Chapter one
On flying and aunt Alex
It was midnight and in sixty seconds it would be Sunday 21st June. Lilly Miller lay on her bed in the darkness of her room, trying hard to make her eyes open as wide as possible so that she could catch the last of the borrowed light from the little plastic luminous stars she had stuck on her bedroom ceiling; they were rapidly fading away to nothing.
The night was warm and through the open window, Lilly could hear a tawny owl hooting softly. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness and Lilly turned onto her side. The moon gave out just enough light to be able to see the soft grey shapes of familiar things; her desk and computer, her cupboards and bookshelves. There was a lumpy looking mountain in the corner that Lilly knew was her packed bags and rucksack ready for her stay with aunt Alex.
In daylight her room had sunny pale yellow walls and white painted furniture, cornflower blue curtains and a blue carpet, her dad had decorated it for her as a birthday treat last year and she loved it. It was her place with her own things. Now in the dark of midnight there were only hues of grey and black waiting to be repainted in colour by the first rays of sun in the morning.
Although it was late…past midnight now, Lilly could not get to sleep. Summer was here and the long school holiday had begun.
As Lilly lay in her room that night, she had the strongest of feelings that this would be the best holiday ever. She was usually right with her intuitions, it was a ‘special gift’ her aunt had told her when Lilly had asked, how was it that she knew about things sometimes before they had happened?
Lilly loved her aunt Alex, she could talk to her about anything and everything, aunt Alex was exactly the sort of adult that Lilly wanted to be when she was older; interesting, not stuffy and full of fun. The other thing, Lilly thought as she lay there, was that Alex was so different from anyone else in the family…and nothing like Lilly’s dad, who was her aunt’s brother. Lilly loved her family, but they always seemed to be busy…or distracted by something else…or someone else.
Lilly sighed happily, turned onto her back and waited, she knew in a few minutes, dark or not, that she would be leaving her little room…and she knew she would leave it by flying…..
Lilly Miller was twelve years old, born on the 9th of September at 9 o’clock in the evening. Her mother often joked that she should have been an emergency… 999!... Ha Ha, very funny, thought Lilly grumpily whenever she heard this. She didn’t complain very often – but she was getting really bored with the same old joke after nearly 13 years.
Lilly was tall and strong for her age with brown eyes and fair hair, which was long. She liked to have it plaited into two small braids either side of her face and the rest in a pony tail braid that hung down her back. She was accomplished at Tae kwon do and had been going to classes since she was five years old; she already had her blue belt. She was also learning to play the saxophone. Lilly’s family were all good at music and her dad Art, Art being short for Arthur, wrote music for films and television whilst her mum, Josie, played the piano and helped Art with any lyrics that were needed. Her sisters, Emma and Cara were three year old twins; full of such mischief that it either made Lilly laugh or cry depending on Lilly’s mood and how tolerant of their tireless game playing she felt on any one particular day.
Lilly and her family lived in a small village in North Norfolk. The village was by the coast and nothing very exciting ever happened there. Sometimes bits of the cliff fell off and slipped into the North Sea, but that was about as exciting as it got. It was mostly a pretty, peaceful and interesting place to live and Lilly thought it was the best.
What was really cool was the amount of freedom she had to wander over the golden fields full of barley and wheat that stretched all the way to the cliff tops overlooking the sea. She could meander down the lanes and hedge rows where you could always find something really interesting if you looked, like birds’ nests or voles. She could walk along the beach, picking up flints and breaking them open to see if they had any fossils inside. She did this mostly when aunt Alex came to visit and they had found fossils of Belemnites, Trilobites and sea urchins, (which had the wonderful name of Lovenechinus), Lilly really liked that word. In fact they had found quite a few of these fossils over the last couple of years and she kept them packed away in a box under her bed.
It was her visit to aunt Alex that Lilly was thinking about that night when…
‘Here I go’ she said softly to herself. Lilly felt her body becoming as light as a dust mote as she rose slowly up toward her bedroom ceiling. She turned herself over to face her ‘other’ self still on the bed, as up she went.
The first few times she’d done this, Lilly really did think she was dreaming.
It had been a week before Christmas last year, when Lilly had found herself ‘floating’ into the locked cupboard that her mother hid the Christmas presents in and of course she had to have a look at them. It probably wasn’t the right thing to do she guessed, but, who wouldn’t if they could?
Then, on Christmas morning she suddenly realised that she knew what everyone’s presents were before they’d opened them! That was when Lilly knew that she wasn’t dreaming.
Since that time Lilly had learnt to fly rather than float and she could go just about anywhere she chose.
Lilly looked below her and saw her ‘earth body’ asleep on the bed; she was quite used to this experience now. She thought of her ‘earth body’ as the one that stayed put in her bed and the one she was in now as her ‘invisible body’, as she was almost certain that no one could see her when she was flying.
On this particular night Lilly decided to fly to Jess’s house. Jess was her best friend and had been quite sad when she found out that Lilly would not be around for three whole weeks of the summer holiday as she was going to stay with her aunt.
