First chapters

First Chapters

Chapter 1 It was early in the morning when I arrived at the small restaurant in the Old Bazaar for the first time. I looked around with real curiosity. After a while, I decided it looked like a chicken coop.

Two round copper pots bubbled on top of the braziers. The smell of boiling soup hanging in the air could wake even the sleepiest of stomachs. The restaurant walls were yellowed with smoke, who knows when they’d last been whitewashed. The place was crawling with insects.

Drawn by the warmth, they sat in clumps on the windowpanes, peering through the dark glass.

They crawled over the tables, scrabbled over the bowls and then took up their position by the windows again.

Everything in the restaurant was carefully arranged, everything had its place—two dusty tables, four long benches, the chair where Gazda1 Mito sat, his pigeonhole-sized cupboard in front of him.

The floor was a caked carpet of thick mud. Thin netting covered the corners where traps had been set up for all sorts of small creatures.

After I’d inspected everything, I stole a glance at Gazda Mito’s hung-over face. He was stretched out and snoring on one of the benches. I wasn’t sure whether I should wake him but, in the end, I whispered, “Gazda, should I do some work?”

“Ah,” he answered sleepily. “Of course, do some work, that’s why you’re here.”

He got up, rubbed his sweaty neck and tottered over to the washbasin as if walking a tightrope. When he’d woken up a bit more, he said, “Now fetch some water. And, when those two scoundrels get back, you’ll go with them to the slaughterhouse.”

I peeked over at the washbasin and saw two big copper kettles. They were just above kneeheight. My eyebrows shot up but I didn’t want Gazda Mito to think I was weak, so I grabbed the kettles and made my way over to the stairs. When I got there, I remembered to ask, “Where do you get water? Where should I fill them?”

“From the pump opposite the inns,” I heard him say behind me, so I ran quickly down the two concrete steps. My wooden sandals were slippery and my feet slid all over the uneven cobblestones.

Out in the Old Bazaar, the shutters on the small shops, lining the alleyways, creaked open and scruffy heads peered out at me. The shops looked like crooked matchboxes, leaning this way and that along the winding lanes. I loved the Old Bazaar. It was peaceful here and familiar. To me, this world was neither strange nor unreal.

At the corner, opposite the small restaurant, was a barbershop. In front, a shorthaired boy sat on a chair, which had been turned backwards, as if he were sitting on a horse. It would be some time before he’d learn the skills of barbering, I thought to myself, inasmuch as the men around the Old Bazaar never seemed to cut their hair or shave.

On the left was Shukri’s forge. The hammer blows on the anvils rang out like thunder and the bellows heaved. When the lemonade-seller’s clinking bottles were added to the mix, the Old Bazaar sounded like an orchestra.

I took small steps along the street. My eyes wandered over the shop fronts, reading the names of their owners, which had been slapped on with paint. I quickly learned all their names and their crafts. When I came to the second crossroads, I noticed all the inns lined the small square where I was told I would find the pump. The most popular inn here belonged to innkeeper, Stevo’s wife. God had made her a widow but had left her a son; they worked and lived together at the inn.

It was mid-July. The sky hung low over the baking roofs and it was unbearably hot. I tried carrying the kettles up high but their weight dragged me down. They tilted my spine and, in my wooden sandals, my feet felt like two thin sticks, threatening to break at any moment from the weight of the kettles. I put the kettles down on the cobblestones and blew onto my reddened palms. Hot and tired, I cursed the person who’d made them so big. I looked down the length of the street and shuddered. If I continued to rest after each step, I’d never get back. Mustering the last of my strength, I pushed on. Barely keeping my balance, I strained my muscles and counted each step, trying to see how much further I had to go.

Among the neighbors was a Russian woman who took in hungry, homeless cats. Suddenly, a strange thought came to mind, instead of being born a person, I could have been born a cat, which is fed and taken care of. The idea disturbed me, so I gripped the handles of the kettles even tighter.

When I got back to the restaurant, two pairs of hostile eyes greeted me. Two boys were sitting on the stairs in front of the restaurant, staring at me like I was a devil. They were about twelve years old but quite different from each other. One was dark, with a long face and straight, oily hair. The other had curly red hair, a ruddy nose and a round head, like a watermelon.

When Gazda Mito saw me, he shouted at them, “Why are you standing around like cattle?

Why don’t you take the kettles from her?”

They sprang up suddenly as if they had been startled from a dream and took the kettles from me. The restaurant began to feel like a crowded coop filled with angry chickens. The boys grumbled and I stared back at them, angrily. I got the feeling, if they could have, they would have booted me out the same door I had entered that morning—they saw me as a threat to their daily crust. They glared at me in silence, like I was a traitor and I stared back—we were sizing each other up as if preparing for a fight.

Gazda Mito told me their names. The one with the long face was Sami; the other one with the curly hair, who looked Jewish, was Leon. I thought, he’d probably been given a longer name at birth, just as I had. No doubt he’d been called Leonid.

Either trouble followed me or me it; I’m not sure which. In any case, Gazda Mito sent the three of us to the slaughterhouse. We walked out, one after the other, bristling like cats. The two boys walked in front while I followed behind, keeping them firmly in my sight. When they turned the first corner they whispered something to one another and took off quickly. But there was no way I was going to let them get away. I took my sandals in my hands and ran after them, the sharp, uneven stones cutting my feet like knives. Despite the pain, I kept going and eventually caught up to them. They stopped, extended their arms surrounding me, holding me in a tight grip.

“Where are you going?” Sami shouted, staring straight into my eyes.

“Where Gazda Mito sent me,” I replied, defiantly.

“Then go alone. Why are you glued to us?” one of them said.

“I don’t know where the slaughterhouse is, otherwise …”

The position they were holding me in became unbearable. I made my body into a ball and tried to get out from under their rough grasp but, guessing what I was up to, they gripped me even tighter, like pliers.

“Let go of me,” I shouted, close to tears.

“Listen,” Sami said, sharply, “D’you see the sun?”

I looked up at the round ball and said, “Yes, I do. So what?”

“If you can understand Kaurski,2 tonight when the sun disappears behind the hill, make sure you’re gone from the Old Bazaar, as well.”

I knew exactly what he meant but I wanted to stir them up a bit and said, “Got it, sir. But tomorrow when the sun returns, I’ll be back here again.”

“Don’t ever come back here again. Have you got that?”

“How am I supposed to understand you when I don’t speak that gibberish?” I replied.

Their anger erupted and sparks darted from Sami’s small eyes when he spoke. “I’m warning you—make sure you’re gone from the Old Bazaar.”

“I’ll leave the Old Bazaar,” I said, going right up to his nose, “when your father hands you the deed to it.”

I wanted to say more but I suddenly felt a strong pain in my shoulder.

“Just wait and see how your bones are going to crack when I grind them,” Sami said, gripping me harder.

I was determined to hold out to the end and replied, “I’ll be back and I’ll tell Gazda Mito about you. Then we’ll see who disappears from the Old Bazaar—me or you.”

Leon, who was far more good-natured and timid, grabbed him by the hand, the way you would hold on to an old friend and pleaded with him, “Let her go. The hell with her. Can’t you see she’s a blabbermouth? She’ll tell Gazda Mito on us.”

I stole a glance at Sami. I wanted to see if Leon’s words would have an impact and if I could find a way of escaping. I watched and listened carefully.

“You want me to let her go?” Sami said, pulling his hand away from Leon, in disgust. “Are you afraid of a little alley cat? A silly little girl?”

“Listen,” I interrupted. “Let’s make a deal; if you let me come with you to the slaughterhouse now, then tonight I’ll take you to the quarter where I live and show you lots of strange things.”

“What things?” Sami asked, skeptically.

“You’ll see later,” I said, wanting to get away.

He put out his foot to stop me and said, “Tell us now, otherwise you’re not taking another step.”

“I’m not telling you now,” I replied, offhandedly.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“Near the abandoned hospital.”

“There’s nothing interesting there,” he said, annoyed, as if he knew the whole city.

Leon thought about it and asked, “Is your quarter big?”

“Of course it is. It starts at Lenski Bridge and goes all the way to the station. Our street is very interesting, small—an alley. First, you enter through a narrow passageway, narrower than four feet. After that, it becomes a bit wider and starts to wind. Now listen carefully,” I said, trying not to seem too desperate. “There’s a building just where the alley widens, but it’s no ordinary building. It’s long with small windows. It looks like a dungeon. There are two gates on either side. They’re huge—as high as this shop here on the corner.”

They looked at me doubtfully and Sami sneered, “So what if it has gates like that. What’s so important about that?”

“The gates might not be important, but the hospital is.”

It was obvious they didn’t understand much but they weren’t about to wait for me to explain.

Leon said, “What is that hospital?”

“You morons. You mean you don’t know it? Well, it’s an old abandoned building whose walls are the only things left standing. The entry doors are blocked and there’s no way in. But I know a secret entrance. And it leads all the way to the basement. They say there are gold kettles buried there, really big ones.”

“How do you know that when you’ve never seen them? You just made that up,” Sami retorted.

“I didn’t make anything up. But, if you take me with you now to the slaughterhouse, I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Stay here,” Sami ordered. He grabbed Leon by the shoulder and took him aside to confer.

Standing alone, I looked further down the road. A ditch divided the livestock market from the Jewish quarter. The sticky summer had started early, drying out the road and kicking up a thick dust. The houses were in no particular order; big ones stood next to small ones, old ones next to new ones, everything was built haphazardly. Painted various colors, the façades made for a strange patchwork. A few pigs grunted in a muddy ditch. I looked at everything and was overcome by the quiet sadness of the street.

First, I saw Sami’s shadow in front of me and then his long face. He stood before me and said, “OK, you can come with us. But keep ten paces behind and don’t come an inch closer. And … carry the buckets.”

I nodded in agreement, put my sandals back on and shuffled after them. They knew all the roads but I was worried I’d lose sight of them because they were constantly whispering to each other, which infuriated me—I was desperately trying to think of a way out.

When we got near the slaughterhouse, Sami whistled through his teeth, gesturing at me with his hand and I rushed on. I hated having to be obedient but, still, I listened and obeyed him.

When I got near them, Sami ordered, “Stop there.”

I stood aside while they paced around self-importantly, as if they were inspecting something. The building was long and dirty with peeling walls. It looked more like a barn than a slaughterhouse.

The sounds here were strange; on the left side, the river murmured quietly, inside the slaughterhouse sheep bleated and cows mooed, while outside, trucks roared by noisily and cartwheels creaked. You could also hear the shrieks of barefoot children. Every now and then, a shot from a revolver rang out.

Sami came closer to me and told me to follow him. Everything was making me suspicious and uneasy, so I followed them cautiously. Coming to the back of the slaughterhouse, there was a small field with wooden stalls. Sami and Leon hid behind a crumbling wall and ordered me to crouch down beside them.

“Why?” I asked, tired of giving in to all their demands.

“So you don’t get your head blown off,” Sami replied, pleased for having more sense than I had.

“Why are there soldiers here?” I asked, wanting to know everything.

“They’re not soldiers. They’re Germans,” he said, trying to impress me.

“I know they’re Germans but what are they doing here?”

“Keep quiet and just watch,” he said. “And if you faint from what you see, I’ll have to slap you to bring you back to life.”

“I’m not scared of anything. I’ve even seen a dead person,” I said.

Leon was crouching beside us, watching curiously and quietly.

I heard another shot and, when I looked, I shivered at the sight; a horse was slumped in the wooden stall, attempting, in a last-ditch effort, to escape its inevitable death. Suddenly, at that moment, another bullet rang out and the horse lay entirely still.

Sami approached me and whispered in my ear, “Did you see that? Another horse will get it now.”

“Why are they killing them?” I asked, aware for the first time he knew something I didn’t.

The expression on his face changed. He puffed up like a peacock and said confidently, “The Germans eat horse meat.”

“Let’s go. There’s nothing else to be seen here,” I said, keen to avoid more terrible sights.

“She’s scared,” I heard a sarcastic voice say.

“No,” I whispered, not wanting to give myself away.

Leon felt the same way I did, so we agreed to abandon the wall. I didn’t want to be the first to leave and lose sight of these two thugs. But the sound of another gunshot would have ripped right through me and it would have been difficult to stay calm.

The sun was high; its rays beat down on us and bounced off the red curls on Leon’s head.

Sami kicked listlessly at the dirt and got up to leave. Leon and I followed him. Near the door to the slaughterhouse, we found our buckets filled with steaming animal entrails that stank.

“Pick up the buckets.” Sammy ordered.

“What?” I said, astonished. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Pick them up and go down to the river and clean them. Or I’ll make you lick ‘em clean.”

Sami shouted at me.

I glanced at him, knowing I was too small and weak to retaliate.

“You don’t need your sandals to dip your feet in the water,” he said. “Give them to Leon.”

“They’re my sandals and I’m not giving them to anyone.” I said.

“If you go into the river with them, the water will drag them off you,” he warned. “Either way, the leeches are going to come and suck your blood.”

I didn’t want to listen to anything else he had to say. I looked at the leeches—those small, disgusting creatures with dark green flesh—and shuddered.

“Leave your sandals and go to the river,” he yelled.

Jagged acacia trees grew along the river. The water was strong and powerful, rushing over the stones and splashing loudly. In places, the water had driven piles that snagged grass and old rags. On both sides of the river, crumbling cottages lined the winding alleys, looking like a row of sleepy, old people.

I handed over my wooden sandals without a fight and stood aside. Leon quickly tried them on and a huge smile lit up his face. They looked as if they had been carved just for him. I looked at my bare feet while he marched back and forth like a soldier on guard duty. I wanted them back.

“The straps will break,” I said, tearfully.

Sami pulled out a small knife from his pocket and flicked its blade. He headed straight for me, as if he was going to stick the knife into my chest. I tried not to show my fear. I waited silently. When he was quite close, he handed it to me and said, “Here’s the knife. Now go down to the river and clean and chop up the entrails.”

Just as I was about to leave he said, “Hang on—I’ll carry the buckets because if they spill out, Gazda Mito will give us hell.”

I shuffled off barefoot in the dust and ran after him, secretly plotting my revenge. An idea suddenly flashed into my mind; I’ll trick them and I won’t take them to the abandoned hospital tonight. They’ll find out just who I am, those alley rats. I felt much better after this and went into the river.

The gurgling sound of the river, with its many small dangers lying in wait, frightened me. I fought hard against a cruel fate that always seemed to surround me. But all of a sudden, we quickly became friends and the water flowed around me obediently.

My work kept me busy and the day passed quickly. At the end of the day, the sun sank behind a big hill and it suddenly turned cooler. Soon, the noise in the Old Bazaar died down.

Suddenly, the wooden and iron shutters banged closed and a cold and empty darkness fell over the uneven cobblestones. The friendly world of the Old Bazaar slowly became deserted and it settled down to rest.

All day, I had been mulling over things in my mind. When it got dark, Gazda Mito gave me permission to go and I left without being seen.

