The Magic We Left Behind
KATE HOOTON
It is a strange kind of loneliness feeling like the only person staying home every Friday night. I never felt this way when I was younger but now I am eighteen and have no real friends anymore. Desperate for a distraction, I rummage through the DVD cabinet for the videos from my childhood which always bring me comfort. I choose one at random and curl up on the sofa, pressing play on the remote. Three little girls are painting on easels in my garden. The paintings are abstract, the kindest way to say we lacked any talent but my mum praises our work regardless. The following scene is me attempting to bake a cake and making a mess of flour. I feel a chilling sense of loss watching these videos feeling like this was a lifetime ago.
Suddenly I hear a scream and the lounge room window is lit up. I rush outside yelling
for my parents to get outside urgently. So overwhelmed by despair, I fall to the grass and cry uncontrollably.
‘Stop crying Emma. It is not the house that’s on fire, just the treehouse we have been
needing to get rid of for years. We should be more concerned about how the fire started,’ says my dad, not providing the comfort I need. I stand in the garden watching as my childhood goes up in flames. The fire brigade arrives but it is too late, the treehouse has been completely destroyed so there is nothing left but the charred remains of what used to be my magical haven, the place where me and my friends would go to escape from reality.
*
That night, I feel myself slipping out of consciousness, waking up in a dreamland although this place feels more real than any dream. The sky is pink and the air smells like roses. A treehouse reaches into the clouds and I see the ocean glistening in the distance. The moon is full in the sky although it seems to be daytime here and the stars light up the trees. I climb the tree and enter the treehouse. It looks identical to the one from my garden but inside it is bigger than I remember, like it grew up with me. I notice my pajamas have been replaced by sparkly pink boots and a purple tutu. I gaze around the room, taking it all in. There are pillows and blankets everywhere and a Barbie movie plays on a portable DVD player. It is Princess Charm School of course. Littlest Pet Shop toys are gathered in front of the DVD player like a miniature audience. Zhu Zhu pets zoom chaotically around colliding into pillows and each other. Do kids even play with Zhu Zhu pets anymore or are they a figment of the past. Toy hamsters on wheels which lost popularity as I grew older. I remember spending hours with my friends watching our toy pets race each other until their wheels couldn’t move anymore due to getting hair and carpet caught in them, despite my mum advising us to only play on tiles. Here the Zhu Zhu pets’ wheels are clean and their batteries show no signs of dying and there are no glitchy squeaks like what used to happen when you pressed their noses after leaving them running for hours. I miss when I was so easily entertained and to keep me occupied when I was alone, I could make up stories with plastic animals to have fun.
‘Emma!’ Two little girls possibly about seven years old enter the treehouse jumping
over the pillows. I stare in shock because Eloise and Rosie are eighteen like me. Why do they look like little kids?
‘Rosie? Eloise?’ I ask uncertainly. They just smile at me before Barbie Princess Charm
School steals their attention. A small rust coloured fox enters the treehouse and approaches me. The fox looks identical to the imaginary fox friend called Rusty I dreamt up to keep me company when I was little.
‘Am I dreaming?’ I whisper to the fox.
‘No Emma, you are in The Lost Realm. Here in the land of childhood magic and memories,
you are seven years old again. The age you wish you were.’
‘I have my childhood back, Rusty?’
‘Yes Emma but you can’t stay here forever.’
*
The days pass in a blur. I see my friends every night in my dreams but they are never around when I am awake. In reality we grew apart. I haven’t seen either of them since Rosie and Eloise had a fight and none of them wanted anything to do with me.
*
The girls I babysit remind me of when I was five and I had the same brown pigtails and wild imagination. Their parents left an hour ago and the girls are still lying sprawled on the carpet with their ipads on full brightness.
‘Girls, why don’t we play a game that doesn’t involve ipads?’ I want to be the cool fun
babysitter who lets them do whatever they want but I also can’t risk their parents getting home and seeing them still on the ipads.
‘Five more minutes!’ yells Lucy and Jasmine pays no attention, fully absorbed in her game.
‘No girls that’s enough. How about we play dress ups before our pizza gets here?’
The girls sigh and turn off their ipads. I smile and drag the basket of costumes closer to them. Jasmine picks out her usual Tinkerbell dress while Lucy always wants to be Elsa.
‘Emma, you need to dress up too! You can be Rapunzel!’
‘I don’t think that dress will fit me but I-’
Jasmine cuts me off. ‘Emma please!’ she demands. I give in and squeeze into the Rapunzel dress worried it’ll rip.
‘I am the fairy queen Tinkerbell! Jasmine screeches, waving a wooden spoon in Lucy’s face.
Lucy pretends to freeze Jasmine with ice powers and both girls laugh as if their game is the funniest thing in the world.
