Amarante

• Cheryl Ning, Grade 10, Macleans College
• Short Story
• 2001

Finalist in the 'Zapped! 2001' competition

The air around her shone brightly; again, the world was all a-ripple, drawn into awesome light-dark pockets of magic. Amarante gasped and then familiar attic shapes blurred into shape again. She lay as she was, on the floor. Was it all a dream?
She saw the tiny rosebud in her palm, and knew at once it was not. Her mind flew back to the incredible events that had unfolded before…
Inexplicably, she had been rippled into a whole, other, wondrous world – and she could not believe who stood before her in misty haloes lit by sunshine.
‘Hello, my darling,’ the woman had said, in a queenly voice, but choked with emotion.
‘Mom!’ Amarante had cried, astonished, ‘They said you were dead, Mom! And Dad!’
‘We are,’ agreed her father, and some of the confusion faded. ‘This is our world,’ he added. ‘We created it.’ Amarante was stunned. Created?…
‘Created,’ echoed her mother, smiling, ‘with magic.’ The familiar, shining figure made an unfamiliar gesture and sparkles trailed her hands. Where had been nothing was now a tiny, closed rosebud. Amarante had gasped quietly as her mother dropped it and it had floated into her own hand.
‘Like this magic bud,’ her mother said. ‘It flowers when its holder is in bliss.’
Amarante cupped the rosebud, overwhelmed. ‘They made me live with Aunty,’ she whispered dazedly, unable to comprehend how her life had changed so dramatically and unexplainably. ‘Aunty Else, Mom! The mean one!’
‘And we’re all in this world now… Dad, Mom!’ Amarante continued, nearly delirious with pleasure; she had been heartbroken at their deaths. ‘I can stay, can’t I? Oh, I love you!’
The silence suddenly crystallized. Amarante’s mother looked away. Her father looked sadly down at her. ‘We love you too, Amarante. But you cannot stay… We cannot – keep-’. He stopped, longing.
Her mother turned back, again, with a desperately unhappy look on her regal, beautiful face. ‘It is a law’. The same magic that we used to create our world…it will pull you away – our child, from our world!’ Amarante suddenly felt her mother’s knelt embrace, longing, and loving, and sad, all at the same time.
Amarante felt her mother’s words come true as the bright, clear world of her parents began to waver. The same, terrible, rippling sucked her tiny self into darkness again, and wooden, dry, dusty images assailed her vision…
When the police came to look for the missing child at her last location, they found the attic door locked. The suspect relative had refused to unlock it, so they broke it. They first saw the young girl, in a simple white shift, lying on the floor. Her chest did not move up, or down, but her eyes were closed and the shadow of a smile even lit her face.
But something else made the officers gasp, and wonder. Cupped upon her breast, Amarante’s hands held a rose. And, red as once Amarante’s happy, happy smile, it was in full bloom.