The Wicker Slippers
Page 8
‘Max? What’s wrong?’
‘The potions. I’ve drunk the wrong bloody potion!’
*
Chapter 24
‘What do you mean? The wrong potion?’
‘The love potion! I’ve drunk the love potion!’
‘Love potion?’
Reaching for the remaining potion, Lee quickly, eagerly slaked it back.
‘No no, you fool! Not that one! That’s my – oh God! I’ve just got to get out of here before it starts working!’
Max rushed out of the door, heading for the stairs.
‘Max, what’s happening, what’s wro–’
‘Don’t follow me!’ Max yelled back down the stairs as she hurtled up them. ‘No one must follow me, understand?’
‘Sure, sure, I understand!’ Lee cried back.
He felt strange.
A little drunk.
He pulled up a chair, sat down.
A love potion!
How cool was that?
And Max had drunk one!
And he’d drunk one!
Perfect.
How perfect could life be?
*
‘Max?’
Janet tried to call Max back as, entering the hall, she caught a glimpse of the older girl’s feet hurriedly pounding up the stairs. But Max didn’t seem to hear her.
Janet made her way towards the kitchen, but stopped at the door when she heard Lee drunkenly mumbling to himself.
She peered past the slightly open door.
Yeah, he looked drunk sure enough, the way he was dazedly slumped in his chair.
She could also here a slight buzzing, like the vibration of air across a bottle neck.
Is that what he was doing?
Whistling tunes on his beer bottle?
*
Lee’s eyes widened in surprise.
Just what the heck had Max put in that damned potion?
It was the fairy.
She’d stepped out from behind the bottles and food still stacked on the table.
She was bigger than he remembered her.
But it was the fairy right enough.
‘You!’ he said.
‘Me,’ she replied.
‘You’re bigger than I remember.’
‘Bigger?’
She said it as if she were surprised. She looked down at herself, checking herself over.
‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘I am.’
‘It’s…it’s not possible. You shouldn’t exist. Fairies don’t exist! It’s impossible!’
‘Yeah, impossible – but here I am!’
She opened her arms wide, shrugged her shoulders.
‘Your wings; they looked damaged. Was that the explosion? All that time ago? So all that time ago – I didn’t imagine you?’
‘No, you didn’t imagine me, obviously. And I’m here to help you again. If I could grant you a wish, what would you wish for?’
‘To be with M–’
‘I don’t need to know! It’s best if I don’t know! You mean, you want to be with whoever you love most, yes?’
‘Yes, the one I love most!’
The fairy seemed surprisingly overcome by Lee’s comment.
Lee wasn’t quite sure, but he wondered if he could actually see tears in her eyes.
Then again, he was drunk.
He could be imagining it.
Just as he could be imagining this whole thing!
‘Janet is the one!’
‘Huh?’
It wasn’t the fairy who had spoken. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he had heard it at all.
It was more like it was just his conscience nagging him.
Like he’d imagined it.
‘Then,’ the fairy said, ‘let’s see what happens, shall we?’
*
Chapter 25
Janet turned.
She ran up the stairs.
The boy was waiting for her.
Lee as a boy was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
Janet looked down by her feet.
The slippers.
Max had somehow finally slipped out of the slippers, leaving them on the stairs.
Calmly taking off her own shoes, Janet slipped on the wicker slippers.
She thought she understood how the slippers worked.
The intertwined straws were like life itself.
Pull on one thread, and the other threads have to move with it.
Like Max pulled her threads and Lee came running.
*
Lee’s head whirled, distracted by a noise at the door.
When he turned back to the table, the fairy had gone.
Would she make everything turn out as he wanted it all to be, as she’d promised?
Would the love potion work anyway?
It didn’t seem right, winning her by magic, by trickery.
But then – it was better than not winning her.
She could never have won over Greg anyway.
Greg was far more interested in Janet.
Janet.
Yes, she was wonderful, wasn’t she?
Calmer, more intelligent, more thoughtful than Max.
More trustworthy, too.
Maybe, just maybe, if they’d both handled things differently when they were younger, who knows what might have happened between them?
They’d gone out a few times together, he remembered.
Yeah, almost dated a couple of times too.
But Janet had never really been serious.
They were friends. Close friends.
If they’d gone out together, then fallen out over something – well, then all that friendship would have been destroyed too, wouldn’t it?
They couldn’t risk destroying that, could they?
Besides, they’d been friends for so long, it would have been odd, going out together.
Well, not that odd, really.
Perhaps they should have given it a go, eh?
Who knows what might have happened?
