What's Broken? #4

TITLE: The Bridge Maker
GENRE: MG Fantasy

Linh, an eleven-year-old protagonist, is home alone because her mother is at work. She hears unusual sounds in the living room.

My question: can you can visualize the setting and where she's going?

Eeek! Eeek! Strange sounds came from the living room.

Probably mice. No surprise there. Linh had grown used to hearing those horrible little rodents scuttling inside the clogged drainpipes at school.

Maybe they had come here. Her house had a clogged drain. She shrugged, sat at the bottom stairs, and fiddled with the phoenix talisman on a golden chain around her neck, given to her by her father. It was the only moment she recalled sharing with him before he died in a car accident.

That was eight years ago when she was three. Other memories had left her.

Thumps echoed through the walls. Bam, bam, bam.

She jerked upright. That couldn’t be mice—unless their tiny feet had grown. She had never heard such bamming noises. She tiptoed past the hallway and stopped in front of the long, velvet curtains in the living room, trying to pinpoint its sound.

One minute. Three. The sound stopped. Linh’s heart pounded.

She hoped whatever it was hadn’t broken into the house through some secret pathway. Some underground tunnel like she had learned about in history class that could be connected to the entrance of a bomb shelter used during World War II, hidden in Merrion Square Park. Her mother had taken her to the park a few times on Sunday afternoons. Linh ran around with other kids on the lawn, not bothered by the naked statues staring at the ground or the Oscar Wilde statue slouching against a rock, smirking, pondering, its color faded.

Now she was curious to return there—just for the tunnel. If such thing existed, she could explore it instead of staying stuck at home. But there could be dirty rats and stinking skeletons and fungus-covered paths. Yuck!

She pulled the curtains. Whoa. A narrow door about three feet high stood beneath the large window. There'd been no door there before. Why would she never have noticed it, right beside the back door?
She bent down and placed a hand on the doorknob, hesitating for a moment. She wondered if a different world awaited her on the other side. Then she could explore it and wouldn’t have to stay at home alone. Her fear melted away, and she opened the mystery door and ducked through it.

Her breath hitched. The sun beamed down on a spacious backyard with colorful flowers—so unlike the usual gray summer days of Ireland. How could the bleak backyard with yellow grass and dead flowers have transformed into one full of vividness and light?

She blinked; the same high walls enclosing the bright yard remained on either side with the low wooden gate ahead of her. She looked behind. The narrow door to the living room still stood there, next to the locked back door.

She could go back if she wanted to, but the warm sunshine lured her into the different landscape. Lush green shrubs grew around her. A field of flowers carpeted the ground ahead, their sweet scent calming her.