Dreams, Part 1

I walk down the street, hood over my black hair. I dodge the puddles collecting in the cracks in the sidewalk. Guitar-heavy rock music blares from my headphones.

I can’t tell you why, but I feel I’m being followed. I reach into my pocket and pause the song I’m listening to, but all I hear is the pitter-patter of the rain and the sound of my own footsteps. For my own safety I know I shouldn’t turn around to look. But I’m sure there’s someone there.

*** 

I woke, heart pounding. I stopped myself from pulling back the curtain to inspect the dark Seattle street outside. It was just a dream. No reason for alarm.

Still, I knew I was too awake. I remembered someone once said to me that milk helps you sleep, so I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass. It tasted good, but I wasn’t sure it was going to help.

I sat down at the table with my glass. Our flat was too small for a dining room, so the table was in the kitchen. I shared the flat with my two best friends, Jonah, and Harriet. The two of them had been an on-again-off-again item since the end of high school. I don't like being in the middle of it, but whenever they break up, it's better to have a third person around to keep things civil. They're aware of my third-wheel status, so they frequently try to set me up with people when we go out as a group. It's nice of them. But they never pick the right person.

Right now, they're very much in love. Or lust. Whatever your philosophy on relationships is. The thing to remember is to stay out late when they stay in. Tonight they had gone clubbing, though, so they were tired and the flat was silent.

I decided that if I wanted to sleep, sitting in the bright kitchen wouldn't help. I put the glass in the sink, turned out the light, and went back to bed.

It was a long time until I fell asleep, as the feeling of being watched still lingered in my mind.

Three

I'm leaving on a jet plane
Chasing the daylight
To a land I've never been

~

Thought I'd continue this, even though my "countdown" is already over.

Four

Minutes inch past
Worry bogs my mind
I don't want this contrast
It only makes me blind

Five

If you take me out to jive
Will you dance with all your friends?
Or will you help me feel alive
Put aside the silly trends
And dance with me until it ends?

~

Six

Boxes of things to store away,

Suitcases to fill, no delay,

The walls are almost bare.


Your old life has gone to make way
For a dream that just yesterday
Was too awesome to dare.

~

Seven

Seven letters to my name
Seven days left to the week
Seven deadly sins to blame
Seven wonders out to seek
Seven notes to play and speak
Seven exes overpowered
Seven Potter books devoured.

~

Eight

The image of a perfect story rests in my mind

So I sit before a blank page and formulate.

The first sentence comes but I don’t like it

So I do my best to recreate.

The page is filled but it's not as I pictured

So I think about starting over, but I debate.

The only way to get better at writing is to write

So I continue and try not to evaluate.

~

Nine

I have never had a feeling quite as fine
As finishing a project as big as mine
Perhaps I should celebrate with a glass of wine

This whole thing could be a sign
That someday more people will see me shine
Till then I will write line by line

Around their hearts my words will twine
Like ivy leaves upon a vine
I just need to wait and give it time

~

Ten

Years since I was that age
and again since I was born.


Months till next summer
which can take their sweet time.


Weeks since I began to yearn
for the presence of my peers.


Days till I go on an adventure
that only time can tell about.


Hours since I was dreaming
yet upon waking I did not remember.

~

Elizabeth Muir, Part 5 of 5

"Dad said he and Mom didn't go into our room the night before, and that Whiskers had been out all night." Elizabeth poked at her dry bread roll. She guess that if she squished it down, it would pop right back up like one of those fancy foam mattresses.

"I bet there's a parallel universe where these beings live," Ed said. "And they only come through when people purposely set things out for them. Quantum physics."

She tolerated him at lunch. Very soon, she thought, she should try to find out where that cute boy in art class sat for lunch. She didn't want to look like she didn't have any other friends than Ed.

Unsure how to follow his comment, she continued with her story. "And then, after Mom and Dad were asleep, Josh put milk out on top of the counter above the dishwasher after he put soap in and turned it on. This morning, all the clean plates were put away. And I didn't interfere this time."

"Like I said," Ed said, drinking the last of his chocolate milk from a straw in his carton. Elizabeth thought this was a rather redundant way to drink milk. "Not surprising. Josh was expecting the--brownies, was it?--to come out, and so they did."

Elizabeth frowned at him. "That doesn't sound like physics." She looked at her plate and wondered why she'd picked the soup and bread. Perhaps she'd thought the soup would make the bread less dry, but the soup just sat there, untouched and watery. "Josh finally couldn't hold it in and told Dad what happened. Josh was so excited, he told Mom, too." Before Ed could go on about physics, she added, "They fought again this morning. Mom and Dad. About Josh. About Dad's 'stories' and things he 'makes us believe.'" She made little quote signs in the air.

