"Ouch!" Sarah said after she'd clumsily stubbed her toe on one of several cardboard boxes strewn about the hallway. The action caused her to stumble just enough to lose her grip on the box she'd been carrying, pouring its contents onto the floor.
As its contents were books, it made a rather large commotion. "What was that?" her father called from downstairs.
"Nothing," Sarah called back to him, reaching down to hold her aching foot. "I stubbed my toe and dropped some books."
"Oh, okay," he answered. Then Sarah heard him reenter the conversation her stepmother was having with her little brother, Toby, the happy four-year-old chatting animatedly about planes and trains, or maybe pirates and Indians.
"No, no," Sarah muttered under her breath, "I'm not hurt." She knelt down and began picking up the books, placing them back into the box. "And I don't need any help, either, so don't trouble yourself." She sighed. She wouldn't have expected concern or assistance from her stepmother, as Karen had never shown any interest in Sarah, or made any attempt to bond with her. She'd always felt that Karen simply tolerated her. But despite the fact that her relationship with her father had begun to dissolve over six years ago when he first met Karen, and pretty much desisted altogether upon the birth of their son, Sarah still found herself disappointed every time he failed to employ the emotional involvement he used to have with her before Karen entered their lives.
Hope is a stupid thing, Sarah thought.
She was leaving for college in a few days, and her parents had plans to turn her room into a game room for Toby, even though she would be returning for summers and holidays. Apparently Karen didn't want to hold off redecorating. And so all week Sarah had been dividing her belongings into boxes marked "Attic" and "College," cleaning out the space she had called her own for her entire life until nothing of hers remained within it. It would be like she was never there, which is what it sometimes felt like, anyway. Her father, Karen, and Toby all lived in their own little world, and Sarah lived on the outskirts of it – acknowledged, but never included.
There was one exception, though. Whenever Toby was hurt or afraid, he wanted Sarah. When he fell down or suffered any bumps or bruises, Sarah was the one he wanted to kiss it and make it better. When he woke up from a bad dream, it was Sarah's room he wandered into, not their parents'. He wanted to play and hear stories and talk about everything with them, but when he needed to feel safe, he came to his big sister. No one really understood why.
When she was finished replacing all the books into the box she had dropped, she stood up and reached for the cord attached to the door to the attic, pulling it firmly and unfolding the ladder. One by one she put all the boxes on the floor at the top of the ladder, pushing the last one further back to make room for the next one, until they were all gone from the hallway. Then she climbed up.
They had a finished attic with a floor made of wooden planks and a few windows, the pre-dusk light shining through one of them. Sarah looked around at all the various objects lining the walls – Christmas decorations, old furniture, some of her mother's things she had salvaged from a garage sale – looking for an empty space to store her belongings. She chose such a space underneath the window through which the dwindling sunlight was streaming, and began moving her boxes over.
As she was carrying the third or fourth box across the room, she accidentally nudged a stack of boxes to her right. Nothing toppled over, but she must have dislodged something from behind the stack, because she heard a loud thud. Turning her head to see what had fallen, she saw a large, clear marble rolling across the floor.
Odd, she thought to herself, furrowing her brow as she watched it make its journey from one side of the attic to the other. Where did that come from? She didn't recognize it, and it was strange for there to be a lone object in the attic, not neatly packed away in a box or a garbage bag. It stopped only when it met with a box labeled "Sarah's Things."
Her curiosity piqued, Sarah put down the box she was carrying and ventured over to the box with her name on it. It was written in round, less-than-sophisticated letters, but it was clearly Sarah's own handwriting. She must have been a bit younger when she'd written it. She knelt before the box and unfolded the flaps.
Inside the box was an assortment of games, toys, and figurines she used to have in her room. She recognized them instantly as hers, and remembered the objects themselves, but experienced the strangest sensation of knowing that there were other memories tied to these objects and being unable to recall them.
She reached into the box and pulled out a Labyrinth game; it was a three-dimensional maze with a small wooden ball inside it, which could be moved through the maze's twists and turns by turning a knob at the side of the frame, which tilted the maze left and right. Sarah remembered imagining that she was the ball, seeing the Labyrinth as life-sized and real as she ran through it. Indeed, she had imagined it so clearly that she could vaguely recall separate stones in the walls, individual leaves in the hedges, and a sky that seemed to go on forever.
Next, she pulled out a stuffed animal with big horns, prominent fangs, and a sleepy expression. She smiled; this toy gave her warm feelings. Children tend to assign their dolls and animals personalities; Sarah had given this one a sweet and gentle disposition. Perhaps he wasn't the brightest, but he was always sensitive and kind.
Flooded with nostalgia and still trying to stir the elusive memories she sensed hovering just outside her consciousness, Sarah eagerly reached into the box to retrieve another toy. This time her hand came up holding a small fox wearing a red vest and a feathered renaissance cap. She chuckled aloud; this animal had been gallant, feisty, and insensible of his own diminutive size. He always led the charge into battle, despite being so tiny that he was continually lost in the scuffle, and seemed to come away from every fight remembering his contribution as being much more significant than it actually was.