The streets in the Old Bazaar were short, no more than thirty to sixty feet long and they crisscrossed one another. I avoided a few of them so I could cover my tracks, in case Sami and Leon discovered me. When I reached the wooden bridge near my quarter, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I held on to the wooden rails of the bridge and started walking across it. I couldn’t help smiling at my victory but then, all of a sudden, behind me, I heard someone out of breath and I recognized Sami’s rough voice, “Grab her.”

I felt a sharp pain across the top of my head. They grabbed me by the hair and started dragging me back. I pressed the palms of my hands against my head to stop them from pulling my hair and turned around quickly.

“You’re not going to get away from us,” Sami said, dragging me even harder.

“Let go of me, you ape,” I shouted in agony, thinking how to get myself out of this hopeless situation.

I punched his bony ribs a few times and made him let go of my hair but he grabbed me by my wrists, instead.

“So, you wanted to get away from us?”

“I’ll take you to the hospital tomorrow,” I lied so I could get free.

“No, you’ll take us now.”

“I won’t.”

“What did you say?” he asked slowly.

“I said I’m not taking you and you’re nothing but a piece of garbage.”

He let go of my wrists suddenly and slapped me across the ear. I stumbled but tried to remain on my feet. Leon stood near us, pale and frightened, muttering something.

“Now get a move on and lead the way or I’ll give you another slap,” he ordered, gruffly.

I went on ahead, clenching my teeth in anger. Then, suddenly, I turned around to look at them and said, “Keep ten paces from me and don’t come one inch closer.”

They were cornered—afraid I might escape again. Leon wiped the sweat from his dusty face with his sleeve. I tried to stay calm, acting as if I didn’t care. I was trying to think of a way I could convince them to let me go. Soon, the Old Bazaar came to an end and the street, which was next to mine, began. I slowed down to gain some time but Sami was on to me and said, “You want to trick us, don’t you?”

“No,” I said and then added, “But I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” he asked.

I stood on the pavement. “It would be really dangerous for you to come to our street tonight.”

“Dangerous? Why?” he asked, looking me in the eye.

“Well …” I started to say, waving my hands in the air. “The only thing separating our yard from the Kavaev’s yard is a wall and every Wednesday Mr. and Mrs. Kavaev have visitors.”

“So what?”

I tried to frighten them, “The Chief of Police is always invited and, when he’s here, it’s full of policemen from one end of our alley to the other. I know all this because I’m friends with the Kavaev’s daughter.”

This explanation seemed to worry only Leon. He quickly took the yellow patch off his shirt, which all the Jews had to wear, and put it in the pocket of his torn pants. Sami finally understood the real danger. His courage and fighting spirit disappeared. Suddenly, he seemed small and rather stupid, even though he was a foot taller than I was. He looked at me suspiciously, trying to determine if what I had told them was just a lie.

I took advantage of their uncertainty and added, “I live here and everyone knows me but I can’t promise you anything. If you’re scared, it would be better if you just went back the way you came.”

They looked at me, skeptically. Leon was ready to give up but Sami grabbed his elbow and said, “Don’t believe her. She’s lying. She just wants to get away.”

Then they suddenly made ready to go. “No,” I stopped them. “Wait.”

“What?” Sami asked barely hiding his anger.

“Listen. Our house has two entrances, two gates, d’you follow me? One from the alley and the other from the main street.”

This was something new to them and they started thinking about things again.

“Come on, stop dreaming,” I called to them and took off without waiting. They followed me quietly, looking around on all sides, like scared rabbits.

It was almost dark. There was tension in the air. Without anyone seeing, I brought them over to the gate, the one on the main street. Behind it, the yard was overgrown with trees and bushes.

Our gate was small and low. It was locked from the inside with a chain. However, I knew how to put my hand through a crack and open it. When I had done that, I grabbed the bell and stuffed it with a hanky so it wouldn’t ring. Therefore, there would be no chance of anyone seeing us entering the yard. I made a sign for them to enter under the cover of darkness, even though I knew there wouldn’t be anyone in the yard at that time.

Right up against our tiny shack was a tall, yellow building whose threshold I had never crossed. The Kavaev family lived there. They didn’t want to mix with their poor neighbors.

When they first moved here, we shared a small wooden fence but later they built a high wall and shut themselves up completely in their own world.

For a long time, I tried to climb the wall so there wouldn’t be any secrets from the other side. My efforts paid off. Every night, without being seen, I would crouch on the wall and learn everything that went on in their house. What I found most unusual was all the strange food served at dinner. And compared to us, their behavior was different—weird and stuck up.

The first step to climbing the wall was to get onto the roof of our washhouse, which I reached by climbing the large quince tree in our yard. From there, it was easy to climb onto the wall. I told Sami and Leon about my discovery and they climbed up together with me. When we were on the roof, I whispered to them, “Now you’ll get to see the Chief of Police up close.”

Soft and gentle music was coming from the other side.

“Is their radio playing?” asked Sami.

“That’s not a radio. It’s a piano,” I said self-importantly, moving my fingers as if I were playing one.

We sat on the high wall, crouched side by side, and looked on at this rare sight. Mrs. Kavaev’s short wrinkled fingers ran lightly over the black and white piano keys. A younger lady, who was walking around the room with a glass in her hand, looked up at the ceiling with halfclosed eyes, as if she were seeking God. She went up to the Chief of Police and said, “Bach is my weakness.”

Bach is her weakness, I repeated to myself, trying to guess who in our street that might be.

I thought of the writer who lived at the end of our alley. He rubbed sherbet in his hair to make it shiny, straight and to keep the wind from tousling it. I was sure he was Bach and continued listening.

The Chief of Police sat in a velvet armchair, smoking a big pipe. He was squeezed into a too tight uniform, making him look like a monkey in a cage. Silver braids, like those on the dress of a village bride, sparkled on his chest, while he dozed, resembling a stuffed turkey.

Pots hung from a balcony on the other side of the wall. Clumsily, Leon slipped, sending one of the flowerpots crashing to the marble floor. At that moment, my heart started to pound. Our bones shook. We quickly went back the way we came.

As Sami was climbing back down the quince tree, a sharp branch pierced his skin, leaving a red mark. He curled up with pain but he didn’t cry out. When we got back to the gate, I said, “Now get out of here. I’ll show you the other things tomorrow.”

Not waiting to hear their reply, I went inside and shut the gate behind me. I felt much better after they left. If I’m able to trick them this easily today, then tomorrow it would be even easier. I jumped into bed without dinner and without talking to anyone, because my worries were my own concern.

Chapter 1

Bad Body Day Freddy assaulted the piano. She pounded the opening chords of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. The lamp on the piano shook with the vibration. Isis, the cat, hid under the ottoman.

Freddy pushed all her anger into her fingers, pummeling the keys. The house throbbed with the pulsation of Freddy’s rage. She raised her hands in anticipation of smashing another series of chords….

“Hey, you crazy? It’s Saturday morning. Quiet, down there,” Mike yelled.

“Quiet yourself,” she shouted back, slamming the keys one more time.

“Fredericka, your brother was sleeping. Don’t make me come in there,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Go get dressed before your friends come.”

Freddy stomped up the stairs. Mike muttered something from his room across the hall.

She turned toward his door and stuck out her tongue. “Sorry,” she muttered but didn’t slam the door to her room. It wasn’t Mike’s fault she was angry. As big brothers went, he rocked compared to others she knew about.

Isis sat watching from the top of the dresser, her yellow eyes gleaming and her tail twitching. “What are you looking at?” Freddy growled, as Isis arched her neck and yawned. “So, OK, you don’t care. How would you feel if you looked like Garfield, with a fat belly hanging down to the floor?”

Isis licked her paws, watching as Freddy pulled out shirt after shirt and tossed each one on the floor. Freddy groaned, throwing herself down on the bed, said, “What am I going to do?”

Isis stood and stretched. Suddenly, she leaped five feet across the room and landed on Freddy’s stomach. “Ouch, that hurts,” she cried. “You are one crazy cat.” Isis purred and settled down on her chest, pushing her nose into Freddy’s neck. Still pouting, Freddy smoothed the soft black fur as Isis purred louder, gently kneading her claws against bare skin. “Hey, no claws.”

Freddy sat up and pushed the cat off. Isis resumed licking her paws, pretending indifference to such undignified treatment.

Freddy’s eyes filled with tears. “What am I going to do, Isis? Why can’t I look like Brittany or Lauren? You know, thin and beautiful.” Even her best friend, Jess was petite with light blue eyes and dimples, which looked as if somebody’d poked holes in her cheeks when she smiled. She’d even settle for her other best friend Ruthie, with her flaming red hair and green eyes. Ruthie wasn’t as thin as Jess but not fat like you-know-who, either. Freddy hated her body.

She just wouldn’t go to the game. Maybe she’d never go out of this room again.

“Frederica?” her mother called. “Ruthie and Jess are here. Where are you?”

She cringed. Why did her mom insist on calling her Frederica? “God, I hate her.” Freddy could feel a huge lump in her throat. She’d hated her mother more and more since her dad had left them. Her mom had become a grouch and she cried so much—she wasn’t Mom anymore.

Freddy absently stroked the cat. “Do you miss Daddy too, Isis?” There was no way out of this.

She swallowed the lump and shouted, “OK, Mom, I’ll be right down.”

There was a sharp rap at the door. It opened just enough for a hand to reach around waving a bright blue tee shirt. “I think somebody needs help,” a deep voice said.

Freddy grabbed the shirt and pulled it over her head, yanking it down as far as she could over the jeans. “OK, come on in.”

Mike grinned from the doorway. “Looks good on you, Freddy.”

“Is it clean?”

“Sure it’s clean. I got it from the pile on the left side of the floor. The dirty clothes are on the right.”

“How can you live like that?”

“Hey, I know where everything is.” Mike looked around. “Besides, your room is starting to look a lot like mine.”

Freddy surveyed the floor, or what she could see of it, as her mother’s voice echoed up the stairs again. “I’ll get them later.” She smiled, swallowing a small lump. “Thanks, Mike. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“OK, don’t get all mushy. Enjoy the game,” he said, stepping into hall.

Freddy felt a tiny twinge of guilt thinking about how she acted before; Mike was an OK brother. She ran a brush through her thick brown hair, giving the mirror one last dirty look.

“Yuck,” she said, then pushed past Mike and tried to run downstairs.

He grabbed her and tickled her side. “Hey, hold up kid. The smile’s gone.”

Freddy giggled.

Mike leaned over and whispered, “In a couple of years, you’re gonna be a knockout.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, the frown returning to her mouth.

“You’ll see,” he said seriously.

The lump was back in her throat. Freddy turned and ran down the stairs. Isis raced ahead to beat her to the bottom step.

“You look very nice, dear,” her mom said.

Freddy forced her mouth into a smile and said through clenched teeth, “Thanks, Mom.” Liar, she thought.

“Hello, Frederica,” Jess said sweetly.

“It’s Freddy,” she hissed. Mike called her that when she was born and it stuck, except for her mom, of course, and everybody in her family, and, well almost the whole world, including teachers. Why didn’t parents think of that when they named tiny babies after people who lived a thousand years ago? OK, maybe not a thousand but long enough to make it old-fashioned.

Ruthie interrupted Freddy’s thoughts on naming. “Hey, I like that shirt. Where’d you get it?”

Freddy looked down. “It’s Mike’s. Let’s go.”

Ruthie looked over at Jess and shrugged. “Sure, I’m ready. Bye, Mrs. Gold.”

“Have a good time, girls.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Gold,” Jess said, following them out the door.

Freddy looked back at the living room window and waved at Isis. The cat twitched her tail.

“Love that cat,” Jess said.

“It’s like she’s a person,” Ruthie added.

Freddy smiled, “Sometimes I think she reads my mind.”

“Maybe she’s a witch’s cat,” Ruthie said.

“Yeah, and I’m the witch,” Freddy grumbled.

Nobody said anything for the first couple of minutes. Finally, Jess said, “You’re a grouch today, Freddy.”

Freddy thought about what Jess said, as they walked down the street toward the ball park.

“I just hate myself today, that’s all.”

“Your hair looks great,” Ruthie said, pulling at her own red curls. “Not like this mess.”

“It’s not my hair I’m talking about, Ruthie. Besides, I wish my hair was red and curly, not this straight ugly brown.”

Jess shrugged, “So, are you going to tell us or what?”

“It’s like a bad body day, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Jess said, nodding. “Well, everybody has those, Freddy. I even saw a zit this morning.”

Ruthie peered at Jess’ face. “Where?” Jess pointed to her chin. Ruthie looked closer. “I don’t see anything.”

“Of course not, I covered it with makeup.”

Ruthie looked at Freddy and rolled her eyes, probably thinking about her 4,000 freckles, which nothing could cover.

Freddy thought about her figure. What did Jess know about being fat or ugly? She didn’t have a fat, ugly cell in her whole body. Everything about her was perfect, from her blond hair to her long legs. Freddy sighed and asked, “Every day’s a bad body day, huh?”

“No, I guess not every day,” Jess said.

Freddy nodded. “See what I mean? I have one every day.”

She bet Jess never had to sneak huge sizes into the fitting room, terrified that someone from school would see her. She didn’t turn red from embarrassment and want to die when those stupid sales girls said dumb things like, “It doesn’t come any larger.” The worst was the day a skinny sales girl said to her mom, loud enough for the whole mall to hear, “Maybe she should try the woman’s department.” Death, it’s Freddy, come and get me, please.

“Our bodies are going to start to change next year,” Ruthie said hopefully.

Freddy raised her eyebrows. “Wow, I can hardly wait. A whole year, or maybe two or three. Or maybe never. You should see my Aunt Carol; she has three chins, with hairs growing out of them. If I have to go through life like her, I’ll kill myself first.”

“Listen, can we just forget our bodies and have some fun?” Jess asked.

“Yeah,” Ruthie said. “Let’s pretend we’re invisible like we did at camp a couple of years ago.”

Jess laughed, “We didn’t speak to anybody. Remember how mad the counselor got because we wouldn’t even look at her?”

Freddy giggled, “I thought she was going to explode by dinner, trying to get us to talk to her.”

“We would just float by and stare over everybody’s shoulders,” Ruthie said.

Now laughing, Freddy nodded. “OK, I got the message, sorry to be such a jerk.” The gremlins, Grumble and Grouch, fluttered around in her head for a couple of blocks but, as they reached the ballpark, her eyes danced with excitement.

Kids streamed in from every direction, squeezing through the gate. This was an important game; the playoff for the County Junior Baseball League title between the Blake school Dragons from Hopsville and their own Leesburg Panthers. Finally, pushing through the gate, they ran to the home team side of the ball field, scrambled up the bleachers and plopped down.

“Watch the bench don’t crack,” yelled a voice somewhere behind them.

Freddy’s heart stopped beating. She was dead. She knew without turning around it was Brock Ames, probably showing off for Brittany and his friends.

“Shut up, jerk,” Jess yelled. “It’s your head that’s cracked.”

Ruthie nudged Jess. “Don’t answer him or he’ll keep doing it. Think invisible.”

Sure enough he yelled, “Look at Fat Freddy and her pals Carrot Top and Messy Jessy.”

Freddy heard giggling. Please God, she begged, let me just disappear, but God wasn’t hanging out at the game. Brock Ames was and he was sitting two rows behind them.

