warmth of a sunbeam lancing through the trees. She was facing away from him, throwing pebbles into the water which danced and skipped across the surface no matter how clumsily she threw them. As with the colours of the forest, the water was an unnatural shade of azure blue and rainbow coloured fish could be seen just below the surface. As he watched, one leapt out of the water and squirted water at Keira, making her squeal and giggle, sounding not unlike a fairy herself.
Part of him registered concern, as it always did, at seeing his young sister unsupervised by such a large body of water. Another part knew for a fact that nothing bad could ever happen to her in here. Even if she fell in there would be a mermaid to save her. Or a magical water dragon. Or something equally ridiculous.
He frowned, unreasonably annoyed, and started forward towards her. Before he could get more than two steps, something large, brown and furry leapt out of the undergrowth, landed on the path in front of him and roared loudly. When he had recovered from the suprise, he took in the creature that was blocking his way.
From the neck up, it appeared to be a large male lion, growling and snarling a low threatening rumble in the back of its throat. From the neck down, it’s body extended into a long limbless tube, like a furry snake. It looked like a hideous creature from mythology, but Christopher knew exactly what it was, and he knew he had no reason to be afraid of it.
Keira jumped at the noise and turned, her round face breaking into a wide toothy smile at sight of him.
“Chris’fer!”
She stood and ran along the rock towards him, her long dark hair flying out behind her. She swayed to a halt in front of him, large brown eyes sparkling, and hugged the lion. It purred loudly at her, closing its eyes in an expression of feline bliss.
“Did you see the fish? It squirted me!”
“Yes, I saw it. It’s dinnertime Keira.”
“Ok” She turned and waved at the pond “Bye fishys!”
“Fishes” Muttered Christopher under his breath, unable to help himself.
Then the forest was gone. And the waterfall, the lake and the lion. They were both standing in Keira’s small room, her hugging a tattered old lion headed draft excluder that she had appropriated as her favourite toy. As always, Christopher had no idea of how it had happened. There was never any sensation of travel, nothing faded magically from view. One second they were in a forest, and now they were somewhere else. It was just another of the many things that annoyed him about his sister.
“Ok” he grumbled “Go”
Keira toddled happily out of the room, as Christopher took a last cursory glance around. Everything looked completely normal...bed, dresser table, bookshelf, toy chest. The only slightly unusual thing about the room was the three detailed murals that had been painted on the walls by a loving but desperate father…
…One of a castle courtyard with a King and Queen flanked by soldiers, minstrels and jesters…
…One of a sunny meadow full of horses, overlooking the sea…
…And one of a forest, where all the trees were a little too green, the sky a little too blue and the sun was a glowing yellow ball with a ruddy cheeked smile…
Christopher grimaced, and pulled the door closed.
This, then, was life with Keira. The little girl who could make wishes come true. At first he had been glad when his father realized that she was different in some way, gratified that what he had seen wasn’t a delusion of some sort. But as she grew older, and her understanding of the world grew along with her, the manifestation of her abilities became correspondingly complex. Soft toys would begin to come to life and walk around her room. At night, the ceiling of her room twinkled with starlight as though it was fully open to the sky. And of course none of them would ever forget the day he came home from school to find his model airplanes engaged in an acrobatic show around his room, a tiny but enthusiastic audience of toy soldiers cheering them on. Since then, Keira had been fully banned from setting foot in his domain. But it wasn’t until her third birthday that Christopher and his father had realized just how powerful and far ranging his sister’s powers really were.
They had been sitting in the lounge, Christopher doing his homework and his father reading the newspaper, while Keira sat crosslegged watching the television as it played in the background. The news was on, and the newsreader was reading an item about a war or revolution in some country or other. Swarthy looking men were shouting and waving guns. Unhappy refugees were shown fleeing towns as soldiers fired at each other across bullet pocked streets.
His father had realized what was playing, and noticed that Keira was paying very close attention to the disturbing images.
“Chris” he had said “Change the channel please”
Christopher changed the channel to some American comedy, and there was no protest from his sister. She merely looked…thoughtful. And that seemed to be that.
The next day, however, there was a new lead article on the news.
Every gun on the planet had overnight turned into a squirt gun. Every pistol, every rifle, every machine gun did nothing more to the enemy than make them annoyingly damp. Even grenades exploded like water balloons.
Christopher’s father had watched the news with a very grave expression. The following day, the TV was gone.
That had been bad enough, but the problem had got worse a few days later on a trip to the supermarket, when a shopping trolly had turned into a rocket ship while Keira was sitting in it. Then, while stuck in traffic on the way home, the car sprouted large feathered wings and flew away above the gridlock. Luckily none of the shocked onlookers managed to get the licence plate, and Christopher’s father had managed to convince Keira to land the car in a quiet cul-de-sac a few blocks from their house. But that was the last time she had been out of the house.
The problem with Keira’s abilities, they had discovered, was that they were as random and unpredictable as only the mind of a three year old could be. They were never malicious or dangerous, and they would pop into being without warning and vanish on a whim, or when her attention was diverted by something shiny, which was especially disconcerting when they had been flying hundreds of meters in the air held up only by the fickle attention span of a toddler. And so Christopher’s father had deemed it too dangerous for her to go out in public until she gained greater control over her abilities. Even the view out the window had been deemed out of bounds after a shocked neighbour’s lawnmower had sprouted a large set of chattering teeth as Keira gazed idly on. Christopher remembered sadly the day his father had erected the large fence right around their property, which, combined with the lack of television and newspapers, effectively cut them off from the outside world. To make up for her enforced isolation, Christopher’s father had painted the murals in Keira’s room, allowing her the illusion of freedom, if nothing else.
