The past few days had been rough on Edana. They had consisted mainly of petty arguments between she and Sarah, and more important disputes between she and Sarah’s parents. More specifically, Sarah’s stepmother, who seemed to have made it her specific goal to convert Edana from all of her mannerisms that she disapproved of. She also wanted to get her settled down at a good school as soon as possible, both because she really did want to see her successful, and because she was tired of dealing with the girl.
She had always found her husband’s niece, with her strange ideas and carefree nature, to be a dangerous influence on her young and impressionable son. She could not relate to the girl’s mentality, and was extremely disappointed that she seemed to have no direction in her life. She did not always approve of Sarah’s decisions, but at least her stepdaughter had some inkling of what she wanted to be.
Edana did know what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted adventure, and then she wanted to write novels so that she could include her experiences as things that the characters went through, either good or bad. And that was precisely what she was planning to do. For a start, she would drive back to California and from there, get a plane to somewhere, anywhere. Maybe the islands of the South Pacific, the cultures there had always fascinated her. Or maybe India. She could work with one of those volunteer organizations that were always on TV – that certainly looked like it would be exciting, not to mention interesting. As traumatic as losing both of her parents at once had been, the insurance returns she had received, along with an inheritance from her grandfather in the bank, would keep her alive and in good shape for a while, especially if she traveled out of season. Since she had no intentions of being a typical tourist, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Another possibility had been nagging at her for days now. Far-fetched, assuredly, but a constant thought none-the-less. She thought back to when Sarah had first taken her to explore the forest and park. When Sarah had found out that her newly discovered cousin was just as enthralled by fantasy stories as she was, she had told Edana some fascinating tales. They had worked them into elaborate games of pretend, for though they were years too old to play such a game their overactive imaginations always got the best of them. Sarah had let her borrow an already well-worn book, from where she had gotten some of the ideas she told Edana about. Edana had then proceeded to read it so many times herself that she had the play memorized.
And so once again, in the room she shared with Sarah, the thought occurred to her again. She stood up on Sarah’s bed to view the bookshelf, gently pulling down the red leather-bound book. She flopped down on her own bed, brooding at the drizzle outside the balcony window, and opened the book. She had trouble concentrating. What if… She pushed the thought away, mildly annoyed. It returned, stronger than before. What if… She was getting angry now, and replaced the book on the shelf. Grabbing her vinyl jacket on the way out the door, she called to her adopted family, "I’ll be home later – not for dinner."
"All right, dear," Sarah’s dad replied in his tranquil, unflappable manner. "Don’t get too soaked."
"Do you have a raincoat?" Sarah’s stepmother asked.
"Yeah."
"Do you want an umbrella?" she pursued.
"No, that’s why I have a raincoat."
"But your hair will get wet –"
"It’ll dry," Edana answered, more sharply than she had intended. "Don’t worry, I’ll be fine," she added in a calmer tone of voice, giving the woman a hug.
"Can I go too?" Toby pleaded. He was well on his way to stir-crazy from being cooped up in the house all day.
"Indeed you may, if your mom says it’s all right," Edana answered, grinning.
"I suppose," his mother acquiesced, sounding not at all thrilled at the prospect.
As soon as Toby had shoes and a raincoat on, Edana practically bolted from the house. He was running to keep up with her as she headed for the door. Sarah would not be home for hours yet, she was at a movie with her current boyfriend. Edana chose not to think about that, she had hoped the reason Chad was talking to her was because he was interested in her, but as usual it had only been to get closer to Sarah.
It was a tender subject – few of the young men in school had expressed interest in Edana (only the desperate ones, as she put it), while Sarah could pick and choose dates as she liked. Her aunt had not so casually observed that it may be due to the fact that Edana was too flamboyant and unpredictable in her manner, her thoughts and beliefs too far removed from the norm. It had made Edana all the more determined not to change her personality for anyone.
Still, she could not hold back feelings of jealousy as strong as she had in response to Sarah’s popularity. Especially since it had only come about following a major turnaround Sarah had experienced only a month or two before Edana moved in. Apparently before that time, Sarah had been selfish and withdrawn, but something - and she had never told Edana precisely what - had caused her to reassess her priorities in life, to take charge of things and make the best of every situation. Although still fun-loving and adventurous, Sarah's travails in the labyrinth had made her appreciate what she had in her life infinitely more than she used to. Edana sometimes referred to her as Mother Hen simply because she knew how much it annoyed Sarah.