“Let’s move,” she whispered.

“I’m not budging from these seats,” Jess said, between clenched teeth.

Freddy sighed and scrunched down. A loud crack behind them shattered the air.

“Hey, you hear that noise?” Brock yelled.

“Yeah, sounded like wood cracking to me,” Tommy Whitehead said loudly, getting into the act.

Then a deep voice said, “Boys, I suggest you keep your remarks to yourself. You’re starting to annoy me.”

It was Mr. Berns, the soccer coach. Brittany giggled. Then there was wonderful silence.

Freddy wanted to kiss Mr. Berns, if he wasn’t so old. She just wished Brock would find somebody else to pick on. It all started last year, when Brock, leaning over to whisper in Brittany’s ear, walked into an open locker door. Freddy saw it and couldn’t stop giggling. His face turned bright red. “Shut up, fat face,” he shouted.

Maybe in a few years when she became thin and gorgeous like Mike said, Brock would ask her for a date and she’d make him beg. Then she’d make him apologize in front of the whole school for every mean thing he’d ever said about her. Of course, she would turn him down for the date. He’d turn red and slink away. Freddy giggled. Why did she always have to giggle?

“What’s so funny?” Ruthie asked.

“Nothing,” she said, trying to stop giggling.

Chapter 1 A Grave Beginning July 1st, 1987 I never would have stepped foot in that moldy, old cemetery hidden behind my aunt’s house if it weren’t for my cousin, Emily. It was her idea to go to the cemetery where the Pesterfield family used to bury their kin, a long time ago, but, somehow, I was the one who ended up being haunted by a ghost trying to kill me. He should have been trying to spook Emily—she was the one who wanted proof ghosts are real. I already knew that much.

My first visit to the cemetery happened on the first day of July. On that morning, I was out the door by nine o’clock and already the air outside was so steamy it felt as if I were breathing hot cotton. I’d like to add the miserable heat to my list of “Things That Stink About the Town of Mabry,” but it’s just as hot in Memphis, which is where I’m from.

As we did every morning, Emily and I rode our bikes six miles into town to get to the community pool and hide from the heat. The pool was a rusting rectangle, half the size of the one I was used to and packed with so many kids you couldn’t swim without getting whacked. All the kids showed up there because there wasn’t much else to do in Mabry. The pool is part of the community center, which has a library where my Aunt Teri works and an activity room with a warped Ping-Pong table. That’s where the excitement ends.

Most of the people around here live on farms and don’t seem to come to town for much.

Maybe that’s why downtown Mabry looks like it hasn’t changed since it was first built. In the town square, there’s a crumbling brick courthouse where they used to hang people from the top tower. At least that’s what my Aunt Teri told me and she would know. She’s written a book on the history of Mabry—it’s actually more like a pamphlet because there’s not much to tell. Right beside the courthouse, there’s a hardware store and a barbershop where the men like to hang out.

Across the street, there’s the “House of Beauty” where the women get their hair fried while they

catch up with each other. There are only two restaurants in the whole town, which means I have to eat my aunt’s food most of the time and she’s a stranger to the spice rack. One of the restaurants is called the Little Brown Jug. That’s where the hunched-over crowd eat what they call “a meat and three,” meaning a serving of meat usually covered in gravy and three kinds of mushy vegetables. The Dairy Barn is the other restaurant and it’s where the teenagers hang out, eating drippy ice cream cones. There are no barbeque places or catfish houses and no places to listen to jazz as there are in Memphis. Everything here is small and quiet.

I sank down into the water at the deep end of the pool and stayed there for as long as I could. There weren’t many places I could get away from my cousin, Emily, but this was one of them. She’s always hovering over me and telling me what’s what. We have never been close because we lived on the opposite sides of Tennessee, until now. She probably wouldn’t have liked me if I had lived nearby because I’m two years younger than she is and, even worse, I’m a boy. It doesn’t help I’ve moved into her house and have to share a bathroom with her. Plus, I get special treatment because I’m a guest.

I watched as legs, feet and bodies swam past, hoping none of them was Emily, hunting for me underwater. I liked being a rock at the bottom of the pool. I wasn’t a fish out of water as long as I stayed submerged. When I finally had to come up for air, I looked around the edges of the pool for Matt Giles, who was semi-sort-of my friend. He was not too hard to spot because he was the one kid who had hair as puffy and white as a cotton ball. The story of how his hair turned white was the first one I heard Matt tell. According to Matt, his mother was on the way to the hospital to give birth to him when someone ran into her car. His mother wasn’t hurt but it scared her so bad her hair changed to white overnight. The shock must have travelled through her body because when Matt was born the next morning, he also had a head of white hair. Not only does he have unusual hair, but he also has pale, blue eyes, making him look goat-eyed.

I pulled myself out of the pool and circled near Matt, like a dog meeting a stranger. Matt was never by himself for long because everyone wanted to hear the latest odd news he had come across. From what I could tell, Matt never ran out of stories and never told the same one twice.

Matt said he had read in the paper a bunch of shoes had mysteriously washed up onto a beach with feet still in them. He reads a way better newspaper than the one that comes to my aunt’s house. The best stories he tells are the ones he hears from his grandma, who lives with him and his dad. She’s a medicine woman, who knows the interesting history of Mabry—not the dusty stuff my aunt tells.

I joined in the huddle of boys leaning in to hear Matt’s latest story. Matt nodded a hello to me and then rubbed his hands together as though he was warming them up.

“My grandma told me this story and said it happened to a cousin of hers.” Matt looked at each one of us. “That means this is the hands-on-the-Bible truth. When my grandma was a girl, she had a cousin named Jay-Jay who had been playing out in the woods for so long he’d lost track of time. It was dark by the time he started for home and he had no way to see his way back.

This was before flashlights were invented, so he had no light to see by. He decided he’d spend the night on the ground because he couldn’t see to go any farther. He didn’t know he was smack in the middle of a cemetery.”

Everyone stiffened right up when we heard that.

Matt let us recover and continued. “Jay-Jay had no idea he was lying on a grave when he fell asleep that night. It was while he was lying there, the ground under him opened up and swallowed him whole.”

“Whoa,” I muttered.

The other boys looked as surprised as I was but one voice made me cringe. My cousin, Emily, had been standing outside the circle listening. She was standing with her hip stuck out to one side and her blue eyes spinning like marbles.

“Like that really happened,” she said.

I wished the ground would swallow her up but I wasn’t that lucky.

Matt took a step back from the pack around him. “You callin’ me a liar?”

“How do you know this Jay-Jay disappeared into a grave?” Emily asked. “Maybe he ran away?”

Matt smiled. “I wasn’t finished with my story. When Jay-Jay’s family went searchin’ for him the next mornin’ they found one of his shoes lyin’ on a mound of fresh dirt at the grave where he’d slept. At first they were afraid to dig up the grave but when they finally did, they found a skeleton dressed in Jay-Jay’s clothes.”

“You can’t turn into a skeleton overnight,” Emily protested. “Right, Freddy?”

She put me on the spot and I could feel everyone’s eyeballs on me, as they waited to hear what I would say.

I shrugged. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t be sure.”

I could tell Emily was flustered with me because she started tucking and re-tucking her brown hair behind her ears as she spoke. “I’ll bet if I asked your grandma, she’d say you were lying.”

Matt cocked his head to one side. “Even if I missed some facts in this story, which I’m not sayin’ I did, there’s no way I’d sit on someone’s grave. Would you guys?”

“No way,” I said.

The other boys chimed in they wouldn’t either and we were agreeing on how crazy it would be when Emily cleared her throat and said, “Nothing would happen if you did.”

Matt pointed at her. “I dare you to go do it then.”

“I will,” she said. “And I’ll be back tomorrow to let you know what happened.”

“If you’re lucky to get out of there alive,” Matt whispered.

Half the boys made spooky sounds and the other half, including me, laughed. I didn’t get to finish my chuckles because Emily tugged at my shoulder.

“Come on,” she said. “I need a witness.”

“What?” I stared at her, then at Matt.

Matt waved me on. “You should go with her to make sure she sits on a grave. You know —just in case she’s a liar.”

Emily huffed and turned to go. I slapped my feet down on the concrete as I walked behind her.

“Why’d you have to be listening in on what Matt was saying? Were you spying on me?” I asked.

Emily looked back at me. “I was walking by and heard him. He’s got a megaphone for a mouth.”

I ran past her and picked up my bike. “Even if he is loud, you didn’t have to call him a liar. Now he’s not gonna want me hanging around because he knows you’ll keep showing up wherever I go.”

Emily climbed on her bike and caught up to me. “He’s too old to be friends with you.”

“He’s twelve years old, which is the same age as you.”

Emily whipped her head around. “I’m going to prove to you that Matt’s a goober and a liar. I’ve been telling you that ever since you got here.”

“So what if he likes to tell stories? He’s not hurtin’ anyone,” I said.

Emily doubled back and veered her bike so close to me we bumped handlebars. Her nose was flaring in and out like an accordion. “You don’t get it. Don’t you remember the kid at your school who was the class cootie?”

I knew the answer automatically. “Yeah, it was me.”

“Oh,” Emily said.

“At least I thought it was me.”

“I doubt that’s true,” she said. She peeled away from me and turned glum. “I’m only trying to tell you about Matt, so you won’t be let down later. He does that to people, sometimes.”

I took my hands off my handlebars and shrugged. “I think he’s funny, that’s all.”

Nothing Emily said about Matt, from how dirty his fingernails were to how he lived in a ratty, old trailer would ever change my mind about him. I thought Emily had forgotten all about the dare as we headed back to her house, as we usually did for lunch, but she rode her bike across the bridge over the creek, past the old farmhouse and kept going into the backyard.

I pedaled harder to keep up. “Where are you going?”

Emily looked back at me, her hair blowing in her face. “Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

That “something” was hidden beyond the backyard, past a row of tower-tall poplar trees.

As soon as I saw the fenced-off cemetery in the clearing up ahead, I jammed on the brakes so hard my bike fishtailed. Every one of the brushy brown hairs on my head stood up like antennas.

How was it I’d been living here for two months without knowing it was there? I already thought the old house Aunt Teri and my cousin, Emily, lived in was haunted because of the floorboards and walls that creaked at night as the house settled. Having a cemetery close by made the Pesterfield place even scarier.

I kneaded the handlebars on my bike and felt my mouth turn pasty. The cemetery was small, at least, with only a dozen or so unevenly sized tombstones. A rusty fence wrapped around the tombstones to keep everyone out. From all the grass growing up around the graves, it looked like the cemetery had been forgotten. The tombstones were the old-timey kind; some were flat and made out of slate and some were crumbly granite. They weren’t big and they didn’t have swirls or angels carved into them like the ones I’d seen in cemeteries in Memphis.

If the cemetery didn’t look so decrepit, it might not have bothered me but there was lichen and moss on some of the tombstones and a few were lopsided, as if something had pushed one side up from the ground. I usually did my worry dance whenever my heartbeat went up a notch, but my bike wasn’t steady enough for me and I could only do it when I was sitting down.

Whenever I did my worry dance at school, the kids would make fun of me when I rocked back and forth in my chair and moved my head from side to side at the same time. I didn’t care, because it calmed me right down. I hovered over my bike as Emily pitched hers to the ground and walked down the path to the cemetery.

“Let’s go,” she ordered.

I panted like a rabid dog and waved her on. “In a minute…..I’m resting.”

I pretended to catch my breath while I watched Emily spring into action. She never took the time to be afraid of anything. One summer, when she came to visit my family in Memphis, we climbed up on the roof of our house, trying to get a shuttlecock out the gutter. We were on the

side of the house with a hillside butted up against it but I didn’t like being up that high and told her so.

“It’s not that far down,” she had argued.

As I headed back down the ladder, I said, “I dare you to jump.”

I should’ve known she’d do it. She landed in a heap and couldn’t breathe. I’d never seen anyone have the breath knocked out of her before, so I was scared she was dead.

I ran over to her and crouched down beside her. “You OK?” When she could finally speak, she croaked, “Shut up.” That’s when I knew she was fine.

Emily came to the rusty fence surrounding the jumbled tombstones and tugged at the gate. It let out a whine as if it didn’t want to let anyone inside. I watched Emily inspect each of the tombstones while I rubbed my head—that’s the other way I calm myself. I liked the feel of my short hair because it reminded me of the bristles on my mom’s hairbrush. While Emily made her way through the graveyard, it occurred to me that something might actually happen to her when she finally lay down on a grave the way it did in Matt’s story. I wasn’t about to fish her out if the ground swallowed her up.

“You know,” I called to her. “Even though Matt dared you to lie on someone’s grave, you don’t have to do it.”

Emily planted her fists on her hips. “I want to do it.”

I was pretty sure if anything did pull her underground, it would regret it and spit her back out. I went back to rubbing my head and wishing I’d never heard of this stinkin’ cemetery.

Without even looking up from her graveyard inspection, Emily waved me over.

“Come on. I need you to witness this or Matt won’t believe me."

I leaned over my handlebars. “I can see you from here.”

“Are you going to tell Matt you were too afraid to come inside the cemetery or do you want me to?”

“OK, fine.” I flung my bike to the ground and marched through the cemetery gate but, as soon as I was standing beside a tombstone, I forgot about being mad at Emily.

“It’s not so bad,” Emily said. She strolled through the cemetery again, while I stood as still as a spied rabbit.

“I don’t like this,” I mumbled. This was the first cemetery I’d ever stepped foot into. I’d gotten out of going to most funerals because my parents always thought I was too young to go to one or it would be too upsetting. I wasn’t going to argue with them. I’m old enough to go to a funeral now but I still won’t go to one even though my Dad tried to make me not too long ago. I told myself this cemetery wasn’t so bad because there weren’t too many tombstones. Plus, it was a family cemetery. No Pesterfield would hurt his own kin, right? But I couldn’t help thinking there was only a few feet of dirt separating me from the skeletons under me. Most likely, those coffins they were lying in were rotting too. What’s worse was knowing that the dead don’t always lie there quietly. I believed in ghosts, even if Emily didn’t.

It wasn’t until I moved to my aunt’s house in Mabry, at the end of May, I was sure ghosts were real. I couldn’t sleep in that old house with the walls creaking and the two grandfather clocks in wooden cases almost as tall as the ceiling. There’s the sound of constant ticking as the pendulums swing, making me grind my teeth. The worst part is both clocks were set about a minute apart, so they chimed at different times. At midnight, I always woke up to twenty-four bongs, which made me think the ghosts were coming for me as they did in A Christmas Carol.

This place was made for ghosts.

Emily pointed to a slate tombstone in the cemetery. “What about this one?”

I knew I’d have to get closer to see it. I looked back at the gate to be sure it was open, if I needed to escape. Out of habit, I reached into the pocket of my shorts and felt for the small, round compass I kept with me. It came in a goody bag from a birthday party and it didn’t really work but I had given it to my mom as a joke because she was always getting lost when she drove. It was mine now and I liked having it with me because it reminded me of our trips and how we never knew where we might end up.

