“Yeah,”
Josie agreed, “Siblings.”
Her friend Annie, who worked at the station
next to her in the munitions factory, had just finished reminiscing about a
time her little sister had stolen all her makeup and drawn all over their
parents’ mirror with it, and of course blamed it on Annie. The parents hadn’t
believed a fifteen-year-old girl would do this, assuming it was likely the work
of the eleven-year-old sister. But it had given them the munition – ironically,
Annie had pointed out as she boxed a pack of twelve bullets – they needed to
ban makeup from the house of their teenage daughter once and for all.
Annie twisted around on her stool to look at
Josie, her curly hair holding up well even under the little hats they all had
to wear as part of their uniform.
“So what about you?” Annie asked. “You got
any brothers or sisters?”
***
Josie watched with bubbling glee as her
brother Eric took in the shimmering orange form in front of him. To be fair,
she wasn’t set on her classification of it as fairy. The shape was flat, like a
piece of paper, but made up of little dots, like dust. Yes, that was what it
was like, dust floating through the air when it catches the light. Except dust
moved slowly, drifting around. This form was sort of curling one way, then the
other, and there was just that one thin layer of it. Plus, it was bright
orange.
“What in the world…” Eric said. But for once
he stopped there and didn’t start going on and on at her about actions and
their ‘consequences’, whatever those were.
“Do you think you can see a face?” Josie
asked. “I’m thinking if you take those two dots as eyes, that thick line as a
nose, that gap as a mouth.”
“Don’t touch it!” Eric shouted.
Josie had extended a finger towards it
across his stomach but she drew her finger back with a fright. “That was right
in my ear!”
“Sorry,” Eric said, “I just think we should
be careful. We don’t know what it is.”
Josie shrugged that casual shrug that wound
him up so much. “Sorry, too late.”
She extended her arm out in the opposite
direction, away from the shimmering form, and as she straightened it out, her
finger reaching as far away as it could, the form jerked towards Eric. He
yelped and jumped up, dusting off his trousers.
“What the hell!” he cried. “How are you
doing that?”
Josie doubled over with laughter at how high
up his eyebrows had shot. He looked so pale, the poor thing. “Ooh, Eric, you
swore!”
“How are you doing that?” he repeated. He looked down behind him at the form,
which had settled back into its original position as Josie had clutched her
sides with both hands. His eyebrows settled, and he even crouched down to look
closer at the form. Not even Eric’s world-renowned aversion to mud could
withstand the draw of this mystery, Josie thought.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, with a genuine
shrug this time. “I touched it, then it just started following me.”
“Of course you touched it,” Eric said, but
he took forever to say it and barely blinked as he stared at the form. “Wait,
how did you get away from it just now?”
Josie grinned. “I didn’t. It was in my
sleeve the whole time! I put it in between the roots when we got back down
here.”
Eric nodded, then stopped abruptly and
stared at her. “Then why did I have to come down here? Why did I have to jump
across the burn and get my shoes muddy?”
“I didn’t want Mum to see,” Josie said.
Eric’s eyes widened again. “Oh no, Mum. What
are we going to tell Mum?”
“Nothing…?” Josie suggested. “I’ll just put
it back in my sleeve.”
“We can’t lie to Mum,” Eric said.
“But she’ll take it away!” Josie moaned,
just like Eric did when he was worried about something.
“What?” Eric asked, standing up.
“Mum won’t let me have a fairy stuck to my
arm. She’ll take me to the doctor and then they’ll take the fairy away.” Josie
kept the moan going and splayed her arms to show her helplessness.
“I really don’t think it’s a fairy,” Eric
said.
“I don’t care. I want to keep it.” Josie
folded her arms and the shimmering form jerked up into the air a bit. “And also
if you tell on me I’ll tell Mum you got mud on your shoes.”
Eric took a deep breath. He crouched down
again and reached a hand out towards the form.
“Touch it,” Josie said. “It feels tingly.”
Eric looked down at his shoes, his heart
presumably wrenching at the sight of the dirt.
“To hell with it,” he whispered, and reached
out and touched it. His fingertip glowed orange for a moment, just like Josie’s
had. He grinned one of the widest grins she’d ever seen on his face and stood
back up.
“That was brilliant,” he said.
“Uh… Eric?” Josie said, glancing down at the
form.
“What?” he turned around to follow her gaze.
“Oh. Oh no.”
The form was now suspended halfway between
the two of them, about a foot in the air. Whenever either of them moved the form
was jerked along with them, as was the other person. It was like they’d caught
each other with a fishing line.
Eric turned to face Josie. “Josie?”
“Yes?”
“We have to tell Mum now.”
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