Emily Feather and the Starlit Staircase

by Holly Webb

  Eva ran her own hand over the bump lovingly, and smiled. She was even sitting differently, eased forward in her chair.

  It just showed how much glamours could hide, Emily thought, shivering.

  Her mum gave her another worried look. She’d seen the shiver, Emily realized, staring down at the woodgrain pattern on the table so as not to meet Eva’s eyes.

  “It won’t look like me,” she whispered.

  “Oh, Emily. . .” Her mum’s voice shook. “It’ll be your brother or sister too. Please don’t think like that. You know we all belong together.” She reached out her hand to Emily, but Emily shoved her chair back so Eva couldn’t reach her. She couldn’t bear to be told that it was all right, that she was imagining things again. . .

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” Emily said quickly, jumping up. “I’m sorry! I just can’t!”

  She plunged away out of the room, practically knocking Robin over in the doorway.

  “Oi!” he growled, but then as she dashed up the stairs, Emily heard his footsteps behind her. She turned back on the landing just before she stepped on to the stairs up to her room, folded her arms, and glared at him.

  “Why are you following me?”

  Robin shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed. “Wanted to see if you were OK, that’s all. You looked upset. . . And Mum went off to her studio. Is it the – you know?” He hunched up one shoulder in an awkward shrug, as if he knew that Emily didn’t want to talk about it. “The baby?”

  “Mmmm.” Emily jumped up a couple of the steep steps, and then sat down. She loved her stairs. They were crooked, and usually a bit dusty, but there was something friendly about them. They were good for sitting and thinking.

  “Do you mind? About the baby?” she asked Robin curiously. He was the youngest, and Lark and Lory always claimed he was spoiled. Especially because he was a boy. Emily didn’t think he actually was spoiled – it was just that he was good at getting away with stuff, because he simply slipped away when someone was about to tell him off. And whatever he did wrong, Lark and Lory or Emily had probably done it before him, so their parents simply weren’t very shocked.

  Robin sat down sideways a few steps up, leaning against the wall and hugging his knees. “I don’t think I mind,” he said slowly. “I mean – babies are really noisy, I suppose. . . And messy. There’s going to be baby stuff all over the place. And Mum’s already getting a bit, um, airy-fairy. . .” Robin sniggered at his own joke. “That’s just going to get worse.” He brightened. “Which might not be a bad thing. I can’t see her fussing over whether I’ve done my homework or not. And I won’t be the youngest any more. I’ll have somebody to boss around now.” He grinned, his eyes sparkling even in the dim light of the staircase. “I think it might be fun.”

  Then he looked up at Emily. “You’re not happy about it, are you? Don’t you like babies?”

  Emily shrugged. “They’re cute – I mean, I’ve cuddled people at school’s little brothers and sisters. But I don’t go all gooey about them. Not like Rachel; she’s always been desperate for a baby sister.” She sighed and met Robin’s eerily green eyes. She was sure he could see some of what she was thinking. “It isn’t the actual baby,” she admitted miserably, scuffing at the step with her plimsoll. “It’s just that the baby’s really going to belong. It’ll be special. Like you all are.”

  Robin leaned his head back and bumped it against the wall frustratedly. “Not this again, Emily! I’ve told you loads of times none of us think like that about you.”

  “Sorry . . . I know you have. And I do believe you. . . I can’t help it, though. A baby just makes me feel even more that I’m different. I suppose I’m jealous,” she said, feeling her cheeks burn scarlet.

  “You and Lory together,” Robin muttered. “I don’t know why she’s making such a fuss.” Then he looked up at Emily again, his eyes suddenly hard, like green glass. “Do you wish you lived with your own family? Is that why you go on about not belonging?”

  “No!” Emily gasped. “I love you, you know I do. And they abandoned me.” She sighed shakily. “I wonder sometimes, that’s all. I wish I knew what it was like. What happened. Why they – didn’t want me.” She swallowed hard. “Look, Robin . . . just go away? Please? I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “These stairs don’t belong to you, you know,” Robin growled crossly. “Just because they only go up to your room. I can sit on them if I want.” But he got up and stomped heavily down the stairs, each step leaving a little puff of glittering dust.