That had been over a year ago. Now four years old, Keira spent most of her time in her room, residing in one of the fantasy landscapes that her father had painted for her. She came out only for mealtimes and tuition from their exhausted father who worked from home as a telemarketer. She seemed happy and healthy, but numerous questions constantly assailed Christopher’s logical mind. For example, was she getting enough exercise? He had walked long distances with her through her various landscapes, but had never left her room. Were they really walking, or just walking in their heads? And was she getting enough sunshine, as in ‘real’ sunshine? Did it count when it had a face on it?
Christopher poked absently at his dinner, forcing himself to ignore what was happening on his sister’s plate. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Dad! Keira’s sausages are dancing with each other!”
His father looked up from his meal with a weary expression. Keira grinned back at him as a couple of capering cheerios pirouetted around her plate in time to unheard music.
“Keira, you know the rules”
Keira sighed, with the smallest of eye rolls “No imagining at the dinner table”
With a final flourish and a bow, the sausages fell backwards onto her plate, going back to being unassuming tubes of processed meat. Christopher felt a sudden loss of appetite.
“Chris…”
Christopher looked up, concerned at the unusual tone in his fathers voice. He sounded hesitant, almost…apologetic?
“Chris, I need you to mind Keira for a few hours tonight. I’m going out to meet an old friend who’s in town.”
“Dad! You know what she’s like, she always plays up with me…!”
“Its nothing you can’t handle mate…Please Chris, you know I don’t go out very often”
Looking at his fathers drawn, tired face, Christopher felt instantly remorseful. He was well aware of how hard his father had worked to provide for the family, how much he had sacrificed since their mother had died. Certainly, one evening was not too much to ask.
“Sure Dad. No problem.”
And so, after a promise to be home no later than 10pm, their father walked out the door, and Christopher was left alone to babysit his little sister who could bend the fabric of space and time to her will. With the merest hint of a sigh, he flumped onto the couch to read a book that he needed to write a report on, while Keira sat on the floor, playing with her dolls.
That was good. The dolls were safe. Sure, they came to life sometimes, wandered around and chatted to each other about boys and hairdos, but at least they were small.
Their father had decreed that evenings should be spent in the living room, officially known as ‘Family Time’. Christopher knew, however, that ‘Family Time’ in Keira’s case doubled as ‘Real World Time’, to stop her from spending too much of her small life in a fantasy realm. And so, part of his duty while babysitting was to keep her out of her room until bedtime.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keira put down her dolls and sit up, looking thoughtful. That was always an early indicator of trouble. Standing, she headed to the toychest in the corner of the room. Christopher tracked her movement like he might watch an unexploded bomb roll across the floor. There were any number of items in that chest that could make his evening highly unpleasant.
She opened the chest and, after a moment of rummaging, pulled out her crayons and a large sheet of construction paper. Christopher unconsciously gripped the sides of his book harder. Last time she had done a drawing, the vaguely rabbit shaped creature that had leapt off the page had taken ages to catch, left greasy pawprints all over the carpet and a suspicious looking pile of rainbow coloured waxy pellets on the kitchen floor.
“Keira..?”
“Yes Chris’fer?”
“No rabbits, right?”
“OK”
There was a brief silence. Christopher read the same sentence in his book about five times.
“In fact, no animals at all, ok?”
“Ok”
“Or robots, dinosaurs, dragons or anything else that could conceivably destroy the house, ok?”
“Ok”
Something about her easy too-easy compliance bothered him, but he felt he’d covered his bases fairly well. He went back to his book.
Keira began scribbling industriously. Christopher glanced over, but couldn’t quite make out the shape of what she was drawing. Every so often, she glanced over him, smiling.
He didn’t like that smile. Not one bit.
Eventually, she seemed to finish her drawing. Attention fully on her now, Christopher watched intently as she picked the large sheet up and carried it over to the pinboard on the living room wall where her other, thankfully inanimate drawings were hung. She pinned it to the board, and it was so large it hung right down to the floor. As she stepped back to admire her work, Christopher finally got a good look at it.
It was a drawing of a small doorway. Small, but just large enough for a child to fit through…
“Keira…” He began warningly. With a mischievous grin, she turned and pulled on the crayon handle of the door. It swung open easily, revealing a dark passageway beyond.
“Keira, don’t you dare!”
Before he could stop her, she dove into the passageway, pulling the door shut behind her. Christopher leapt forward and tried to pull on the handle, but his fingers hit nothing but paper. Angrily, he pulled the drawing off the pinboard. Nothing but bare wall behind.
Yes, this was life with Keira. It was like living in a cartoon.
In a barely controlled fury of frustration, Christopher flung open the door to his sisters room and stormed inside. Inside it was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the scene. He was standing in a clifftop paddock, overlooking a misty ocean. An abnormally large moon hung overhead, its reflection on the sea stretching in a dappled triangle all the way to the horizon.
Another unusual feature of Keira’s abilities, Christopher realized. The time in her room always matched the time outside, either consciously or unconsciously. It was nighttime outside, so it was nighttime in here, even though the murals on the wall were painted in full sun. Christopher scanned the sea briefly, noting with reluctant amazement the sight of a large sailing ship, its white sails caught in a moonbeam as it headed for the distant horizon. Where was it going? What lay over the horizon of a child’s imagination? How far did his sisters powers range?
Shaking his head, his rage largely defused, he spotted his sister sitting near the cliff edge, surrounded by horses. Running various rebukes through his head, he walked through the lush grass towards her. Disturbed fireflies launched themselves into the air on his every step then settled again behind him, a comet like tail of light stretching out behind him as he crossed the field. As he got closer, he noticed that the Horses around Keira were sitting in a very un-horselike manner. As he watched, one scratched it’s ears with it’s hind hoof.