*
Janet woke up in the corner of what had been Lee’s bedroom.
She felt exhausted, bedraggled, dazed.
She sensed that someone was in the room with her.
Heard his heavy breathing.
Felt that he was drawing closer.
Felt his touch on her shoulder.
She should have been petrified.
But she wasn’t.
She rose to her feet, feeling his arms wrap around her. Help her.
Standing so close to him, in his warm embrace, she could now feel his breathing on her neck.
He pulled her tighter, closer. Like he was never going to let her go.
He kissed her.
She felt the warmth, the softness, the moistness, of his lips.
She felt the hardness and strength of his need.
His need for her.
She responded with all the need she had for him.
*
‘The doors!’ Greg shouted excitedly up the stairs. ‘The doors are open!’
*
15 Years Later
Chapter 26
‘How do you do it Lee? How do you manage to look like you gave up aging when you reached eighteen?’
Of all the things Max resented Lee most for, this one was the worst.
‘The potion, remember?’ He always used this excuse to try and placate her. ‘The one you made, the one you finally admitted wasn’t a love potion after all.’
‘Huh! If my potions had actually worked, Lee, you should be an ancient, wizened old man by now!’
‘Well, the love potion worked, didn’t it?’ he said, hoping to raise a chuckle from her.
But the days when it would have worked had long gone.
‘All I know is something crazy in that house happened to me, Lee! Something made me marry you, and I still don’t know what!’
‘You were in love with me, you said, if you rem–’
‘Of course I remember!
But if it was the bloody potion, it’s finally wearing off, thank God.’
*
Maybe if we could have had children, things would have been different.
Maybe if we hadn’t got married, at least we’d still be friends, rather than constantly at each other’s throats.
Maybe maybe maybe…
Life’s full of ‘maybes’.
Lee switched on his computer.
He clicked on the internet, browsing the ‘houses for sale’ sites.
They couldn’t go on much longer living like this.
He would have to move out.
*
‘Well I never!’ he chuckled.
It was the house.
Apple Cottage.
Up for sale.
In the photograph they’d used on the site, it still looked the same.
Perhaps they’d used an old photo.
He clicked on a few more buttons.
Yes, he’d be interested in viewing the house.
*
Chapter 27
‘…original features, inglenook fireplace and–’
The agent’s mobile rang.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, checking who the caller was on the screen. ‘Er, this is an important call. Do you mind if I…’
With a wave of his hand, he indicated to Lee that he wanted to leave the kitchen to take the call.
‘Sure, that’s okay,’ Lee said. ‘I’ll just wander around, if that’s okay?’
‘Sure, sure! Help yourself,’ the agent replied gratefully, hurrying off towards the living room.
Lee glanced around the kitchen.
It was strange being here again after all this time.
It was even the same table, the one that had been offered as part of the house in the competition.
In fact, the overall structure of the place was all pretty much as he remembered it.
Last time he’d been here, he’d been sitting at this very table.
Dazed.
Drunk on whatever gunk Max had mixed into that damned potion!
Imagining that he was talking to that fairy once again!
He laughed at his foolishness.
And then he saw the fairy standing on the table.
*
Chapter 28
‘What? No! Not again!’
The fairy didn’t respond to his surprised wail.
In fact she didn’t seem to realise that he was there.
Like he was a figment of her imagination.
If she really is there, he realised, she can’t see me for some reason.
She was acting strangely.
She wasn’t staring at him. She was looking off to one side.
She was also standing oddly, like she was leaning on something that he couldn’t see.
She moved oddly, too, as if she were trying to avoid being seen by someone standing to the side of the table.
But, of course, there wasn’t anyone standing there.
Suddenly, her actions changed, like she was moving out from her hiding place behind the invisible objects.
Like she was revealing herself to someone seated at the table.
‘Me,’ she said confidently, then, after a brief pause, ‘Bigger?’
She looked down at herself. She gave herself a quick check.
‘You’re right. I am,’ she said to the invisible man in the chair.
Wait a minute!
He recognised this conversation!
‘Yeah, impossible – but here I am!’ the fairy declared, flinging her arms wide and shrugging her shoulders.
No, he didn’t just recognise the conversation!
He remembered it!
This was the conversation he’d had with the fairy all those years ago!
‘No, you didn’t imagine me, obviously. And I’m here to help you again. If I could grant you a wish, what would you wish for?’
She paused. Lee couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said.
‘I don’t need to know!’ the fairy said. ‘It’s best if I don’t know! You mean, you want to be with whoever you love most, yes?’
Lee couldn’t hold back any more.