  Emily watched him go, and then she stood up. She needed – she wasn’t quite sure what. Time out. Time away. No fairies, no magic, no family. She shivered again as the nasty little voice at the back of her mind whispered, You’ve already got no family. . .

  Emily flung herself down the stairs, running headlong into the kitchen and grabbing the phone from the window sill. She stabbed out Rachel’s number with trembling fingers, hoping her best friend would answer.

  “Rachel?”

  “Are you all right, Emily?” Rachel sounded worried, and Emily caught her breath, trying to stop herself sounding so shaky.

  “Yeah. Sorry. It’s just . . . I had a fight with my mum. There’s some stuff going on. . . Weird family stuff, I’ll tell you when I see you. Look, Rach, can I come for a sleepover? Do you think your mum would let me?”

  Rachel snorted with laughter. “Of course she would. She loves you, Emily. Do you want to come now?” she asked hopefully. “I was supposed to be going shopping with Mum, but someone from work called again.” Rachel was an only child, and she spent her time shuttling between her mum’s flat and her dad’s. She had lovely rooms in both, and loads of nice stuff – her dad had bought her a mobile phone, which Emily really envied. But both her parents worked full-time, and Emily knew Rachel got lonely sometimes. Her mum was probably catching up on work.

  “Yes. Yes, please. I’ll explain what’s going on then, OK? I’ve just got to leave a note for my mum.”

  Emily hurried back upstairs and threw her pyjamas and toothbrush into a rucksack, and grabbed her sleeping bag. She scribbled a quick note – Gone to Rachel’s for sleepover – and left it on the kitchen table. Then she slipped along the hallway, darting past the passage that led to her mum’s workroom and fumbling with the lock on the front door. Her dad would know that someone had opened it. He had spell-guards on all the doors, but they were more about keeping an eye on who came in than anyone trying to sneak out. He probably wouldn’t even notice that she had gone.

  Emily closed the door behind her, and the brass mermaid door knocker shifted a little, chiming against the panels of the door with a sweet, bright note. Emily looked up at it in surprise, and the mermaid stared back. She was softened and worn by years of hands, but now her blurred features had sharpened to life again, and she looked suspicious. Her tail twitched and slapped against the door, and there was a faraway whiff of salt and dry seaweed.

  “What?” Emily muttered, taking a step further away.

  “Where are you going, Emily Feather?” the mermaid demanded.

  Emily hadn’t actually expected her to answer – the mermaid had never spoken to her before, although Emily had seen her move – and she gulped and said nothing.

  “Are you surprised to hear me talk?” She gave Emily a teasing smile and added, “Didn’t you know that I could?”

  Another thing she hadn’t known. Emily shook her head and turned to go.

  “Ah, don’t run off! Please! Come back here, Emily,” she coaxed. “This isn’t right. . .”

  “What do you know?” Emily whispered, looking back unwillingly. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m part of the house.” The mermaid wriggled and stiffly reached out one burnished arm, the sun glinting on the brass so it glowed buttery. “Don’t go.” Her voice creaked a little too, and Emily wondered when she’d spoken last. “Y
ou mustn’t run. . .”

  “Because you’ll get into trouble?” Emily suggested, rather bitterly, but the mermaid looked surprised – or Emily thought she did. It was hard to tell with her being made of metal.

  “Of course not. Because you belong here.”

  “I go out all the time!”

  “Not like this.” The mermaid shook her head, and her stiff metal hair jangled. “You’re pulling away. Leaving.” She shuddered, and a shadow ran over the gleaming metal. “And there’s a strong wind to take you far away, Emily Feather. Don’t go.”

  “I have to,” Emily whispered, and the metal girl shook her hair again, her eyes beginning to glow, as if she was waking up more fully. Perhaps the mermaid was going to try and stop her, Emily thought, taking another anxious step back. She pressed her hands over her ears and turned away, racing as fast as she could down the path, her bag banging against her side.