It was to be expected, he supposed. Keira had never actually seen a real horse, but she had seen plenty of dogs.
“Keira. You know you’re not supposed to be in here at night”
Keira didn’t turn around. She continued idly stroking the Lion-snake that purred contentedly in her lap.
“I’m sorry. I got bored”
“Well, you’re going to have to come out. Dad left me in charge, so that means…”
“Can you tell me about Mum?”
Christopher grimaced. This came up more and more just lately, and it wasn’t a subject he enjoyed talking about.
“Why don’t you ask Dad when he gets home?”
“It makes dad unhappy. But he pretends not to be”
“What if it makes ‘me’ unhappy?”
Keira finally turned to face him, her large dark eyes earnest and pleading.
“Please Chris’fer?”
Christopher stood resolute for a moment, with what he hoped was a stern expression.
“Please?”
Even the horses turned to look at him expectantly. One barked impatiently.
“Oh, alright. Then we go back to the lounge, right?”
“Right”
Christopher settled himself into the long grass next to his sister. To be fair, he could see why she would want to spend all her time in here. The air was warm but not stifling, the smell of the ocean refreshing. Crickets sounded around them, and fireflies continued to flash on and off around the field, as though reflecting the stars that twinkled overhead in random patterns, not matching any of the constellations he had studied. It was intensely relaxing, and he felt much of his own inner tension drift away.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Christopher smiled in spite of himself.
“I don’t think we have that much time before dad gets back. Pick one thing Keira.”
“Ok, ummmmmm…” She sucked on her fingers thoughtfully, a leftover habit from her baby years. The Lionsnake gazed up at her adoringly.
“How did Mum and Dad meet?”
Christopher breathed an internal sigh of relief. This was an easy one.
“Well, I wasn’t there at the time of course, but Dad told me when I was a bit older than you. Apparently he was on the way to a blind date when he saw mums car broken down on the side of the road. She was having to change a tire in the rain. He helped her, and it took longer than they expected, so he missed his date. To make up for it, she asked him out, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“The rest is what?”
“History.”
“His story? What about Mum’s story?”
“No, History…it means…things that happened in the past.”
“Oooohh” She nodded, turning back to face the sea. They sat in silence for a while, the song of the crickets and the gentle crashing of waves on the beach far below the only sounds.
Keira twirled her fingers in Lionsnakes fur, making little circular patterns.
“I wish I missed her”
It was the kind of completely honest, candid statement that only a child could make. But it sent a logjam of different emotions and feelings through Christopher in a confusing rush. Finally, one emotion elbowed and forced its way past all the others to the forefront. That old standby, Anger.
He stood up quickly.
“You’ve had your one question. Let’s go!”
“Why are you angry?”
“I said lets GO!”
Keira stood sulkily. The landscape vanished, and they were back in her darkened room. Her dark eyes, now fierce, looked up at him under glowering brows that matched his own.
“Why are you always angry!?”
Then she stormed past him to the living room, leaving him alone in the dark.
As promised, their father was back before 10pm. He returned to find two unhappy looking children sitting in the living room not speaking to each other, but he didn’t ask any questions. He sent them each off to bed with a kiss for Keira and a manly shoulder squeeze for Chris and then fell asleep himself wondering when things were going to get better.
But his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Next door, an old woman in a snug dressing gown sat next to her telephone and fretted, nervously stroking the cat on her lap.
It was the last straw, she told herself. The absolute last straw.
She hadn’t seen that beautiful daughter of his in over a year. Not since he had put up that awful fence. The boy came in and out, and the Father…well, it seemed he felt it appropriate to stay out all hours of the night. She knew the girl was still there, but she never left the house. Never.
And you heard so many awful stories, and then read about the people who could have done something, but didn’t….
Setting her jaw, she told herself that this was the right thing to do. If he wasn’t doing anything wrong, then he had nothing to worry about.
Picking up the phone, she began to dial.
CHAPTER ONE
Christopher Spud was only eight years old when he decided that he was going to stop having an imagination. It hadn’t been a decision made lightly, but four years later, on the cusp of his teenage years, he felt that it had been a good one, the past four years having proven to him the trouble that imaginations could cause.
Prior to his momentous decision, Chris had been just like any other boy, although possibly a little more bookish than most. He had a thirst for knowledge that was matched only by his capacity for memorizing minutiae and trivia, which he loved to display while watching quiz shows with his parents in the evenings. He had never excelled at sports at school, preferring the cool darkness of the computer lab or the seemingly boundless knowledge contained in the library. Life had been simple then, before the day his parents had come into his room while he was in the middle of building a scale model of a German AV7 tank ( First German tank to be used in battle, April 24th, 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux)
“Chris, we’ve got some news” his father had said.
“Good news” his mother had added quickly. A little too quickly, Chris realized in hindsight.
“Sit down son” said his father.
“I am sitting down” replied Chris, frowning slightly.
His mother had elbowed his father in a playful manner, as if sharing some private joke.
“Ah, yes. Well, good, because we have some news”
A wide, almost manic grin had spread across his fathers face. His father used to smile a lot more, back then.
“Oh, I’ll tell him!”
His mother had kneeled down in front of him as he sat at his work desk, completely befuddled. She smiled gently, taking his hand.
“Chris, sweetie…my little bookworm…you’re going to have a little sister!”
Chris had leaned back in his seat, almost reflexively. His elbow dropped onto his desk, landing on a tube of superglue and squirting the contents onto his half finished AV7, jamming up the tracks far more permanently than the mud of any WWI battlefield.
That was the beginning. Things had gone downhill since then.