I walked carefully in the cemetery, but everywhere I turned, I felt as if I was stepping on someone. “Excuse me,” I whispered. I hopscotched across the graveyard until I stood beside Emily.

“What about this one?” Emily asked again.

“It’s not much to look at,” I said.

Emily patted the knee-high tombstone. “This is the home of Martin J. Pesterfield. He’s our great, great, great grandfather. Mom says he was one of the first people to settle in Mabry.”

Emily sounded like her mother, I thought, as she told me the family history.

She pointed to another grave as if she was showing off a new car. “That’s Martin J. Pesterfield the second and the third in the graves over there. There’s been a Martin in every generation but that ends with ol’ Uncle Marty.”

“Which Pesterfield is he?” I asked.

Emily circled the tombstone she’d chosen. “He’s actually our Great Uncle Marty but we call him Uncle Marty. Partly because it’s easier to say and, also, because there’s nothing great about him.”

“You sound like your mom—always talking about our family gynecology,” I griped.

“It’s genealogy, not gynecology,” Emily said, with a snort.

“I knew that,” I said. She was always correcting me. “Go sit on the grave, already.”

“Here goes.” Emily sat on the grassy mound where Martin J. Pesterfield was buried and crossed her arms over her chest. She lowered her upper body stiffly onto the ground and closed her eyes as though she were Dracula, sinking into his coffin.

I looked around the cemetery to see if anyone was watching and then started backing toward the rusty gate. “OK, that’s long enough. Let’s go.”

Emily looked peaceful with her eyes shut.

“Emmers? Em?” Emily didn’t answer. I walked closer and kicked her foot. It jiggled, but the rest of her remained still. I knew she was playing dead. She played tricks on me all the time but she seemed awfully quiet, which she never was for long.

“Emmers, quit it.”

She didn’t seem to be breathing. I plucked a blade of grass, bent over Emily’s face and poked the grass up her nose. The force of the sneeze shot Emily up from the ground, knocking her head into mine. I tumbled backward, grabbing my aching head first then wiping her spit from my face.

“Geez, Emily. You banged into my head and spit all over me.” I dried my face on my tshirt, rubbing hard to get the germs off.

Emily tugged the grass from her nose. “Well, you shouldn’t poke grass up people’s noses.”

I stopped wiping my face long enough to notice I was sitting on someone’s grave. I jumped to my feet as if I’d been pinched hard.

Emily laughed and stood up. “Did you think you were gonna be sucked under?”

“It’s not funny,” I said.

“Well, there’s nothing to be scared of either. Didn’t I prove that?”

I jabbed a finger at Emily. “If you didn’t want to scare me, how come you were playing dead a minute ago?”

“I was kidding around,” Emily said.

I glanced around to see if the ground was starting to shift. “This is no place for jokes.”

“You’d think it was funny, if Matt’d done it,” Emily said.

I stuck my chin out. “I don’t think Matt would be mean enough to play dead in a cemetery.”

Emily looked at me as though I was brand new to her. “You used to be a lot more fun before. . .”

“Before what?” I shot back. “I want to know.”

Emily rammed her hands into her pockets. “You know—before you started hanging around Matt.”

I wasn’t used to seeing my cousin turn limp so easily. “Well, you told me I can’t follow you around all the time so I found Matt, instead.”

Emily kicked at a mound of grass. “Yeah, I don’t need you circling around me like a puppy dog.”

“You ought to be glad I’ve got another friend now.”

Emily nodded. “I am but you could have picked someone normal. But if Matt doesn’t know how to do stuff like yo-yo tricks or how to make peanut butter milkshakes, you can come to me.”

Thinking about my white-haired friend, Matt, made me half-smile. “I’ll bet he knows some yo-yo tricks. He’s good at everything.”

Emily dusted the grass from her bottom. “Come on. Let’s go home. I’m hungry.” She waved at the tombstone on which she’d been resting. “Goodbye, Martin J. Pesterfield. Hey, Freddy, who were you sitting on over there?”

“I wasn’t sitting on anybody’s grave,” I announced in a loud voice, in case someone besides Emily was listening. “I fell on it by accident.”

“Let me see,” Emily said. She leaned in close to study the gray lump of rock sticking out of the ground.

I looked and decided I hadn’t sat on a grave, after all. “It’s not a tombstone; it’s a mosscovered rock.”

Emily cleared the grass growing over the rock and rubbed bits of moss from it. “There’s a name etched on it. There’s the word ‘Tump,’ and that’s all. No last name or date when the person died.”

It was someone’s grave but not much of one. “Maybe it was a pet dog,” I said.

“I don’t think they buried pets with the rest of the family, back then,” Emily said.

I stared sideways at the carved rock. “I wonder who he or she was.”

“I don’t know but it’s gonna be your new nickname.” Emily started singing, “Tump, Tumpety-toes, Tump, Tump.”

“That’s not who I am.” I was whirling around the cemetery searching for an odd name to give to Emily, when the hairs on my neck went porcupine stiff. The first time my neck radar went off was right before my dad ran into a deer with our car and we ended up in a ditch. I rubbed the back of my neck. “That’s enough. I’m getting out of here.”

“All right, Tump. I’ll race you home.”

I led the way out of the cemetery, running straight for my bike. I grabbed my bike off the ground and looked back to see if Emily’d caught up. She’d scooted out of the cemetery right behind me and left the gate wide open.

As she got to her bike, I said, “You forgot to close the gate.”

Emily ignored me and pedaled on by. “Are you afraid the ghosts’ll get out?”

“No,” I yelled. “But you should leave things the way you found them.”

“See you at the house.”

I set my bike down and scurried toward the fence. As much as I wanted to get away from there, I wanted to set things right, in case there was something we had done wrong. I pulled the gate shut and backed away quietly, but I couldn’t stop staring at the graveyard. Something seemed different now. The air felt heavy and pressed down on me, the way it did before a thunderstorm but the sky was clear blue.

“It’s supposed to be quiet here,” I thought to myself. The living things around the cemetery were silent now; no breeze rustled the leaves, no June bugs knocked around. Even the creek seemed to hush. Everything seemed to be holding its breath. My stomach twisted and I told myself I was hungry but I knew it was fear running through me. I climbed onto my bike and rode off, too afraid to look back. I had the strange feeling someone was following me. I kept looking over my shoulder for the rest of the day.

By bedtime, my neck hurt from whipping it around. I lay in my bed, trying to hear something over the noise of the clocks and creaking walls. I didn’t know how I would get to sleep, with all the noise in the house and in my head, but I finally did. Only there was no peace in my dreams, either.

Chapter 1

I loved spring break. It wasn’t the fresh green leaves, spreading across gray limbs or the mixture of scents from the new growth. It was because I got out of school for a week and it usually always landed on my birthday.

Dad was stubborn about taking me to town each year so I could pick out my own present. He always said it was better if I chose the gift myself, instead of him picking something I might not want.

This year was special. I’d be eighteen and graduating this summer. Thank God. I’d be saying good-bye to teachers and friends. Calling my companions, friends was a stretch. I sat with them at lunch and we goofed off during class but I never went to parties or on dates. I was looking forward to getting away from the seventeen-year-old stereotype.

However, my birthday was more than that. Last year, Dad told me my eighteenth would be my best. I would travel to places most people only read about and meet new and interesting people. I’m still waiting for the adventure to start but, knowing Dad, he meant my adventure was going to college but I’m not sure that’s for me.

Dad turned on to the main road. It was a two-lane, taking one straight through town, past the major buildings of good old Silver City. When Dad slowed down to turn, I saw a yard sale set up on the lawn of a rundown house, Mrs. Crumley’s.

The kids from school talked about her as if she were a witch or something. They always made a point of visiting her on Halloween, to see if she flew around on a broomstick. I felt sorry for her. She had no family and the way the town treated her, as if she had leprosy—was disturbing. Did something happen to her?

There were tons of furniture and knickknacks spread across the grass. A rope connected two trees in the yard where her clothes hung. It looked as if everything she owned was strung across the lawn.

“It’s a yard sale, Dad. Can we stop?”

Dad let out a breath and turned in to the driveway.

I smiled as he put the truck in park. I seemed to get what I wanted when it came to antiques. He knew how I liked to browse through the flea market and a sale like this made my day.

He acted as if he didn’t want to stop but I knew he was pretending. The only reason I loved the stuff was he told me Mom had enjoyed browsing through antiques.

For me, it was as if I was walking alongside her, feeling that connection as we looked at the collectibles.

My eyes couldn’t focus on any one thing. There was stuff everywhere and I wanted to look at it all. I immediately forced my eyes to look forward and ran to a large chest next to a few smaller ones, which seemed to call my name. You know how you have a favorite color and, no matter what, you have to have it? That was the way I felt when I saw the chest.

Engraved vines worked along the edge of the lid and trees were carved on the side panels. I hunkered down to run my fingers along the smooth wood. The dark stain hid the nicks along the curved handles and blunt corners. I looked at the tree design closer. It was full of foliage and the roots spread down then around the tree in spiraling twists.

It’s beautiful. Now what’s inside?

I heeded my thoughts and flipped the lid up. I crinkled my nose as a puff of stale basement escaped. After the stench, a faint, soothing smell of roses wafted up from the chest. I couldn’t believe the condition of the inside. Small bronze tacks held the dark-red velvet against the wood and, to my surprise, two books lay in the bottom.

My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the covers. The larger one was gold with red swirling letters, which I couldn’t make out. The smaller one was older, with a dark-green cover and yellow letters. Myths and other Legends had been scratched across the top, as if it was carved into the leather. The cover opened easily. The pages were tinged and ripped from age and use.

“What did you find?” Dad startled me.

“Oh … a book and this trunk.”

He looked at the box. “It’s old, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “So, it brings back memories?” I couldn’t resist the joke.

He threw me a wry smile. “You are too funny.”

“I know.” I put the book back in the trunk and groaned as I picked it up. Dang it, it’s heavy. I struggled to keep it steady in my arms. “Can I have it?”

He sank his hands into his pockets, attempting to be unimpressed by my discovery. “If you must.”

“Thank you.” A grin spread across my face.

I set the trunk at the foot of my bed then took the books from inside. I sat at my desk, ready to see what mysteries the pages held. The larger book intrigued me—it was the not knowing what the strange words said. I scanned the pages until I found English writing. It was written in cursive, scribbled on the back of an empty page.

All dreams have meanings.

Find the courage to decode them.

Of all the things I could read, I read this. I’d awakened each night for a month, sweating and cringing, after random dreams. I wondered why I had them. They made no sense to me. It was always places and people I’d never seen but, oddly, I wanted to know them.

I flipped through the pages to the last. Little notes had been written there, as well.

I frowned as I stared at the cover. I need to figure out what language this is.

“Dad?” He poked his head in the door. “Yeah, honey.”

“What language is this?”

He took the book. His brow furrowed as he turned the pages. “Did this come in the chest?” I saw a spark of interest in his eyes.

I nodded. “What is it?”

“Latin.” He smiled lightly as he rubbed his hand along the cover. “This is a special book.”

“How do you know that?” The way he held the book made me think it was special, but why?

“I did go to college.” He handed the book back to me.

“Can you read it?”

“Sorry, honey. I didn’t do that well in the class.” He returned to the living room.

How was I going to figure out what the book said? I sighed and set it aside to look over the other one.

I flipped through the pages, ecstatic over the information inside. I couldn’t put the book down, as I read about things considered fantasy—the gods creating vampires and werewolves only attacking when they were crazed. I read about myths and legends from all over the planet, things I never knew existed. Finding the book was like finding a new world and I loved it. I wondered if legends like these existed in my own backyard.

Chapter 1 The Nemunas River flowed through the Eastern European country of Lithuania and finally emptied into the sea. A tiny village or shtetl, as it was called by the Jewish people who lived there, hugged the side of the riverbank. In 1897, it was an insignificant village whose name would eventually be crushed and forgotten under the marching boots of history. Its vibrant people reduced to a fading photo in a tattered album, a collage on a museum’s memorial wall, or just a pale memory, eventually fading into obscurity.

The river provided a bounty of fish for the people who lived near its shores. This included the Jews and the gentiles, or the outsiders, as the Jews referred to them. They shared the land, although no one ever intermingled. The gentiles hated the Jews and the Jews feared them and, thus, ignored the gentiles, unless something happened to set off a pogrom, a vengeance attack by the Cossacks, Russian cavalrymen, against the Jews. It might be nothing more than a wrong look or a rumor started by someone, but pogroms were the most feared form of retaliation, for they resulted in loss of homes, livestock and often people. For this reason the Jews minded their own business and the only contact was between the Jewish rabbi and the gentile mayor or sometimes an exchange of goods between merchants.

Lithuania, a beleaguered country of confused identities, had been conquered or annexed by one or another of the countries surrounding it for centuries. In 1897, it existed under the thumb of Czarist Russia, prey to Czar Nicholas II’s whims and laws.

The village was divided according to religion, the Jewish section, houses and businesses haphazardly clustered around the place of worship, the shul or synagogue that backed onto a path along the river’s estuary. Only a tiny portion of the town was Jewish and their lives centered on the shul. The word of the rabbi was law, Jewish law, and for the congregation it meant they would follow the laws written in the Talmud, the book of Rabbinical law; respect the Torah, the

scrolls housing the five books of Moses; follow the ten commandments; and never take the name of the Lord in vain.

If the rabbi was the keeper and teacher of Jewish law, his wife, the rebitsin, set the example for all the girls and women; the model of how to maintain decorum and a traditional Jewish home and family.

At fifteen, Hannah Levin had reached the age of marriage. All the women and girls sat behind the screen in the balcony of the synagogue. Hannah peered between the heads of her mother, Bella, and younger sister, Rifka, trying to see through the screen of wooden strips that crisscrossed in a pattern she knew by heart. She even knew the number of spaces formed in each row, for she had sat up here for most of her young life, shielded from the wandering eyes of the young men. It was meant to screen the women from the men during religious services so they would not be distracted from their prayers but Hannah had other ideas.

Her eyes fixed on the back of one young man seated in the front row, the fringes on his tallis, prayer shawl, swaying as he rocked back and forth in prayer. His dark hair curled around the edges of the yarmulke, a cap perched on his head. She had spent days sewing and embroidering the head covering as a present for this boy, whom she had loved since she was a tiny girl. He was destined to become her husband, that is, if God heard her daily prayers and the matchmaker could be persuaded to agree.

Gershon Cohen, son of Rabbi Efrem Cohen, was expected to follow the family tradition that had been established for hundreds of years and, one day, become the rabbi of their village, God willing. This was the boy she had dreamed about most of her life, the cause of the strange feelings in her body she did not understand nor could ever explain, even if she had the temerity to talk about the taboo subject.

Hannah tried every Shabbas, Sabbath, to send mental messages to Gershon but, if he picked up her thoughts, he never acknowledged it. Certainly he would never talk about it were they even able to find a moment alone, an action forbidden in her protected world.

A serious boy, Gershon did not laugh often. In her moments of doubt, Hannah wondered what it would be like living with such a solemn soul for the rest of her life. Could she change him, at least in their own home, or would she eventually succumb to his moods and personality and lose her true happy self? Add to that the responsibilities of being a rabbi’s wife, the rebitsin of their congregation, as well as a wife and mother, Hannah felt the weight of thousands of years of tradition piling on her shoulders.

