Zoé

The story

"Are you going to tell me today?" Angel sat on the floor, looking up at her like a giddy child during story time.

"Tell you what?" She teased.

"How did you get here?" He asked eagerly. "What happened to you?"

Her honey dripping laughter echoed in the museum before she caught herself. "Bon Dieu, I think I will get you caught if you keep visiting me."

He puffed out his chest and strengthened his back to give himself a more courageous stand. "I'm not scared."

He already knew no guard was going to come. They were soundly sleeping when he slipped in earlier – an information he chose to ignore as to keep the feeling of adrenaline pushing him on.

"No, but I am scared." She pouted, "who else will I tease if you're locked away? It gets very lonely here especially since no other painting here seems capable of talking."

"Wait, so there are more people like you?"

Zoé watched the boy carefully. He sat on top of a giant sized top hat made of wood. His body was twitching in excitement. She saw the thirst for adventure reflected in his brown eyes. She remembered him looking for some sort of wakeup call when he first set foot here. That was what drawn her out of hiding.

"Since you insist upon it I will tell you the story, my family's story."

He brought his legs closer to his chest. He was ready to get lost into another world. One he never knew existed.

She began like this, "A long long time ago, in a town far away from here, where witches were more than tales of nightmares and fairytale, lived a little girl named Erica."

"Erica?" Angel interrupted. "As in the Erica from the Roald Dahl's story? The one who was trapped in a painting then disappeared?"

"Yes," Zoé agreed, "it is the same Erica but she never completely disappeared as the stories have people believed. The world only knows part of her story."

"What's the unknown part?"

"I will get to it if you stop interrupting me," she scowled him teasingly. "Now where was I? Ah, Oui. Erica never completely disappeared. In fact, she came back as a real little girl only to find her family gone – her parents, her grandparents, and cousins. The painting was all she had in her possession. She was taken to an orphanage where she was given a new name – Theresa. Nobody believed that she was the same little girl who went missing all those years ago. They thought she was abandoned and created a story to make herself feel better. But Erica knew who she was.

Alors, as soon as she was out of the orphanage she went back to her hometown to find out what happened. In the midst of all the myths and legends, she figured out the real story. She found the identity of the witches who had taken her. She also found the reason why she was trapped in the painting."

"Why was she trapped?" Angel asked, unable to stay silent.

"Patience," Zoé smiled. "Erica found out that the witches were never after her. They wanted her mother to join their witch coven. When she refused, they cursed her daughter to spend a lifetime in a painting. After her sentence was done, she was able to come back as a little girl again. Erica tried to find the witches who had done this to her but nobody knew who they were. Her search led her to France where she was forced to stop and make peace with her new life without her family. She got married there to a French farmer.

They were happy and Erica had almost forgotten about her past until the day her daughter went missing. That was when she remembered the painting. She prayed that she was wrong but she wasn't. Her daughter was also trapped in the painting."