Six Months, one week and three days later, Keira Graham Spud was born. At first glance, Chris decided that his family surname had never been more appropriate. She had a thick crop of the dark hair that his whole family shared and a pair of wide silvery eyes that stared back up at his own brown ones in an unfocused manner. Occasionally, to Chris’s horrified amazement, one eye would wander independently of the other, as though it wasn’t yet properly attached or she was trying to peer inside her own head. Tiny fingers writhed and clutched at the air like a wizard performing an arcane ritual. Despite his best efforts to find her ‘cute’, ‘adorable’ or ‘precious’, Chris decided that the thing she most closely resembled was some form of root vegetable in a bonnet. She had arrived home early that morning with his exhausted looking Mother and Father, and for the rest of the day relatives that he hadn’t seen for years and in some cases didn’t know existed had dropped in to stare into the bassinet and pronounce her the most perfect baby ever. With a small pang, Chris remembered when people had fussed over him like that. It didn’t seem that long ago.
“Chris!” His father’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.
“Can you get your Auntie Dora a glass of juice?”
Chris nodded and made his way to the kitchen, forcing a smile at Auntie Dora, who was in fact an old neighbour from a street they had lived in years ago. Even he could tell by his parents increasingly weary attempts at small talk that she and her thick Scottish accent had overstayed her welcome, but she seemed oblivious.
Pouring a glass of OJ from the fridge, Chris caught sight of his reflection in the kitchen window. At a cursory glance, he didn’t look any different. His thick mop of dark hair still fell into the serious dark eyes that people constantly told him would drive girls mad when he got older. (Not that he could see the appeal in that, girls seemed generally mad enough already.)He wasn’t any taller, although he was tall for his age. His small chin still displayed a disappointing lack of manly stubble. No, he didn’t look any older, but he certainly felt it. Seven and three quarters old and already replaced.
“Do ye remember Jan? Her wee lass has gotten into University, studying Marine Biology, now thar’s a fine thing… Oh, thank you Christopher dear…”
Chris smiled automatically at Auntie Dora and glanced briefly at his mother, concerned. He didn’t know all of the details about having babies, but a few months ago the family had been watching a nature documentary which showed the process in some detail. His mother must have caught his openmouthed look of shock, because she had quickly changed the channel. He had brought it up later with his father who had answered his concerns briefly and with only the hint of a smile playing around his lips.
“Your mothers not a giraffe son” He had said “The baby won’t need to survive a two meter drop”
Chris knew his mother wasn’t a giraffe, but looking at her drawn and exhausted face now, he knew that however a baby was born, it was hard work, and both his parents were too polite to state the obvious.
“Auntie Dora” He said quickly, before his brain talked him out of it. Truth be told, he had taken it totally by surprise, and it had very little say in the matter.
“Mum and dad are really tired now, I think they need to sleep”
I can’t believe you actually said that! Yelled Chris’s brain. We’re both in trouble now!
Auntie Dora blinked at him. His parents stared, surprised but(hopefully) not angry.
“Of course they are dear” said Auntie Dora. “ nae, yer right laddie, I should be off, it’s just been bonnie to catch up..”
“No, its been fun, but…we are a bit tired”
“Of course!”
“Come around anytime Dora, it’s great to see you”
“And if you ever need a babysitter…”
“We know who to call.”
As Auntie Dora was politely but firmly escorted to the door, she paused briefly to regard Chris thoughtfully.
“Yer a good boy Christopher” She said “Very responsible.”
Chris smiled. So this was growing up. No longer cute and fussed over, but responsible and respected. He could live with that.
The coming weeks, however, were not easy. Keira was a newborn baby, and Christopher soon learnt that that equated to noise. Ongoing noise, at all hours of the day and night, with no respect for homework or worse, favourite TV shows. And, because of his new responsible and respected status, he was expected to help out to a disturbing degree. He did dishes, vacuumed the floor and kept his room scrupulously tidy, although he drew the line at changing nappies. In spite of his help, his parents had a constantly exhausted look about them, stumbling through the in a bleary eyes haze, muttering to each other things like ‘Why did we do this again?’ and ‘I don’t remember it being this hard’.
I must have been a very easy baby, Christopher thought. No-one would be silly enough to go through this twice.
Eventually life took on a semblance of normality as a routine established itself. Unfortunately, that routine still rotated almost entirely around the baby who, it had to be said, didn’t show a lot of appreciation. She had two expressions, crying and confused. She smelt of milk and talcum powder. She couldn’t move apart from uncoordinated wriggling, couldn’t speak apart from a high pitched screaming that sounded like a sheep that had swallowed a helium balloon, and certainly couldn’t help Christopher with a jigsaw or play a board game. In that respect, she had something in common with his parents. They had no time to play with him either.
He was staring into her cot one evening, once again trying to fathom the appeal, when he got his first indication that all might not be normal with his baby sister. She was oddly quiet for a change, seemingly attempting to see something just beyond her range of vision. As he watched, her eyes scrunched up, then widened, and the slightest hint of a smile seemed to flash across her face.
Surely babies don’t smile this early? He thought. Idly, he followed her gaze upwards.
And gasped! Floating in the air, just below the level of the ceiling, were three radiant globes, gently glowing with a warm, golden light. As he watched, they circled slowly around the single electric light in the center of the ceiling, as though performing a dance.
Christopher blinked, glanced quickly down at Keira. She was still focused on the globes, following their movement. Looking back up, Christopher noticed that the globes weren’t perfectly round. They were in fact changing shape as he watched, undulating gently as though they were floating in a lava lamp. They also seemed oddly unfocused and indistinct around the edges, like he was looking at them out of the corner of his eyes, even though his gaze was firmly locked on them. And they were floating with absolutely no visible means of support.
Christopher finally forced a sound past the catch in his throat.
“Muuuum! Mum!”
The Globes vanished. Keira began to cry.