Gershon had five brothers and sisters and she had three. How many would she be expected to have? Probably one every year until she became a worn out old hag by age 25, dragged down by the burdens of birthing, nursing and raising a brood of children, not to mention all her other responsibilities. Hannah marveled at how her mood could swing from light to dark and back to light again with a single thought. Even nature took her sweet time with fading dusk as the sun dropped below the horizon, sending streaks of orange across the sky, painting the clouds. Then at dawn, nature raised the sun again to cast a golden glow that grew as the sun slowly emerged from its journey to the other side of the world. Hannah wished her mercurial moods would slow down like sunrise and sunset instead of the sudden crash of thunder and the downpour of rain that seemed to come over her faster than a flash of lightning.

“Stop it, foolish girl,” she silently chastised. Having many children was an honor for a Jewish woman, especially sons to carry on the name. Still, Hannah grimaced at the thought of being pregnant every year like some of the young women in the village. She would be old before she left her youth behind, old and fat. “Stop, stop, stop.”

Hannah fidgeted between her two best friends, Leah Bloomberg and Sarah Brodsky. Leah leaned over and whispered, “Stop wiggling. Do you think he knows you’re watching him?”

Her mood shifted and Hannah giggled, quickly covering her mouth.

“Hush,” Bella Levin hissed, reaching behind and tapping Hannah hard on the knee with her knuckles. Wincing, Hannah bit her lip not to giggle.

Leah’s mother also turned and glared at her wayward daughter, who bowed her head to hide her grin. Hannah bit her lip harder when she heard her little sister, Rifka, stifle a giggle as Bella turned and sent silent daggers at the younger girl. Hannah and Leah shook with silent laughter.

They were in big trouble, now. Hopefully, Bella would forget this breach of protocol by the time the never-ending service was over and she had gossiped with the other women while they walked home. Somehow, Hannah didn’t think her mother forgot anything, ever, but kept it stored in a drawer in her brain to pull out at some later date; like some long forgotten stocking stuffed behind the under-garments, suddenly recalled when it’s twin reappeared. Bella’s unfailing memory of things they wished she would forget, only added more to the weight of guilt imbedded in her children.

All the mothers talked about anyway was Malka Osterman, the matchmaker, and who would be a good match for a son or daughter of marriageable age. Sometimes they gossiped about the latest pregnancy or a new grandchild, but most of their thoughts focused on marriage possibilities, often arguing over the same boy or girl. No one ever thought to ask their children whom they might want to marry; that was just not done in this time and place. Instead, Malka Osterman with her widening waistline, ruled supreme, while gorging on delicious meals as she traveled from house to house, delivering her matchmaking decisions as though it came from a voice on a mountain in the Sinai desert; Malka’s commandments.

The woman hadn’t prepared a Shabbas dinner since her long-suffering husband had died three years ago, probably to get away from her constant nagging. Hannah hoped for his many years suffering his overbearing wife, he had gone to a better place as a reward, olov hasholem, may he rest in peace.

Malka Osterman lived off the largess of the families with children of marriageable age, like a tyrant beggar, traveling from house to house every Friday evening. Hannah glanced at the object of her thoughts who sat like a bloated toad, her beady eyes studying the young women in the balcony. Hannah looked away and shivered, wondering if just thinking this way could bring down the wrath of God, like a lightning strike.

After the service, Hannah and her friends slipped out before their mothers could stop them and rushed around the corner behind the synagogue.

“You girls are so bad,” Sarah said, trying to keep a straight face.

Hannah and Leah giggled.

“I know,” Leah said. “Wicked and evil.”

Hannah sighed. “Did you see Gershon? He was wearing my yarmulke.”

“I did see something new on his head but I was busy looking at Yussef Baum,” Sarah said.

“Of course you were,” Leah stated. “You are always looking at him, how could we not notice.”

Sarah lifted her head and twirled her long skirt. “You are just jealous.”

Leah shrugged. “We’ll see. Malka the Matchmaker is coming to our house next month for dinner.”

“She’s probably going to make a match for your sister,” Hannah said, laughing.

“Oh, be still both of you. I actually hope it is for my sister for I am not ready to be married,” Leah said.

Hannah grinned. “You’re just worried that she’ll pick someone you hate before you have a chance to choose someone yourself.”

“As if that would make any difference to my father. I think he already has someone picked out for me.” Leah announced, her expression grim.

“Who is it?” Sarah asked.

Leah shook her head. “He won’t talk about it, which makes me even more worried.”

“You asked him?” Sarah looked horrified.

“Of course not, I asked my mama and she wouldn’t say a word, but then she never tells us anything. I did hear the words New York one night when I went down to the kitchen for some water.”

Hannah grabbed Leah’s arm. “Do you think they are going to send you to America to be married?”

Leah pulled her arm free. “I told you, I don’t know anything. My parents are so secretive they would probably tell me to pack a bag the morning I was leaving.”

“That is so exciting, Leah. Imagine going to America.” Hannah saw the look of disgust on Leah’s face and said, “I mean, if you weren’t going to marry some stranger.”

“Hmph,” Leah grumbled.

“They probably want to marry off you and your sister quickly, since you are the last of the girls left at home,” Sarah suggested. “Or maybe they are planning on leaving here and taking you with them, after they marry off your sister, of course.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Sarah, you are always helpful.”

Sarah looked at Hannah. “What did I say?”

Hannah shook her head and turned back toward the road, “Nothing, Sarah, don’t worry about it. Come on, it isn’t worth speculating on things we don’t know.”

Leah followed. “That’s right, we’re already in enough trouble, let’s find our mothers and go home.”

The three girls walked to the front of the synagogue where the women and younger children had gathered in small groups for the walk back to their homes to eat the cold food set aside the night before. The men and older boys would soon follow and then return to the synagogue for study and final prayers.

Dinner would be served late when cooking could begin again after Shabbas, the Sabbath ended at sundown. Bella Levin beckoned to Hannah and she followed her mother and sister, still focused on the boy with the dark curls peeking out from under the yarmulke.

Award Winning Cover Chapter 1

Nantes, France 1685

T

he wooden door to the spice shop shook under the fierce pounding of a fist and a deep voice from outside

shouting, “The king’s men are coming.”

Then he was gone, his voice fading with the clatter of his clogs as he raced to the next door where the pounding began again; then on to the next and the next, until he reached the end of the street and disappeared into the shadows.

Jules Dubois herded his three sons into the small back room of the shop. Jars and jugs of spices stood like soldiers at attention along the shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling. Each was carefully labeled, dated and fitted with its own pewter scoop. Jules, a spice trader of fine repute, was scrupulous about keeping the expensive and much sought-after spices clean and fresh; not a speck of dust was visible to the naked eye.

Jules looked at his sons and sighed. Their paths would take a sharp turn in the next few minutes, with the route as yet undetermined and he would not be there to see them to their final destination. The two younger boys, nine and thirteen, cowered in the corner, trying valiantly to be brave, but failing miserably. Tears rolled down Luc’s face and Paul’s body shook with fear.

Breathing deeply to calm his voice so they would not panic, he grasped the eldest, Jean-Claude, by the shoulders. “You must take responsibility for your brothers, Jean-Claude, and get them safely out of Nantes to Prussia. Your beloved mama’s brother, Charles, will be waiting and take you into his home.”

Jules opened his mouth to protest, but his father shook his head. “You are past sixteen, my son, and they are so young. Therefore, I am entrusting their lives into your care.”

“Papa, please...”

Jules shook the boy. “Do not speak, just listen. Lead your brothers quietly through the woods. until you reach the docks. The Dutch East Indies ship, Marianna, is sailing at dawn for Königsberg. You must board tonight. Captain Van Sickles is expecting you, but do not delay for he will leave on the tide.”

He thrust a leather pouch into Jean-Claude’s hand. “This is a map of Königsberg and the route to your uncle’s house, your papers, a letter of introduction to the Dutch East India Company and the captain of the ship and enough money for your passage.”

The boy managed two words: “But, Papa.”

His father continued as though Jean-Claude had not interrupted. “There is also a letter for your Uncle Charles and money to purchase a partnership with him in his spice business and pay for your lodgings in his household.”

This time Jean-Claude did not allow his father to stop him. “You must come with us, Papa, please.”

Jules shook his head. “My decision to remain here in France until Charles could build the business in Prussia was a foolish mistake. Now I must live with that decision, but you and your brothers must survive and I will hold you back. With my bad leg, I cannot move as fast as you young ones. I will try to follow as soon as possible, my son. We shall meet again, I promise.”

The young man backed away, panic in his voice. “I will not leave you, Papa.”

“I am sorry, Jean-Claude, but you have no choice. I have packed clothing and packets of our most valuable spices for Uncle Charles in these saddle bags, one bag for each of you.” He whispered, “There is a sack of coins and your mother’s jewelry in your bag and also a letter for your uncle, so guard it well.”

They heard shouting and screaming echoing in the distance. Jules grimaced and quickly hung a leather bag over each boy’s shoulder. Then Jules did something he had never done before—he hugged his youngest and kissed him on both cheeks. He wiped away Luc’s tears and whispered, “You must be brave and very grown up, Luc. No more tears.”

Then he grasped Paul and held him close. “You, my son, the quiet poet, you are so sensitive and gentle. Be of brave heart and never lose your love of words.”

“Papa, I shall miss you so much.” Paul looked up at his father, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Jules brushed them away and kissed each cheek.

The shouting and screams grew louder. They could hear the pounding of boots on the cobblestones.

Jules Dubois pushed his sons through the curtain and out the rear door of the shop. “Go, now. Quick. Stay in the shadows and make for the woods until you reach the wharf. Captain Van Sickles is waiting for you. JeanClaude, keep those papers safe.” He patted the bulge inside the young man’s blouse under his leather jerkin then kissed him on both cheeks. Jean-Claude’s throat filled until he could barely swallow and he lowered his head so his father would not see the tears welling in his eyes.

Jean-Claude herded his terrified brothers across the field to the woods and turned once to look back.

Smoke rose from the roof of a building in the distance. His father raised his hand and limped back into the store.

“Farewell, Papa,” Jean-Claude whispered, knowing in his heart that he might never see his father again. He turned and pushed his brothers ahead of him into the shelter of the trees, trying to block the loud smashing of wood and glass behind him and the shouting of the soldiers.

The three brothers moved as quickly as they could north through the dense forest, making as little noise as possible. Jean-Claude led the way and Paul held Luc’s hand, sometimes pulling him along. Suddenly, Luc tripped over a root and fell. He sat on the ground, rubbing his knee, and refused to move. Paul pulled at him, but the boy tensed his body until it was rock solid.

Jean-Claude turned back and knelt before him. “Luc, you must get up. Luc.” The boy seemed not to hear him, but stared straight ahead, tears coursing down his face.

“I’m sorry, little brother.” Jean-Claude smacked Luc across the cheek and hauled him to his feet.

“Now take Paul’s hand and walk.”

The child rubbed his cheek and sniffed, but he stood and clasped his brother’s hand; Jean-Claude slung Luc’s saddlebag across his own shoulder and beckoned them to follow. Eventually, they emerged at the edge of the wharf and Jean-Claude pulled the packet of papers from inside his shirt. He slipped the saddlebags from his shoulder and handed everything to Paul.

“Keep these safe,” he ordered. “Stay down behind these pilings while I check for soldiers. If anything happens to me, do not show yourselves, but

find the ship, Marianna. Do you understand?” Seeing their nods, he stepped out onto the wharf. He turned back to look at his brothers. “Remember, keep still and do not follow me.”

Flames and dark smoke rose into the air above the town and drifted upward in funnels of gray-black clouds. Jean-Claude smelled the fiery smoke and he knew that this moment would return over and over again with the scent of burning wood. He tried not to listen to the distant screams or think about his father’s fate. Seeing no one, he pulled his brothers from their hiding place and retrieved the packets from Paul, tucking them once more into his shirt and slinging the bags over his shoulder. Then Jean-Claude urged the boys even faster toward the single ship gently rocking alongside the pier. Other ships were anchored out in the harbor, but only the Marianna remained at port.

When they reached the ship, Jean-Claude looked up at the man leaning against the railing, staring into the distance at the smoke. “Captain Van Sickles?” Jean-Claude called.

The man turned his head and peered down at the boys. “Ah, at last, Jean-Claude. I was about to raise anchor, but I promised your father I would wait until the moon rose in the night sky and here you are. Hurry, now.”

When the boys reached the deck, Captain Van Sickles asked, “But where is your father?”

Jean-Claude shook his head. “He would not come with us, sir. He said his bad leg would hold us up.”

The captain nodded. “Perhaps he will still arrive. I will leave two crewmen with a boat here at the pier in the event he appears.”

Jean-Claude nodded in gratitude. “You are very kind, Captain, and I thank you.”

“Be strong, young man. Your father is very resourceful. If he can get here, he will.” Then he turned and shouted to one of the officers, “Mr. Maarten, they are here, finally. Have someone take them below and put them in a cabin, then prepare to anchor offshore until the tide turns. Oh, and leave two seamen and a boat here in the event Monsieur Dubois appears, but tell them to make haste for the ship if they are put upon by the King’s men.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Mr. Maarten said. “You, there, take these passengers below to cabin two.” Then he began barking orders at the crew.

Jean-Claude looked around the tiny cabin. He gave his brothers the lower bunk and threw the saddlebags on the upper, covering them with the blanket. Not much of a hiding place, but he didn’t intend to leave them there permanently. He felt inside his shirt for the leather pouch and remembered his father’s final words: “Keep it safe.” He waited until his brothers fell asleep—Paul’s arm around Luc, who had cried himself to sleep.

The boy had never known their sweet, gentle mother who died giving birth to him, and now he would not have a father. Jean-Claude recalled the delicate, beautiful mother who had loved him for only seven short years; her blonde curls cascading down her back and her blue eyes twinkling even when she was annoyed with him for some infraction.

He felt her presence with every scent of roses or dried rose petals like those she always wore in a sachet fastened at her waist. His mouth watered at the memory of his mother’s wonderful

soup and the fresh-baked bread, cooling on the rack.

The boy inside him remembered those bright eyes dimming in grief over the two lost baby girls who died in infancy and her joy when learning she was with child again. “I hope it is another girl and she is healthy,” she’d whispered to her husband, not knowing Jean-Claude was listening. “But a healthy boy would be just as welcome.” That healthy boy did arrive a few months later, but his dear mother never knew him, for the angels claimed her soul a few minutes after Luc was born.

Jean-Claude sighed as he considered the responsibility he now carried as father and mother to his younger brothers, barely out of childhood himself.

“Damn you to hell, King Louis, for destroying our lives and sending us into exile for our beliefs. I curse you for all eternity,” Jean-Claude swore under his breath, clenching his hands into painful fists.

“They call you the Sun King, but you should be called the King of Darkness for the misery and torment you have brought to the Huguenots because we are Protestants. I shall never forget.”

