Resolving herself to carry out her mission, however, the girl lifted her right hand from the doorknob to grasp the key dangling from a chain around her neck--her mother's last gift to her before the unexplainable accident that had claimed her life.
With a dramatic sigh the girl dropped her hands to her sides, opened her eyes and turned around to face the mysterious room before her. The room, and all its contents, was coated in a layer of dust. Light filtered through the two windows at the opposite end of the room, illuminating the sheets that were strewn over everything, creating a mass of indefinable lumps that filled most of the attic.
As she looked again at the windows she noticed that one of them was slightly open, unnoticed at first due to the cobwebs concealing the minute gap.
In the midst of the city of dusty cloth buildings there was a road and, after a moment of hesitation, the girl started to trek down it, wondering what she might find along the way--if the answers she so desperately sought were somewhere in this room.
As she walked she started to unceremoniously remove the sheets that obscured the ancient inhabitants of the room. She yanked arbitrarily the sheet from an object on her right--an old dresser--and then her left--a broken lamp. She continued this method of unveiling things until she reached a particularly tall lump on her right near the end of the room.
Stopping before it, she gazed, entranced, and for reasons she could not fathom she had to know what this alluring thing was. Reaching up with a quivering hand, excitement bubbling in her stomach, the girl grasped yet another dusty white sheet and slowly slid it off of the unknown object, leaving her to face the image of a pale youthful girl whose long, black, untidy hair fell around her face all the way to her shoulders. Around her eyes was puffy and red, accentuating their bright green irises. Gazing into the reflection's eyes, the girl asked herself, Is this really what I've become?
Breaking her gaze away from her seemingly perpetual grief stricken face, the girl admired the peculiar key her mother had given her. It was made of copper, but it had partially oxidized so that now it was both golden and bright, magical turquoise. And although the girl found it beautiful, she also thought it was a nuisance. Her mother had bestowed it upon her so that she might find the answer to...to what? All her mother had told her was that she'd know when she found it, but so far the girl hadn't had any luck. She had tried the key in every lock she came upon, and yet none matched.
She sighed with annoyance and had begun to turn back the way she had come when she noticed a bright patch of turquoise reflected in the mirror's lower right corner.
Feeling hopeful now, she jerked around and eagerly stepped over the partially obscured item, casting off the sheet and revealing a locked chest. With a sharp intake of breath the girl removed the chain from around her neck and held the key up to the chest's copper lock, knowing impossibly that this chest contained the answer she had been searching for. With a nervous exhale the girl fit the key in the lock and twisted, hearing the click that assured her with a sense of finality that her disobedience in sneaking into the attic had not been for nothing.
Upon lifting the lid she discovered that the only thing in the chest was an old, elaborately decorated journal. On its dark blue cover were stars, moons and suns, all golden and metallic so that when she picked it up and moved it back and forth, the light from the windows reflected off their surfaces, making it all the more magical.
The happiness she experienced at this discovery did not last long however, for upon standing up she heard a bang from behind her and hastily turned around as what appeared to be an antique glass punch bowl shattered on the floor, causing a plume of dust to rise up in its wake. Then through the haze of dust she saw a small creature coming towards her, its feet lightly scratching the ground as it hopped closer and closer. What is a crow doing in here? she wondered. Then all of a sudden the bird took off, flapping frantically as it dove straight for her. She screamed and ducked, hands outstretched in front of her to protect her face from its sharp beak and talons. However, it averted its path at the last second and disappeared ominously in the city of sheets.
The girl seized the opportunity of its absence and began to run toward the door, only making it a few steps before she tripped on a fallen candelabra that she hadn't seen--the journal flying out of her hand to land with a loud thud a few feet away as she fell. Suddenly, the crow let out a shriek of excitement and swept out from behind a sheet, diving for the journal and snatching it up in its fierce talons.
The girl frantically scrambled to her feet and shouted at the bird, which had landed on another sheet covered object near the window, to drop it, throwing the candelabra that had been her downfall as she did so. The crow sprang out of the way at the last second and landed on the mirror as the candelabra broke through one of the old windows with a resounding crash.
The girl glanced at the broken window and then the bird, already knowing with a sick sense of dread what was about to happen. Then it gave two strong hops and flew, skimming toward the window, toward the light. She shouted, "No!" as the crow flew through the window, and watched as it got farther away... as the answer that she so desperately craved disappeared with it into the horizon.
Inspirational Sentence of the Day: "Then it gave two strong hops and flew, skimming toward the window, toward the light." From A Gathering of Gargoyles by Meredith Ann Pierce
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