Ed was silent, like he always was when she brought up the topic.

"Don't they say, when you grow up, you can't see faeries anymore? Maybe I'm too old. Maybe that's why I can't believe it happened. But then, Dad seems like he believes..."

"What's going to happen?" Ed said, and Elizabeth knew what he meant.

"I don't know." Elizabeth said. She fiddled with her spoon in the soup, moving two chunks of carrot to make eyes, and a frowning green bean for a mouth. "What's it like?" she asked.

"It's not so bad. I bet it will be better for you, since you have a brother."

Elizabeth looked at him, and felt pity. He knew what it felt like to be abandoned, like half of you ripped out of your body. And he hadn't had anyone to tell about it, no one to ask whether it was his fault. She was suddenly very happy that she had Josh, annoying faults and all.

"Did you bring your sketchbook?" Ed asked, the best friend she could ask for, someone who changes the subject when things start to hurt.

"Yes," she said, and started to wonder how she'd draw Mrs. Fennerman today.

Elizabeth Muir, Part 4 of 5

After Josh went to sleep that night, Elizabeth stayed up and quietly set about cleaning up his side of the room. It was slow going, trying to be quiet while cleaning. Josh stirred at every accidental loud noise, but didn't wake. Eventually she got so tired she had to sleep before it was all done.

***

"Lizzie!"

She groaned and rolled over. "I keep telling you not to call me that," she mumbled at her brother. "What is it?"

"They came!" he was pointing at the lack of clothes and toy cars and robots on the floor. "And look, even the milk!"

Suddenly she remembered. The milk! She had forgotten to empty the saucer. "I'm sorry, Joshua…"

"What? Look! They drank it!"

Elizabeth came to her senses and sat up, looking over at the saucer groggily. At the sight, she woke up completely. Not only was the saucer empty, the toys she hadn't put away were gone. Surely it hadn't been the brownies…

 She got out of bed and looked at the bowl. The milk was definitely gone. "You're sure it wasn't Whiskers?"

"Come on, he doesn't like milk. And besides, our door was closed all night, and I checked the bowl before I went to bed. It had to be them!"

"Josh, I…" She didn't want to tell him, but figured it was for the best. "I did it. I cleaned it."

A crestfallen look crossed his face. "What?"

"I cleaned it while you slept." He looked about to throw a tantrum. "Josh, wait. I didn't do all of it. And I forgot about the milk. Someone else cleaned it out."

He squinted, glaring at her.

"I'm telling the truth! I swear!"

"Did you tell Dad?" He crossed his arms firmly across his chest.

"No. No one knew."

Josh frowned. "So it could have been the brownies…"

"I guess…" She said. She didn't know what to tell him.

He uncrossed his arms and put on his idea-having expression. "We have to try again. And this time, don’t mess it up."

Elizabeth sighed. She knew she couldn't change his mind. But the milk and the cleaning was definitely a mystery, so she decided to ask Dad about it. Discreetly, of course. There had to be an explanation.

She picked up the bowl to inspect it. There was the slightest few drops of milk left. So it hadn't been cleaned. No sign of it being poured off one side, either. And Josh was right, Whiskers didn't like milk.

There was the slightest trace of milk on the drawer handle. The only empty drawer left after she'd stopped cleaning. And it was filled with the rest of Josh's things.

Elizabeth Muir, Part 3 of 5

It was Saturday. Elizabeth looked out her living room window behind the couch, kneeling on the cushion, arms and chin resting on the old brown-plaid fabric. Her mother was outside gardening. Joshua wandered around, picking at the grass and inspecting flowers for bugs. He seemed to be annoying their mother, so before she was noticed at the window and asked to babysit, she hopped off the couch and hurried up the stairs.

Before entering her room, she looked up at the attic door. Ever since the selkie story the night before, she'd wondered about what her father had said. He was at his shop now, and wouldn't be home till late. She'd never been in the attic. It had always been off-limits.

She hurried into her room and grabbed the chair in front of her desk before she lost her nerve. Placing it under the attic door, she reached up as far as she could and barely grasped the handle. She pulled, and the door creaked downwards, exposing a ladder. She'd heard the noise before when her father went into the attic, but only now did she realize how loud it was. She waited a few moments, in case anyone had heard. Satisfied she was still alone in the house, she pulled at the bottom rung of the ladder and it slid down to the ground. Ladders always seemed insubstantial enough to her that it was quite possible she would fall and break a bone at any moment, but she braved the climb anyway.

Pulling herself up into the attic, she looked around. Everything was slightly dusty, even the sunlight filtering through the small round window beneath the roof's point. The ceiling was oddly slanted, and she almost had to duck her head at either side of the room.