His mother burst into the room, her eyes wide with panic.
“What? What is it?”
Her eyes quickly scanned from Christopher to Keira, narrowing slightly in confusion as she took in the apparently normal scene.
“What?” She asked again, as Christopher struggled for an answer. What indeed? How to best describe what he had seen?
“There were…the ceiling was glowing..like really big fireflies”
His mother leaned against the doorframe.
“Fireflies” It was not a question. Christopher felt his certainty falter under her tired but even gaze.
“Or…maybe…ghosts…”
It sounded lame even as it was leaving his mouth. His mother rubbed a hand across her face, and lifted the crying baby out of her cot.
“Chris…please don’t set the baby off for no reason. We were just enjoying a nice quiet moment”
With that she left the room, gently clucking and cooing to calm down the unhappy potato in her arms. Christopher glanced back up at the now normal ceiling.
He had seen something. He had!
More weeks passed, and the odd apparitions didn’t return, despite Christopher’s constant scrutiny of the bedroom ceiling. He began to think that maybe he had looked up too quickly that night, that the bright lights were all in his head. Or reflections from outside. Or ball lightning. Over time, his anxiety faded.
And was replaced by anxiety for his mother.
Even to his eight year old mind, she seemed a little ‘too’ tired. His father seemed to have bounced back fairly well and was going for morning runs again, but his mother…she spent a lot of time in bed. She looked pale and didn’t smile much anymore. And, in the occasional unguarded moment when she didn’t think he was watching, she looked worried. No, more than worried. She looked scared. His concerns were confirmed when his parents returned from the hospital, supposedly for a ‘checkup’.
His father had called him into the lounge, where he sat on the couch with his arm around Christopher’s mother. Christopher sat down on the carpet in front of them, his face a blank mask. But inside, his stomach was churning. His mother looked white, and her eyes were staring dully at nothing in particular. She was leaning against his father as though she didn’t have the strength to hold herself up. His father cleared his throat briefly and then spoke in a shaky voice.
“Chris…you’ve been a great help over the last few weeks. Your mother and I, well… we’re really proud of how you’ve stepped up son.”
Christopher nodded. The words registered, and at any other time he would have been overjoyed to hear them, but he knew that’s not what he was here for. He waited for his father to get to the point.
“Your mother…she’s not well at the moment. So we’re going to have to ask you to help out for a little bit longer while she’s in and out of hospital”
Christopher nodded.
“Thank you Chris…don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.”
His mother jerked her head up quickly to look at his father, the first time she had moved since he’d sat down. Some unspoken communication passed between them, and she turned to Christopher, smiling weakly.
“I love you sweetie…you’re such a good boy”
Christopher nodded again, while unasked questions screamed in his head. What’s wrong with you? Why do you need to go to hospital? Are you going to die?
But he didn’t ask any of these. He just got up quietly and went to sit in his room, surrounded by his incomplete models.
Over the following weeks, Christopher found himself retreating more and more into his imagination. As his mother grew weaker, he imagined himself as a great doctor, discovering the miracle cure for whatever was wrong with her. He imagined that he found a magical lamp, and the genie inside gave him three wishes (Full health for his mother, riches for the family and a volume control for the baby). He imagined that aliens with advanced medical technology came down from space and made his mother better, back to how she was before Keira was born. But none of these helped in reality. And then one day, one awful, rainy day…she went away. And Christopher imagined he had a miraculous healing power in his hands, that all he had to do was touch his mother and she would come back, and everything would be normal again.
But as he took her hand while she lay in her bed, and felt how awfully cold it was, heard his father softly weeping next to him, and heard the suddenly hated baby, the ungrateful, demanding baby who had taken his mother away crying in the next room, reality threw cold water in his face.
And so he decided not to imagine anymore.
CHAPTER TWO
“Chris! Can you go and get your sister for dinner?”
Christopher shuddered inwardly. Of the many daily chores he had to do in this house that had become more of a prison, this was surely his last favourite. Reluctantly pulling himself away from his current model, (A Hawker Harrier Jump jet, first operational vertical takeoff fighter aircraft) Christopher stepped out of his darkened room into the corridor, carefully locking the door behind him. Locks were very important nowadays. No-one wanted a repeat of the day that Keira got into his room and got her hands on his models. Actually, she didn’t even need her hands…
It was small consolation to know that he hadn’t been mistaken four years ago when he saw the floating globes in his sister’s room. He knew now that that was the first manifestation of what his father like to call ‘Keira’s little parlour tricks’. They had become more frequent as she gotten older, and had moved on from indistinct floating objects. The ‘parlour tricks’ had gotten bigger…much, much bigger.
Christopher walked down the hallway, paying no attention to his surroundings. Truth be told, he could have walked though the gloomy house blindfolded, since it had changed very little in the past four years. After he had become a sudden widower their father had very little time, energy or inclination to engage in home renovations, and so the house remained trapped in a sort of time bubble, a snapshot of sorrow. The only major changes were negative ones.
He passed the lounge, wistfully noting as he always did the darker spot of carpet where the television had been. That had gone last year, another sign of Keira’s gradual stranglehold over the house and his life. That, and the large fence that surrounded the house, blocking out any view of the street, the world in general and most of the available sunlight. His home had become a fortress, him and his father playing the part of guards and prisoners. All because of her, and what she could do…
He stopped outside her room, taking a deep breath. What would it be tonight? Setting his jaw with a steely resolve, he pushed the door open.
And stepped into a lush, green wood. Birdsong of all kinds assailed his ears, and sunlight glittered through the tall trees that stretched out as far as he could see into the distance. A gently undulating path of cobblestones wound its way from the doorway, as though inviting him in.
So. The Magical Fairy Forest. He hated this one.
