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"Lily, Lily, where are you?”
A sing-song voice keeps calling for her.
“Such a clever girl. Now, where might she be hiding? I just can’t find her!”
Lily giggles. Yes, she is very clever. The best at playing hide-and-seek. Lily crawls along the backside of the large leather couch, careful to make no sound, and lies down, her face pressed to the floor. The Enemy wears pretty, pink pumps with Pygmy Puffs as pompoms. The Pygmy Puffs can be seen through the gap underneath the piece of furniture, walking around the living room.
“Aha! Here you are!”
Lily hears the curtains to the large windows being yanked open. The little girl stifles a laughter. Only a beginner hides behind curtains! Lily looks at the feet intensely. She must be quiet, like a cat. She looks at her tiny hands and balls them into cat-like paws. The next move is very important. Lily sneaks a peek around the couch carefully, her heart beating. Aunt Luna is looking in the other direction. Exhilarated, Lily scrabbles towards the living room door. Behind it is her next save spot! Quick, quick.
Now she is in the hall. A gentle summer breeze blows through the house. The door creaks. Stupid door! Lily thinks. Then she hears steps coming closer.
“Maybe she is in the hallway! I think I might just check there!” her Aunt Luna says loudly.
Oh no! Lily looks around the hall. Where can she hide next? She must not be found out. The Enemy will never find spy-cat. She spots a large, black cupboard across the hall. Decidedly, she jumps in its direction. How can cats be so quiet when they leap? Her paws land on the floor with thuds.
“Yes, I can definitely hear something in the hall!”
Lily feels exited. She opens the door of the cupboard and squeezes herself into its corner. She won’t close the door completely, because the dark is scary.
Through the small slit, she can see the Enemy entering the hall. The Pygmy Puffs stop. Aunt Luna’s eyes look up and down the hall. Then they look straight into Lily’s. Lily squeezes her eyes shut, her heart beating even faster.
“Now, I think I know exactly where spy-cat is!”
Slow steps come closer. Click –clack. Click –clack. Lily tenses in her corner and nervously opens one eye.
“HA!”
The door of the cupboard flies open and Lily shrieks loudly. Aunt Luna steps into the cupboard and looks down on the little girl, smiling. “Spy-cat has been found out!”
“Nooo, it was the wind’s fault!” Lily starts crying.
At that moment, said wind plays another evil prank on her. With a swishing sound, it speeds through the hallway and the door of the cupboard shuts with a loud BANG.
Lily’s voice gets caught in her throat. For a tiny moment, it feels as if her heart has stopped. Around her, there is only blackness. Something rustles in front of her. The Enemy. Or a monster. Her state of shock is interrupted when cool fingers touch her arm. She starts screaming.
“NO! Leave me alone, Monster! Go away!”
The monster pulls her forward, while she struggles to get away. Her arms and legs hit the walls of the cupboard. Is the space getting smaller? What if it gets smaller and squeezes her until she can’t breathe?
She screams with all her might. “LET ME GO!”
“Shh. Lily, it’s me! It’s Aunt Luna!”
Two strong hands get hold of Lily’s arms and she is caught in an embrace. The smell is familiar. It is flowery and sweet.
“I’m not a monster,” Aunt Luna’s voice says calmly. “It’s me! Feel that?”
Fingers enclose Lily’s hand and slowly lead it upwards. She can feel a face. It isn’t hairy, like a monster’s, but smooth and soft. Her fingers can feel little hoops of metal.
“These are your earrings,” she states.
“That’s right! Now let’s see what we can do about our situation,” Aunt Luna says.
The door next to them rattles when Aunt Luna pulls at it, but it doesn’t move.
“Ah, this is quite unfortunate.”
Lily feels panic rise inside her again. “Are we locked in? We can’t get out, can we?”
She takes fast breaths. There is no doubt, the walls are closing in on her and Aunt Luna. Maybe there is no monster in the cupboard. Maybe the cupboard is the monster. Tears start to roll down Lily’s face. She is being swallowed by the dark monster. Surely, it will not notice her if she is very, very quiet? Lily stops breathing. No sound is allowed. She can hold her breath for quite some time. But not forever. Why won’t Aunt Luna stop breathing? Doesn’t she know that she will be eaten by the dark?
“Lily? Sweetie, are you alright? I can’t hear you?”
Lily feels a little bit dizzy. Her breast burns and she almost can’t bear it any longer. The tears keep falling and tickle her cheeks. She can’t help it, she has to breathe. She opens her mouth and draws air into her lungs, scared because any second now she will be swallowed. She hiccups and small sobs escape her lips. “T-the ... the dark. It’s getting smaller!” she tries to explain.
“Now, don’t worry, Lily. We will get out of here in no time. We just have to wait a little bit until your mummy and daddy come back.”
Lily tears her eyes wide open. They prickle, but still no ray of light gives her any hint of her surroundings. It becomes very quiet in the cupboard, but Lily knows that they are not alone. The silence is alive and it rustles and creaks to show her its power. Darkness and Silence are the two things Lily hates the most. She can hear little whispers, talking in a language she cannot understand. Formless hands reach out for her and want to drag her away.