Shelves filled with old leather volumes lined the flat walls on two sides of the room, and lay in lopsided piles everywhere else. There was one old chair that seemed less dusty than everything else, and she guessed her father sat there sometimes. She did so herself, surveying the room, soaking in the feeling of being among so many old things.

A certain book caught her eye. It sat on the small side table next to the chair, looking like it had been read recently. It was covered in brown leather, and the gold-foiled word Faeries glinted at her. She picked it up as best she could with her meager muscles and put it in her lap.

She flipped through it, and saw it was some kind of encyclopedia on faeries. She thought it was a weird spelling. She stopped when she saw the entry on selkies. This must have been what her father got the story from the night before. She turned a few more pages, until she saw the word 'brownie.'

There was a clattering noise, and she quickly shut the book, being careful to leave her finger on the page  she was reading. She stayed perfectly still and realized someone was coming up the ladder. Josh's head poked out of the square hole in the floor.

"What are you doing here?" Elizabeth said. "You know you're not supposed to come up here!"

"Neither are you," he said matter-of-factly, and hoisted himself up the final step into the room. "Mom said I was being a nuisance, and to see what you were doing." He looked around the room for a few moments in awe.

Elizabeth didn't want to let him in on what she had found, but he was already here and would manage to find out somehow. She wanted to avoid his whining.

She held up the book in her lap. "It's the book Dad got yesterday. The one with selkies."

Josh hurried over and stood in front of her. "What does it say?" he said eagerly. He wasn't good at reading like she was, and she smiled at his question, glad to be the one with the knowledge.

She opened the book to the page her finger was on. "This is a brownie."

"I know what a brownie is," he said, but then looked at the picture. It was a small brown creature with a funny-looking pair of pants and a bald head. He frowned. "That's not a brownie."

"Yes it is. Here. It says, 'Brownies are a type of hob, similar to a hobgoblin. They help around the house if you leave them a gift.' And it says their favorite gift is a dish of milk."

Josh's eyes widened like they did when he got an idea.

"No, Josh. We can't leave milk for them. They're not real, they're just a made-up fairy in a book." She was afraid that he'd be disappointed when nothing happened to the milk.

"Pleeeeease?" he said, pouting. She couldn't resist his pouty face, most of the time.

She sighed and put the book down. "Alright. But let's get out of here before Mom knows we're up here."

He nodded. They both scrambled down the ladder, and Elizabeth struggled to put the ladder and door back up until she stood on her tip-toes. The door slid into the groove and she stepped off the chair, satisfied.

"What are you two up to?"

Mother had come back from the garden, and saw them putting the chair back. Elizabeth thought quickly. "We thought about making a fort, but we got hungry. Do we have any milk?"

"Or brownies?" Josh said. Elizabeth gave him a look. "What? You made me hungry."

"If you're willing to wait," their mother said, "I can bake you cookies instead. I've been meaning to."

A little while later, they were sitting at the table, eating chocolate chip cookies. Elizabeth had specifically asked her mother to put her cookie on a saucer. After warning her about not breaking nice plates, she let her have the saucer.

Josh insisted on drinking his own milk, but Elizabeth left hers untouched. By now, their mother was back in the garden, and so Elizabeth went to the sink and brushed the crumbs off her plate, then poured her milk into the saucer.

"Where do we take it?" Josh asked.

Elizabeth thought. "What chores do you have left to do?"

"Cleaning my side of the room." He stuck out his tongue.

"Alright. Let's leave it in our room, and ask the brownies politely to clean for you."

Elizabeth didn't have the heart to let him learn that fairies--or faeries-- weren't real, so she decided she'd have to clean her brother's side of the room herself. Life wasn't fair sometimes.

Elizabeth Muir, Part 2 of 5

"What story do you want to hear tonight?"

Elizabeth was snuggled up to her father in her bed, and her younger brother Josh sat on his own bed, facing them, eagerly awaiting the nightly tale. Their father owned a rare and antique bookshop, and occasionally brought home beautiful old, leather-bound books. Most were kept in the attic, where Elizabeth and John weren't allowed. But their father read the books himself, and told them stories from memory.

"Medusa!" Elizabeth said. She thought she was probably too old for bedtime stories, but she loved it too much to give it up.

"You pick that every night," Josh said irritably. "What about Odin?"

"You pick that every night," Elizabeth asserted.

"What about a new story?" their father said. His children's eyes gleamed with anticipation. "I read a new book today. It's a love story." Josh groaned as Elizabeth grinned. "Now, don't be worried. There's shape shifting. Transforming."

At that, Josh mirrored Elizabeth's smile. His favorite movie was Transformers, and he had boxes filled with robots and aliens and cars that changed shape.

Father took the smiles as a sign to begin. "There was once a faerie. It wasn't a small girl with wings, no. It was a selkie."

