The Ruby Bottle

by Janet Reid

She reached the front door, yanked it open and ran out into the night. She had no idea where her djinn had gone; all she could think about was Mrs Heggety.

  As she ran down the footpath, she stumbled in the dark and grabbed the fence rail to stop herself falling. She didn’t even feel the splinters in her hand. She reached Mrs Heggety’s front gate and pushed hard. Nothing happened. The latch. She had to find the latch. She felt a fingernail split as she tried to pull the stiff bolt free of the hole. Her hand slipped.

  Amber paused and took a deep breath as she felt for the bolt again, trying to remember how Mrs Heggety had done it. She closed her eyes, just as Jimell had suggested when she was shooting goals, and tried to see it in her mind. Yes, that’s right. Taking hold of the latch, she lifted the gate just a fraction with her foot.

  The bolt slipped out. The gate swung open.

  Amber ran along the front path. She leapt up the two steps and onto the verandah.

  ‘Mrs Heggety,’ she shouted, thumping on the front door with her fist. ‘Mrs Heggety, wake up. There’s a fire.’

  Behind her, light spilt over the front lawn. Someone had switched on more lights back at her house. But she couldn’t wait for anyone to come and help. She hammered on the door again.

  ‘Mrs Heggety, open the door,’ Amber shouted. She could smell the smoke now and thought of the lessons they’d had at school about fire safety. They’d been told how dangerous the smoke was in a fire. What if the smoke had already got to Mrs Heggety’s bedroom?

  Amber could waste no more time at the front door. She had to get in there. But how?

  A window. I’ll break a window.

  She jumped off the low verandah and rounded the dark side of the house. Which was Mrs Heggety’s window?

  She heard a popping sound. Something exploding in the fire. Amber knew she would just have to take a guess. If her parents’ bedroom was at the front of the house, perhaps Mrs Heggety’s was too. That would mean it was the first window she came to. Would she be able to reach it?

  As she stepped forward, she tripped and sprawled headfirst into a garden bed. Something dug into her leg. She reached down and her hand grasped something round. A handle. Of a shovel. Mrs Heggety must have been working in the garden and left it there.

  Thank you, Mrs Heggety, Amber thought as she picked it up and swung it at the window.

  Crash!

  Glass scattered everywhere, but Amber took no notice. She hit the window again.

  ‘Mrs Heggety,’ she cried. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘What …? Who …?’ came a frightened voice.

  Amber almost sobbed with relief. Mrs Heggety was awake. But Amber still had to get her to safety.

  ‘Mrs Heggety, it’s me. Amber. There’s a fire. You need to get out of there. Now!’

  In the distance, she could just hear the sound of a siren and hoped it was the fire brigade on its way here.

  Mrs Heggety’s head popped through the window frame. ‘Amber … What on earth …’

  Amber could see that her neighbour was still half asleep, unaware of the danger. But there was no time to lose.

  ‘There’s a fire, Mrs Heggety,’ shouted Amber. ‘You have to climb out the window.’

  ‘I can’t climb out there, dear. I’m far too old. I’ll go out the front door.’

  ‘No!’ cried Amber. ‘The smoke … It’s too dangerous. You’ll have to come out the window. I’ll help you.’

  ‘But the glass … I’ll cut myself,’ said Mrs Heggety, hesitating.

  An idea popped into Amber’s head … something she’d seen on television.

  ‘Your doona. Cover it with your doona,’ she shouted.

  A few moments later, Amber saw a doona flop out over the edge of the broken window. A slippered foot followed, and then a hand. It clutched the window frame as Mrs Heggety’s face appeared once more.

  ‘Oh, Amber, I don’t think I can do this,’ she said, her voice quivering.

  ‘Yes, you can, Mrs Heggety. Come on, I’ll help you.’

  Another foot came through the window. Mrs Heggety teetered on the sill.

  Amber reached her arms up. ‘Grab my hands,’ she said. ‘I’ll try and catch you.’

  And at that moment, Mrs Heggety pitched forward, dived into Amber and sent them both sprawling to the ground.

  And that was where Amber’s father found them moments later, just as the fire truck turned into their street, sirens wailing and lights flashing.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Amber and Mrs Heggety sat side by side on the couch in the Daleys’ lounge room while a paramedic patched up a couple of cuts on Mrs Heggety’s arms. He’d already pulled several splinters from Amber’s fingers and cleaned up the graze on her cheek.

  Outside, the lights of the fire engine flashed through the darkness of the night and men called to each other as they checked that the fire was out.

  ‘You were very lucky, both of you,’ said the paramedic as he clipped his bag shut. ‘You’ll probably both have some bruising tomorrow. Just make sure you rest, and apply ice if you need to. I should really be taking you to hospital, Mrs Heggety, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Mrs Heggety. ‘I’ll be as right as rain in the morning, thanks to my young friend here.’ And she reached over and gave Amber a hug.

