Emily Feather and the Secret Mirror

by Holly Webb

  “You even smell weird!” Katie stepped back, waving a hand in front of her nose as though she’d caught a whiff of something disgusting. “Uugghhh!”

  “She does!” Lara chimed in. “Really weird! Like – rotten food.”

  Typical, Emily thought. Lara was so useless she couldn’t even think up a good insult when she’d had time to practise. Emily knew she needed to say something back. Katie wasn’t one of those bullies who got bored if people just didn’t say anything. She was too good for that. She’d keep going and going until her victim snapped and burst into tears, or tried to run away, or both. The only way to get rid of her was to say something quick and snappy back, and sound as though you couldn’t care less.

  But today Emily couldn’t do it. She had this sudden dreadful feeling that maybe she did smell weird. She was weird, after all.

  Even your own mother didn’t want you, something inside her whispered. That’s what’s weird. That’s wat they can smell on you.

  Rachel nudged her, expecting her to snarl some insult back at Katie, the way she usually did, but Emily felt as if her voice had disappeared. She had no defences at all. The part of Emily that should have told Katie to go and talk to someone who cared, was curled up in a little ball deep inside her. Without the confidence in her family and her home to armour her, Emily couldn’t fight.

  “She’s crying!” Ellie-Mae squeaked – she sounded excited, shocked, a little frightened. They’d never managed to make Emily Feather cry before.

  “Ohhhh, poor little weird smelly Emily,” Katie purred, her dark eyes glittering and her fingers clenched into claws. Suddenly she reminded Emily of those fairy Ladies, the way they’d been so eager for their prey.

  Emily stumbled as Rachel caught her arm and tried to pull her away. “Come on,” Rachel whispered. “Emily, come on.” She could hear Katie and Lara and Ellie-Mae crowing with laughter and triumph as Rachel hurried her across the playground.

  “What happened to you?” Rachel demanded, as thankfully the bell went and everyone began to wave goodbye to their parents and stream into the school. She was still holding Emily’s arm, and Emily felt as though Rachel might be the only thing holding her up. She didn’t say anything, and once they’d got to their classroom Rachel pushed her into a chair and stared at her.

  “What is it? What’s the matter with you? You’ve never let her get to you like that before. She’s said stuff that was loads worse.”

  Emily just shrugged helplessly. How could she explain?

  “Was it her saying you smelled? Honestly, Emily, that’s the kind of thing Robin says to you all the time!”

  Emily’s eyes filled with tears again, and they began to spill over on to her cheeks. Rachel still thought Robin was her real brother, and it was so hard not to be able to tell her the truth. Emily wanted to, so much. She wanted to talk to someone else. Someone who was human.

  The way that Rachel was staring at her, the hurt look in her eyes, was even worse than Katie’s meanness. Rachel knew that Emily was hiding something from her. Which was awful because Rachel had told Emily everything about what happened with her parents last year when they were splitting up. The arguments. The silences. The way she hid under her bed so they couldn’t find her when she knew they wanted to tell her they were getting a divorce. If she could tell Emily things like that, she wanted to know that her best friend could tell her everything in return.

  Emily rested her head on her arms and peered up at Rachel sideways. “Sorry…” she whispered.

  Emily woke the next morning feeling as though she couldn’t actually have been to sleep. Her eyes felt sore and scratchy, and her head ached. She inched herself up in bed, and reached down for the duvet that she’d kicked off during the night. It was another hot day already, but her hands and feet were freezing, and her shoulders were shivery, as though she was coming down with a bug.

  Maybe she could stay off school? Emily sighed, imagining staying in bed. There would be toast, and dry cereal, and piles of books. She wouldn’t have to creep into school with her shoulders hunched as she waited for Katie and the others to say something.

  And she was going to have to talk to Rachel, as well. They’d have to walk to school together again, and the thought of it made Emily feel even more ill. Rachel had been miserable and silent all the way home yesterday. Even Robin, who always walked as far away from the girls as he possibly could while still claiming to be with them, had noticed that something was wrong.