Lilly had almost told Jess about her ‘flying’ on the last day of school but had decided not to in the end. She hardly believed it herself so why should anyone else? She didn’t really know how to explain her ability or knew where it came from or for that matter, if anyone else had ever been able to do it. She made up her mind to ask aunt Alex if she knew anything about people who were able to fly.
Lilly thought herself toward her bedroom window and as she passed through it, heard the familiar ‘pop’ sound that always happened as she flew through things.
A warm breeze surrounded her as she flew towards the wood at the end of the garden; a path ran through the wood that she and Jess used all the time to get to each others houses.
Flying above the tree tops was always amazing; the interlocking leaves made her think of a dark, soft carpet with a few holes in it.
Below her, along their well trodden path, she could just make out, by the soft white tip on his tail, a fox trotting off to do his nights hunting. Lilly thought herself down to a level just alongside the fox so that she could see his bright eyes reflecting what little light there was and his whiskers with tiny diamonds of dew stuck to them.
After a few minutes of watching him trotting along the path, Lilly saw his small snout twitch with the scent of something good to eat. He lifted his head, looked into the bushes away from Lilly and leaped off into the undergrowth with hardly a sound.
Wow! Lilly thought… that was awesome. How lucky am I to be able to do this?
After a couple of seconds staring at the empty space that the fox had stood in, Lilly thought herself up to the top of the trees once more and rose gently, brushing against a leaf here and there and feeling the moisture on them transfer, cool and refreshing to her skin. Although Lilly had left her earth body indoors, she could still feel the sensations of things, like wind and water, on her invisible skin. She had no idea how to explain this either.
Across the field behind the wood, Lilly saw Jess’s house, there were no lights on.
Good… thought Lilly, for although she was certain she could not be seen, she had never tested this out on anyone. She really didn’t want to give Jess’s parents the shock of seeing their daughter’s best friend flying around outside their house in her pj’s at 1 o’clock in the morning!
The thought of this made Lilly laugh to herself as she floated up to Jess’s bedroom window and through, with a little ‘pop’ into Jess’s room.
She would have loved to have spent the whole summer with her best friend Jess, but aunt Alex had asked her to help sort out and clean some new archaeological stuff that she had from her latest dig and Lilly really wanted to do that too. Lot’s of the kid’s Lilly knew didn’t see what was exciting about a load of old bones or broken pot’s, but Lilly loved thinking about where they had come from, or who had they belonged to? The years that had passed since these artefacts were last used or touched by another person and how long had they laid buried somewhere under the earth? It was very exciting to Lilly’s way of thinking.
Lilly always went to stay with her aunt at some time in the holidays, but usually only for a week – not three weeks! She had thought of asking aunt Alex if Jess could come along, but her intuition had told her to leave things as they were and as her intuition was usually right, Lilly had not asked.
As she looked around the room Lilly spotted some paper on Jess’s desk. Jess must have been making a card or something earlier and using silver glitter because there was a big pile of glitter on the paper. This gave her an idea. She moved closer to the paper, stared at it for a moment and thought of a smiley face.
After a second or two, the glitter shards started to heave and shift as if a tiny mole were tunnelling just below the surface. Magically appearing in the glitter was the outline of a smiley face.
Wow, that’s really cool, thought Lilly, how did I know to do that?
She thought again and concentrated on the words, see you in three weeks and pictured them above the smiley and there they were, appearing as if the tiny mole was there again, writing them from underneath the glitter.
She finished it off by thinking of her own name at the bottom of the smiley and a couple of x kisses. There, she thought, looking at the glittering silver message that Jess would find… see you in three weeks Lilly xx.
Standing in Jess’s bedroom Lilly suddenly realised how familiar it seemed to her. From the age of around seven, she and Jess had spent most of the winter months, when it was too cold to play outside, either in this room or her own bedroom. They had made up play’s, danced and sang, told each other secrets, now Lilly had the oddest feeling that everything was about to become different, or was it that nothing would ever be the same again?
Lilly shivered in spite of the summer night and noticed the digital clock flashing it’s red display, next to Jess’s bed. It read 1:27am; time always went so quickly when Lilly was flying and now, at last she felt as if she could get to sleep herself.
She turned to Jess and waved goodbye, even though Jess was asleep. She thought herself back to the window and out into the now cooler night, retracing her flight across the field and wood to her own house.
As she approached her garden, two bats passed her, flitting around in the dark, she felt sure that they could sense her somehow as they seemed to use their inbuilt ultra sound to avoid flying into her.
Flying mice is how Lilly thought of them. Small, furry, flying mice flying alongside a tall flying girl in her pj’s! Lilly was smiling to herself again and thought what an amazing picture that would make!
Soon Lilly was back in her own room. She ‘thought’ closed her bedroom curtains and floated herself down to just above her sleeping ‘earth body’. She knew she had to drop back gently or she would wake herself up with a nasty jolt.
She had made this mistake the first time she’d come back and had knocked the breath out of herself with the force that she had dropped back into her body! (It was like the first time Lilly had tried diving into the pool at school. She had done a ‘belly- flop’ instead and winded herself). Lilly had not been able to get to sleep for ages that particular night and she didn’t want to repeat that experience - it had been gross.
Gently, gently thought Lilly to herself as she floated down, down and down to sleep.
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