He breathed deeply and unclenched his fists. Checking once more that the boys were asleep, he slipped out of the cabin and climbed up to the deck. Mr. Maarten stood watch, and Jean-Claude went to stand beside him.

The officer stared across the water at the fire and smoke. “This is a sad night of death

and destruction.”

Jean-Claude did not answer, but watched the tiny outline of the boat bobbing in the water by the pier. He knew his father would not appear for he would stand and fight to the end with his compatriots. Clenching his fists again, Jean-Claude dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands to imprison the sobs that pounded against his chest, pleading to be set free like a caged bird beating its wings against the bars.

Mr. Maarten laid a rough, calloused hand on his shoulder, but to Jean-Claude it was a lifeline because he felt a sudden peace move in where only anger had lived. He had bitten his lip to hold back the bitter words threatening to fly from his mouth, but now he released his breath in a huff and the weight of despair lifted, for childhood was not so far behind him that the strong hand of a man on his shoulder could not still impart a sense of safety.

“All is as it is meant to be, son, and you will survive this, too. Remember you are never alone,” the officer said.

They stood together on the deck, watching the pier until the moon drifted lower in the sky and a faint light glowed on the horizon. Jean-Claude watched the boat pull away from the dock and when it drew close, he saw only the two sailors. His father had not appeared.

“It is time, Mr. Maarten,” Captain Van Sickles’s voice sounded behind them.

The first officer strode across the deck and began shouting orders to the crew.

Jean-Claude felt the captain’s presence beside him. “I am sorry, son. We cannot wait any longer for we must sail with the tide.”

Jean-Claude simply nodded. He didn’t trust his voice, then he turned and went below to the cabin.

The captain watched him go and shook his head. “So much grief for these children and the loss of a kind and peaceful man like Jules Dubois because of a foolish, selfish king’s tragic decision,” he muttered. He stared at the smoke still rising in the dawn sky for a minute, pondering the stupidity of kings then went about the business of setting sail.

Chapter 1 Blue blazer and pants, white shirt and blue tie; school emblem sewn on the right vest pocket.

Underneath, a cloth “filakto” pinned to a tee shirt to ward off any evil spirits.

And so I began another day in the South Bronx.

My buddy, Alex, was always the first one to dive in to his lunch. It didn’t matter what the chef in the back room cooked up that day, Alex would find a way to cram a little less than half a stick of butter in his mouth just before our school cafeteria offering landed on the table.

“Hmmmm. Good, no?” Alex would say, his mouth stuffed with yellow, slimy mush.

Earlier in the day, on the way to school, Alex would let out a moan from the back of the school bus as we crossed the Triborough Bridge and the smell of a nearby bread factory wafted through the windows. “Hmmmm, French toast.” The smell would last as long as it took for the Hell Gate Bridge to vanish from our site, almost to the bridge tolls. There was a rumor that, if you could hit the Hell Gate with a paper wad just right, it would collapse into the East River, but no one ever tried.

Alex grossed us out, but that was not what weighed heavily on our little minds at the Hellenic American School for the Arts. Awkwardly located in one of the worst sections of the Bronx, it took those of us who lived in Queens two hours to get there and two hours to return home.

This was a highly regarded place of learning. Without it, our proud parents wouldn’t have been able to say they carried on the Greek traditions they had brought with them when they crossed the Atlantic. Their search was for a better life after the tyranny of the Germans during the Second World War. This was personal.

“You see when we go to town,” my mother would say, referring to her hometown of Patras, “your cousins will kiss and pinch you because you know the words.” Mom took my brother and me to Greece practically every summer—11 days to get there on the Queen Frederica and another 11 days to come back.

“We are lucky to go,” Mom said, always punctuated with her finger pointed to the heavens.

We spoke, read and wrote Greek at a very early age. Heck, we even spoke, read and wrote Ancient Greek. And we learned our faith without reservation. This was education

the way education was supposed to be carried out—with a purpose and a necessary strong hand whenever the young charges roaming the hallways got restless.

Every day was a challenge and yet the same, for eight years, from first to eighth grade.

Nothing ever changed at the school; not even the teachers.

When it snowed, school was never half a day for us and it took sometimes four hours to get home. But even when it didn’t snow, the ride was so long there hardly was enough time to smack a baseball across the concrete ball field, doodle out my homework, eat the dandelion greens and the salad Mom served up for dinner and squeeze in the latest Twilight Zone. I hated homework. I saw it as a waste of good time.

The year was 1965, two years after President Kennedy was shot. That was a day that would stay with me forever. The teachers marched us down to the auditorium and we sat in the metal folding chairs, the ones usually used for music appreciation class. The radio was on and we listened as the events unfolded.

“Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in downtown Dallas, Texas. This is ABC Radio. We repeat . . . . In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today… We’re going to stand by for more details on the incident in Dallas. Stay tuned to your ABC station for further details. We now return you to our regular programming.”

With that, I got my ears boxed by Miss Papastavrou because I whispered something to Alex. I think it was mostly her anger at the tragic news. My head was just there for convenience. It would have been lunchtime and then recess for us, but that was interrupted by the day’s news. John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in his car in Dallas, Texas, and 1,500 miles away boys and girls in a Greek American private school in the South Bronx sat terrified on metal chairs not quite understanding it all.

The lunch menu at the Hellenic American School for the Arts was always a surprise.

Depending on which Greek immigrant jumped ship that month, lunch was either pretty damn good or it tasted like raw fish guts.

Our principal, Mr. Paris, was considered a fine, upstanding pillar of the Greek American community. We were required to address him at all times as Kyrie, “sir” and nothing else. He was a brilliant scholar, respected and revered for drilling the Greek language and culture into American-born kids who just happened to have Greek parents. But inside the school’s walls, Kyrie spread fear along with the prerequisite respect. With his half-inch thick wooden ruler always at the ready in his jacket pocket, we knew he would use it if he had to. Kyrie was more than tough with us, but we were a tough bunch and it was his way of making what we needed to learn stick.

Friday mornings were always a treat. It was called “assembly,” much like a boot camp muster. The girls sat across from the boys, always separated, even during recess. From atop a stage, Kyrie would descend the stairs, causing trepidation in every little boy’s pants as he took his position in the middle of the freshly waxed wooden floor and on most occasions would call out a boy’s name.

“Please come forward…” were his usual well-chosen words before the “lesson” of the week, once again, played out on the day before a weekend.

Girls were never publicly disciplined like the boys, though they were at times sent home with the telltale sign that they had been caught in some transgression─red palms.

Eight times out of 10, it was the same kid─ you guessed it, Alex─who was summoned front and center. Heck, he even prepped for it beforehand, entrusting me with his Cokebottle glasses.

Alex took his punishment like a wussy, always interrupting Kyrie with tearful pleadings.

In the end, after several light whacks across the palms of his hands, Alex would turn on the drama and end up on the floor crying, crumpled like a pile of laundry.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Chapter 1 Tsunami

L

ike a snake charmer flirting with death, I glide up and over the hypnotic waves as the ocean lures me into its magical spell. Fear exits my mind and my arms paddle faster, hoping to snag the swell past the pier. Surfing on the tail end of a storm rebels against common sense, but I ignore the warning and head for the danger zone.

The prize rises like a cornered cobra. I spring into position and tunnel through the barrel, the crest ten feet above me. The rain stings my eyes; I could surf in my sleep.

My aerial stunt projects my body from the board. My fingers skim the Pacific blue while I return to my ride; but, without warning, the wave crashes, slamming me into a wall of water. My surfboard flips in the angry surf and the lights blink out in my head.

I awake to another life-threatening wave. The sea sucks me under as the ocean strangles my throat. The board’s leash attached to my ankle wraps around my upper body. My straight jacket twists me in a tailspin. I thrash my legs and turn in the opposite direction. The cord releases me from my funeral; I swim toward the veiled light and break the surface. Grabbing my board, I catch a ride back on the next wave.

A seagull shrieks above and revives my senses. The sunlight pierces my vision and I roll off the surfboard and onto the sand. As I pull my hand away from my head, my fingers drip with blood. The salt water sears my throat and I gag on a mouthful of sand and part of a broken tooth. The mixture sends a wave of nausea to my stomach; I lean over and spit out more blood. I struggle to my feet, but my legs crumble like the tide washing over a sand castle.

Sitting up, I try to recall what hit me. A couple strolls by; the woman helps me stand and asks, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” I stumble forward and cover the gash on my head with my hand. The lady presses a towel to my temple and a crowd gathers; the man next to her punches a few buttons on his phone. Without any friends or parents present, I have no choice when the ambulance arrives.

I share the good news with my dad. “I was riding this crazy wave and crashed in the roll. My surfboard came back and hit me in the head—only fourteen stitches and a partially broken molar.”

In the emergency room, the silence between us weighs on me, like one hundred percent humidity.

“So, where have you been? The nurse tried calling you a zillion times.”

“Cam, we need to talk.” He takes a seat, runs his hand through his hair and speaks one sentence that changes my life forever. “We’re moving.”

His newsflash jars me, like the aftershock of an earthquake. Tsunamis often trail earthquakes. I drag myself to the edge of the bed and clutch the sheets. The final wave of the tsunami steals everything I’ve ever known and washes it out to sea.

Chapter 1 The advanced unit of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, had been notified by Division Headquarters their entire unit was to be airlifted by Huey helicopters, from the sunny, sandy beaches near Tuy Hoa, South Vietnam, to the Central Highlands, a mountainous area near Pleiku, South Vietnam.

An advance group of three light weapons platoons and all 12, 3-man LRRP teams, were quickly assembled and sent to secure the area chosen for the site. They were also given instructions to begin building sand bagged defense bunkers around the perimeter of what initially was called Fire Base Delta, later known as Camp Holloway.

The orders of the LRRP teams were to set up and maintain a first alert perimeter 200 meters outside the Fire Base, then scout the area forward of their position to gain firsthand knowledge of the surrounding area.

If any booby traps were found, they were to be disarmed. The teams were also instructed to report all movement or sightings of anything in question to Major Anthony Collins, who was the officer in charge of the advance unit.

Upon arriving, the advance group met with no resistance. When on the ground, the LRRP teams immediately headed away from the main group, to dig themselves in before nightfall. After each team found a vantage point that would allow them to see the team on either side of their position and still have a clear field of fire to their front, they dug in and placed claymore mines at 30 and 60 feet to the front of their position. Each team member carried a 200 foot roll of heavy-duty kite string, which they stretched out from their foxhole to the foxhole on either side. If anything moved in front of or on either side of them after dark, they could simply tug on the string and alert the others that something was heard or spotted. That way, no one had to speak and give away their location.

When the teams were in place, they each, in their turn, began to patrol forward of their site to have a mind print of the terrain. The first and second teams returned with nothing to report, but the third team reported finding an area about 100 meters forward of their site that looked as if 50 or 60 people had made camp the night before then left early that morning, heading northeast. After a short discussion, John Gresham, the team leader for the third team was sent back to report what they’d found and to inform Major Anthony Collins that the LRRP teams were dug in and ready. Word was passed to each team. Within an hour, John was back.

“What did the Major say?” inquired Little Fox, as John passed his position.

“I think we might’ve made him mad. He said he didn’t think what we found was anything to worry about. He also said he had received an intelligence report that said nothing had been spotted in this area for the past three days. He figures, more than likely, what we found was nothing more than villagers moving to another location, because they didn’t like the idea of us setting up our Fire Base so close to their village. The Major also wanted me to tell you ‘BOYS,’” John emphasized sarcastically, “‘too take it easy and not get spooked and start shootin’ up everything that moves.’”

“Well, go ahead and tell your team we’ll be proceeding according to our plan, just in case the Major happens to be wrong,” Little Fox commented dryly.

Little Fox couldn’t help but smile to himself after John had walked away, as he remembered the day Major Collins had come out to the firing range back at Fort Lewis.

He reminded everyone of a high school coach the way he stood there with his feet

spread apart and his hands on his hips with that ever present unlit cigar in his mouth, as if he dared someone to come and try to take it. Sergeant Rock had always referred to the major as “The Bull Dog”. When asked why he called him “The Bull Dog”, Rock said it was because of the way the major’s nose always looked as if it were being pressed against a window. Then he asked, “You know why a bull dog’s nose is pushed back, right? That way they can bite and breathe at the same time.”

The day progressed with each team patrolling their designated area. Although nothing else was spotted by the other teams, they still proceeded an hour after sundown with their plan of moving 10 meters back and shifting 20 meters to the right of their original position.

Major Collins had been angrily pacing outside the command tent since the first shot had been heard from the northeast outpost, shortly after midnight; he had instructed the radio operator to contact them.

“Well, have you been able to get hold of ‘em yet?” barked Major Collins, as he rushed back inside.

“No, Sir. They must have their radio turned off,” replied the on duty operator.

“Damn it. I knew it. I knew it.” growled the major, as he pounded his right fist into his left hand. “I’ll have those boys’ asses hangin’ from tree come daylight. And they’re supposed to be the Elite Outpost. Elite, my ass,” he added sarcastically, as he walked back to the entrance to the tent.

“We’ll be lucky if we find any of ‘em alive in the morning. They just may kill each other tonight.”

“Their line may have gotten probed by N.V.A. or VC, Sir,” injected Captain Harding, who had been in the command tent, checking the area maps.

“Hell no, there is not a damned thing out there but the wind blowin’ through the trees and a bunch of scared little boys who think the boogie man is about to get ‘em,” bellowed the major.

“You know, Sir, Chu Pong really isn’t that far from here. Last November, units from the 1st Calvary got their clocks cleaned at L.Z. X-ray because they refused to check out the area. Instead, they believed the intelligence reports and walked right into an ambush,” the captain reminded him.

“Oh hell, that’s old history, captain,” said the major, as they heard another claymore explode somewhere in the darkness, out toward the northeast.

“Damn their hides. I am goin’ to my tent and try to get some sleep. Wake me at first light and have a platoon ready to move, captain. I’m goin’ out there and rip them boys a new ass,” he growled, as he stormed out of the command tent.

“Yes, Sir, I’ll take care of it,” assured Capt. Harding. “Well, sergeant, I guess I’d better drop these maps off at artillery and turn in myself. Send someone to wake the major and myself at 0530 hrs.,” instructed the captain.

“Yes, Sir, I’ll pass it on, Sir.” After dropping off the maps and speaking with Sergeant Andrews, Capt. Harding went to his tent and stretched out on his cot. But try as he may, sleep was the farthest thing from him. He could still hear an occasional shot fired. Nowhere in the far reaches of his mind did he believe those boys were spooked. After all the training they had been put through the past year, they knew exactly what was expected of them. Somewhere during his thoughts, he drifted into a troubled sleep.

Chapter One THUMP I had just finished practicing piano when I heard a loud noise in the kitchen. It wasn’t like a pan hitting the floor with a BANG or the CRACK of glass breaking.

It was a THUMP. I’d never heard that sound coming from the kitchen before.

I found Mom sitting on the floor and I rushed to her as she started to get up.

“Mommy, Mommy, what happened?”

“Nothing, Amy,” Mom whispered. “I must have slipped. Maybe the floor is wet.”

