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.
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