The Penderwicks at Point Mouette (14 page)

“No!” said Skye, snatching up Batty’s rope and pulling her close.

“Sondheim’s ‘City on Fire’ doesn’t really fit, and we don’t have a soprano for Ravel’s ‘Fire’ aria. Jeffrey, help me.”

“The ‘1812 Overture’ has cannon fire in it. Does that count?”

“Close enough.” Alec held up the match like a conductor’s baton. “Everyone, we’ll start with the French horns playing ‘The Marseillaise,’ a minute or so before the first cannon shot. Got it?”

Naturally, only Jeffrey had any idea what he was talking about, but between the two of them they managed half the orchestra—Alec was particularly good at being French horns—and they could have made it all the way through if Jeffrey hadn’t fallen over laughing when they got to the crashing booms of
the cannons. By then, everybody else was laughing, too, and it took a while for them to get calmed down and ready for business.

“Shall I do it?” asked Alec.

“Yes,” they all answered.

He ceremoniously lit the match, then held the tiny flame to the smallest pieces of kindling, mere twigs. At first nothing seemed to be happening, but then all at once several of the twigs were glowing red. Alec blew gently on them, encouraging the fire to spread to the rest of the kindling, and suddenly—a blaze! Cheers went up, echoed by the adults on the deck, and Jane and Batty did a celebration dance, being Robinson Crusoe and cowboys all at once. After Alec fed the fire with two larger pieces of wood, Jeffrey pulled Skye to her feet and made her dance, too, swooping and whooping and, for now at least, not worried about anything at all.

Then it was time for marshmallows.

Roasting marshmallows over an open fire is an art. The marshmallow should be evenly toasted all around until it’s a golden brown. A slight puckering of the skin is all right, and some people like that the best. The inside should be hot all the way through and softened, but not melted into messy gooeyness. Not one of the marshmallows roasted that night came even close. Many were burned black at least on one side, and the ones that weren’t were barely roasted. No one
cared. They gobbled them up, declaring them delicious, and not remembering about sharing with the missing grown-ups until Turron roared down at them. After that, Jeffrey and Skye took turns running marshmallows up to the deck, where Turron and Aunt Claire devoured them as greedily as the others had, and a few of the blackest were slipped to Hoover and Hound as compensation for not being on the beach.

When the marshmallows were all gone, and the fire was burning low, Alec joined the other grown-ups on his deck, and the four children were alone on the beach, sated and happy. For a long time, they sat, staring into the flames and listening to the soft slapping of the waves. The breeze off the ocean was cool now, the ocean was as dark as the sky, and the stars were arriving, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of them, blinking and glowing overhead.

“We should make wishes,” whispered Jane. “Wishes to the Firegod.”

“I wish for more golf balls, and to see the moose and her babies,” said Batty, drowsily leaning against Jeffrey. “And I wish for a piano.”

Skye groaned. “What would you do with a piano?”

Jane went on, warming to her idea. “The wishes must be silent and secret, Batty. And to increase their power, we should each throw something of ourselves into the fire.”

“Nail clippings,” said Jeffrey.

“Excellent idea, but I’ve got a better one,” exclaimed Jane. She dashed off to Birches and was soon back with a pair of scissors. “Hair!”

“We’re not cutting our hair,” said Skye. “And anyway, this is ridiculous. Wishes!”

“But I’ve got one,” said Jeffrey. “A good one.”

“What is it?”

“The wishes must be silent and secret.” Jeffrey imitated Jane perfectly.

“Thank you, Jeffrey,” said Jane. “And we only need tiny bits of hair.”

“I’ll go first,” said Batty.

“One minute, please. I must call up the magic with an ancient spell. Which I haven’t made up yet.” Jane thought for a minute, then chanted:

She cut off a tip of one of Batty’s curls and threw it onto the fire.

“I wish for a piano!” Batty jumped up and down with excitement.