  “Did you have a fight?” he whispered to Emily as they came out of school together in complete silence.

  Emily shrugged. “Sort of.”

  Robin glared at Rachel, but she was staring at her feet as she plodded along a few metres behind them, and didn’t even notice.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Emily added quickly. Robin could be surprisingly protective sometimes, and she didn’t trust him not to do something awful to Rachel if he thought she’d started it. He wasn’t supposed to use magic, of course, but it wouldn’t take much magic to make her tread in something disgusting – quite a lot of people walked their dogs along this road. She gave him a warning look. “Don’t. It really was mostly my fault.” Then she hurried on, anxious to get this horrible walk done.

  Rachel had stopped at their gate, and muttered, “Bye, then,” and Emily had sighed and tried to smile. “Bye. See you tomorrow,” she added, fiddling with the gate, until Robin lost patience and dragged her into the garden, leaving Rachel to walk round the corner to her mum’s flat.

  “You’d better make up with her,” Robin snapped as they walked up the path. “I’m not putting up with that for the rest of the week. It felt like being wrapped up in a cloud of miserable fog.”

  Emily had blinked at him in surprise – but then he and the rest of her family did feel things in that sort of way. Now she huddled her duvet round her shoulders, trying to imagine what that would be like. She quite liked the idea. Instead of worrying about something, and not being able to work out quite what, you would know exactly what was going on, because there was a sad little cloud of greyness sitting next to you, or wrapped round your neck like a scarf.

  It would be even better if they were … things, Emily thought to herself, climbing out of bed and tugging the duvet with her like a squashy coat. Or animals. A sad little creature that you could cheer up with a saucer of milk, so you stopped being miserable, or worried.

  She curled herself up with her duvet on her window seat and gazed into the strangely slanted glass. It was greenish and old, as old as the house, and it had been made by hand, her father said. If Emily looked hard enough at the swirls and tiny bubbles, usually something would appear, although she never knew what it would be, or whether she would like it.

  A few weeks before, when Emily had started to feel that she was different, the visions in the windows had seemed just another proof that there was something wrong with her. She had tried not to see them, and she’d moved her chair to the other side of the table, facing away from the glass. But she had missed the pictures.

  Emily had always loved them, right from when the funny little room in the tower had first been hers, when she was five and old enough to walk up the steep, narrow staircase without falling. She adored her room. She could sit for hours drawing the strange things she saw in the window – cities made of clouds, strange creatures dancing through rivers of light. Now she knew that her pictures were probably real somewhere. And that all along the fairy world had been trying to entice her in.

  Emily leaned her cheek against the cool green glass and looked at it out of the corner of her eye, hoping to catch a hint of movement.

  A faint misty swirl, far off inside the glass, darkened and seemed to come towards her, becoming clearer and more solid as it paced slowly forward. A small, dark grey bear padded into view, its head hanging down, and Emily swallowed. It was exactly how she felt.

  The bear sat down, just o
n the other side of the glass from Emily, and leaned forward, as though to place its damp black nose on her shoulder, or in the crease at the top of her neck. Emily could almost feel him through the glass, and she shivered with excitement. She’d never been able to touch the pictures in the glass before. She was sure her dad was right – now that she had been through the doors, there was magic inside her too…

  The bear sighed mournfully, and Emily giggled. She could feel its sad breath and tickly whiskers on her ear. “I don’t know how you did it, or if you even meant to, but I do feel a bit better.”

  “Do you want anything particular in your lunch?” Eva, Emily’s mother asked, waving a buttery knife at her. “Do you think you ought to take two drinks? You’ll probably boil shut up in a coach today; it’s going to be really hot again.”

  Emily gaped at her. She was feeling a lot better than she had when she’d first woken up – seeing her unhappiness as a small grey bear really had taken the worst out of it. But she had a horrible feeling that as soon as she saw Katie, that awful fog of silence was going to wrap itself around her again.