  There was the sound of heavy footsteps out in the hallway, and a man wearing a yellow coat, and with a helmet tucked under his arm, poked his head around the door. Bits of grey ash speckled his bushy beard.

  ‘Ah, how are the patients?’ he asked, coming into the room, followed by Mr and Mrs Daley.

  ‘Lucky,’ said the paramedic. ‘Very lucky.’ He stood and picked up his bag. He looked down at Mrs Heggety, then across to Amber’s parents. ‘If you have any worries, call us. We can be here within minutes,’ he said as he left.

  Amber curled up on the couch and rested her head in Mrs Heggety’s lap. She watched as the fire chief took out a small notebook and pen and sat down in an armchair opposite them.

  ‘Now, I’ve had a bit of a look around,’ he said, thumbing through the pages. ‘I’m fairly certain the fire started in the kitchen. I just wondered if you’d had any trouble with your oven lately …’

  And he listened as Mrs Heggety told him about the burnt cakes.

  ‘Funny thing was,’ the fire chief said much later as he slipped his pen and notebook back into his pocket, ‘the alarms at the station went off before we even got the call.’ He shook his head in puzzlement. ‘Darned if I know how that happened. You know, we all had our boots and coats on ready to go and someone said, “Where are we going?” It wasn’t until then that the call came.’ He shook his head. ‘Weird.’

  ‘You don’t think you’ve got a ghost down there, do you?’ laughed Amber’s father.

  ‘Well, ghost or not, it saved us some precious time and that meant …’ and he leaned forward and patted Mrs Heggety’s knee, ‘… that we saved your house. Even another couple of minutes and I reckon it could have been too late.’

  ‘Well, whatever it was,’ said Mrs Heggety, running her bony fingers through Amber’s short dark hair, ‘if it hadn’t been for this little star, I wouldn’t be here now.’ She smiled down at Amber. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Amber. You saved my life tonight. And not only that,’ she added, ‘you saved me at the fete as well. So that was twice in one day you rescued me. I think you deserve a medal.’

  ‘Yes, we’re really proud of what you did, Amber,’ said Mum, ‘but even a star needs sleep, so it’s off to bed with you. And we need to get Mrs Heggety tucked up in the spare room, too.’ She held out a hand to help Amber to her feet.

  ‘We’ll get going now, too,’ said the fire chief, his fingers scratching through his thick beard. ‘The blaze is well and truly doused, Mrs Heggety. We’ll be back in the morning to do a full assessment of the damage and determine the cause.’

  ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done,’ said Mrs Heggety, before she followed Mrs Daley and Amber
out of the room and up the stairs.

  The ruby bottle was on the doona where Amber had dropped it, the stopper lying beside it. It felt a life time ago that she’d been here, trying to pull the stopper out of the scorching bottle. As tired as she was, she took the bottle onto her lap and Jimell slowly drifted out. He shimmered in front of her and settled on her knee. He looked a bit … well … faded. Not all there. The way he’d been when his bottle had been broken.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asked, suddenly worried.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered in a whisper. ‘It’s just that I’m a bit … ah … depleted again. I’ll be right once I’m tucked up back inside with my stopper in. But tell me, how is Mrs Heggety?’

  ‘She’s alright.’ In her mind, Amber could still see Mrs Heggety standing on the road, watching the firemen working to save her house. But what if she hadn’t got there in time to rescue her? She looked at Jimell. ‘That was what you saw, wasn’t it? What I was supposed to do? It wasn’t about the fire at the fete at all?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That was why I was so puzzled. I thought I must have got it all wrong. I knew I had to help in some way, and well, I didn’t help at all at the fete. That was all down to you, Amber Star.’ His long arm reached out and he patted her cheek.

  But Amber suddenly felt annoyed and brushed his hand away. ‘Why couldn’t you have told me before it happened?’ she asked. ‘If you’d said something, none of this would have happened. I could have told Mrs Heggety there was something wrong with her oven and that there was going to be a fire. Then Mrs Heggety wouldn’t have been in danger.’ Her face began to crumble and she felt a sting somewhere behind her eyes. She pressed them with her fingertips, trying to hold back her tears.

  ‘You should have told me,’ she said. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘But I couldn’t tell … I … I didn’t know …honestly … all I knew was that you would save her from a fire. That you had to save her from a fire. It was your destiny.’

  He watched helplessly as Amber battered her cheeks in an attempt to wipe away her tears. And her anger. Gently he settled onto her lap and reached out his hand. He rested it on Amber’s shoulder while she cried.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Really, I’m sorry. Please, Amber. Let me explain.’

  Amber used the corner of her sheet to wipe her face, smearing it with the last of her face paint. She sniffed, and looked down at her djinn.