"Where are we going?" Toby’s four-year-old voice chirped from the carseat at her side. He was surprised when she did not stop at the small park that she and Sarah often went to when something was bothering them, the one with the pretty bridge, little pond, and forest that the three of them always pretended was magical.
"I don’t know," Edana replied. "Just for a drive." She stopped at the large community park. "Would you like to go play on the playground?"
"Oh, yes!" Toby exclaimed, then frowned. "But we can’t slide in the rain."
Edana raised one eyebrow and smiled as though she knew a secret. "I just happened to bring waxed paper along from the kitchen," she giggled, holding up the roll. "If we sit on this, we won’t get wet and we’ll go a lot faster."
"Like a roller coaster?" Toby asked excitedly, his eyes wide.
"Like a rocket," she promised, unbuckling him from the car seat.
Edana chased him to the giant sliding board, then followed him up the ladder and placed a sheet of waxed paper on the metal before sitting him down on it. Then she gave him a nudge and he flew down it, landing in a heap at the bottom. He shrieked with laughter, begging to do the ride over and over before moving to the other pieces of playground equipment.
It was getting dark before Edana realized it and convinced Toby to come back to the car. When both of them were comfortably seated and belted in, she turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. She tried a few more times, using every trick she had ever heard of, but the car did not even make a hum.
"Looks like we’re walking," she told Toby resignedly.
He looked at her in shock. "But it’s miles!"
"Just one or two. I’ll carry you if you get tired, OK?" In truth, it was over two miles, much of it uphill, but there was no other choice, so Edana figured that they had better get moving. At least the rain was still only a light drizzle, more like a mist.
They had covered a mile, and it was now very dark except for the street lamps. Toby yanked on Edana’s hand and said, "I can’t walk anymore!" It was not so much a whine as an exhausted statement of fact. Without a word, Edana picked him up and sat him on her shoulders. The extra weight slowed her down more than she had expected it would, but when she saw a puddle she could not resist the urge to jump in it, making a terrible splash. Toby laughed gleefully, and she did it again. She felt her sneakers soak through but did not really care for the simple joy of the action. She walked onwards towards home, but soon found another puddle.
This time, Toby yanked on her hair and begged to be let down so he could join in the fun. "You’re going to get wet, and your mother will throw a fit," Edana warned him. She knew Toby was at the age where that was more a promise than a threat. She lifted him down from her shoulders and stood him on the ground before her.
"And will she jump up and down?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly," Edana laughed.
"And will she yell a lot?"
"Of course," Edana said, "but mostly at me, and not at you, for I was the instigator." At his look of confusion as he tested the word, she explained. "It was my idea."
"And will she turn bright red?" he asked brightly, returning to his original train of thought.
"Quite possibly," Edana told him. "I really do think she might!"
With a shout, Toby jumped into the puddle and splashed Edana playfully. Together they danced and leapt in the water until it was all splashed out and there was not a dry spot on either one of them.
Invigorated, Edana finished the last mile with Toby on her shoulders once again. They removed their shoes and socks in the mudroom, and rolled up their pant legs so as not to drip water on the floor. Hand in hand, the two bedraggled souls strode into the kitchen and gave Edana’s aunt a terrible fright.
"Dear God, you’ll catch Pneumonia!" she cried, picking Toby up and whisking him away upstairs for a hot bath and dry clothing.
"Where were you?" Sarah asked as Edana entered the living room and her father looked up from reading the paper.
"At the playground," Edana said, as if going to the playground in the rain was the most natural idea anyone could have. "The car wouldn’t start, so we had to walk home. We found some puddles on the way. I guess I need to call Tim and have him get the car."
"A lake, I’d say," Sarah’s father said with a chuckle. "Go get some dry clothes, we’ll call Tim later. The car isn’t going anywhere," he assured her.
Half an hour later, Edana was seated in the living room talking on the cellular phone with her mechanic friend Tim. "You can come by and bet the keys tomorrow morning sometime. If you can’t fix it this time, just scrap it. After all, it is twelve years old at this point, I can’t expect too much. All right, see you then." She disconnected the line just in time for her aunt to come storming downstairs.
"Are you quite satisfied, young lady? I can’t believe your irresponsibility! He’ll be in bed for a week with the cold he’ll have caught from tonight’s fiasco! He’s just a child – how can you show so little concern for his –"
Edana, taken aback by the tirade at first, had finally caught her wits enough to tune out what her aunt was saying. She knew that doing so made her aunt’s prognosis of her immaturity that much truer, but she also knew that if she allowed herself to hear it, her temper would take over and make the situation even worse.