  “Beware!” the mermaid cried sharply. “You belong here, Emily Feather. Remember that! Come back!”

  But Emily was already gone, and the mermaid’s voice was lost in the wind as she whispered again, “Come back. . . Please. . .”

  Emily didn’t stop running until she was a good way along the road, halfway between her house and Rachel’s. There it felt as if she was far enough away to stop any spell pulling her back.

  “Are you all right?” Rachel demanded when Emily turned up at the door of the flat, red in the face and gasping. “Were you running? What for?”

  “I just wanted to,” Emily wheezed. “Felt like it. Can I come in?”

  “You are funny sometimes,” Rachel told her as Emily followed her through the pristine flat to her bedroom. “Mum’s fine about the sleepover. I said your mum was OK with it, though.” Rachel looked back and eyed Emily thoughtfully. “Does she even know?”

  “I left a note,” Emily muttered, squishing herself into Rachel’s furry beanbag. “She will know.”

  “So you just walked out?” Rachel looked shocked, and Emily shrugged. Rachel didn’t know anything about Emily’s family or the magic, but Emily had told her that she was adopted.

  “There’s stuff going on, like I said. Mum told us, last night. She’s having a baby.”

  “A baby!” Rachel squeaked joyfully, and Emily couldn’t help thinking how pleased Eva would have been if she and Lark and Lory had reacted like that the night before. “When?”

  “Oh. . .” Emily blinked. They hadn’t actually asked, but she had a feeling that fairy babies didn’t stick to firm schedules the way human ones did – or were meant to. “Quite soon, I think. . .”

  “I hadn’t noticed her getting bigger,” Rachel said curiously. Then she nodded. “But actually, your mum always wears those lovely drapey sort of dresses. I probably wouldn’t have noticed. That’s so exciting. . .” Then she trailed off as she finally saw the distinctly unexcited look on Emily’s face. “Isn’t it?”

  “I know it should be,” Emily explained, sinking further into the beanbag and staring at the ceiling. “But it isn’t. I’m not just being jealous!” she added, struggling up on her elbows to try and look at Rachel. “It probably sounds like it, but I’m not. Don’t you see? The baby properly belongs. I don’t.”

  Rachel was silent, and Emily held herself up uncomfortably on the squidgy fur, waiting for her friend to say something.

  “Sorry,” Rachel murmured at last. “I’d forgotten.”

  “Really?” Emily pulled herself into a sitting position again and stared at her. Not being truly part of her family was such a big thing – how could Rachel have forgotten about it?

  “Mmm. You always seem like you belong. Especially you and Robin – I mean, you’re just like anyone with an annoying little brother, Emily. But I suppose a new baby would make it weird. Just because it’s different to how you came to be part of the family.”

  Emily sighed. “Exactly. But I don’t want to think about it any more. Have you got any ice cream? Do you think we could just do normal stuff? Watch DVDs, and maybe make random mixtures out of all the bottles in the bathroom? The stuff we always do. And eat ice cream. . .”

  Rachel knelt in front of the beanbag and gave her a hug. “It’s OK. We’ve got lots of ice cream. And marshmallows. And a bottle of that squirty chocolate sauce.”

  Emily lay curled up in her sleeping bag, listening to Rachel’s soft, unworried breathing. It had been a good idea to come. She had needed to get out of the house – to breathe some air that wasn’t laden with spells. Her family were so powerful, so bewitching, that with them around her it was sometimes hard to think for herself. Rachel’s flat, and Rachel’s everydayness, and Rachel’s nice, normal mum, made Emily feel as if her own house was a strange sort of dream.

  It was a dream she loved, though. However much she moaned about Lark and Lory bossing her around, and Robin teasing her, and her mum fussing about. Eva had called earlier on, Rachel’s mum had said, wanting to check that Emily had remembered her sleeping bag. It was just an excuse. She’d wanted to check that Emily was all right, and she’d actually made it to Rachel’s. Emily was glad that her mum hadn’t marched round and told Rachel’s mum she hadn’t really said she could stay over.