I hugged Mom and sat in the kitchen with her for a few minutes. She seemed OK. “Do you need help?” I asked her.

“No, Amy, go on outside if you’ve finished piano for today,” she said.

“OK.” I thought she sounded strange, but I went outside anyway to play with my best friend, Kayla. Playing with our Barbies wasn’t much fun, though.

I was still thinking about Mom. I told Kayla about Mom falling.

“What if she falls again?” I asked Kayla. “It was a terrible noise.”

“She probably won’t,” Kayla said. “I fell at school last week and skinned my knee, but I haven’t fallen since.”

“I know, but we’re just kids,” I insisted. “Parents aren’t supposed to fall down.”

Kayla shrugged. “Come to my house. I want to show you what I made at Brownies for my mother for Mother’s Day,” she said.

“Ok,” I said, but I was still thinking about my Mom. On the way, Kayla invited me to her birthday party. “I’ll be nine years old on Friday.

We’re going to the county park on Saturday at 2:00 pm.”

“That’ll be fun. I’ll ask my Mom,” I said. “My birthday is in August. I’ll be nine, too.”

At Kayla’s house, we rushed to her room, calling hellos to her mother on the way. Kayla pulled out a box from under her bed and opened it. In the box was a picture of her mother in a bright red frame.

“That’s beautiful. How did you make it?” I asked.

“I cut a piece of cardboard to outline the photo,” Kayla said. “Then I wrapped the yarn over the cardboard until it was a thick covering and glued the end.”

“It’s really cool. Maybe I’ll try to make something like that for my Mom.”

Suddenly, the thought of Mom sitting on the floor flashed through my mind and I told Kayla, “I’m going home to see if my Mom’s OK. I’ll be back later.”

Chapter 1 The History It all began in the large, dark forest of Gwendare, in the land ruled by Queen Gwendolyn. Now, in this forest lived a multitude of creatures. The furry ones lived in stumps, those with feathers lived in trees and some with scales lived in caves. Most who were human lived in houses. One such house dweller was a young witch named Quagmire Pinch.

Quaggy, as her family and friends knew her, came from a long line of natural witches going back hundreds of years. The family tree was quite impressive with her fifth greatgrandmother Fancy, acting as Queen Gwendolyn’s seeress and astrologer. That fact alone made the Pinch family one of power and prestige in the witch community, until the reign of King Haight. At the time of his triumph over Queen Gwendolyn, Haight had grown tired of witches.

He began to banish from the country and dispose of anyone who practiced the art of witchcraft.

Following the execution of Queen Gwendolyn, Fancy Pinch managed to escape that same fate by leaving Gwendare. To insure the witch community would offer no resistance, the King executed all castle servants loyal to Gwendolyn. Yes, it was a dark and gloomy time for witches, as well as all mystical creatures that dwelled in Gwendare.

Immediately after a proclamation of Haight’s intensions, the rest of the Pinch family went into hiding, conjuring only out of necessity. After fifty years of the king‘s horrific plunder of the country, this cruel ruler was overthrown by the army of Gwendolyn’s daughter, Fortuna.

Fortuna’s rule ushered in a quieter, more serene way of life. It was at this point, the Pinch family came out of hiding, returning to their home to live openly as witches for two-hundred years.

The house, in which Quagmire lived, saw many children born into the Pinch family. Because of its construction, this house withstood the most severe storms as well as any battles fought to secure freedom from potential invaders. Such had been the case during the half-century of terror inflicted by King Haight. The home was a small but comfortable stone structure, with a thickly thatched roof. It had a big main room, which contained a fireplace used for heating and cooking.

There were two large bedrooms and ample loft space above. The windows were made of intricately shaped leaded glass. It was rather ornate for its time.

Quagmire’s parents were priceless, as parents go. Her father, Lochlann Pendergast, loved to dance and play jokes on people. His fiery red hair was a mass of curls; a hint to his temperament and playfulness. He loved music and played the concertina for any occasion he could create.

Showing an industrious side, he owned a meadery where he made both spiced and fruited mead, also known as honey wine. The people believed Lochlann’s mead was the very best mead in all of Gwendare and it was true. His was the finest because his family stole the recipe from another.

This is not to say his was a family of thieves, but there was a proclamation during the reign of the king, to find the best mead for the royal family. The makers of the chosen elixir would be revered and spared a cruel demise. Therefore, what was Lochlann’s family to do?

Quagmire’s mother, Spinney Pinch, was rather placid in her youth. It was not until she met Lochlann that she became a different person. She was frolicsome. Her head was in the clouds more than it was on her studies, but she managed to become a formidable witch, nonetheless. In her later years, after she had her daughter, she became somewhat matronly and could be quite strict. The only throwback to her youth was her flute playing. When Lochlann would pick up his concertina, she would accompany him on her flute. It was a sight to behold. When those two would play, their music made people sing and dance.

There were many happy moments spent in this home. Rarely was sadness a part of their life, when they no longer had to hide. They held parties, celebrations and festivals inside this house, as well as on the grounds. The Pinch family had owned this home for as long as anyone could remember. Moreover, just like those before her, Quagmire was very shrewd and imaginative. So much so, through her final years of study, she was under the discipline of Crone Sibyl Beldam.

Sibyl was a crone with unequaled capabilities. She too, came from a line of natural witches whose powers had surpassed others in the sisterhood. Because of their strengths, the women of that family accepted the position of Crone for many generations. Fancy Pinch was the first witch in the Pinch family. When she began to show witchy talents as a child, the family allied themselves with the Beldams to tutor her.

As for Quagmire, the Pinch family relied on Sibyl for instruction. Now, Sibyl rather liked her young student and quietly admired her, as she reminded the Crone of herself when she was Quagmire’s age. When her student feigned illness to get out of her chores, lessons and the like, Sibyl would ignore those bouts, continuing to prod the young witch to mind her studies, until her student would concede. At first, this made the young witch very angry, but eventually, she came to respect Sibyl more and more for seeing through her act.

Quagmire Pinch was one in a million. The skill she had shown over the years was remarkable.

The adults in her family felt she had the potential to become an outstanding witch, if only she would apply herself. She began conjuring at a very young age. Even though she was very good at it, she was also a bit careless. She once made the barn explode into a burst of flames, which turned into butterflies. Her mother undid that mishap and issued a stern warning followed by a lecture on the proper use of a wand, as well as the appropriate words used in incantations.

Quagmire loved nature, as she should, and was naturally inquisitive. She found pleasure in poking her nose into things. Investigating might be a more appropriate term for what she did; whether it was the forest around her house, or asking questions of people on matters that may or may not have been her concern. When asking questions, the Crone had warned her on many occasions, to be less nosy, especially when or if the question was of a personal nature. Quaggy did consider the Crone’s warnings. After all, Sybil was the one in charge for the time being.

In the art of persuasion, no one could match Quagmire Pinch. She had a way of drawing you in to believe whatever she suggested. In the beginning, she did this without the use of Magic, but as

her knowledge of the craft increased, her methods were nearly boundless. It might have been the way she shifted her eyes, or the way she smiled, or even her tone of voice. No one really knew why she had this power nor could anyone learn how to mimic it. Worse yet, no one learned how to avoid it. It was exactly what it was. She neither harmed anyone with it, nor used it for evil means. Nonetheless, she did use it.

The way of a witch’s tutelage is unique. The world around, when a child born into a family shows witchy talents, the parents school her until the age of eight. At that time the parents step aside and another older, wiser witch moves into the home where she will teach, train and prepare the young witch until such time as the young one is a full-fledged, adult witch. This process usually takes another ten years. However, in the case of Quagmire, she was a quick study and ready for the final test three years early.

She was grateful when her parents chose Sibyl Beldam as her instructor. After all, if Sibyl were good enough to train her mother, she was good enough for her. Given time to prove herself, she felt she could and would be a more prominent witch than the Crone.

By no means did Quagmire Pinch suffer humility. As a result of all the praise she received over the years, she thought very highly of herself, which was unusual for a witch, but probably not for one who had shown as much promise as she. Much to the disgruntlement of the Witches Council, she had, for years, accompanied and assisted the Crone on several matters of scrying, which is seeing the future in shiny objects, conjuring and incantations. The Council felt it was inappropriate for such a young witch, who had yet to obtain her academic credentials, to assist on the levels Sibyl had allowed. Still, once the Council had been witness to this student’s expertise, they were more inclined to acquiesce to her and the Crone on the matter. This only added to the young one’s feelings of self-importance, which, at times, would further irritate the elders.

Regardless, she never challenged Sibyl’s authority. Sometimes however, she would answer her tutor’s questions with a quip of disrespect. On those occasions, the Crone would sit her down and firmly explain the true situation, pointing to the express fact that Quagmire had not graduated yet and, until such time, she was not all she imagined herself to be. Luckily, graduation was soon to be here.

The final test was usually a demonstration of an original spell or potion concocted by the student. Part of the test would include a journey to collect ingredients that would require one or more nights spent alone in the forest. Once collected, the student would return home, mix the potion and demonstrate its properties. Upon acceptance of the potion and associated incantations, if any, the instructor issued a diploma. Then, and only then, Quagmire Pinch would be a fullfledged witch. She knew when she had graduated, she would be able to go out on her own and carry out feats no one had seen or could even imagine. In her heart, she knew she was ready.

CHAPTER ONE In the Season of Dry Heat, in the village of Windrow, Noni knelt inside her hut, mopping up spilled milk. Noni didn’t work in the fields, where watching others effortlessly plant and sow crops only reminded her of how different she was from everyone else. Bad enough that the leaves sliced at her skin and the dust and seeds made her sneeze, but worse was the reminder of what she could never do. She was much happier staying in her hut, caring for infants too young to know she was unlike them.

Noni sat back on her heels and stared around her one room. This hut, its furnishings and a book were all Oma had left her. A rough-oak table, a three-legged stool, baskets, a cupboard and some shelves faced her stone hearth. A pot and long spoon dangled from nails above it. The dirt floor was packed hard, swept clean by her willow-twig broom. A narrow pegged ladder led to a low-ceilinged sleeping loft, below a thick layer of thatch. No windows eased the plain surface of the daubed walls, but the open door let in a breeze that smelled of fresh earth.

A path started at her door, forking left and right as it entered a stand of oak.

Above the woods, if the air was clear, she could see distant rosy mountains, marking the border between Mitlery and the dragons.

Noni’s mind walked down the path to the fork. In her imagination, she glanced left to Windrow’s Market Square, but chose the right fork and flew away from the mountains, past Windrow’s fields to King’s Port and the Zilfur Zee; then back again to the mountains and the ‘Dragon Hold’.

‘Dragon Hold’ and Zilfur Zee, the words made her fingers tingle. Oma’s stories about them promised danger and thrills to anyone who ‘Traveled’ so far. But ‘Traveling’ required Magic. With a sigh, Noni gathered her long dark hair into a knot. She was stuck to the ground as surely as this hut.

The breeze cooled the back of her neck. Although she gazed at the oaks, she was imagining ocean and dragons, with herself casting spells to tame each. No more hard work of lifting, bending or stretching to do the slightest thing. Instead, she would

flick her fingers to harvest turnips and cabbages, to put supper on the table, to make dragons obey and oceans settle. She could be such a wise Mage, if only ….

A sharp squeak drew her eyes to a pair of cradles, where two babies stirred.

Strewn between her and the cradles were smidgens of bread, a ball of wool, several acorn caps and an oak leaf dried to a lacy outline.

“You can’t possibly be hungry so soon,” she scolded Old Winesap’s grandniece, Aster, who squeaked again. “I just fed you that porridge. Now sit quietly while I take care of Betula.” In her care, this morning, were these two, the strongest babies in the village; able to ‘Reach’ for toys, food, animals and even other children from an early age. To protect them, their cradles had been covered with ‘Wards’ soon after their births.

Aster’s ‘Ward’ was made of delicate stems harvested under the Waking Moon and woven into willow leaf and cloud patterns. Betula’s was simpler, grass and fern fronds laced through a frame of branches. Noni preferred Betula’s sturdier ‘Ward’, for she always worried a leaf or cloud might snap off Aster’s. Aster’s short-tempered mother would hold back barterings if anything like that happened.

Aster raised her arm, floating a piece of bread from the floor towards her basket, where it hit the ‘Ward’ and fell. The child screeched in frustration and ‘Reached’ again for the bit of bread. It bounced up and down several times between floor and ‘ward’ before finally disintegrating into crumbs, too small to be Magicked by anyone without a strong spell.

“Oh, there you’ve done it, you wasteful child. That’s for the piglets, now,” Noni chided. “You must learn not to ‘Reach’ for everything you want.” Aster looked ready to cry, but a crash and a long, skinny body falling through the doorway made the child’s eyes and mouth open wide.

It was Twig, in another growing spurt that confused his feet and mind. Neither seemed able to keep up with what the other was planning. Noni noticed brown and green stains covering the front of his jersey. In his sand-colored hair, shorn just below his earlobes, two leaves stuck out, making him resemble a tufted owl. His leggings were patched at each knee and his bare feet showed scratches near his ankles. He frowned slightly as he picked at a clump of dried moss on his sleeve.

“If someone would just teach me a ‘Scouring’ Spell or two,” he moaned, “I could fall all over the place and not worry.”

“You do that already,” Noni joked. “Here.” She handed him a rag and he scrubbed off what he could. But instead of placing the rag into her waiting hand, he released it into the room. Like a swallow soaring on a breeze, it gracefully sailed onto its hook next to the fruit baskets.

“You’re just showing off,” Noni said, her voice tight and thin. “When did you master that spell?”

Twig grinned, revealing a gap where his front teeth didn’t meet. “This morning, first thing, I’ve been practicing the ‘Reverse-Reach’ all week. Want to see it again?”

“Not really.” Noni turned back to her tasks. Twig was her best friend, but she couldn’t help wishing for the Magic he so easily controlled. All these seasons she’d watched him growing more and more skilled with spells, while she could brag of nothing but growing a little bit taller.

There was one thing she could do, but she’d never mentioned it to Twig. Noni could read. Oma, her mother, called it ‘kenning’, and sometimes the ‘Old Knowing’. Noni

had never heard anyone but Oma mention it, so she never spoke of it after Oma died.

She worried others knowing about it would be the final thing separating her from the rest of the village. They would stop bringing their children to her. They might think her a witch.

She was lucky that mothers trusted her with their infants. Without that, she’d have to beg for food. There was no other work she could do, for every other task in the village could be done with Magic. No one needed an extra hand and she would never be able to cast even the simplest of spells. Before dying, Oma had made that clear.

She could remember the days when she imitated what other children did. Oma watched with thin lips, but never discouraged her. Noni would gesture towards a spoon or jump from the ladder’s lower rung, closing her eyes and hoping, “This time, it’ll work.

This time I’ll cast the spell.” She was eight before she stopped crying at each failure, ten before she stopped trying in front of others.

Still not looking at Twig, Noni folded rags to use on the children's bottoms as she struggled with her feelings. As lightly as possible, she asked, "Where are Linden and Laure? Don’t they usually follow you like your shadow?" She forced a smile when she faced him.

