Chapter two:
I rolled to the other side of my bed, turning away from my window and took a look at my alarm clock. 8:10 stared back at me with bright green numbers. I sighed, rolled onto my back, and sat up.
There was a quick, quiet grouping of knocks on the other side of my bedroom door. I knew that little hand anywhere.
"Come in." I yawned.
When my door creaked open, a tiny freckled nose paired with one dark brown eye poked through the opening. "Can I come in?" her small, six-year-old voice rings like a little bell in my ears.
I nodded, "I already said you could, Charlotte," I opened my arms and waited for her to fill the space between them.
She flung open the door and ran, padding over to me, her viciously curly hair bouncing and flying behind her. Under her arm was a worn, stitched, and stuffed puppy that had patches in several places.
Immediately behind her, scampered in a tan dachshund with its tongue flying and his beady eyes glinting. He jumped up on my bed after Charlotte had situated herself in my lap.
He barked and licked my face with a slobbery wet tongue. I pushed him away and laughed as he sat down beside me, his furry tail wagging happily.
Charlotte pat him on his head as he licked his chops and layed down. "Peanut is excited to see you, Matty," Charlotte says in her tiny voice.
"Well, I'm here just like every day," I answered, "How'd you sleep?" I hugged her tightly and rocked side-to-side the way I knew always made her giggle.
Sure enough, her melodious jingling laugh could be heard. It was muffled though, because her face was buried into my chest. Charlotte rolled out of my hug and said, "Matty, I dreamed a weird dream again."
"The one where I fall down a well?" I asked. I knew she had been having strange dreams for the past couple of weeks now. They always involved me. Sometimes, she told me, it scared her and I was worried for her.
She once came crying to me in the dark of the night, telling me strange stories of how I was battling crazy mad men and I got hurt. She didn't specify the injury because she broke out in more fits of tears and I wasn't about to make her. She was shaken up enough as it is.
She nodded solemnly. "The one in Mrs. Macannaly's yard," Charlotte pouted.
The next door neighbor.
I pulled her closer and hugged her tighter. "I promise none of that is going to happen to me, Char. Who would be stupid enough to fall down a well?" I asked.
She turned away, a wry smile spreading across her face, "You," she chuckled.
"Oh yeah?" I demanded playfully as I turned her over and started ticking her sides.
She squealed and shrieked, kicking and hitting my shoulder, demanding that I stop.
"Alright, you two," Mum's voice stops me and I look up to see her in the doorway. Mum laughed at the sight of Charlotte, who was dangling halfway off the bedside. Her princess themed nightgown was flipped upside down over her head, exposing her round belly.
I pulled her back onto my lap, smiling. Char punched my arm one last time, showing me her crooked (and some missing) teeth. She moved some corkscrew curls from her face as Mum spoke next.
"I've got breakfast on the table downstairs and it's getting cold. Charlotte, dear, someone's waiting for you downstairs—you too, Matthew. Get dressed and hurry down," Mum closed the door behind her.
"Who you think is there?" Charlotte asked me, her long dark eyelashes blinking over her chocolate brown eyes.
"Why don't you find out?" I suggest as I poke her stomach.
She laughs and I see the tiny dimples in her cheeks. "Okay!" she piled off my bed and ran from my room. Peanut barked and jogged after her on short stumpy legs.
I shook off my covers. I shuffled over to my dresser and pulled out my shirt for the day and a pair of jeans. I put them on and then found a pair of socks lying around. I bounced like a grasshopper (with only one leg) around my room as I tried putting on my socks.
"Grandpa!" Charlotte yells from downstairs. Having heard his name, it only made me want to get down there faster.
I ran into the bathroom in the hall (decorated with butterflies, to suite Char, even though we shared it), and quickly brushed my teeth and combed my equally as dark hair as Charlotte's. Then I hopped down the stairs to see my grandfather.
They were in the kitchen when I turned in, my family was seated around the table.
"Hello Matthew boy, how are you son?" Grandpa turns in his seat to greet me.
"Great now," I reply cheerfully, "What brings you here?"
Grandfather chortles at this, a deep humorous laugh. "Why can't I come to see my favorite grandchildren without being questioned? Come and sit and be merry. Your mother made some delicious flapjacks and I'd hate to eat them all," he said in a tone that very much meant he's love to eat us out of house and home.
"Sure Grandfather," I came to sit at the table and dished myself out some breakfast, munching on a bacon strip as I did so. "Even though we are your only grandchildren…" I munched.
He smiled, "You are too witty for your own good. Just like my daughter."
