Here goes... Chapter 1

        She was at the piano. It was 3 o'clock. Pounding the keys in frustration, Emily had to remind herself why she was there in the first place.

It was two weeks until Sarah's birthday. Sarah was Emily's 8 year old little sister, about to turn 9. Sarah was a simple, sweet, mousy-brown haired girl, and loved the piano and its music. Emily was composing a piece called "Madame Butterfly", named after Sarah's favorite opera. But composing was not coming as easily to Emily as it used to.

Emily played through her already finished bars, something she found herself doing more and more often lately, as she was making hardly any progress. She had had smooth sailing when she started; the notes flowing from her fingers, but then, one day she finished a phrase and it ended. Not the piece, the music. The music wouldn't come to her, but it was obvious it wasn't the end of the piece. Emily was dreadfully stuck.

She pounded the keys again, holding the notes. She started. Something had happened, some sort of click.

Emily quickly glanced at her fingers to confirm what she already knew, something she had learned to do writing music: she had played F E and D in her left hand, F A and D in her right. She shook her head to clear it. Just a trick of her overworked brain, she told herself.

Emily felt something tugging at her memory: her mother, speaking to her. But what was she saying? Then the memory faded away. She had been feeling oddly around the piano ever since... she couldn't remember when. That was the problem, she kept forgetting things.

Emily quickly shifted her attention back to the clicking noise, still uneasy about the memory. She tried banging the piano again; nothing. She tried to recall what she had played, but in vain. The notes had faded with the memory, which by now she couldn't even remember remembering.

Another click reached Emily's ears, this time more a creak than anything else. She saw an odd rectangle of wood above the keys closing into the piano. Emily started again, then snapped to her senses and stuck her finger into the timy hole and cried out in pain. Her finger was wedged in a door. After carefully extracting the aforementioned digit, she wondered how she had gotten there all of a sudden. Then her brain caught up.

She was standing in front of the odd rectangle of wood, now fully open again. How was she standing? Then her brain caught up again. The door had grown larger. Or, she had shrunk. Emily realized the latter was far more likely as she cautiously turned around, and saw her house looming high around her. The piano bench seemed 12 feet away, not a mere 12 inches.

Emily started to tremble. How had this happened? Emily saw no other course of action but to walk through the already re-closing door, though every nerve in her now tiny body was telling her not to.

Emily was confused, and had no idea what to do. She didn't want to leave the safety of her home, but then again her house seemed sinister and deadly to someone her size, and the piano was in her house, wasn't it? But what would she find in the piano? Would she become bigger while in the piano and become trapped? Emily was torn, and the invisible string that seemed to be pulling hew towards the door wasn't helping.

Finally, a fraction of a second before the door closed for the last time, Emily made her decision.

She jumped through the door.