Philippa Fisher and the Dream-Maker's Daughter (13 page)

“I think I just need to go back to bed,” I said, getting up.

Mom tucked me into bed and kissed my cheek. “I used to tuck you in like this every night when you were little,” she said, smiling down at me. “You slept as soundly as a baby. Now, just shut your eyes and sleep like a baby tonight, OK?” She kissed my forehead.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I turned over, and she went back down the ladder.

But sleep was the last thing on my mind. There were too many thoughts getting in the way. Why had Daisy taken the charm away? What was so special about it? And was it really made of the same thing as her wings? Had I imagined that? Had my sleepy, dreamy mind connected them by mistake? Maybe I thought I’d seen Daisy’s wings in the sky, but really it had been the feathered charm all along. It was so dark at night, I couldn’t be sure.

By the time my eyes finally flickered closed and my mind stopped whirring like an out-of-control machine, I’d managed to convince myself I’d made a mistake. It must have been the charm I’d seen in the sky, not Daisy’s wings.

Before long, all the thoughts and questions melted away, and I sank into a dreamless sleep.

“We’ll come back for her at three o’clock,” Dad said to Mr. Fairweather. He turned to me. “Have a lovely day, sausage.”

“You, too,” I said, before Robyn dragged me inside the shop. We went over to her corner and slouched down into the beanbags.

“So, what d’you want to do?” she asked.

I’d half wondered about asking Robyn to show me Annie’s house, but it was pouring rain again today, so a walk in the woods wasn’t a great idea.

Even though the house had spooked me when I came across it on my own, now that I knew it was her house, it didn’t feel strange. Someone as friendly and lovely as Annie could never have anything scary going on in her home!

Except — what was it Robyn told me her dad had said? She wasn’t what she seemed. What did he mean by that?

Either way, something about the house intrigued me. It seemed that everything and everyone I met here had a hundred question marks following behind them.

I wanted to talk about fairies with her, ask her what she’d seen, but I decided I’d wait for her to bring up the subject. And I wanted to talk about the house, ask her if her room was the one in the attic — but this felt too sensitive, too. I got the feeling she’d clam up on me again if I was too direct. I already knew her well enough to know she’d open up about things when she was ready to, not when she was pushed into it.

“You choose,” I said.

Robyn jumped out of the beanbag and reached down to pull me out of mine. “Come on — let’s hang out upstairs,” she said. “I’ll show you our apartment.”

We were heading for the door that led out of the back of the shop when her dad called her over. “I have to duck into the post office,” he said. “Promised Mrs. Metherson I’d get this book to her by tomorrow. Will you girls keep an eye on things for me for a few minutes?”

“Sure, Dad,” Robyn said.

The doorbell tinkled behind him as he scuttled out with the package under his arm. Robyn took up her place on a high stool behind the counter. “How can I help you?” she asked in a funny voice.

I laughed. “I’m looking for a rare book,” I said, playing along.

“Absolutely,” Robyn trilled. “Rare books are our specialty. What is it you’re looking for?”

I thought for a moment. What could it be? I wanted to think of something crazy and outlandish. But then I had another thought. Maybe I could find out more about something I really, actually wanted to know about.

“Butterflies!” I said. “I want to know all about butterflies.”

As soon as I’d spoken, a shadow fell across Robyn’s face. She stopped smiling, stopped playing along.

“What? What is it?” I asked. “What have I said?”

Robyn tried to wave it off. “No, nothing. Sorry,” she said. She forced her mouth into a smile, but I wasn’t convinced.

“Robyn, you can talk to me, remember? What is it? You can tell me anything.”

She slumped on her chair, suddenly looking small and frail. “It’s just — well, Mom used to love butterflies. We even had a butterfly house in a shed in the back.”

I pictured the backyard. I couldn’t remember having seen a shed.

“Dad tore it down after she died,” Robyn said, reading my mind. “It was the same day he had the argument with Annie. It was so awful. He came home and went out into the garden. I’d never seen him in a mood like that. It was as though he had a black cloud over his head, following him around. He got an ax from the back porch and went straight outside with it.” Robyn looked up, her eyes faraway and sad. “He went over to the shed and smashed it to pieces,” she said.

“What about the butterflies?”

She shook her head. “They’d already gone, anyway. When Mom got sick, Annie used to come over and look after her while Dad was at the shop. A few days before — before the end, Mom said she couldn’t look after the butterflies anymore, so Annie took them away. She said she’d look after them.”

That explained one of the things I’d seen at Annie’s. All the butterflies flitting around the house.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“The shed collapsed after about three swings of his ax — but he kept going. I tried to make him stop. I was yelling and screaming at him, but it was as if he didn’t even hear me or see me. It was as if I wasn’t there. He just kept going. Smashing it into smithereens. When he’d finished, he was filthy and sweating. He stood looking at the smashed-up bits of wood all over the garden. Just stood there.”

“What did you do?”

“I was scared. I’d never known my dad to do anything like that in his life. Eventually, he turned to me — but it was weird. It was as though he was looking through me, past me to something else. His eyes were a million miles away.” Robyn shivered. “Then something changed. Like he came back to the present or something. He looked down at his hands, at the ax. Then he looked back at me. He said he was sorry. Then he took the ax inside and came back out with some trash bags and started cleaning up. He said, ‘We’ll burn this in the fireplace. It’ll keep us warm,’ and I just nodded and helped him clean it up. We burned it that night.”