My mother smiled, "Aw, thanks Dad. I believe intelligence runs in the family."
Charlotte piped up from across the table, just a head floating above her plate, and asked, "Can you tell us a story please, Grandpa?"
"A story?" he questioned, his old brown eyes flashing, but joyous, "I suppose so. Once upon a time—"
"No, no! Not that one! We've heard that one too many times already!" Char complained, sticking her breakfast with a fork. She stuffed half of a whole flapjack in her mouth at one time.
He laughed again, as did Mum and I. We always enjoyed Grandfather's stories. It was classic family bonding time and Grandpa never left our home without mentioning some sort of tidbit in any of his various stories.
"Okay, love, which one would you like to hear?" he asked, leaning across the table.
I chewed as she thought. Her eyes lit up and she told him, "How about the one with your brother and sisters?"
"Ah," he said, thinking as if going back into a memory. For a glimpse of a moment my 85 year old grandfather seemed to be truly his age and not his young, happy, energetic spirit as we normally saw him. His white eyebrows drew together, making the wrinkles around his face protrude even further. Then the expression faded as he seemed to get a grip on how he was to tell this story that we've heard so many times.
"When I was a lad of only thirteen, my brother and sisters were shipped away because the year was 1940, and we were smack dab in the middle of the war. Air-raids literally bombed us out of our home and onto a train where we would spend time in an old mansion with a man named Professor Digory Kirke…" As Grandfather sunk deeper and deeper into his riveting tale, I looked to see Charlotte's brown eyes widen with amazement when he described having fallen through a wardrobe, into a completely new world.
"It was known as Narnia," he explained, and continued with his story.
Mum seemed equally as entranced into his narrative as Char was. She rested her elbow on the table with her head in her hand, a dreamy look in her eyes, and watched Grandfather as if she were imagining the story as he told it.
We sat there listening to his story, Charlotte occasionally asking questions, and I occasionally reaching across the table for more bacon, yet all of us were too engrossed in his story to focus everything on our meal.
Eventually, the tale drew to a close. Grandfather finished with, "My brother, Edmund, and my sisters, Susan and Lucy, grew up in Narnia, ruling over the land as its Kings and Queens. One day, while taking a ride through the wood, we came to a light post. It seemed vaguely familiar to my sisters, brother, and I, but Lucy was the first to step from her horse. She led us back to the other side of the wardrobe, back in the year 1940! And the tricky part is," he held up a boney finger, "we were young again! We talked for weeks about our adventured in Narnia, maybe even months after we left—we never forgot the wondrous world or the magic." He ended.
"Of course though, Grandpa, this isn't real. You could've never gone to this make-believe world, or battled the sorceress, Jadis, or became a ruler over this make-believe land." I began clearing the table, as I saw everyone was long finished with their breakfast.
"I believe in it!" Charlotte shouted. The stuffed puppy fell from her arms and she bent over to pick it up.
Meanwhile, Mum gave me a look. "I think it is best if you believe in whatever you wish, however you don't go breaking other's beliefs. Don't you?" She eyed me closely.
"Yes Mum," I answered, as Char popped back up in her seat.
"Oh Matthew dear, can you feed Nutmeg out back for me? The Macannaly's said we could use the water from their well, so I want you to use it, because the hose outback has holes in it."
Without a second thought I said, "Sure Mum, I'll get right on it," I set the plates that were in my hands in the wash bin and went to the backdoor. I slipped on some work shoes, laced them up tightly, and went outside.
I climbed down the steps into our yard and said 'Hello' to Nutmeg, the mare, in her single stall in the lone barn in our backyard. Her chestnut brown head shot out of the opening in her stall and she whinnied. I waved, and walked over into the next yard over.
I walked right up to the old stone well and peered down. It was dark, regardless the daylight, and it seemed to stretch on for miles. I looked up to a rope just above my head and tugged on it. I pulled and pulled, reeling in the rope, until I could see the brim of the wooden bucket. It was full to the top with sloshy water and I reached for it.
Before I knew it, the rope snapped. I made to catch the falling bucket.
Wrong move.
I toppled over the low stone wall and tumbled head first into the black abyss. I yelled as I fell like a stone over a cliff, bracing myself to hit the water, and scratching at the walls on either side of me to get a hold on to any gap in the bricks. It was useless, for any moment now I was going to be sleeping with the fishes.
Only I never hit the water. Instead, I hit dirt, grass, ground. I collided with the earth, hard on my left knee and I slumped over exhausted from the sudden incident. Before I could lift myself up again, I collapsed into unconsciousness.
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