All that is Gold

Lottie, splashing in the river, found a glittering lump of iron pyrite. She insisted it was fairy gold, but Sasha set her straight: iron pyrite is fools’ gold. It might look like the real thing, but it’s not. Fairy gold is different: it is the real thing… for a while. But by morning it will be gone, turned to sand. You must be careful where you spend it!

Lottie couldn’t get Sasha’s stories out of her head. She went to bed dreaming of piles and piles of fairy gold; longing to see it. She breathed on the window and drew a picture, wishing that the fairies would come.

After Sasha had tucked Lottie in, she sat on the floor by the gas fire and picked up her crochet. She was so absorbed in the rhythm of yarn and hook that she didn’t hear the window open. When Lottie called, ‘Mama!’ Sasha assumed she was asking for a bit of attention before she went to sleep. She left it ten minutes, or perhaps it was twenty, before strolling through the flat to check on her. She was only in the next room.

Lottie was gone.

Sasha screamed out of the open window. She called in the neighbours; they called the police.

There was no sign of the little girl.

Near and far they sought; the call for a missing person went out. A day went by. Other people living in the town saw it on the news and felt wretchedly glad that it hadn’t been their child. The mother must have made some sort of mistake… mustn’t she?

At first, Sasha’s insistence that Lottie would return was met with genuine hope. As the week drew on this faded to hopeful platitudes which Sasha could see had no basis in genuine belief. Then, later, ‘There’s still a chance’ became ‘Time will heal’, and that was when Sasha, too, began to disappear. She would let nobody into the flat, and she certainly wasn’t coming out. Even the detective had to contact Sasha by phone, and those calls became less and less frequent.

Sasha became so reclusive that, one day three years later, Mrs Pickles from the flat upstairs was very surprised to see Sasha's door open as she passed by.

Out of the door came Sasha.

She was hand-in-hand with a little girl.

Before she could stop herself, Mrs Pickles had exclaimed, ‘Why, she looks just like little Lottie!’

‘But I am Lottie,’ said the girl, with the affronted air of a child who has been obliged to explain the obvious to a grown-up.

Sasha said nothing, but there were tears in her eyes.

Friends and family rejoiced when they heard that Lottie was back. But when they came to visit, and saw Lottie with their own eyes, they began to scratch their heads. Without a doubt this child looked like the one who had disappeared. Exactly like her. But exactly was somewhat too much alike, for it had been almost three years since the disappearance, and logic dictated that a person who had been four years old at the time ought by now to be six or seven. Lottie, however, appeared entirely unchanged. How could this have happened, they asked each other; they did not dare to ask Sasha, afraid it would upset the very delicate balance of her emotions. She would not go anywhere, not even to the bathroom, without the little girl. The only time they were separated was during the police questioning, when Sasha was not permitted to be present in the room; under the circumstances Sasha was allowed to watch Lottie through the tiny window. The girl was questioned several times, by officers who were experts in communicating with young children. She also saw a play therapist, her old school teacher and various social workers.

In every case, Lottie remained calm, collected and self-possessed. The only emotion she displayed was frustration at being required to repeat her story so many times. The story itself was very simple, and it never changed.

She had been to visit the fairies, she explained. She had danced with them all night and they had given her a gift, then they had brought her home. Whoever she spoke to, this was what Lottie insisted had happened. Sasha was not able to give any more information; she simply said that one day she had walked into the child’s unchanged bedroom, as she did every morning, to find the girl asleep in her bed. Friends, family and social services were nonplussed but as the child appeared to be in perfectly good health and disclosed no hint of abuse, she was permitted to remain with her mother under the supervision of a social worker.

Gradually, people forgot. The neighbours became used once more to hearing Lottie’s childish voice and running feet in the flat. Lottie did speak of her friends the fairies, and more than once she mentioned going to visit them again. As a result Sasha moved Lottie’s bed away from the window and installed a camp bed for herself in the gap. She had several child proof locks fitted to all the windows and would never open them, even in the summer; it was stifling but Lottie didn’t seem to mind. Soon she returned to school, where she met her new teacher and made new friends. Sasha, with support, was able to leave Lottie, at first only in the mornings and before long for a whole day in her new class. Happy, Lottie flourished. Soon the childhood incident became something that nobody spoke of any more. Lottie had no passport: the discrepancy between her apparent age and the one that was listed on her birth certificate made it difficult to obtain one. However in other respects she lived a normal life and by the time she was a teenager she had no recollection of the fuss that had been made. If she had been asked, she might have remembered a dream about dancing all night with the fairies. But she was not asked. Nobody spoke of it at all.

Nobody spoke of anything that might be upsetting to Sasha; as the years went by her behaviour became more and more unusual. She would leave milk and cookies outside the back door with no explanation, even if it wasn’t Christmas Eve. She left mysterious pieces of paper around the house, half-finished notes which Lottie made sure that nobody ever saw, because they made no sense. She could stare at a pebble for hours on end, murmuring about its transcendent beauty.