He cried out what he should have cried out all those years ago.
‘Janet is the one!’
*
‘Huh?’
Lee was seated at the table.
But hadn’t he been standing by the–?
He shook his head.
He felt a little dazed.
A little drunk.
He was directly facing the little fairy.
She was standing before him on the table.
Her eyes were full of tears.
But she was smiling.
They were tears of happiness.
‘Then,’ the fairy said, ‘let’s see what happens, shall we?’
*
Chapter 29
There was a noise at the door.
Lee whirled around, expecting to see the agent coming back into the kitchen.
But there wasn’t anyone there.
He turned back towards the fairy – but she’d gone.
*
Janet rushed away from the door.
She rushed up the stairs.
Lee was at the top of the stairs; Lee as a boy.
Lee as the ghost he would become unless she did something to help him.
The slippers had been left for her.
She slipped them on.
*
The table in front of Lee was piled with shopping.
And bottles of herbs.
And an opened book of potions.
How had all these got here?
He still felt a bit dazed, drunk.
He reached out and picked up a glass of oily, yellowish liquid.
This looks just like the remains of the love potion Max drunk.
Bewildered, Lee went out into the hall, looking for the agent.
‘Hello? Mr…’
Damn! He couldn’t remember the guy’s name.
The guy?
What guy?
Greg!
Of course! That was his name!
How could he have forgotten that?
‘Yeah? You all right Lee?’ Greg shouted back, emerging from the living room.
‘Yeah, yeah, fine thanks Greg,’ Lee answered. ‘Have you seen Janet?’
‘Upstairs, Lee; I think she must be upstairs.’
Lee realised he was still holding the glass of love potion.
He handed it to Greg, like he was handing him a beer. As he’d hoped, Greg was drunk enough to slake it back with nothing more than a shocked, disgusted grimace.
‘Max is upstairs, Greg; a bit upset,’ Lee said, turning around. ‘Could you go and see her? I need to find Janet.’
*
Janet stood by the bedroom window, her arm cradled around the boy’s shoulders.
They looked out through the window, across the lawn.
‘I have to go back to save you,’ she said.
A speck of pollen drifted past her nose, making it twitch.
It tickled.
She laughed.
And then she was gone.
*
Chapter 30
He woke up, his nose tickling.
His eyes widened in surprise.
Janet laughed.
Lee looked so cute. So amazed.
She was smaller than she thought she’d be.
Even though she’d heard Lee’s story of the fairy, she hadn’t realised that she would really end up this small. This light.
So light, that she drifted on the breeze.
It must be with having to travel back in time so far, she realised.
She’d never tried it before.
Never had the power of the slippers to help her.
The farther back in time you went, it seemed, the smaller you became.
She seemed almost transparent too, the light passing through her like she was some iridescent gem.
‘Lee! You have to l
eave–’
She stopped.
Lee couldn’t hear her. Her voice was too small, too tinny.
What could she do to get him out of the room?
With a few rapid flaps of her arms, she rose up into the air slightly on a passing breeze.
Of course; she had to lead him towards the window!
She swooped across to the open window overlooking the front garden.
Lee slipped out of bed, following her.
Janet slipped out of the window, hovering in the bright sunlight.
Lee’s attention suddenly shifted. He stared past her, looking towards the front gate.
Janet glanced behind her.
It was Lee’s mum. Unloading the car parked out on the road.
Janet looked back at Lee. He looked like he was about to shout out to his mum.
‘Shussssh!’ Janet placed a finger against her lips.
Janet couldn’t risk his mum seeing her. She couldn’t risk his mum seeing Lee, and yelling at him to stand back from the window.
She waved her hands, urging Lee to climb out of the window.
She shouted as loudly as she could, ‘Come, come fly with me!’
How could Lee resist?
He clambered up the small wall, clambered onto the window sill.
And then he jumped.
*
Janet watched Lee land safely in the bush.
She smiled, knowing he was safe, as he lightly tumbled down onto the surrounding soil.
Picking himself up, he ran towards his mum.
‘Mum, mum, I’ve just seen a fair–’
Janet prepared to throw herself forward in time.
And then the explosion hit her hard from behind.
*
Janet shook her head, dazed, wondering where she was, how she’d got here.
‘What do you mean? The wrong potion?’
It was Lee’s voice, but booming, like he was speaking through a megaphone.
‘The love potion! I’ve drunk the love potion!’ Max wailed in an equally thunderous voice.
Janet glanced urgently about herself. She was surrounded by gigantic packs of food.
No, not gigantic packs of food; she was still tiny! Still translucent and vibrating.