Free Away With the Fairies by Jenny Twist

Away With the Fairies
     
    Jenny Twist
     
    “Lucy!”
    June stopped dead in the bedroom doorway. Lucy was sitting staring at the wall. Again. She did it all the time these days. Mum said she was suffering from some sort of condition that made her go into a trance. It sounded like someone's name – Betty Moll? – something like that. But Granny McCurdle said, “Och, she's away wi' the fairies again.” And that sounded so much nicer.
    Even so, she didn't want to wake her up. You weren't supposed to wake people up if they were sleepwalking. Maybe it was the same with a trance. She didn't know what happened to them. Did they die? Or go mad? She just didn't want to take the chance. So she moved across the room very quietly and sat beside her sister on the bed.
    There was a tiny tear in the wallpaper just opposite where Lucy was sitting. Lucy said that was what she had to concentrate on to make the trance come. Only she didn't call it a trance. She said she went to look at Fairyland.
    June leant forward and stared at the tear in the paper. It was that kind of lumpy paper called Anna something – Anna Galloper? The wall remained blank and ordinary. June sat back a bit and refocused. And there was something – just the slightest suggestion of green - a pale shifting of green shadows, a bit like a film being projected onto a screen. Fascinated, she concentrated harder. Then, just as the shadows started to coalesce into a picture, the cat, Mitzy, shot across the room and ran straight into the wall. Straight into the middle of what had become a picture of a forest. And she ran into the shadows under the trees and disappeared behind a trunk.
    June gasped with shock.
“Mitzy!” Lucy stood up and ran after the cat, straight through - or was it into - the wall. But the wall wasn't there anymore. A real live forest was standing beyond the hole where the wall was supposed to be. 
    Shaking, June stood up, her hands outstretched like a blind man, feeling in front of her for where the wall used to be. Then with an audible pop! the wall reappeared, just at the ends of her fingers. She felt it smack against them as it came back.
    “ Whoo! ” June sat down again suddenly and stared at the wall. It was white and blank and innocent again. She remained staring at the wall for a long time.
     
    ****
     
    “June! Lucy! Lunch!”
    It was Mum. What was she going to do? She couldn't tell Mum Lucy had walked through the wall. They would call for the plain van to take her away. That's what Granny McCurdle said if anybody went mad - “The plain van came to take them away.” The plain van was full of men in white coats. June imagined them in white raincoats with the collars turned up and white hats pulled down over their faces. She shuddered. She wasn't going to say anything.
    “Coming, Mum!”
     
    Mum didn't seem at all fazed that Lucy didn't come. “Lucy not with you?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow, and then, when June shrugged and shook her head. “Oh, I expect she's wandered off somewhere and gone into one of her trances. Here you are, your favourite.” She put a plate of fish fingers on the table and went out into the garden to look for Lucy.
    June stared miserably at the fish fingers, feeling slightly sick.
     
    The clock on the wall ticked loudly, the hands moving slowly round, and the fish fingers congealed on the plate, but Mum didn't find Lucy. First she just looked in all the rooms quietly, so as not to disturb her if she was in a trance. Then she began to call for her, her voice going higher and more strained as the afternoon went on. She went through the whole house again, looking in all the cupboards and under all the beds, still calling.
    When the clock said half past three and she still hadn't found Lucy, she called Dad at work.
    June felt sicker than ever. You weren't allowed to call Dad at work unless it was a DIRE EMERGENCY.
    “Yes, I've looked everywhere.” Pause. “But she never goes to any of her friends to