Robyn fell silent. I didn’t know what to say. I wished I hadn’t mentioned butterflies and brought it all up. I loved it that she could talk to me like this; it made me feel special and made me want to tell her all sorts of things about myself as well. She looked so sad, though, and I wished we could get back to how it had been earlier, having fun and laughing. But now that she was talking about the house, it made me think of something else, too.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Of course,” she said vaguely.

It didn’t feel like the right time, but then there probably wasn’t a right time, and I really wanted to know. “Did you have the upstairs room?” I asked.

Robyn looked at me blankly.

“At your old house,” I said, my face flushing with awkwardness. “Was your bedroom the one in the attic?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

I smiled. “I thought so. That’s where I’m staying.”

Robyn smiled back. “Cool,” she said. “I’m glad.”

She hadn’t lost that faraway look in her eyes, and I was still trying to work out how to lighten things up again when the doorbell tinkled and a woman came in.

“Hello, dear,” she said to Robyn with a smile. “Are you running the shop today?”

“Only for a bit,” Robyn said. “Can I help you?”

“I wondered if I could order a book. It’s for my niece. She’s living abroad and has asked me if I could get hold of it for her. Now, what was it called? Hang on — I’ve got it written down in here somewhere.” While the woman rummaged in her bag, I wandered around the shop. There were so many books crammed onto every shelf, and piles of them were on the floor, too.

Robyn caught my eye. “Just a minute,” she said.

“I’ll just use the bathroom,” I said. “Where is it?”

“Through there, second door on the right. Go through the stockroom, and it’s at the back.”

I turned to go.

“Wait. You’ll need this.” Robyn reached under the counter and brought out a set of keys. “It’s the long one with the yellow tab.”

I took the keys.

“Ah, found it!” The woman pulled a torn piece of paper out of her bag and handed it to Robyn as I let myself out through the back of the shop.

Second door on the right, through the stockroom. I fumbled for the key and pushed the door open. Wow! It was crammed virtually from floor to ceiling with books of every shape and size. Boxes and boxes were stacked on top of one another, no doubt containing more books. There were probably almost as many books in here as there were in the shop!

I took a step toward the back of the room, tripping over a single wide box in the middle of the floor. I pulled myself up — and that was when I saw it! Hanging from a hook on the wall, just inside the door.

No! It couldn’t be. I must be mistaken!

I took another step toward it. I needed to see it more clearly. I stepped over a box on the floor and leaned across. It was! I was sure of it! A feathered charm just like the one in my room, the one Daisy had taken. In fact it was so similar, I could almost have sworn it was the exact same one — if that hadn’t been impossible!

Surely
it wasn’t possible. I took another step toward the charm and leaned across a stack of boxes. It was just out of reach. I stretched across to grab it, then suddenly a shadow fell over the room.

I looked up, snatching the charm and grasping it in my hand behind my back.

Mr. Fairweather was in the doorway. His face was dark and full of shadows, and his small black eyes trained on me as he said in a voice like a knife cutting across my skin, “What do you think you’re doing in here?”

“I — I — I needed to use the bathroom,” I stammered. I clutched the charm in my sweaty palm.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing behind me.

“What?” I tried to look behind me without turning my body.

“In. Your. Hand,” he said, slowly and deliberately, as though he were talking to someone really stupid. Maybe he was. Maybe I was a complete idiot. I certainly couldn’t make sense of anything that was going on right now.

“I — it’s nothing,” I said nervously. My voice quivered and shook. That’s one way to make sure you sound guilty.

“Show me,” he said. He held out a hand and took a step closer toward me.

“I just thought it looked nice,” I said, my words tumbling out of me. If I could get the whole explanation out before he took it, maybe I could get out of this without being hurt. “I was on my way to the bathroom and had to climb over these boxes, and I just thought, ooh, that looks pretty, maybe I could take a closer look. That’s all.”

Mr. Fairweather was standing in front of me. His left eye twitched as he glared at me. “Give it to me.”

I figured I’d run out of options. I gave him the charm.

Mr. Fairweather took it from me, smoothing it out in his palm. “You’ve squashed it,” was all he said.

“Sorry — I didn’t mean to. I —” I wanted to ask what it was doing here. Up until last night, it had been in my room. At least, I was pretty sure it had. Maybe I’d gotten it wrong, and this was a different one altogether. That would make much more sense. I hadn’t really had a chance to look at it before he’d come in.

I gathered all the nerve I could and took a deep breath. I could feel the words clogging up my throat.
Come on, just ask. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
I didn’t want to think about that.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“Where did I get it?” he repeated, his eyes lost and far away. Then he shook himself. “I bought it,” he said. “I buy and sell. I run a secondhand shop, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

It didn’t seem like the right time to point out that it was a secondhand
book
shop, and that this wasn’t a book! I kept quiet.

“Now, hurry up and do whatever you came in here to do,” he went on as he turned to walk away. Pausing in the doorway, he added, “And then I think you should leave.”

“But I — I only just got here,” I said.

“Robyn has to help me in the shop. We’re busy this week. I shouldn’t have said she could see you. You need to go,” he repeated.