  Emily sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees, and gazed into the darkness. She hoped her mum was all right. Maybe she was awake too, worrying. Emily almost hoped that she was – not because she wanted her mum to be unhappy (although it would be nice to be missed). But if her mum was unhappy, then at least it meant she cared.

  When she’d marched out that morning, Emily had been angry and miserable. She’d been thinking that she’d never belong, so why should she go back?

  But of course the answer was, because she wanted to. Because she loved them.

  If only she could be sure that they loved her.

  It didn’t seem to Emily as though she fell asleep. She didn’t remember being sleepy at all. She went from lying there in the dark, with Rachel fast asleep beside her and making her feel all the more lonely in her wakefulness, to dreaming. It was one of those dreams where she knew she was dreaming – she had that strange sense of being broken away from the real world.

  But so often over the last few weeks, dreams had been more than dreams. She had travelled to the fairy world, sometimes without even meaning to. Fairy people had been reaching out to her through her dreaming too, for years. She hadn’t known what was happening when she was little, but now she was almost sure that some of her strangest dreams had been real.

  Emily was sitting on Rachel’s window sill. It was cold, because the window was wide open, but she couldn’t quite feel it, so it was all right. She could see herself, still asleep, huddled up in her sleeping bag. But part of her, perhaps the most important part, was gazing out into the darkness, watching the stars. The orange glow of the street lamps had faded, and the stars seemed so much bigger, and clearer, as though they were reaching down to her. Emily blinked slowly as a shooting star burned across the midnight velvet of the sky towards her. She was awake enough in her dreamworld to wonder when it would stop, and then to think, a little anxiously, that it wasn’t stopping.

  And then she saw that it wasn’t a star at all.

  Shimmering in a silver-white dress, Lady Anstis stepped towards her out of the air and stood before the window. She wasn’t floating – she wasn’t actually there, Emily decided. She was still in the fairy world, and she was standing in a doorway. She must be very powerful, Emily mused dreamily, to have opened a door in the sky. I wonder how she’s done it? Is it because I’m here? I suppose I’m a link between here and there. And she knows me. I’m helping her open this door. . .

  “Of course you are, Emily darling,” Anstis whispered. “You’re so strong, you see? And so clever. Such a clever girl.”

  “I’m really not.”

  “Oh, but you are! It makes me so angry, Emily, catching wisps of your thoughts. You say that Lark and Lor
y and Robin are the special ones, and you think you’re nothing. But you have it completely the wrong way round!”

  “I’m not a fairy, though.” Emily frowned at her, but secretly she was wishing Anstis would go on. Her voice was so soft and silky, and her words seemed to wrap Emily up. She felt warmer already.

  “Exactly,” Anstis whispered. “You’re not a fairy, but look what you can do. I saw that little chocolate mouse, Emily dearest, I saw him in your dreams, and Robin’s. Such strong magic, and from a human child! Imagine what you could do if you were properly trained.”

  Emily gazed out at the fairy lady, her mind full of star-shine. Anstis was so beautiful. Emily had some vague thought that she wasn’t always, that she’d seen the fairy look different, somehow. But it was hard to keep that in her mind, with the glittering figure smiling down at her so lovingly.

  Anstis reached out one slim white hand and beckoned to her gently. “Come with me, Emily. I’ll show you.” She stepped back a little, and Emily could see the fairy world through the open doorway. It was a pleasure garden – the gardens that surrounded the king’s palace. She had seen them once before, but she couldn’t quite remember how. Her memories were blurred, and not really important anyway. . . There was a fountain playing now, and the water glittered like the stars. Emily leaned a little out of the window, staring towards the water, and gasped. She had seen water-sprites before, of course. She’d even met one, she seemed to remember. But not like this. As the veils of water from the fountain shimmered down, tiny, delicate creatures shot through them, riding the droplets and laughing gleefully as they cascaded into the gleaming stone basin.