Next she grabbed a red creature with long legs and arms, a beaklike nose, and protruding ears. This one had been rather one-dimensional and, for lack of a better word, a bit of a nutcase – more of a hindrance to magical quests than anything else. She carelessly tossed him aside.
The next object she withdrew was a wooden bookend with a carved dwarf on the other side of it. Looking into its beady eyes, which rested above an overlarge nose, Sarah felt an odd combination of annoyance and affection. This one had been slow to warm to others. Cranky and crotchety by nature, wanting simply to be left alone, this dwarf would go to the ends of the earth for you once you became his friend. But besides friend and companion, he took on another role in Sarah's mind; something like a guide. She felt that his duty had been to show her the way.
The way through what? she silently wondered. Then, for some reason, her gaze was pulled back to the Labyrinth game on the floor next to her. That's right, she said to herself, he sat overlooking the Labyrinth. He told me which way to go. Then, remembering how she used to imagine herself inside the Labyrinth, He walked through it with me, so I wouldn't have to be alone.
She smiled down at his heavily lined face, gave him a gentle caress with her finger, and gently set him aside.
Sarah still felt that there was something else related to these items that she wasn't grasping, and while she was enjoying the familiarity of her toys and the magical memories they invoked, she was beginning to despair that the incomprehensible something would remain lost, perhaps forever.
The box was nearly empty. Next she pulled out a music box. There was a girl, with dark hair like hers, in a beautiful white gown, standing on a round platform in a kind of gold gazebo. Sarah froze. This figurine had not been an imaginary girl with imaginary traits; this was her.
Slipping her legs to the side and out from under her, Sarah adopted a more comfortable position; she didn't know why, but she knew that she required more time to consider the music box. She looked and looked at it, recalling every detail and yet feeling as though she were seeing it for the first time. This had been a different Sarah, some version of herself that she imagined existed in another world. This Sarah was a princess, or a queen; she was beautiful, untouchable, she lived in a magical world. She danced gracefully, the envy of all who observed her, but she danced for her own joy and no other reason.
No… that wasn't quite right. Even though the figurine was alone on the floor, twirling by herself, Sarah got the feeling that the version of herself she used to imagine had had a partner. Someone who had pursued her, in his way; someone who had been intimidating, at times condescending, even frightening – but who had, in a rare moment of truth and weakness, declared her his equal, and admitted his admiration of her.
Sarah shook herself free of her reverie and privately laughed at herself. How ridiculous, to imagine your prince charming in such a way. How deranged, to have that as your paragon of romance. Yes, I want someone who's intimidating and frightening, she bitterly derided herself. Sign me up!
The sun was setting; the light in the attic was almost gone. Reaching into the box, she groped around the bottom for anything else that might lie within. Her fingers brushed against something, and for an instant she was filled with a wild hope that this object, whatever it was, would fill in the gaps and make sense of all her jumbled, incomplete memories.
What she held in her hand provided her with one answer, and several more questions. It was a statuette of a man dressed in odd clothing and who appeared to be in the middle of casting a spell. She held the statue in one hand and the music box in the other, gazing at each of them in turn. Yes, they definitely went together. He was her counterpart.
But why would Sarah have put this statue in the role of suitor to the girl in the music box? It didn't make any sense at all. She was four inches tall at the most, and he positively towered over her at well over a foot. She was made in realistic colors – dark brown hair, fair skin – while he was cast entirely in shades of blue. No child, however strange, would have chosen these two for each other. And yet Sarah was sure, as sure as she was of her own name, that the statuette was the tiny, dancing Sarah's "someone."
He even sang her a song, she absurdly thought out of nowhere.
But then she was confused anew, because she had no idea what song she could be thinking of.
Suddenly she looked as the music box again and realized she hadn't played it. Putting the blue man statue down, she tilted the music box sideways and turned the key underneath it until it was tightly wound. She placed it gently on the floor in front of her and watched the girl begin to slowly spin. And then the music started.
It was eerily familiar, and not just in its own right. It meant something else, she was sure of it. This was what she had been trying to remember.
Sarah heard the keys inside the box tinkling the melody, but on top of that sound, in the back of her mind, she also heard it being played differently – with a fuller sound, perhaps more instruments. She could almost hear someone singing. Then, as the third line approached, some words fell into her head.
She sang softly, but aloud, "I'll place the sky within your eyes…"
What is that from? she asked herself with much anxiety. How do I know those words?
"Sarah," her father shouted from the bottom of the ladder, causing her to jump. "Dinner's on the table."
"Okay," she called back to him, hurriedly packing everything back into the box. The last item remaining on the floor was the large marble that had led her to it. She hesitated for a moment, still not remembering it and unsure what to do with it. Then she put it in the box with everything else, closed the flaps, and went downstairs to eat.