Finally her aunt paused for a breath. "I feel terribly upset about it, but the car wouldn’t start. I tried for half and hour. I figured that bringing him home in the rain was preferable to abandoning him in the car to wait for me to come home and ask you to go drive out and pick him up. I just couldn’t bear to leave him alone for that long. What else would you have me do?" Edana was more than a little distraught by the turn of events, and near tears. This made her even angrier, since she rarely cried, and never if other people were around.
"For a start you could have walked home instead of swam!" her aunt shouted.
"Honey, please calm down," Edana’s uncle said to his wife. Toby had begun to cry as a result of his mother yelling at Edana. He had not thought his mother would become quite so fierce, and he knew from experience that Edana would take all the blame upon herself to keep him out of trouble.
He crawled down the stairs, peering through the banister, and called through his tears, "Mama, I wanted to jump in the puddle too!"
Edana stood and started up the stairs. "No honey, stay out of this. It’s my fault," she told him dejectedly. She pulled him close to calm his crying, but her aunt intervened.
"Toby, get back in bed – I told you to stay there the rest of the night. Don’t touch him," she continued coldly to Edana. "You’ve done enough for the night!"
Edana flinched as though she had been hit by a board, then stood up slowly and went upstairs to the room she shared with Sarah. She threw herself onto her bed and could no longer hold back the tears, sobbing painfully. Her aunt had forbidden her contact with Toby, whom she dearly loved. She had not felt so alone since the death of her parents. Minutes later, there was a timid knock on the door. She ignored it.
Toby came in anyway, clutching Launcelot, his favorite toy just as it had been Sarah’s. He nestled it into Edana’s arms, then stood and looked at her worriedly.
"Toby," she whispered hoarsely. "I’m going away soon. I don’t know for how long. On the bus. Your Mama and Daddy mustn’t look for me. I need to find out who I am. And I will be back, so you must promise never to forget me, no matter how long it is. Will you do that for me?"
The little boy nodded. He did not even try to convince her to stay, for her knew she would not listen anyway. He just gave her a hug and a kiss, then went back to his room before his Mama could come up to check on him and find him out of bed.
When Sarah came in, she was surprised to find her cousin asleep and still holding tightly to Toby’s gift. She had expected to commiserate with Edana for a while, like usually happened when her cousin and her stepmother entered full-scale warfare. She drifted to sleep herself, suspecting nothing of the plans Edana had confided to Toby.
* * * * * * * * *
In the morning, they all left the house for an engagement that Ariana had bowed out of weeks earlier. Edana gave them all a hug when they left, and she could see that Sarah suspected something was going on. After they had gone, she called Tim and told him to scrap the car because she didn’t want it back, but to make sure that her aunt got the car seat back. "I’ll leave the key in the mailbox," she finished, hanging up the phone. After taking the key out as promised, she packed up a few things in a bag and wrote a letter to the family.
Dear All:
I love you all very much, but I am not living up to your expectations or my own.What happens
in my life is important to me, but in order to find out what it should be, I have to take a trip.
I need to figure out what my life requires and find some direction. I appreciate all that you’ve
done for me and I will keep in touch as I am able. Please don’t send out search parties for me.
I need to do this for myself.
All my love,Edana
She placed the note on the kitchen table, then returned to her room to get her bag. She picked up the red leather book. It opened to a page and the nagging thought rushed at her in an instant. What if it actually worked, and Sarah’s stories, based on this book, were true? There could be no better place to find herself, Edana reasoned. Besides, she was just being romantic. What was the likelihood it would really happen? Slim to none? Even less? She placed the book, open to the correct page, on her bed, but recited the magic words from memory, where they had been deeply engrained. She meant it with all her heart: "I wish the Goblins would take me away, right now!" A peal of thunder raged outside, and she went to the huge balcony windows to watch the gathering storm. She loved the balcony, and was glad that Toby switched Sarah’s old room, the smaller of the two, so that she and Sarah could share this one. Sarah, however, always kept the Balcony windows locked, as though she was afraid of an intruder.
The rain pelted down on the balcony mercilessly. "Just what I wanted to walk to the bus stop in," she lamented, reflecting that she had better go close the window in Toby's room. "Ah, the irony of my life. A shame those couldn’t really be magic words," she thought out loud.