‘No! You can’t enter my castle without a password!’ demands Lucy pointing at the corner of
the room. There is just a laundry basket full of clothes.
‘Emma! Say the password so we can get in!’ says Jasmine urgently.
I try to play along but I feel ridiculous. I can’t imagine there is a castle like they can. I just
watch as they give up trying to include me and I realise somewhere between their age and mine I stopped believing in things that weren’t real.
*
That night I enter the Lost Realm to find Rusty sitting next to a sign saying ‘Enchanted Forest this way.’ I smile at Rusty and we walk the way the sign is pointing towards the forest. We pass a beach with soft white sand and I make a mental note to come back to it another time. Just past the beach, we reach the vast enchanted forest where Rosie and Eloise are waiting for us. The trees whisper secrets to each other in voices like the wind. Their leaves drip with glitter which sprinkles over my skin and into my hair. I follow Eloise’s blonde braids as she weaves between the trees. Rosie is skipping along behind me, always the calmest of us three. We reach a clearing of wildflowers and there it is exactly how I always pictured it. The magic tree rises higher than the clouds, the branches wide enough for pixie houses.
We used to read about places like this! Remember?’ Eloise can barely contain her excitement
as she dances around, her face lit up with wonder.
I smile as Rusty appears and starts to climb the tree. Fantasy books about fairies and
magical lands at the top of a tree filled my bookshelf. We used to sit in our treehouse and pretend we were in the different lands at the top of a magical tree. We start to climb the branches, following Rusty’s shining red fur. Tiny fairies flutter past us on their way up the tree, their wings leaving a trail of glitter. From above a voice calls out to mind the toffee rain. Rosie sticks out her tongue to catch the sticky caramel on her tongue. A pixie selling drinks at a stall on one of the branches offers us sweet tea as we pass. Grateful for the refreshment I savour every delicious sip. After hours of climbing, we reach the clouds where a ladder leads us to the land at the top.
‘Emma you shouldn’t go up there. It’s the land of Sleeping Beauty, if you go up there you
could be in danger of sleeping for one hundred years.’ Rusty warns me. I know he’s right so I just watch as Eloise and Rosie climb through the clouds.
‘It is time to wake up Emma.’ Says Rusty as the world turns black.
*
Back home in reality, I walk through the woods which I named ‘fairyland’ when I was younger and saw the possibility of magic everywhere I looked. Now all I see are plain oak trees with no pixie houses or mythical creatures. I used to beg my parents to let me and my friends play there for hours pretending we were fairies living in our own magical woods. Unlike the enchanted forest in my dreams, these woods don’t feel alive with magic but I remember what it was like to believe fairies lived here. I walk to a nearby cafe, freezing when I see Rosie and Eloise are sitting together at a table outside. It stings of course that they would meet up without inviting me but I suppose it’s nice that they made amends after their fight years ago. I can’t even remember what started the fight but they both wanted nothing to do with me after I couldn’t pick who to side with. I sit at a nearby table, trying not to listen but their voices carry.
‘I didn’t realise the candles would be a mistake,’ Eloise sounds worried.
‘I just wanted to go there to experience the magic one last time. She won’t know it was us and if we tell her it looks even worse that we broke into her garden and didn’t even invite her.’
‘She wouldn’t have said yes if we asked.’
I sit frozen as their words hit me. The pieces falling into place. I stand up ready to confront
them but I imagine Rusty’s voice in my head telling me I have to let them go. They were just trying to experience their childhood magic like I did in the Lost Realm. I stand up and walk past their table without acknowledging them. I see now that The Lost Realm was merely a distraction from my reality and I no longer wish to see Eloise and Rosie there. I hear Rusty’s voice in my mind telling me he is proud of me for finally letting go because after all, a refuge becomes a prison if you never leave it. Maybe fairyland was never meant to be forever. Maybe growing up means I have to accept that the magic will always be with me, just in my memories. I visit Rusty one last time that night to say goodbye.
You came back,’ Rusty says gently.
‘Just to say goodbye,” I reply, trying to smile.
‘Most people don’t find the strength to leave this refuge and their imaginary friends. They
cling to the past hoping it will make them feel happy again,’ Rusty says wistfully.
‘I wish I could stay here forever. It felt so magical and real.’
‘It was real. Your memories are what keeps the magic alive. I will always be with you in your memories. The magic never disappears, it just sometimes fades or evolves into something new.’
As the Lost Realm fades, I finally understand the magic was never gone, it was just hidden amongst the ordinary, waiting for me to see it again.
Kate Hooton is an aspiring author, studying creative writing and journalism at Macquarie University in Sydney. She has a passion for literature, art and reading and has written many short stories favouring fantasy and dystopia, hoping to publish them.