Lily starts humming. The silence retreats, but the darkness leers and waits for the moment she stops making noises.
“Lily,” Aunt Luna interrupts her tuneless humming, “are you scared of the dark?”
Lily doesn’t answer but keeps humming, her eyes wide open.
Aunt Luna reaches for her head and strokes her hair softly. It is comforting, like a shield that keeps the monsters away.
“Yes,” Lily finally dares to answer.
“You don’t need to be. The darkness is very mysterious. And maybe also a little bit shy. But we could tell her to show herself.”
Lily looks around and sees only blackness. “What would she show us? Darkness is always black!”
“Well yes, right now it is. But where do you think the darkness goes when the lights turn on?”
Lily thinks about the moments when she lies in bed at night and her dad turns on the light to make her less scared. The darkness creeps away, and the world is there again.
“Maybe she’s hiding under the bed when it’s daytime,” she muses.
“Maybe,” Aunt Luna agrees. “But maybe she just changes shape. Maybe she turns herself into everything we can see.”
Lily pauses and thinks about everything she can see. “I don’t think so. I can touch most things, but I can’t touch darkness.”
“You are right. Isn’t it a bit like magic? We can turn magic into chairs and animals and other things. But I have never touched magic.”
Lily doesn’t like magic very much, either. Magic doesn’t do what she wants. It’s just as with pens. When Roxy takes a pen it turns into a beautiful drawing. But when Lily takes the same pen, it only becomes a web of lines, not at all what she has in mind when she tries to recall figures and forms and turn them into people and houses and cats. When her mum uses her wand, the plates in the sink start to move. When her father says a magic word, things will fly in his direction. But for Lily, it doesn’t work. Her brother once stole a wand from Uncle Ron and he made her favourite toy car burn. The flames swallowed the car and it shrivelled into an ugly bunch of plastic.
A blue, glimmering light erupts to her right. Lily winces and blinks into the sudden brightness. The blue glimmering is set against the shape of a hand and spreads slowly over the surface of the cupboard wall. Aunt Luna moves her hand in small circles. Ever-expanding waves of blue force the blackness into retreat. Lily is mesmerized.
“What is this?” she whispers. She looks downwards at her feet and sees only never ending, shapeless blue. She shuffles her feet a bit. They stand on solid ground, but it still feels as if she’s flying.
“Is this the sky?” she asks quietly, trying not to disturb the blue that has chased away the darkness.
“It might be. Look!” Aunt Luna flicks her hand and stars sprinkle from her fingertips, setting themselves comfortably next to each other on the blue canvas of infinity.
Lily stares at the blinking dots. They seem to wink at her, twinkling and wiggling in the air. She raises her hand and tries to catch one of the little stars. It escapes just in time when her index finger touches the wooden surface of the cupboard.
“They don’t like me,” she states.
“They’re just playing with you.”
Lily frowns. These are definitely not normal stars. Because normal stars don’t move and they don’t play games. She moves her hand to encircle a group of twinkling dots. As if they wanted to tease her, they move backwards, deeper into the walls.
Feeling annoyed, Lily leans closer to the wall and presses both palms on the wood that separates her from the stars. “HEY!” she calls and bumps her fist against the inner side of the cupboard. “Don’t go away!”
She takes another swing at the wall – but instead of hitting the obstacle flies right through it into the endless blue. Lily stumbles and keels over. Her body slowly rotates in the space she has fallen into. Lily wriggles and tries to stand up. Finally she manages to stop her body moving around, but she doesn’t know where up and down are anymore. Beneath her feet, there is only blue and it stretches in all directions. She panicky looks around.
“Aunt Luna?” she calls, and her voice is carried away by the stars and swallowed by the sky.
“I’m right here!” a voice next to her answers, and Lily sees the familiar figure nearing her, each step bouncing her body up and down, just like when Roxy jumps on the trampoline in her backyard.
Testily, Lily jumps, too. Slowly, like a feather, she floats up and glides down to her former position.
“Are we still in the cupboard?” she asks, unsure of her whereabouts.
“I should think so,” Aunt Luna says and reaches for a little star that passes her shoulder. The star approaches her hand, cautiously as if sniffing her, and then settles on her index finger, where it glows and pulsates calmly like tiny heart.
“They only work for magic people,” Lily says, slightly disappointed. She has no magic, it ignores her as if she’s not even there. Whenever she’s wanted to tame it, it has avoided her, as if she wore a magic-repellent.
“Magic is a little bit like a puppy,” Aunt Luna says, “If you’re scared of it, it can smell it and won’t come near you.”
Aunt Luna moves her hand slowly and holds the star right under Lily’s nose. Lily watches the twinkling spot suspiciously. It sits calmly on Aunt Luna’s finger, humming comfortably. Lily raises her left hand and inches towards the star.
“I don’t think this is a real star,” she states “Teddy told me that stars are actually very big. We just don’t see it that way because we’re so far away. This looks more like a snowflake.”