"What's that?" Josh interrupted.

"Shush!" Elizabeth said. She rather thought it sounded like some kind of fabric, but it wasn't right to interrupt a bedtime story. Josh did it at least once a night.

"A selkie is part seal, part human. A selkie can shed their seal skin and become human when they want to. But they can only spend so much time as a human before they must return to water." Josh nodded, showing he understood. "Now, this selkie--a female--was happily swimming along in the sea. One day she saw the most beautiful man she'd ever seen, walking along the beach. She shed her seal skin, hiding it, and approached him."

"Isn't she naked?" Elizabeth asked, too embarrassed to worry about interrupting.

Her father smiled. "She found a woman's garments discarded on the beach, and put them on."

"Isn't that stealing?" Josh asked.

"The selkie isn't too worried about that sort of thing. Now, will you let me tell the story?" His children nodded, and he resumed. "This man saw the selkie maiden, and thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. They fell in love, and for the next few years, had the most happiest times of their lives." Elizabeth smiled at the thought. "Soon enough, though, it was time for her to return to the sea. In all her years, she hadn't told him the truth, that she was a selkie. One night, she left silently, and returned to where she had hid her seal skin. She put it back on, and returned to the sea.

"This left the man heartbroken. He thought she had left because she didn't love him anymore. Years passed, and he couldn't stop thinking about her. He never loved another." Their father paused, and Elizabeth frowned, wondering if that was the end. She smiled when he started up again.

"On a bright summer day, the man returned to the beach where he had met the selkie maiden. Suddenly, she appeared before him again, and demanded to know why she'd left. She told him the truth, that she was a selkie, and she couldn't live without being in the ocean for a while. The man said that he would do anything to be with her, even live under the sea. She said no, that would only kill him. So he built himself a house on the beach, and every few years he lived with her for a time. It was difficult for him when she was gone, but when she came back, it was worth it.

"After a time, he realized she didn't age like he did. She lived was immortal--lived forever. She slowly stopped coming to see him, her love for the sea too strong, and her love for him lessening. When he became old and wrinkly, he was just another old man fishing by the sea, until the day he died. Even now, people say if you go to that beach, you can see the ghost of the man, pining for his love."

"How sad," Elizabeth said. "I'm glad selkies don't really exist."

"Yes they do!" Josh said, rolling his eyes at her.

Her father looked down at her and raised his eyebrows. "How are you sure that they don't?"

"Well, it's impossible," she said. "You can't just put on a seal skin and turn into a seal. And not get older."

"Faeries do exist, honey." He touched his finger to the tip of her nose. "You'd be wise to learn their ways, so you know what to do when you meet one."

As their father gave them their goodnight kisses, she wondered. The light was turned out, and her brother's robot night-light gleamed in the far corner of the room. And she wondered.

Elizabeth Muir, Part 1 of 5

Elizabeth did not like pencils.

Or, rather, she did not like hand-sharpeners. Either they barely scraped anything off the end of the pencil, or they scraped too much, and a centimeter of lead would fall out. The old-fashioned hand-cranked sharpeners in her school's classrooms worked decently, but they made awful noises. She was always afraid of breaking her pencil during a test so that she'd have to stand up and have a go at the sharpener, grinding her classmates' nerves like the tip of the pencil.

"Lizzie," came a whisper from the seat beside her.

This startled her enough that the pencil she was using to draw with promptly broke. She sighed.

Ed, who always sat next to her in history class, was leaning over in his seat to look at her paper.

"Who is that?"

"Mrs. Fennerman."

The drawing in front of her was of a plump woman, looking very much like the teacher at the front of the classroom, who was at the moment droning on about the history of China. The woman was about to climb into one of those boxes magicians use for their saw-a-lady-in-two act. The magician off to the side looked particularly menacing with his saw.

Ed stifled a giggle unsuccessfully, which prompted the real Mrs. Fennerman to stop talking and look at them sharply. "Eyes forward, Ed. Elizabeth. Unless you have something you'd like to share with the class?"

Elizabeth thought Mrs. Fennerman's threats were rather cliche. "No, Mrs. Fennerman."

"Very well." And she continued in her monotone.

Ed looked over at her and gave her a conspiratorial smile. She thought about any pencil replacements she might have in her bag, but realized she'd even left her sketching pencil set at home. She lifted up her broken pencil at Ed and raised her eyebrows as a silent question. He nodded, fishing around in his dirty black backpack as quietly as he could, and gave her a stubby Star Wars pencil. It was so short that if it needed sharpening, Chewbacca's head would be cut off. She had to be careful this time.

It was Ed's lucky pencil, so she smiled in thanks. She made the magician's saw a little sharper.