Through the Looking Window

Alba really woke up halfway through the window.
It started simply enough... as these things will. She half-rolled out of bed expecting to find the floor, and then presumably the wash room. She'd just gone down to rest her eyes. She'd had a strange dream... there were voices somewhere that she couldn't quite hear, and a train. A very horrible train headed into a fire, and there was a rainbow of milk and castles made of ice.

Boy had been playing with Olaf's window again, which Jacob had found in the remains of the burned out barn as they got ready to rebuild it.
“It's magic, like the lady on the front of the Argo,” Boy had told her when she wondered aloud why it wasn't burnt like everything else. Boy had been reading a lot lately. He was allowed to read these books because he was so much older than Alba he told her, having been planted before she was born. Alba asked what he thought of Homer and the rest, and he told her, “I don't know... I'm only seven.”

She didn't think the window would be talking to her anytime soon, and she said as much.
“I do,” he responded. That made her stop. He was cut from a tree, and he talked to her... but is that what he'd meant? She was glad his arm was grafting – it was amazing what Ethel and Frau Holda had been able to do... his new hand looked so much like his first. Each time they changed the burlap tied around it he seemed to be able to use it more.

Alba tucked the window away when he was distracted. She didn't get cross with him for playing with it like she did before... she just, she didn't want him getting into anything.

Alba asked him if he wanted to play a game. Irenka had brought over one that was new. It was a money game, and you tried to buy real estate and then charge other people rent. Boy said he didn't enjoy it much. “If things happen over and over, I'd rather live it then pretend it. That's more fun,” he shrugged. “Besides,” he said wistfully, “You can change when you live.”

Alba took the window and headed upstairs.

“You should close it first,” Boy warned her very seriously, “...before your nap.”

Alba trudged up the stairs and into her room. “She never listens, Cadejo” Boy said, “And I don't like where she's going. I hope she's ok.” Cadejo whined, flipping the bone he'd been trying to gnaw on to one side and laying his chin on it, yawning.

Alba wasn't taking a nap. She just dropped the window frame against the bed, and then looked at her pillow and decided maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all... Just to close her eyes for a second. Her foot knocked the square wooden frame, but she let it hit the ground as she fell onto cool sheets and a goose feathered oblivion.

Her eyelids fluttered and she was in a fog. It was cold, and she pulled her blanket up around herself. It looked like a bright red overcoat. It was night and the stars were out, but it was really early afternoon, she knew that. She heard water, something calling to her. She felt something watching her.

“Be careful, Alba,” her father told her.
“I will, dad,” She promised him sleepily as she got up to go to the wash room. That's when it happened - Alba saw the floor of her room rush up and pass her. Wind caught her hair. Her feet kicked through a nothingness that was bright, sunny and blue.
Alba landed none too comfortably in an empty field of grass with sun in her eyes. Above her she could see a square in the sky that looked like a patch of her ceiling.

She had no idea where she was.