Being very careful to keep the door open behind him, he started down the path, hoping that she hadn’t wandered too far.
“Keira! Keira! Dinnertime!”
No response. He continued walking.
It was only on closer inspection that the true nature of the forest revealed itself. The greens were a little too green. The tree trunks were all the same shade of rich brown. The sky was a perfect flat blue. The sun…yes, the sun was literally a yellow glowing ball in the sky. It even had a ruddy cheeked friendly face on it, which winked back at him as he glanced at it. He looked away scowling. The whole effect was one of walking into a child’s painting, which of course was exactly what was happening.
A couple of small glowing figures flew down from a nearby tree and flitted around his face. They were beautiful little female figures, with delicate gossamer wings, and they waved to him in a friendly manner. He swatted at them irritably, but they dodged his clumsy swipes easily, flying away and giggling like small bells. Really annoying small bells.
Fairies, he thought angrily. One day I’m going to remember to bring the bug spray.
As he wandered through the forest that looked like a Walt Disney fever dream, he marveled again at the sheer scope of his sisters ‘powers’. His rational mind told him that he was still in her room, but the distance that he had already walked should have taken him a respectable distance down the street. Yet he had come across no obstructions, hit no wall. He had no idea how this worked. It made no sense, and on a fundamental level, that really annoyed him. And the longer he had to spend here, the more annoyed he got. So he stomped through the Magical Fairy Forest, ignoring the Faries that clustered around the treetops waving and giggling and the occasional woodland creature that bounded across the path and threatened to trip him up. He stomped and fumed.
“KEIRA!”
Finally he heard the sound of flowing water and headed towards it. Pushing aside a large fern frond he finally caught sight of his young sister.
The forest opened out into a natural clearing , revealing a large lake being fed by a crashing waterfall. Keira was sitting on an outcrop of rock overlooking the water, in the warmth of a sunbeam lancing through the trees. She was facing away from him, throwing pebbles into the water which danced and skipped across the surface no matter how clumsily she threw them. As with the colours of the forest, the water was an unnatural shade of azure blue and rainbow coloured fish could be seen just below the surface. As he watched, one leapt out of the water and squirted water at Keira, making her squeal and giggle, sounding not unlike a fairy herself.
Part of him registered concern, as it always did, at seeing his young sister unsupervised by such a large body of water. Another part knew for a fact that nothing bad could ever happen to her in here. Even if she fell in there would be a mermaid to save her. Or a magical water dragon. Or something equally ridiculous.
He frowned, unreasonably annoyed, and started forward towards her. Before he could get more than two steps, something large, brown and furry leapt out of the undergrowth, landed on the path in front of him and roared loudly. When he had recovered from the suprise, he took in the creature that was blocking his way.
From the neck up, it appeared to be a large male lion, growling and snarling a low threatening rumble in the back of its throat. From the neck down, it’s body extended into a long limbless tube, like a furry snake. It looked like a hideous creature from mythology, but Christopher knew exactly what it was, and he knew he had no reason to be afraid of it.
Keira jumped at the noise and turned, her round face breaking into a wide toothy smile at sight of him.
“Chris’fer!”
She stood and ran along the rock towards him, her long dark hair flying out behind her. She swayed to a halt in front of him, large brown eyes sparkling, and hugged the lion. It purred loudly at her, closing its eyes in an expression of feline bliss.
“Did you see the fish? It squirted me!”
“Yes, I saw it. It’s dinnertime Keira.”
“Ok” She turned and waved at the pond “Bye fishys!”
“Fishes” Muttered Christopher under his breath, unable to help himself.
Then the forest was gone. And the waterfall, the lake and the lion. They were both standing in Keira’s small room, her hugging a tattered old lion headed draft excluder that she had appropriated as her favourite toy. As always, Christopher had no idea of how it had happened. There was never any sensation of travel, nothing faded magically from view. One second they were in a forest, and now they were somewhere else. It was just another of the many things that annoyed him about his sister.
“Ok” he grumbled “Go”
Keira toddled happily out of the room, as Christopher took a last cursory glance around. Everything looked completely normal...bed, dresser table, bookshelf, toy chest. The only slightly unusual thing about the room was the three detailed murals that had been painted on the walls by a loving but desperate father…
…One of a castle courtyard with a King and Queen flanked by soldiers, minstrels and jesters…
…One of a sunny meadow full of horses, overlooking the sea…
…And one of a forest, where all the trees were a little too green, the sky a little too blue and the sun was a glowing yellow ball with a ruddy cheeked smile…
Christopher grimaced, and pulled the door closed.
This, then, was life with Keira. The little girl who could make wishes come true. At first he had been glad when his father realized that she was different in some way, gratified that what he had seen wasn’t a delusion of some sort. But as she grew older, and her understanding of the world grew along with her, the manifestation of her abilities became correspondingly complex. Soft toys would begin to come to life and walk around her room. At night, the ceiling of her room twinkled with starlight as though it was fully open to the sky. And of course none of them would ever forget the day he came home from school to find his model airplanes engaged in an acrobatic show around his room, a tiny but enthusiastic audience of toy soldiers cheering them on. Since then, Keira had been fully banned from setting foot in his domain. But it wasn’t until her third birthday that Christopher and his father had realized just how powerful and far ranging his sister’s powers really were.
They had been sitting in the lounge, Christopher doing his homework and his father reading the newspaper, while Keira sat crosslegged watching the television as it played in the background. The news was on, and the newsreader was reading an item about a war or revolution in some country or other. Swarthy looking men were shouting and waving guns. Unhappy refugees were shown fleeing towns as soldiers fired at each other across bullet pocked streets.
His father had realized what was playing, and noticed that Keira was paying very close attention to the disturbing images.