Although always affectionate with Lottie, her emotions seemed to be turning further and further inwards. Lottie persisted in a vague hope that at some time in the future she would find the key that would allow her to develop a deeper relationship with her mother.

But the cancer came too soon. Lottie was still in her twenties when her mother succumbed to the incomprehensible mutation of her own body. Lottie felt robbed of the time she should have had. Although supported by friends, grandparents, an aunt and an uncle, Lottie felt as though none of these people could reach her in her grief and wished she had closer family — a sister; a father — with whom to share these feelings.

In the midst of this emotional tumult, Lottie received a parcel from the executors of her mother’s will. She waited until evening to open it, wanting to be alone. The packet contained a small, heavy fabric bag and a black notebook, round-cornered, soft to the touch. There was also a thin envelope, which Lottie ripped open with a momentous feeling.

Sasha’s missive was short. It did not begin in a showy way. There was no ‘If you are reading this, I am dead,’ or any other such beginning. Just ‘Lottie,’ in the familiar slanted handwriting.

‘Lottie,

This is yours. It is all yours.

I hope the notebook explains everything.

Love always,

Mother.’

And that was all.

Lottie opened the book.

The notebook was thick, the pages expanded by the addition of photographs and other memorabilia. It began as a kind of baby book. There were dates, and photos of Lottie, with and without Sasha. She was unsurprised to find no mention whatsoever of her father, of whom Sasha had always refused to speak at all.

Little Lottie grew older through the pages of the book. She spoke her first words, took her first steps, had her first haircut, her first day at nursery. She started school.

Then, suddenly, everything stopped. There were a few blank pages, and space where one had been torn out. Looking closely at the following page, Lottie was able to decipher the imprint of the pen that had been used on the missing one: ‘They never give you anything without taking something precious away.’ That was it.

More blank pages.

Then, just as suddenly, the story picked up exactly where it had left off. There was another photo of Lottie, wearing the same pink jacket with rainbow sleeves as in the previous picture.

But there was something odd about the date.

How could it be possible that this picture was dated a whole three years later than the last one? She looked exactly the same in both. Lottie remembered the jacket, but not the moment when the photo was taken. Could it be a mistake?

Entries became less and less frequent, petering out altogether by the time photo-Lottie reached the age of about ten. She did not mind; this later part of her childhood she could remember. It was the beginning which was shrouded in mystery.

The last thing written in the book, which finished about three quarters through, seemed to be a letter to her from her mother.

‘Lottie,

When you went to your father’s people I was so terribly afraid that you would never come back. Thank you so much for returning to me. Were you happy with them? Have I selfishly held you in the mortal world when you wished to leave? Now you are free.

You brought this small bag of gemstones and gold with you when you returned. I have had them valued by a jeweller, but other than that I have never touched them. The valuation is enclosed. Be careful where you use them. You know what they say about fairy gold!’

One last enigmatic note. Her father’s people? Held in the mortal world? Lottie was sad not to be able to understand what had prompted her mother to write these things.

Tucked between the next two pages, Lottie found a valuation form. It listed various small precious stones and raw gold nuggets. The total value came to £14,273 or about $20,000.

Excited now, Lottie undid the ribbon around the little bag. The contents felt like sand, and, remembering her mother's pebbles and the cobweb sheets, that’s what she was mostly expecting to find.

Lottie tipped the bag towards her palm.

Out came a rush of dust with an odd, familiar smell. Lottie breathed in and felt dizzy; the dust in her palm fell onto the open notebook as she slouched forward. Her head was whirling and she could hear music that she thought she’d heard before, although she couldn’t say where or when. It reminded her of childhood dreams; of dancing all night, being swung from one partner to another, half-delighted and half-afraid, and not able to stop at all. The memory was so sudden and powerful that Lottie sat for a long moment, eyes closed, breathing deeply, trying to come back to the present day.

Finally she opened her eyes.

There, tumbled out on top of the open book, were the tiny gemstones, just as listed in the jeweller’s valuation. She picked one up and turned it in her fingers, marvelling at its bright shine under the desk lamp. The gems were uncut and there were several small lumps of gold amongst them. There was no dust.

Carefully, Lottie transferred the gems into a little dish. This she put beside her bed. She made mint tea, changed into PJs, and tried to settle down.

But she could not stop thinking. What would she find in the morning? Gems, or sand? She was unsettled that this last message from Sasha should be such a disconcerting one.

Sighing, Lottie snuggled down and, finally, slept. She dreamed of a great hall, draped in cloth of gold, with many handsome figures twirling to the music. Moonlight gleamed in through the windows. And there, in the midst of the jubilation, was her mother, a huge smile of delight on her face, twirling, spinning, moving for ever through the dance that went on and on and on.