  ‘It had better be good,’ she said in a shaky voice.

  Jimell looked up sadly. ‘Amber, I’m never really sure what’s going to happen. I just get a hint here and there. And I can’t change anything, even if I wanted to. It’s against our rules. If I changed our future, the world would not be at peace with itself.’

  ‘But Mrs Heggety could have died in that fire,’ she sniffed. ‘Then how would you have felt? What if I hadn’t been able to save her in time?’

  ‘But you did, Amber. That’s the point. That’s why I came to you. Because I knew it had to be you who saved her. This was something only you could do. And you were meant to do it. And anyway, no one else’s room faces Mrs Heggety’s kitchen. If you hadn’t seen it, she would have died in that fire and the house would have been destroyed.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how you knew it was up to me,’ she sniffed.

  Jimell reached up with his big flat hand and rested it on Amber’s face. ‘It was preordained, Amber. Written in the Book of Destiny, long before I even came to Australia to live in the house next door. It said I would meet an amber star. That’s what you are, Amber. A star.’

  That’s what Mrs Heggety just said.

  ‘Now look at you. Your eyes are almost falling out of your head. You need to sleep. We have a lot to talk about in the morning and we still have a diary to finish reading.’

  Amber wanted to hug him but … she blinked her eyes. He was hardly even there.

  ‘Jimell, are you alright?’ she asked, suddenly frightened. ‘You’re almost transparent.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve just been out of my bottle too much lately. It’s nothing that a few days of rest won’t fix.’ He reached up and touched her cheek. ‘You are a special person, Amber Star,’ he said. ‘And may I bring peace and good fortune to your world. Now, my bottle …’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Amber. ‘That fireman. He said –’

  ‘Yes,’ yawned Jimell, ‘that was me. It was the only way I knew how to help. Apart from waking you up, that is. Now –’

  ‘Wait. Before you go.’ And she noticed he looked even thinner, almost not there at all, but she needed answers. ‘How did you make your bottle, you know, hot? And glowing?’

  ‘Another time, my Amber Star. Now, goodnight.’

  And with that, Jimell slipped back into his bottle and Amber pushed the stopper into place. She ran her fingers over the delicate pattern on the glass then carefully placed the bottle up on her bedside table. She sensed this was not to be the last of her adventures with her djinn.

  For a moment she thought of Ricco. She’d be able to tell him all about the fire, because that’s what you did with friends – you told them about the important things that happened in your life.

  She tried to glance up at the ruby bottle one more time, but her eyelids were too heavy, and she was well and truly asleep when her mother looked in on her a minute later.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It has been many years since I have written in this diary. I have enjoyed being part of Richard’s family. Emily has always treated me kindly and, though young Vera has been a handful at times, I have loved her like a daughter. Even that time she took my ruby bottle from its shelf and broke the stopper.

  These days I have little need of my djinn, Jimell, but it still makes me chuckle to remember how he helped Emily learn to bake. I love Emily dearly, but … oh! Her scones and biscuits tasted like cardboard, and her cakes were as flat as my hand. I don’t know how he did it, but the next time Emily opened her recipe books, Jimell had me release him from his bottle and that night we ate the best chocolate cake I had ever tasted.

  I wonder what will become of Jimell. We have had some wonderful times together. He has told me many of his secrets – how he uses his two funny arms and how he makes his bottle glow – but that is another story.

  He has told me of adventures he has had with previous keepers and, though I am sure he knows, he will not tell what the future holds for him. Now, as I near the end of my days, he has bid me take his bottle to Richard’s shed and to leave it there in a box. I am sure he knows what he is doing – Jimell, my precious djinn.

  Epilogue

  ‘This is my room,’ said Amber. She pointed to the window beside her bed. ‘And that’s where I was when I saw the fire.’

  ‘That was so cool,’ said Ricco. ‘I can’t believe you saved Mrs Heggety twice in one day. I reckon you’ll get a medal or something.’

  Amber laughed. Mrs Heggety had said the same thing.

  ‘So, what are we going to do?’ asked Ricco, bouncing on Amber’s bed. ‘Could we –’

  But just then, he saw the ruby bottle sitting on the bedside table. And before Amber could stop him, he reached over and snatched it up. ‘Why don’t we see if we can get this stopper out?’ he said.

  ‘Nooo …’ cried Amber.

  Janet Reid grew up on a dairy farm with hay sheds and pigsties, old abandoned farm machinery, and lots of open space. It was a haven for hours of story weaving with her sister between milking cows, feeding calves and pigs, and sneaking milk for stray cats.

  She went into teaching and taught in places from the cane fields in Central Queensland to Brisbane before retiring to concentrate on her writing. She lives on the northern outskirts of Brisbane with her husband, two sons and a very ‘human’ cat called Kelsey.

  Photo by John Downs

 

 

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