"Emmy, remind me why we're hiding in here again?" Jen sighed, her neck was practically at a right angle jammed in the corner, and it looked pretty uncomfortable.
"Because we've never hidden under the stairs before." I hissed, and glared at her, if she kept talking then we'd be found, and I'd never know if this was a place I could actually hide in peace. Jen rolled her eyes but remained silent in our hiding place, it was barely big enough for one of us, so how we both managed to fit in I'll never know. Though we weren't there for as long before someone opened the door, it was my little sister Katie; she grinned when she saw me, put her hands on her hips and laughed.
"Why do you keep hiding?" She asked as we clamoured out of the tiny space.
"How do you keep finding us?" I retorted, Jen rubbing her stiff, sore neck.
"I told you last time," Katie sighed, "I always know where you are, Emmy."
"So what do you want with us?"
"Come and play Ring a ring o' roses with me and my friends."
"Do we have to?" I groaned, Katie might have been unusually mature for a seven year-old, but all of her friends were little stuck up brats.
"You know fine well that if you hide I'm just going to find you again, so come on!" She demanded, and began to tug me along.
---
Our back-garden was usually a complete tip, but by some miracle my father had woken from his TV-induced coma to come out and tidy it up for Katie's birthday, he'd soon sunk back into it, I could see him in the lounge, trapped in front of that glowing box. I couldn't help but wonder if it had been before or after the balloons had been blown up, that sounded just like too much work for him.
"The King has sent his daughter, to fetch a pail of water," they all sang as they skipped around in a circle, "ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo, we all fall down!" Jen sat herself down on the patio, and I took my place next to her, it had been so long since I'd last heard that game, I couldn't even imagine myself playing it as a child.
"We gonna hide again, Emmy?"
"Nah, Katie's right, she'd just find me again, she always does."
"That's quite creepy." Jen shivered, though all I could do was laugh at her. We watched them play for a while, both of us wishing that we could go and do something else, when my Mum came out and gave us the ultimatum; join in or help with the washing.
"We're up to the bird verse," Katie told us as we found our places in the circle "Do you know the words?" Neither of us said anything, and Jen laughed nervously as my sister's friends looked at her like she was some kind of retard.
"The bird up in the steeple, sits high above the people, ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo, we all fall down." They all dropped down and began to roll on the ground, leaving me and Jen to stand there like a pair of fruit-cakes.
"Emmy, you're meant to fall on the ground." Katie told me dryly, I was spoiling all her fun, and she clearly wasn't very pleased about it.
"I know. I just don't like this game."
"We could play something else," Jen suggested, helping some of the little kids to their feet "how about Kagome, kagome?" They all stared at her with that wry expression again, though at the time it sounded like a good idea. I explained the game to them, and we reformed the circle, Katie demanding that, as she suggested the game, Jen was it first.
"Kagome Kagome. When, oh when does that bird come out of its cage?" We sang, walking round Jen, who had her eyes clamped shut."The crane and the turtle slipped at the dawn of the night. Who is behind you?" We stopped, and waited. She had to guess who was stood directly behind her, which was going to be very hard, especially seeing as the only names she knew were mine and Katie's.
"Erm, is it that boy with the freckles and the fat glasses?" She asked, and this set the kids into fits of hysterical giggling, all except for the child in question, and Katie of course. Glowing red with embarrassment, Jen made her way back into the circle as someone else became 'it'.
"I made an idiot of myself, didn't I."
"Yup, just like you always do." I grinned. She needn't have worried though; none of the kids could guess the right person, until Katie was chosen as it.
"Kagome, Kagome," We all sang, and skipped around her, "Who is behind you?" Without hesitation she told us.
"It's Emmy." She smiled, as they all gasped with delighted surprise. My Mum came out and told us it was time to eat.
"How on Earth did you know it was me?" I asked, as Katie filled up her plate with party-food. She beckoned me down, so I bent over so I was eye-level with her, and she whispered into my ear,
"Because I always know where you are, Emmy."
---
I was woken up in the night by my Mum's screams. I dragged Jen out of bed, and we went to go see what was wrong. She was in Katie's room, the window was open, curtains fluttering in the wind, but there was no sign of my little sister. She wasn't anywhere to be found in the house, not even in any of my hiding places, the ones she could always find me in. Within minutes the police were round, taking details, snatches of speech crackling through their radios. My Mum, and my Father, went out with them to go and search for their missing daughter; they told us to stay at home in case Katie found her way back.
We went to the back-garden and I kicked around a few limp balloons, while Jen lit up a cigarette to calm her nerves.
"Where do you think she is?" She asked, blowing out a mouthful of grey smoke. I shrugged, this wasn't the sort of thing Katie would ever do, but for some reason I just didn't feel all that worried, like none of this was really happening.
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"I think she was good at playing Kagome, she was the only one who could get it right, wasn't she, Emmy? And she always knew where you were."
"Yeah, I guess. You think she's wrestling bears somewhere or something?" I asked playfully, Jen snorted, and took another drag on her cigarette.
"Either that or she's using chop-sticks to row along in a rice-bowl boat." She smiled, and kicked a balloon into the air.
"Jen, this isn't a dream is it." I sighed, as a police helicopter flew over us.
"No, though you'd have to agree," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, "We'd have been better playing Ring a Ring o' Roses after all."
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Yes, I'm not sure how many people know what Kagome, Kagome is (my friends who'ev read this all know, so meh) It's a game played by Japanese children, where there is one child in the middle, Oni, or 'it', who closes their eyes while the others skip around in a circle, chanting the song, and once they stop the person in the middle has to name who's stood behind them. In some areas it's though that it can be used as part of a ceremony to summon a God, and so the child that can guess correctly might have some sort of spiritual power that they could use [I'm quoting info from the manga Tactics here, it's the only information I could find XD] So yeah, Just in case you were wondering, as there's not much about it on-line. There might have been more about it I'd forgotten ><" so if you have any questions about it, I'd see if I could answer them.