“Silent wishes, please,” admonished Jane, then took her own turn, with a particularly dramatic recitation
of the chant and a properly silent and secret wish.

Jeffrey went next, and only Skye was left. She couldn’t think what to wish for. She so barely believed in wishes that she hadn’t wished even on her birthday candles since she was seven. But it did seem a waste not to, now that they’d gone to all the trouble to build the fire, so she thought and thought, and hemmed and hawed, until Alec called down to them that he was on his way to help put out the fire.

“Hurry, Skye,” said Jeffrey.

“Okay, I’m ready. Do your chanty thing, Jane.”

Skye tossed her bit of hair just as Alec arrived. She wished that all the others’ wishes would come true. Except for Batty’s piano.

A
S A FUTURE ASTROPHYSICIST
, Skye didn’t believe even the slightest bit in a Firegod who could grant wishes. Nevertheless, when no piano magically appeared over the next few days, she was glad she’d countermanded Batty’s request for one. There would have been no room for it in Birches, and besides, she was sure that Batty would soon forget about pianos and go back to wanting only stuffed animals and Rosalind.

As for Batty, it was possible that someday she would forget about pianos, but it wasn’t going to happen soon. Because now Jeffrey and Alec were teaching her how to play. A little here and a little there, and when they weren’t teaching her, she was watching and listening while they played, and when she grew
restless from sitting too long, Turron took over and made up games with his drums to teach her about whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes; and three-four time and four-four time; and even syncopation. It was Turron, too, who had the idea of Batty and Jeffrey giving a concert for the others on the last night of their stay, although he himself was leaving before then and so wouldn’t be there to see it, and soon Jeffrey and Alec had picked out the perfect song for them to perform and started working on an arrangement. Batty blissfully soaked it all up and didn’t tell anyone in her family what she was doing, not Aunt Claire or Jane, or even Rosalind when she called, and especially not Skye. She did talk to her new friend Mercedes about it, because Mercedes would never say that Batty was too little for music or that she couldn’t be a musician because Penderwicks never were. Mercedes only said that she wished she could learn to play the piano, too, so Batty told her about wishing to the Firegod, but when she couldn’t remember Jane’s chant, Mercedes gave up on the piano and went back to trying to ride her bike without falling down.

As a future—and current, though not recent—writer of novels, Jane was able to believe just a little bit in a Firegod who granted wishes. And perhaps she was right, because for the same few days that the piano wasn’t appearing, Jane’s wish was coming true. Her wish? To finally have enough research material for her
Sabrina Starr book. She hadn’t suggested how this should happen, but the Firegod was no dummy. He used the most direct method, having Jane herself fall in love—and with the most logical candidate. When she went to sleep the night of the marshmallow roast, Dominic wasn’t much more than a skateboarder with a dazzling smile. When she woke up the next morning, he was the love of her life. And as time went on, her adoration for Dominic grew and grew, all without the slightest encouragement from him.

Occasionally he zipped by on his skateboard, and once he slowed down enough to hand Jane a wooden Popsicle stick, still damp from the cherry Popsicle he’d just finished, and once he told her that she looked better now with her bandage gone and her nose almost back to normal, but that was obvious, and there were no love notes, gifts, or flowers, and no more meetings at French Park. Jane didn’t need any of it. Thinking about Dominic, dreaming about Dominic—this was enough to keep Jane in raptures, in fact too much so to risk talking about her feelings to anyone, and especially not to Skye.

Nevertheless, Skye knew that something was odd about Jane. Her giddily high spirits and the way she always seemed to be gazing off into the distance with an enigmatic smile—these were clues. And now when Jane talked in her sleep, Dominic’s name popped up among the usual Sabrina Starr wanderings. Although concerned, Skye held off asking Jane about it all, because
she believed in privacy, and also because she couldn’t stand the idea of hearing about how much Jane liked Dominic. But then came the Popsicle-stick incident. Not the actual receiving of it—Skye had been there for that, and though she saw Jane blush and tuck the stick into her pocket, that wasn’t too bad. Maybe Jane didn’t want to litter. No, it was much worse than that. One evening Skye walked into their portion of the screened porch and caught Jane
dancing
with the Popsicle stick, dancing and humming, and even murmuring to it. Skye heard only one word, which was, naturally, “Dominic.”