“Chris” he had said “Change the channel please”
Christopher changed the channel to some American comedy, and there was no protest from his sister. She merely looked…thoughtful. And that seemed to be that.
The next day, however, there was a new lead article on the news.
Every gun on the planet had overnight turned into a squirt gun. Every pistol, every rifle, every machine gun did nothing more to the enemy than make them annoyingly damp. Even grenades exploded like water balloons.
Christopher’s father had watched the news with a very grave expression. The following day, the TV was gone.
That had been bad enough, but the problem had got worse a few days later on a trip to the supermarket, when a shopping trolly had turned into a rocket ship while Keira was sitting in it. Then, while stuck in traffic on the way home, the car sprouted large feathered wings and flew away above the gridlock. Luckily none of the shocked onlookers managed to get the licence plate, and Christopher’s father had managed to convince Keira to land the car in a quiet cul-de-sac a few blocks from their house. But that was the last time she had been out of the house.
The problem with Keira’s abilities, they had discovered, was that they were as random and unpredictable as only the mind of a three year old could be. They were never malicious or dangerous, and they would pop into being without warning and vanish on a whim, or when her attention was diverted by something shiny, which was especially disconcerting when they had been flying hundreds of meters in the air held up only by the fickle attention span of a toddler. And so Christopher’s father had deemed it too dangerous for her to go out in public until she gained greater control over her abilities. Even the view out the window had been deemed out of bounds after a shocked neighbour’s lawnmower had sprouted a large set of chattering teeth as Keira gazed idly on. Christopher remembered sadly the day his father had erected the large fence right around their property, which, combined with the lack of television and newspapers, effectively cut them off from the outside world. To make up for her enforced isolation, Christopher’s father had painted the murals in Keira’s room, allowing her the illusion of freedom, if nothing else.
That had been over a year ago. Now four years old, Keira spent most of her time in her room, residing in one of the fantasy landscapes that her father had painted for her. She came out only for mealtimes and tuition from their exhausted father who worked from home as a telemarketer. She seemed happy and healthy, but numerous questions constantly assailed Christopher’s logical mind. For example, was she getting enough exercise? He had walked long distances with her through her various landscapes, but had never left her room. Were they really walking, or just walking in their heads? And was she getting enough sunshine, as in ‘real’ sunshine? Did it count when it had a face on it?
Christopher poked absently at his dinner, forcing himself to ignore what was happening on his sister’s plate. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Dad! Keira’s sausages are dancing with each other!”
His father looked up from his meal with a weary expression. Keira grinned back at him as a couple of capering cheerios pirouetted around her plate in time to unheard music.
“Keira, you know the rules”
Keira sighed, with the smallest of eye rolls “No imagining at the dinner table”
With a final flourish and a bow, the sausages fell backwards onto her plate, going back to being unassuming tubes of processed meat. Christopher felt a sudden loss of appetite.
“Chris…”
Christopher looked up, concerned at the unusual tone in his fathers voice. He sounded hesitant, almost…apologetic?
“Chris, I need you to mind Keira for a few hours tonight. I’m going out to meet an old friend who’s in town.”
“Dad! You know what she’s like, she always plays up with me…!”
“Its nothing you can’t handle mate…Please Chris, you know I don’t go out very often”
Looking at his fathers drawn, tired face, Christopher felt instantly remorseful. He was well aware of how hard his father had worked to provide for the family, how much he had sacrificed since their mother had died. Certainly, one evening was not too much to ask.
“Sure Dad. No problem.”
And so, after a promise to be home no later than 10pm, their father walked out the door, and Christopher was left alone to babysit his little sister who could bend the fabric of space and time to her will. With the merest hint of a sigh, he flumped onto the couch to read a book that he needed to write a report on, while Keira sat on the floor, playing with her dolls.
That was good. The dolls were safe. Sure, they came to life sometimes, wandered around and chatted to each other about boys and hairdos, but at least they were small.
Their father had decreed that evenings should be spent in the living room, officially known as ‘Family Time’. Christopher knew, however, that ‘Family Time’ in Keira’s case doubled as ‘Real World Time’, to stop her from spending too much of her small life in a fantasy realm. And so, part of his duty while babysitting was to keep her out of her room until bedtime.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keira put down her dolls and sit up, looking thoughtful. That was always an early indicator of trouble. Standing, she headed to the toychest in the corner of the room. Christopher tracked her movement like he might watch an unexploded bomb roll across the floor. There were any number of items in that chest that could make his evening highly unpleasant.
She opened the chest and, after a moment of rummaging, pulled out her crayons and a large sheet of construction paper. Christopher unconsciously gripped the sides of his book harder. Last time she had done a drawing, the vaguely rabbit shaped creature that had leapt off the page had taken ages to catch, left greasy pawprints all over the carpet and a suspicious looking pile of rainbow coloured waxy pellets on the kitchen floor.
“Keira..?”
“Yes Chris’fer?”
“No rabbits, right?”
“OK”
There was a brief silence. Christopher read the same sentence in his book about five times.
“In fact, no animals at all, ok?”
“Ok”
“Or robots, dinosaurs, dragons or anything else that could conceivably destroy the house, ok?”
“Ok”
Something about her easy too-easy compliance bothered him, but he felt he’d covered his bases fairly well. He went back to his book.
Keira began scribbling industriously. Christopher glanced over, but couldn’t quite make out the shape of what she was drawing. Every so often, she glanced over him, smiling.
He didn’t like that smile. Not one bit.
Eventually, she seemed to finish her drawing. Attention fully on her now, Christopher watched intently as she picked the large sheet up and carried it over to the pinboard on the living room wall where her other, thankfully inanimate drawings were hung. She pinned it to the board, and it was so large it hung right down to the floor. As she stepped back to admire her work, Christopher finally got a good look at it.
