Free Plenty by Ananda Braxton-Smith

and quiet.
    She didn’t want to play.
    She dreamed about Stonewall every night.
    Then one day a man at the head of one of the queues said yes. They could go. They could go to Australia.

    “Anyway,” her mother said in the end. “We came to Melbourne and Popi moved us out here and that was that. My parents never wanted to move again.”
    “But why didn’t you tell me?” asked Maddy. She couldn’t believe she’d lived her whole life without knowing about Mum and Cyprus and the soldiers.
    “I didn’t want to scare you,” her mother said. “Or you know – depress you.”
    “I’m not depressed,” said Maddy. She felt angry at the soldiers, sad about Stonewall, proud of her mother – all sorts of things. But not depressed. Actually, she felt better than she had for a while.
    “Good,” said her mother.
    There was a sleepy calm in the bedroom.
    “But you wanted to,” Maddy said. “You wanted to move. Because you went away with Dad.”
    “Oh yes.” Her mother closed her eyes and sighed. “I wanted to leave. I thought about running away all the time. It was bad enough before Popi died but after, Nana wouldn’t stop remembering. All she talked about was the village and the soldiers and that wedding quilt. Even after you were born she wouldn’t stop. She was angry all the time.”
    “Nana’s still mad, actually,” said Maddy. “At you.”
    “Yes, well, she can join the club then, can’t she?” said her mother, shrugging sadly.
    It was hard for Maddy to hold a grudge against the homeless little Eleni Spyrou, Ex-Kakopetria: Dweller in a Shed and Loser of Her Horse. It was much harder than holding a grudge against the Home Breaker, Ellen Frank: Friend Smasher and Stealer of Sanctuary.
    “I thought Nana was the family grudge holder but next to you, she’s an angel of forgiveness,” her mother said, turning off the lamp and standing up. “Nana would never stop calling me
daughter
, no matter how angry she was. But you! You’re the queen, the president, the
empress
of angry.”
    Maddy saw her mother’s hand hanging at her side, loose and pale in the moonlight. The fingers were awkward, like the hand wanted to reach out and touch her. Like it wanted to tuck her in but wasn’t sure it was welcome. Maddy reached out and took hold of it.
    Slowly and carefully, Maddy plaited her fingers through Ellen’s. She pulled her mother down towards her and laid her face on her cool arm. Strangely, the cool made her feel warm – and then with no warning she was crying. The hot tears rolled, the ice inside melted.
    “I miss Sophie-Rose so much,” said Maddy.
    “I know,” said Mum.
    And Maddy Frank knew that she really,
really
did.

    That night Maddy dreamed that the Jermyn Street fairies came home. In the dream she heard them coming, calling in familiar voices. Just as the lead fairy was clearing the peak of the dark mountain, she sat up in her dream bed. Just as the flights were crossing the moon-shadow gums, she ran to the dream window. The lead fairy was out there, hovering over the yellow stubble, listening. Putting the tiniest of horns to her mouth she was calling Maddy by her full name.
Madeleine Jean Frank
, called the fairy in a firm tone. Dream Maddy called back and the lead fairy heard and darted left, coming in to land on the windowsill. The others followed and just like that they moved back into Maddy’s dream room: the blue and the yellow ones, the ones with horns, the ones with bee fur. All of them.
    The thing was, she had thought she must leave them behind. She had thought they were for babies. But they were her fairies, actually, and indigenous to herself. Maddy Frank was their habitat. She needed to keep part of herself wild for them.

Chapter Fifteen
What’s Important
    Mum had told Maddy that Nana was losing her memory. She said it was called dementia –
demensha
. Nana Mad was getting very old and her brain was getting very old too. Bit by bit she would forget most things. She said right now