“What are you
doing
?” she barked, horrified that a Penderwick would sink so low.

Jane dropped the stick and casually covered it with her foot. “Nothing,” she said. “Just dancing.”

“Dancing with—” Skye couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

Jane burst out with more humming, swaying back and forth. “Isn’t life just wonderful, Skye? Magnificently wonderful. Fabulously and wonderfully magnificent.”

“Not right this minute it isn’t. Jane, I know what you’re standing on.”

“You do?”

“And I have to say that you seem a little wacko to me. I mean, maybe if that stick had belonged to, say, Einstein, but …” Skye let her voice trail off. No one got crushes on Einstein. Even she knew that much. “I wish Rosalind were here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, no, Skye, you’re a brilliant OAP! Glorious and wonderfully fabulous!”

“But, Jane—”

“Don’t fuss over me, Skye. I’m just happy!” Jane picked up her Popsicle stick and beamed. “Someday it’ll happen to you, too, when you meet the right boy, and then you’ll understand.”

Skye managed to get off the porch and outside without punching Jane in the nose and making it swollen all over again, and she was quite proud of that, at least. But now she was really concerned. How could she protect Jane from this idiocy? Wondering what Caesar or Napoleon would do in this situation was worthless. Skye needed a tree to kick, now, immediately. Poor patient birch trees—this wasn’t the treatment they deserved. But kicking them calmed Skye down a little, enough to help her realize that she did after all have someone she could talk to about boys, crushes, and dancing with Popsicle sticks. Aunt Claire, of course. Skye apologized to the birch trees and began to plot how to broach these painful subjects without giving away Jane’s secrets.

The next morning, Skye waited until Aunt Claire was alone in Birches, working on yet another jigsaw puzzle from Turron. This one showed the Grand Canal in Venice, and Aunt Claire was trying to find one final piece of a gondola.

“Help me,” she said when she noticed Skye lurking.
“I don’t know if I can’t find it or if Hound ate it. He was looking guilty earlier.”

Skye found the puzzle piece under the couch, and indeed it was a little wet, as though it had been sucked on and spit out by a certain dog.

“You’re lucky he didn’t swallow it, for once,” said Skye, sticking the piece into its rightful place. “Aunt Claire, may I ask you a question?”

“Ask away, young Jedi.”

“When you were young and—”

Aunt Claire interrupted. “I am not yet old.”

“Sorry, younger. When you were younger, did you ever keep stuff that boys had given you? Weird stuff?”

“You’re not writing a book about love, too, are you?”

“No!”

“That’s a relief.” Aunt Claire poked around the jigsaw pieces, looking for the gondolier’s hat. “When I was in college, a really cute ice hockey player gave me one of his shin guards. Is that weird enough? I kept it until—probably until I started dating Micah, the chemistry major. You wouldn’t think a chemist would be the jealous type, but he hated that shin guard.”

“Did you ever talk to it?”

“Talk to what?”

“The shin guard.”

Aunt Claire squinted at Skye as though trying to recognize her. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing, really. Just a hypothetical.”

“You’re sure? Then no, I don’t remember talking to the shin guard.”

“Or dancing with it?”

“Honestly, Skye, you have to give me more to go on here. Should I be concerned? I can’t even imagine you dancing, let alone with weird stuff from a boy.”

“I’m not!” Stung that anyone could think she’d be so foolish, Skye was still too loyal to tell Jane’s secrets. “Never mind. This is all just something I’ve been wondering about. I shouldn’t have said anything.”