It was a drawing of a small doorway. Small, but just large enough for a child to fit through…
“Keira…” He began warningly. With a mischievous grin, she turned and pulled on the crayon handle of the door. It swung open easily, revealing a dark passageway beyond.
“Keira, don’t you dare!”
Before he could stop her, she dove into the passageway, pulling the door shut behind her. Christopher leapt forward and tried to pull on the handle, but his fingers hit nothing but paper. Angrily, he pulled the drawing off the pinboard. Nothing but bare wall behind.
Yes, this was life with Keira. It was like living in a cartoon.
In a barely controlled fury of frustration, Christopher flung open the door to his sisters room and stormed inside. Inside it was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the scene. He was standing in a clifftop paddock, overlooking a misty ocean. An abnormally large moon hung overhead, its reflection on the sea stretching in a dappled triangle all the way to the horizon.
Another unusual feature of Keira’s abilities, Christopher realized. The time in her room always matched the time outside, either consciously or unconsciously. It was nighttime outside, so it was nighttime in here, even though the murals on the wall were painted in full sun. Christopher scanned the sea briefly, noting with reluctant amazement the sight of a large sailing ship, its white sails caught in a moonbeam as it headed for the distant horizon. Where was it going? What lay over the horizon of a child’s imagination? How far did his sisters powers range?
Shaking his head, his rage largely defused, he spotted his sister sitting near the cliff edge, surrounded by horses. Running various rebukes through his head, he walked through the lush grass towards her. Disturbed fireflies launched themselves into the air on his every step then settled again behind him, a comet like tail of light stretching out behind him as he crossed the field. As he got closer, he noticed that the Horses around Keira were sitting in a very un-horselike manner. As he watched, one scratched it’s ears with it’s hind hoof.
It was to be expected, he supposed. Keira had never actually seen a real horse, but she had seen plenty of dogs.
“Keira. You know you’re not supposed to be in here at night”
Keira didn’t turn around. She continued idly stroking the Lion-snake that purred contentedly in her lap.
“I’m sorry. I got bored”
“Well, you’re going to have to come out. Dad left me in charge, so that means…”
“Can you tell me about Mum?”
Christopher grimaced. This came up more and more just lately, and it wasn’t a subject he enjoyed talking about.
“Why don’t you ask Dad when he gets home?”
“It makes dad unhappy. But he pretends not to be”
“What if it makes ‘me’ unhappy?”
Keira finally turned to face him, her large dark eyes earnest and pleading.
“Please Chris’fer?”
Christopher stood resolute for a moment, with what he hoped was a stern expression.
“Please?”
Even the horses turned to look at him expectantly. One barked impatiently.
“Oh, alright. Then we go back to the lounge, right?”
“Right”
Christopher settled himself into the long grass next to his sister. To be fair, he could see why she would want to spend all her time in here. The air was warm but not stifling, the smell of the ocean refreshing. Crickets sounded around them, and fireflies continued to flash on and off around the field, as though reflecting the stars that twinkled overhead in random patterns, not matching any of the constellations he had studied. It was intensely relaxing, and he felt much of his own inner tension drift away.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Christopher smiled in spite of himself.
“I don’t think we have that much time before dad gets back. Pick one thing Keira.”
“Ok, ummmmmm…” She sucked on her fingers thoughtfully, a leftover habit from her baby years. The Lionsnake gazed up at her adoringly.
“How did Mum and Dad meet?”
Christopher breathed an internal sigh of relief. This was an easy one.
“Well, I wasn’t there at the time of course, but Dad told me when I was a bit older than you. Apparently he was on the way to a blind date when he saw mums car broken down on the side of the road. She was having to change a tire in the rain. He helped her, and it took longer than they expected, so he missed his date. To make up for it, she asked him out, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“The rest is what?”
“History.”
“His story? What about Mum’s story?”
“No, History…it means…things that happened in the past.”
“Oooohh” She nodded, turning back to face the sea. They sat in silence for a while, the song of the crickets and the gentle crashing of waves on the beach far below the only sounds.
Keira twirled her fingers in Lionsnakes fur, making little circular patterns.
“I wish I missed her”
It was the kind of completely honest, candid statement that only a child could make. But it sent a logjam of different emotions and feelings through Christopher in a confusing rush. Finally, one emotion elbowed and forced its way past all the others to the forefront. That old standby, Anger.
He stood up quickly.
“You’ve had your one question. Let’s go!”
“Why are you angry?”
“I said lets GO!”
Keira stood sulkily. The landscape vanished, and they were back in her darkened room. Her dark eyes, now fierce, looked up at him under glowering brows that matched his own.
“Why are you always angry!?”
Then she stormed past him to the living room, leaving him alone in the dark.
As promised, their father was back before 10pm. He returned to find two unhappy looking children sitting in the living room not speaking to each other, but he didn’t ask any questions. He sent them each off to bed with a kiss for Keira and a manly shoulder squeeze for Chris and then fell asleep himself wondering when things were going to get better.
But his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Next door, an old woman in a snug dressing gown sat next to her telephone and fretted, nervously stroking the cat on her lap.
It was the last straw, she told herself. The absolute last straw.
She hadn’t seen that beautiful daughter of his in over a year. Not since he had put up that awful fence. The boy came in and out, and the Father…well, it seemed he felt it appropriate to stay out all hours of the night. She knew the girl was still there, but she never left the house. Never.
And you heard so many awful stories, and then read about the people who could have done something, but didn’t….
Setting her jaw, she told herself that this was the right thing to do. If he wasn’t doing anything wrong, then he had nothing to worry about.
Picking up the phone, she began to dial.