“I don’t know.” Twig was twiddling his fingers to make the larger pieces of bread near Aster’s cradle do cartwheels around each other. “They’re probably off with Ma, practicing some cooking or sewing Spells or something. You know, girly stuff.” The breadcrumbs moved in the Weaver Dance pattern, level with Twig’s shoulders. “The girls are getting pretty good at it. Won’t be long, now, before they ….” He broke off after glancing at Noni. His hands stilled and the crumbs fell to the floor.

Noni glared at him, one tight fist at her waist and the other pointing a long finger at his chin. “You. Are still. Showing. Off.” The words came out softly but clearly and her pointing finger wagged to underline each of them.

Twig’s eyes crossed as he focused on her fingertip.

“Sixteen years old and still thinking about games. If you can’t be useful here,” Noni continued, “without using Magic, then go away.” She turned back to her stack of rags and only heard Twig leave when he tripped again at the doorsill. “He’ll be impossible when he masters the ‘Traveling’ Spell,” she said out loud, almost hoping Twig would hear her. “No one’ll ever hear him coming or going.”

A moment later, she regretted her quick temper and hard words. Magic was all Twig had. Because he has no affinity for bees, he could never hope to take over his mother’s hives. Any work with them always leaves him covered in welts. And, after all, it isn’t his fault I have no Magic skills.

But whose fault was it? Noni shuddered, trying again to free herself from the feelings that made her want to cry each time Twig learned a new Spell. Oma said kenning was her family’s birthright, passed from mother to daughter since that first Mage, Winter, had given kenning to Candleberry. If anyone was to blame, it was Winter.

He gave everyone else Magic, but only kenning to Candleberry. Why? Magic was so obviously the more valuable skill.

Noni slammed a rag onto her table. For a moment she closed her eyes, fighting tears. When she was younger, Oma would patiently explain why kenning was better than Magic, but Oma’s reassurances could never erase her envy. Being able to ken and having Oma’s book did not fill the space in her chest that widened when others cast

spells. Noni would happily trade kenning for the tiniest skill in Magic, to never feel the stares of everyone in Windrow. She knew they looked down on her. She knew they thought her family had done something terrible long ago.

She took a deep breath and concentrated on the rag in front of her. Then, with eyes closed, she raised her right hand and chanted the Spell Twig had taught her long ago.

Oh come to me This thing I want I raise my hand To call you nigh She repeated it, and then again, but felt no soft brush of cloth against her fingers.

Through barely opened eyes, she peeked at the cloth. It hadn’t stirred.

With tight lips, Noni faced the infants. Toys, food and pottery were spread across the floor. Why could they cast ‘Reaching’ Spells before they could even speak? She sighed as she bent to pick everything up. She truly loved the babies, but …. She didn’t let the thought continue.

Later, as Betula and Aster slept, Noni sat in her doorway to watch the wind blow up dust from the path. In a patch of sun sat a barn-cat, flexing its paws. Sharp claws flashed and then disappeared. Noni wondered if dragons’ claws worked the same way.

She thought of Twig and his growing Magical skills and felt admiration and jealousy battling each other in her heart. As she had done so often before, she swore to waste no more breath yearning for something she could never have. As Oma used to say, a wish and a wagon will take you to King’s Port.

Old Winesap, one of the village elders, wandered by, muttering. His crooked cane-stick clicked against pebbles. Noni knew he could save his feet by ‘Traveling’, but he seemed to enjoy the sound of his cane-stick on the path. She was grateful that at least this one person didn’t zing by through the air, ‘Traveling’ as if already late for dinner.

The old man stopped to stare at Noni. His gray eyes peered past his shambled hair and beard to study her face for a moment. Noni tried to smile. Then he moved on, scratching the top of his head with one hand as the other held the cane-stick, almost like a weapon. He seemed to attack the path with it.

Two dames passed, gossiping about King Zollan’s new queen. Just three days earlier, the announcement of his second marriage had come by messenger, a young woman dressed in blue and gold. Children had gathered around the woman, like baby chicks around a mother hen. The messenger opened a box from which a clockwork pigeon leapt to squawk the words, “King Zollan XVIII takes pleasure in informing you that his new queen, Mirana, wishes joy to all.” The dames passing Noni’s hut hissed about Mirana’s wedding gown, which reportedly had come from Sarony. “Everyone knows that Saronian weavers use only the cheapest and flimsiest of materials,” said one of the dames. “Our worst enemies. What kind of king would allow his queen to …?”

The woman’s voice faded. Noni leaned her head against the doorframe and closed her eyes. The infants would sleep until late afternoon. All Windrow’s workers rested at this time of day, so no scythes whooshed through the grain stalks and no oven doors or pottery clattered in dwellings. It was quiet, just a few bird chirrups rising from the oak that shaded her from the warm sun. A fly whisked past her ear.

Noni gently felt the square object in her pocket, the book of stories Oma had written down before Noni’s birth. Oma always said this book was to be her solace when she envied others’ Magic. She caressed the cover, remembering days of sitting with Oma and learning the ‘Old Knowing’ from it. It was stained from handling and the edges had begun to fray. Noni had read the book so often that she could recite each story from memory, but she had promised her mother she would never recite, only ken. But without Oma, it was hard for Noni to find comfort in her kenning.

It was two years since Oma died and her mother’s last days were still vivid in Noni’s memory. “The ‘Old Knowing’ is precious, my girl,” Oma had gasped one evening, lying on the mattress in the loft. “You mustn’t lose it.” The wasting fever that would soon kill her had taken her breath and strength and she strained at each word. “Our people were never Mages, not my grandmother, not my mother, not I. Not you, my daughter. But we always had the ‘Knowing’ and you have it, too.” Oma closed her eyes, as if to concentrate on pulling air into weakened lungs. “You can capture the letters.

Everyone else has forgotten you have it,” she whispered, “but they’ll remember, when they need you.”

Before dying, Oma reminded Noni of another book, the most important one in the kingdom of Mitlery. “One day, you might ken that book, little Noni, like Candleberry does in my story. My stories will help you find it.” She winced, held her breath against the pain and said no more. After sun-fall, while a Blood Moon wrestled with the branches of a leafless tree, Oma died as Noni slept next to her.

The memory of waking to find her lifeless mother made Noni clutch the book in her pocket. She closed her eyes again to concentrate and saw herself two years earlier, sorting through cupboards and baskets. She couldn’t have said what she was looking for, but she searched through everything again and again, until Twig’s mother took her away. For many days, Noni huddled next to Twig’s hearth, Oma’s book always with her.

When she returned to her lonely hut, she hid it in a crevice near her door, the reminder of her mother too sharp and painful. But soon, she had pulled it out, to ken her mother’s stories again, to keep her promise to Oma. Although she was only twelve when her mother had died, Noni stayed on alone in the hut. Her mother had tended the village children in exchange for food and cloth; Noni hoped to do the same. When a dame brought an infant for Noni, she agreed to watch it and soon there were other babies, as well.

By now, the little book of stories was a comfortable weight in her pocket, a happy reminder of Oma, whose voice seemed to echo behind each word. She could touch its cover and still hear her mother kenning, “In the long ago, before Magic came to Mitlery….”

“Noni,” Old Winesap’s nephew-wife stood on the path, tapping her leather-shod foot. She held a small bunch of vegetables and her narrow frame stood upright, as stiff and unbending as an old tree.

Noni eyed the limp greens. But she forced a smile. “Yes, Dame. I hope you have not been waiting.” Noni quickly stood and brushed her shift over her knees. Dame Willowdale always made her feel dirty.

“I’ve come for Aster,” announced the Dame, as though Noni were too stupid to know this. Noni had already gone inside for the baby, who was asleep and made no

protest when lifted. When she took the vegetables, Noni tried not to scrunch her nose against the sour smell of greens too wilted for the Dame’s table.

“Someone will bring Aster after Moon Time,” Dame Willowdale said brusquely, taking the child from Noni. Although still asleep in the Dame’s firm grip, Aster’s arms waved as though she were batting at humblebees.

Noni watched the Dame stomp off towards her immaculate three-roomed house, its door carved with elaborate willow leaves of all varieties. Looking again at the greens in her hand, Noni envied the scullery at the Willowdale hearth, most likely stirring fresh onion tops, potatoes and some lamb into a pot of fragrant broth. She would willingly spend a day stirring that pot, in exchange for some of the stew. But for now, Noni would have to harvest some ferns in the copse. Cooked with her turnips and some thyme, it was a meal that would keep her from starving. With a grimace, she set the limp greens around her herbs, to keep the slugs away.

When Betula’s sister came for her, the baby lay quietly in her cradle, chewing her toes. In exchange for tending this child, Noni received a loaf of bread and a lump of sheep’s cheese. She could smell the toasted oats and barley in the steam that rose from the bread.

“My own Lucky Moon day.” she almost sang, grateful that Dame Ivy had remembered the Holiday. Noni danced into her hut, the bread and cheese held high.

She placed her food in a basket and covered it, chanting ‘Lucky Moon Day’ softly to herself.

Though they were sometimes days of hunger for her, Noni loved the Moon Time celebrations. This Moon Time, in honor of the Weavers Moon, was dedicated to flax weavers, whose celebrations often got noisy. The weavers liked to display their skills, ‘Ascending’ their looms above the flax fields whose blue flowers matched the color of all cloth woven during that month. The clacking of the treadles above everyone’s head made some villagers nervous. But no loom ever fell or failed to produce beautiful cloth, not even if its weaver had stepped into the tavern to hoist a draught of foaming barley ale. She had never missed a Weaver’s Moon festival; after her meal, she would go, even without Twig.

Noni hid Oma’s book in her loft. Whether Holiday or Moon Time, it was safest to have empty pockets; too often, a young prankster had ‘Ascended’ and ‘Descended’ her and, later, she would find the smidgen in her pocket gone, her hard-earned meal wasted, forcing her to forage. Yet she didn’t mind these Moon Time jokes and even looked forward to being ‘Ascended’. Unless she climbed a tree or into her loft, it was the only chance her feet had to leave the ground.

When she came down from the loft and looked out her doorway, Twig was facing her on the path. She hadn’t expected to see him again.

“Your babies have all gone home, now, eh?” he asked. He was nervously working a rope that floated in front of him, controlling the ends with his index fingers.

Noni could see he was attempting a Saron’s Hat knot but with little success. It began to look like a jumble of writhing snakes. Twig seemed to give up and the rope straightened, coiled itself neatly and slipped into his pocket.

“Still no twins?” Noni asked. She’d rarely seen Twig without his two younger sisters framing him.

“No. They’re busy yet, I suppose. ‘Um,” Twig paused to pull something out of his pocket. “Ma gave me a pasty for supper. Do you want some?” He brushed some lint off the browned and flaking pastry.

Noni thought he was apologizing for showing off earlier, so she smiled a return apology for her cutting remark. She knew words weren’t needed between them. “Yes, I can smell it from here.” Still smiling, she stepped through her doorway, “Mutton?”

“And turnips.” Twig carefully broke the meat-filled pastry into two pieces and offered the larger half to Noni, but he made no protest when she took the smaller one.

They sat under the oak and ate quietly, their eyes watching the sky above the flax field.

“Is that …?” Twig asked suddenly, craning his neck to look towards the fields, above which a flock of pigeons swarmed up and then towards the Market Square. “No, I thought it might be one of the looms already ‘Ascended’, but not yet.” He relaxed against the tree, his bent knees straining against the patches in his leggings.

“Were you helping your mother today?” Noni asked, eyeing some red welts on Twig’s hands.

“Oh, you noticed,” he responded, hiding them between his knees. “Yes, before sun-return. She wanted more honeycomb for Market. I hate those bees. Wish Ma would let me use Magic, but she says weak Magic makes the honey taste bad. I have to learn new spells for that.” He raised his shoulders, as if to protect his neck from a swarm of insects.

Noni, who had just eaten the last bite of her pastry, felt Twig’s eyes on her, but ignored him. She knew what he was going to ask next, because he asked it every holiday. She knew he wanted to help her, yet every time he asked, it hurt just a bit more.

He didn’t know she still tried to ‘Reach’, still hoped for some Magic; still shed tears after each failed attempt. She stiffened, as if preparing for attack.

Twig pulled at grass blades, uprooting several shoots. “Do you want to try doing some Magic today? Ma says the holiday might make it easier for you.”

“Twig, you’ve asked me that every holiday for the past I-don’t-know-how-long, and I keep telling you. I simply cannot do Magic. I don’t have the skill.” She shook her head, guilt mixing with self-pity. Hadn’t she just tried it this morning? Hadn’t she just failed again to cast a spell? Why did she keep trying? And why couldn’t she tell Twig how much she wanted to be like him? At that moment, she wanted to rip up Oma’s book and feed the shreds to Betula’s goat.

“But it’s so strange,” Twig protested. “You’re the only one in the village. Even the babies you take care of ….”

“My mother couldn’t do it, my grandmother couldn’t do it. The women in my family have never been Mages.” Noni’s fists clenched tighter at every word and she wanted to punch something with them. She stood to tower over Twig, one fist aimed at his head. All those pointless attempts, all that time wasted wanting something she could never have. She missed Oma so much. Frustration and loneliness exploded in her chest. She hated the look of pity on his face. With Magic so important to her friend, she had never told him about kenning. He would laugh at her and then give her that sad face again.

“We never will be Mages,” she almost shouted, “so just stop asking me. And thanks for the pasty, but I have to go in now.” She turned towards her door, but Twig caught her hand.

“But the festival,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Aren’t you going?”

The smile that had been in Twig’s voice was gone and Noni felt responsible. She paused, her back to Twig. Every festival was thrilling, with sounds, sights and smells to shake everyone into a happy mood. Traders came from Wintersett and as far away as King’s Port to hawk their foods, woven cloths and ironwork. Going with her mother was one of Noni’s favorite memories. Oma had stories about every village and every craft, and she would whisper them to Noni as they walked through the crowds, looking at oddities and wondering where they were from.

Twig pleaded again, “Come to the festival, please.”

She turned back to look at Twig. “I don’t know,” she said, her anger wavering.

“I’m … I’m busy. I have to …, I have to clean. It’s a mess in there.”

“But, I can help you,” Twig offered eagerly. “Only one room, how long can it take?

Then we can go.”

A movement over the flax field caught Noni’s eye and she watched a large loom slowly ‘Ascend’ and begin to twirl high above. A short section of bright blue cloth was already completed; light from the lowering sun turned it purple. She heard the sound of the loom’s treadle and she caught her breath.

In the past few weeks, as Twig’s Magic skills had expanded, it had become more difficult for her to spend time with him. In fact, when she recalled her loneliness since Oma’s death, she realized that she’d been avoiding nearly everyone in the village. Then she looked at his face again. There it was. He was feeling sorry for her. She shook herself again and finally decided.

“Never.” She took a breath to pull in her anger and when it was locked in her chest, she spoke more quietly. “Twig, I don’t want to. You go without me. I’m too tired.

Tell me about it tomorrow.” Without looking at him, she walked into her hut. Leaning against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut, she heard him calling. With one hand pressed to her chest, she wiped tears from her face with the other.