  Lory rolled her eyes. “Emily, you look like a fish.”

  Emily closed her mouth, and her mother came over to the table and looked at her worriedly. “Are you all right?” Then she frowned. “Emily, you haven’t been – travelling?”

  Eva meant dreaming her way through the doors, Emily knew. She had done it before, without meaning to, and without understanding that it was anything more than a strange and very real sort of dream. She had found herself on a riverbank, talking to the water-fairy girl from the mirror.

  “No.” Emily shook her head. “But I never tried to,” she added honestly. “When it happened before, it just happened, so I don’t know how I stop it happening again.”

  Eva licked thoughtfully at the butter on the knife, her tongue pink and pointed, like a cat’s. “True. You’re quite right, we should have thought of that. Remind me, darling, when you get home, and we’ll ward your room.” Then she shook herself. “And what I was trying to say, Ems, is that it’s your school trip, so do you want anything different in your lunch?” She smiled, making herself suddenly far more fairy-like. Her smile stretched wide across her face, showing a mouthful of shining teeth. “Had you really forgotten?”

  “Yes,” Emily admitted. She supposed that Mrs Daunt had spoken about the trip yesterday at school, but she’d hardly been listening.

  Now she stared down at her plate, frowning worriedly. She was going to have to talk to Rachel – she had to tell her something. She couldn’t spend an hour or so sitting next to her best friend on a coach without saying anything to her. Emily sighed. Obviously it would be impossible to tell Rachel the whole truth – but a bit of it would surely be all right?

  “Mum…”

  “Mmm?” Her mother turned round from cramming an extra juice carton into Emily’s lunch box.

  “Can I tell Rachel anything about … well, you know.”

  Her mother stared at her. “No. No, most definitely not. I’m sorry, Emily.”

  Emily watched unhappily as her mother’s hand crept up, as though it wanted to point at her. As though her mother was considering a spell for silence. She had done it to Robin, after all – he’d told Emily so.

  “All right, I won’t,” she said hurriedly, and the tautness went out of her mother’s spread fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Ems. But we just can’t risk it. You do understand?”

  Emily nodded. She did understand. It was just that she wanted to talk to someone without wings about it. “Can’t I at least say that I found out I’m adopted?” she pleaded. “I won’t say anything, you know … that’s really secret…”

  Eva sighed. “I suppose so.”

  “Are you coming?” Robin asked Emily impatiently. He liked to get to school early to play football, which he was very good at. He was unfairly fast and he had amazing reflexes. It was no wonder his side almost always won.

  “Are we meeting Rachel?” he asked, glancing up at her as they went out of the front door.

  “Yes!” Emily said, a little sharply. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “Don’t snap at me just because you’ve had a fight with her!” Robin said, in a sing-song voice.

  Emily folded her bottom lip in and bit it, to stop herself losing her temper. “It wasn’t really a fight,” she muttered. And it would be a great pleasure to tell Rachel exactly what Robin was, and leave him to deal with it.

  She smiled to herself, and then waved at Rachel, who was just coming round the corner looking unsure. Emily waved far more happily than she would have done without Robin irritating her, and she caught a quick delighted smile dart across Rachel’s face.

  Robin hurried off ahead of them, leaving Emily and Rachel walking slowly side by side, occasionally glancing at each other.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily murmured as they came to the end of her road.

  “What for?” Rachel asked uncomfortably.

  “Not telling you this before…” Emily sighed and looked behind her. She didn’t want anyone else hearing what she was about to say. “You were right when you said I’d never have been upset by Katie like that, until yesterday. She never worried me all that much before – I mean, she says horrible things, but she can’t really do anything, can she?”

  I knew who I was before, she realized. I really belonged. Katie couldn’t take that away from me, whatever she said. It was like standing on a good solid floor. And now I’ve got a wobbly branch or something instead. She swallowed, and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her school dress. “I found out I was adopted.”