As soon as she has said those words, the star stops pulsating and transforms into a tiny crystal. Its ends are spiked like twigs of a tree and glitter beautifully. Lily’s eyes widen in surprise. “Look! It actually IS a snowflake! I was right!”
She carefully nudges the crystal. The flake trembles, and then starts to enlarge. It grows and grows while the spiky ends melt away until it is nothing but a large, icy orb that hovers in front of them. Lily eyes it critically. It looks a little bit like a very large Easter egg. As if on cue, a thick brush appears in her right hand, inviting her to decorate it. She draws a large circle on the orb. Where the brush touches its surface, it leaves a thick, red line. Lily smiles satisfied.
“Red is my favourite colour,” she explains. “This brush is really smart to know that.”
The red circle, she has decided, is a porthole, like the ones big ships have. It seems that the egg agrees with her, because the porthole slowly opens to the outside. Lily carefully edges closer to take a look at what’s behind, and she is immediately transfixed by the whirlwind of colours that enter her vision. What can it be? What does she want it to be?
With her left hand supporting her weight, her right reaches through the little window, into the kaleidoscope with ever-changing patterns. The blue and red and green and yellow exchange places so quickly that she can hardly follow. She blinks rapidly and with every look the circles and triangles have changed again. Lily frowns. She has never had much patience with the kaleidoscope her granddad had given her. Decidedly, she leans forward and thrusts her fist straight into the kaleidoscope’s heart. For a moment nothing happens – only a calm and steady pulse that lightly presses on Lily’s fist. Slowly, the rhythm travels up her arm. First her wrist, then her elbow, now her shoulder. Badam. Badam. Badam. Badam.
Then it suddenly stops – and everything around her explodes in millions of tiny, colourful pieces. There is no sound, but so much to see that it occupies all of her senses. She can feel the green tingle her skin and the red giggle in her ear. Nothing is concrete, except for herself, as she watches pieces of the universe disperse and make place for another endlessness.
Strangely enough, Lily is not scared, because for the first time, Magic does exactly what she wants. She lets herself fall and fall and fall. She doesn’t even need a broom to fly, whichever way she goes the universe invents itself anew. She looks to her left and out of nowhere, grass grows in the middle of infinity. The straws extend and reach her feet.
Only now she remembers Aunt Luna. She can’t be far, because Lily knows her own Universe well. Lily looks around and then upward. Far above her, she can see Aunt Luna squeezing through the tiny porthole and graciously gliding down towards her, softly landing on the grass that has become a meadow by now. Luna looks around her and then down at Lily, a wide smile on her face.
“Lily, your Magic is really beautiful!”
Lily glows with pride and takes Luna by her hand, dragging her around the large clearing that stretches far ahead to a point, where a line of trees mark the beginning of woods that remind Lily of the woods close to her grandparents’ home. The setting sun is casting its light on the meadow, flowers dance with the wind and leafs of trees that have grown around the large clearing rustle friendly words.
“See, I have cats too!” she exclaims excitedly and picks up a small kitten from the ground that has played around her ankles. The baby cat looks at her with large, brown eyes – quite like her own, she notes satisfied – and meows.
Lily happily starts playing with the cat, small balls, threads and woolen mice appearing whenever she reaches for them. The cat is soon joined by two little friends, a black one and a ginger one that has fur the same colour as her hair.
She hardly notices as the edges of the meadow start to blur. Her mind, so wide and endless before, is reduced to just her and the cats. The trees tremble slightly and with a silent sigh dissolve into nothingness. It doesn’t take long before Lily starts getting tired. Running around and rolling in the grass – like a carpet it is lain out before her wherever she needs to go – is quite exhausting. Aunt Luna has been sitting close-by, watching her with an encouraging smile.
Now Lily approaches her former Enemy-Monster-Aunt and snuggles into her lap, the cats obediently following her example. As her lids grow heavy she sleepily tells Aunt Luna: “I really like this cupboard.” Then she dozes off.
Stars and Easter eggs are floating around Lily. She is in the middle of a very important discussion. A cat says in a low voice: “God, we are so sorry! Have you been alright?”
Lily frowns. The voice doesn’t sound very cat-like. In fact, it sounds quite familiar.
“We should’ve brought the cupboard straight to the Department of Mysteries! I told you Harry!”
A bright light rips through the blue sky and at the end Lily can see a white curtain flutter in the wind.
“Don’t worry, I think Lily was quite alright after the initial shock,” Aunt Luna’s voice says.
Lily blinks and opens her eyes to her surroundings. She feels the pressure of her mother’s arms carrying her around her back. In her field of vision is the big living room window. A big yawn brings tears to her eyes and she wriggles to loosen her mother’s grip.
The arms immediately shift her and her mother looks into her eyes. They are big and brown, like the cat’s, like Lily’s own. "Hello Mum,” Lily says.
“Darling, are you alright?” Her mother’s eyes look worried.
“Yes!” Lily answers decidedly. She looks around the living room. It seems strangely solid after what she has experienced. “I made a lot of magic!” she tells proudly. “In the cupboard!”
Her mother puts her down. She takes a few steps to the side and peeks into the hallway through the door.
But the cupboard is gone.