Once, there was a girl.
A tiny little thing, yes, a striated tangle of pale calf limbs and auburn hair and wonder.
This girl, this curious child, just happened to live in a house, a house with grey-blue walls that her father carried her through on his tough, fleshy shoulders, and her mother dusted every Sunday with a feathery duster she used to tickle her little girl.
But can I go into the cellar, Mama?
No, darling, never. Never open the cellar door.
Papa?
No, sweetie. Never open the cellar door.
But why couldn’t she go into the cellar?
Hush, child, can’t you see I’m telling a story? Listen and you will know.
Her parents would not let her open the door to the cellar because if she did, she would see things that were never meant for a grown woman, let alone a girl her age.
The door in question was the color of oak in sunset, a reddened-brown hue that playfully imitated the shade of the girl’s hair. She would sit in front of it. She would sit there for hours, waiting, waiting to see if whatever she wasn’t supposed to would open it.
That’s silly. Why would she think that? It doesn’t make sense…
Shush. Wait and see.
Years passed.
The little girl grew older. She grew taller. Her oak-red hair grew longer. She grew wiser.
She stopped asking her parents to open the cellar door.
She stopped asking, and she stopped sitting in front of it every evening. She didn’t think whatever was behind it would want to see her. Why would it? Why would she want to see whatever it was, anyway?
She stopped asking, and the door began to fade.
What?!
I told you.
The door began to fade, and her hope faded with it.
Once, there was a girl.
Still a skinny thing, yes, but longer now, stronger. Wiser. Quieter.
The faded door remained closed.
The girl was sitting in her favourite chair, a squashy combination of quilted, purple, scratchy fabric and staple stitches, and a boy came to the window.
She looked up at him.
Did he live in the cellar?
No, he didn’t. Hush and listen, won’t you?
She looked up at him, and he looked down at her.
And a flicker of little-girl oak-haired curiosity began to spark in her mind.
Who are you?
My name is Sam.
Sam what?
Just Sam. What are you called?
She found she did not know -
She didn’t know her own name? Why not?
She had never been told, child.
And now a new feeling came to her. A hot, itchy feeling. Irritation. Confusion. And Determination.
She thought for a while.
She came up with a sound that felt soft and shadowy, blooming on her tongue.
Lia.
My name is Lia.
The boy’s mouth quirked. Lia what?
Just Lia. Why are you here?
Well, Just Lia, you were staring out of the windowpane, and I noticed your hair is the exact color of sunset.
Just Lia did not know this word, sunset.
She didn’t know what a sunset was?
Not just that, child. She had never seen the sun, nor the sky, nor the moon nor stars. She did not know the meaning of the word “world.”
Lia stared out behind the boy, Just Sam. Through the corner of the window, she could only see a sliver of light. A sliver that filled her instantaneously with terror and longing, with the urge to throw back her head and cry out to the grey-blue ceiling, and to curl up into a ball in the grey-blue corner, and to lash out her pale fist and smash the blue-grey frame of the window that appeared so innocent. So she thought, and she thought, and she stopped thinking, and stood up from her favourite chair.
Just Sam’s face was confused.
What’s wrong, Lia?
When I return, will you show me what a sunset is?
Just Sam’s eyes were wide and earnest. Of course. Will you write me a letter?
Yes.
He extended his hand, palm up and out. Lia stared at it, something whispering in her. She took his hand. He shook hers.
Lia turned on her bare heel and strode away.
She came to the cellar door, faded nearly away into the blue-grey wall of her house.
When had it gotten so transparent? So shadowed? So...invisible?
Lia grasped the handle and turned, bracing herself for the click of the lock and the stutter-stop.
There was none.
The cellar door slid smoothly open, a solid red oak question in a sea of blue-grey.
And the sun shone.
Wait! But she opened the door to the cellar…
She was never outside the cellar, child. Her parents had hidden her away and told her never to open the cellar door and step out, because she would see things she would never forget. And they were right, weren’t they, child?
Lia threw her arms to the blueness above her, tinged with fiery crimson and dandelion hues.
Tell me what a sunset is, Sam?
It is the sky dancing, Lia. The sky is dancing, Just Lia.
The girl who was now Lia turned, spinning around, drinking in the greens and the reds and the blacks, browns, whites, blues, yellows, oranges, pinks, purples, so many colors her eyes teared.
And then.
And then the girl who was now Lia saw a hint of blue-grey, in the corner of the blueness above her, the sky. A cloud.
A puff, a hint of the past. Smoky. Quiet. But reminding.
Lia paused. She thought.
And she bowed her head, and waved goodbye to the hint of the past.
Will you write me a letter, just Lia?
Will you?
Of course I will.
The girl who would forever be Lia entered the cellar again. But the door was open. She would never close it on herself, ever, ever again. Just Lia picked up pen. She picked up paper. She floated out of the cellar door into the blooming of colors and emotions and meeting of worlds and sat.
And Lia wrote.
Once, there was a girl.
What happened next?
Pick up your pen and your paper, child. Do you see the colors?
Yes.
Then you decide. Simply do me one favour, child.
Of course! What is it?
Always leave the cellar door unlocked, will you?