  Rachel stopped walking and stared at Emily, her mouth open.

  “Are you … no, you mean it… Your mum and dad aren’t really your parents?”

  Emily shook her hair so it hid her face. “They adopted me when I was a baby.”

  “When? I mean, when did they tell you?” Rachel whispered.

  “Last weekend.”

  “And you never knew before? Your mum and dad never said anything?”

  Emily sighed and shrugged. “No. But things were feeling weird. I knew something was going on.” She glanced up apologetically at Rachel. “I even wondered if they might be splitting up.”

  Rachel snorted. “I don’t think so. Well, I suppose you never know, but your parents are always nice to each other. Not just polite nice. I mean you can tell they really like each other.”

  “Mmm. But it was all I could think of. There were all these odd moments – like someone wanted to say something and couldn’t quite do it.” Emily shivered, remembering the oddness and all the other things that had happened, the ones she definitely couldn’t tell Rachel. “Then we had a big family dinner together on Saturday night.” She gave a strange little gasp, remembering the dryness of the roast chicken in her mouth, the way she could hardly swallow. “That’s when they told me,” she went on, her voice very high and thin. It was harder to talk about it than she’d thought it would be.

  “I’m sorry I was cross with you yesterday.” Rachel looked at her anxiously. “I shouldn’t have had a go at you. And then I was all sulky. You shouldn’t have to tell me stuff. I mean – that’s a huge thing. I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it now. I just didn’t know…” She trailed off. “I really am sorry.”

  “Oh shut up saying sorry!” Emily hugged her.

  “Lark and Lory and Robin aren’t adopted too?” Rachel said suddenly, as they set off walking again.

  Emily shook her head. “No. Which makes it worse. I’m the odd one out. I don’t belong and they do.”

  Rachel frowned. “I suppose… I mean, yes, not by blood… But do you really feel like that? That you aren’t part of them? It never seemed like you were any different. Not the way your mum and dad treated you all.”

  “I know.” Emily kicked at a leaf on the pavement and sighed.
“I think that’s making it worse, though. If I didn’t like being Emily Feather, and I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t mind, would I? I’d be glad that I’d got another family somewhere. My real family. But I’m not glad at all. I just want to be me.” She sniffed, refusing to cry again. “That’s why it was so hard when Katie said those things. I am weird. I don’t know who me is any more.”

  Rachel made a noise Emily had never heard her make before. A sort of furious growl. It was so surprising that Emily giggled – it was like hearing a rabbit roar.

  “She’d better not do it again,” Rachel snarled. “And if she says you smell, there’s a simple answer, isn’t there?” She put her arm round Emily’s shoulders. “We can just tell Katie to put a bag over her head. That’ll be an improvement for everybody.”

  Emily yawned and blinked as Rachel nudged her. She’d almost been asleep.

  “We’re nearly there. Wake up, Emily, Mrs Daunt’s doing her how-we-expect-you-to-behave-not-like-when-you-went-to-the-farm-last-year talk. She definitely doesn’t expect people sleeping while she’s moaning.”

  “Wasn’t asleep,” Emily murmured, but the coach was pulling into a car park, and wasn’t on the motorway any more. She blinked stickiness out of her eyes and tried to concentrate. This trip to the city gallery was to do with their literacy topic, writing in response to stimulus – which just meant seeing something and writing a story about it. They were supposed to choose pictures that they liked and write a story inspired by them. Emily suspected that she wasn’t going to enjoy it. And she had a feeling that whichever painting she chose, strange details were going to creep into her story. Some things she’d seen over the last fortnight were engraved deeply in her memory – Lark and Lory unfurling their glorious, bird-like wings. Her mother’s huge, glowing eyes. Robin’s flaming hair and translucent skin. The strange otherness of her father’s face, once he’d let her see his real self.