The Wikkeling (22 page)

Henrietta was first to form a question: “You have friends from the
Old City
?” she said. “What are they like? Are they scary?”

“The Subscribers are nice,” said Rose. “They come over and fix books with my dad.”

“How do they live?” said Gary. “Do they kidnap people?”

“They find things,” said Rose. “Like in trash cans.”

“They
steal trash
?” said Gary, his eyes widening.

“Sometimes it isn't really trash,” said Rose. “All of my clothes I'm wearing. My shoes.”

Henrietta and Gary looked at Rose's shoes. In the low light of the candles, they looked like regular shoes, white plastic with Velcro straps.

“Those were in a dumpster?” said Gary. He reached out and touched them gingerly.

“Someone outgrew them,” said Rose.

“This is amazing,” said Gary. “Amazing.” Everything he'd ever thought about the world was turned on its head in an instant. Trash wasn't trash. Criminals weren't criminals. He frowned, and then smiled, and then bit his lip.

“Why didn't you tell us this before?” said Henrietta.

“My parents said if I ever told we'd have to leave the Library, and I'd have to quit school.”

“
I
won't tell,” said Gary. “Not a soul. Not ever. Unless it's by accident,” he corrected. “Sometimes I say things by accident.”

“I'll remind you not to,” said Henrietta. She turned back to Rose. “But how do your parents keep the whole thing secret? And why is an old library sitting out in the middle of the Addition?”

“I don't know,” said Rose to both questions.

“I can hardly believe it,” said Henrietta. She stared at Rose as if looking at a complete stranger. This little kid was a never ending font of surprises, and
Henrietta felt proud to have her as a friend.

Gary said, “My only secret is that I can't read.”

“But you can read now,” said Rose.

“That's true.” Gary grinned. “I guess I don't have any secrets.”

“You cheat on tests and collect garbage,” said Henrietta, and she leaned over and blew out the candles. In the darkness, they crawled under the covers they'd laid out, and rested their heads on the couch cushions.

After talking with his friends, Gary felt a little less scared to be in the dark, and he drifted off quickly. Henrietta and Rose followed soon after, both exhausted and scared, but, for the moment, safe.

A
fter the children departed to Henrietta's room to study, Aline returned to her work, but even as she prepared a lengthy accounting report, part of her mind continued to ponder the mail from the city. That money could make her life into something she'd begun to think it would never be: happy. Perhaps she could escape the feeling, one she'd had for so long, of being trapped. She wondered how Henrietta would react to the news, and realized that she had no idea at all.

Aline didn't feel very close to her daughter. As Henrietta had grown into childhood and revealed her personality, the two of them had begun to clash. Henrietta couldn't seem to do anything the normal way, and not because she lacked the ability. Rather, she seemed to intentionally avoid fitting in and doing what people required of her. Aline had wondered, on occasion, if Henrietta wasn't her real daughter. Maybe her real daughter had been switched with someone else's at the hospital, and some set of sloppy, willful, uncharming parents were wondering how they'd managed to produce a beautiful, obedient, tidy little girl.

Aline's phone rang. She looked at the screen and frowned. It was Al. For a moment, she became angry. Why would he be calling her? She'd told him in no uncertain terms when he'd married her mother that she wanted nothing to do
with him. It had been the last straw, and she was still, even now, furious that her mother had—

Her heart sank as she realized why Al was calling. There was only one possible reason. She turned away from her computer and answered the call. “Mother,” she whispered into the phone.

“Aline, I'm sorry,” said Al's scratchy old voice. “She passed away peacefully in her sleep. This morning.”

And the worst of all: Aline hadn't seen her mother since the birthday party, over a month ago. She'd been so angry, about . . . something.

“I'd like to talk to you a bit about memorial arrangements,” Al said stiffly.

“I need to go,” said Aline. “I'll . . .” she didn't even finish the sentence, just disconnected the call. She turned to the windows where the slow mass of traffic passed within inches of her house. The cars seemed miles away.

H
enrietta's eyes opened in the pitch darkness. It took her a moment to remember where she was—the attic, with the windows blocked off, and Gary and Rose beside her.

“What was that?” said Gary's voice.

Something had awakened them both.

“I don't know,” said Henrietta.

Then came a whooshing sound, like a broom scraping across a floor. It came from the blocked windows.

“It's the trees,” said Henrietta. “They're getting chopped down!” The sound continued, and Henrietta imagined the grand limbs toppling, their red and gold leaves brushing the house as they fell.

“I wonder how much time has passed,” said Henrietta. She sat up, felt for the box of matches and the candelabra on the table, and lit the candles.

Gary and Rose sat up in their piles of blankets. Rose's black hair was frizzed out from tossing and turning, and Gary's was a spiky thicket. They certainly looked as though they'd been asleep for a while.

They went to the trapdoor and cracked it open, although they all had a feeling about what they'd find. They were right. The creature hadn't moved. Its eyes
were still fixed on the entrance.

“I'm kind of hungry,” said Gary once Henrietta replaced the trapdoor.

“Me, too,” said Henrietta. Her stomach growled.

“I wish we could eat cobwebs, like Mister Lady,” said Gary. He plucked one from an empty bookshelf and eyed it critically.

Rose tapped the
Bestiary
's cover, on the table. “Have you ever looked up the Wikkeling in here?” she asked. Gary and Henrietta looked at her blankly.

“The what?” said Henrietta.

“The Wikkeling. In your room,” said Rose, gesturing toward the trapdoor.

“How do you—” said Gary, and then stopped himself. “Never mind,” he said. “You just know everything. I accept that.”

They sat at the coffee table, and Gary and Rose looked on as Henrietta flipped to the table of contents and skimmed it fruitlessly. She went to the index. Nothing. Page by page, they examined all the pictures.

“I guess they didn't know about it,” she said as she turned past “Alphabeetle,” “False Apple,” and “Tree Goat.” Then a thought occurred. “You know what, though. My grandfather's version might be better. It's a later edition.”

“I wish our phones worked,” said Gary.

Henrietta continued flipping through the ancient book a page at a time, until she landed on the very first thing she'd ever looked up:
Housecats—Wild
. She remembered sitting with Mister Lady, studying the strange words, combing the mildewy attic dictionary for the meanings of terms like
ingress
and
egress
. She contemplated those terms now, still locked in their same sentence.

. . . many homes contain so-called “Cat Halls,” thought to encourage Ingress and Egress.

“Hey,” she said, putting her finger on the sentence.

“What is it?” said Gary.

“Cat Halls,” said Henrietta. “Ingress and egress!”

“You're right!” said Rose.

“What? What?” said Gary, looking from one of them to the other. “What are they?”

Henrietta grabbed the candelabra.

“Coming and going,” said Rose.

“People used to put doors in their attics for wild housecats,” said Henrietta. “That's how Mister Lady got in here, and it's how we're going to get out.”

T
hey split up, each taking a candle and moving behind the bookshelves into the various deep corners of the attic. Now that they had an idea to work toward, the attic seemed a little less scary. As she headed down a dark aisle bordered by stacks of old paintings of the ocean, Henrietta heard Gary and Rose rooting around elsewhere, moving boxes, squeezing between stacked chairs. Suddenly, she found herself smiling. They were going to figure this out!

She balanced her candle on a tabletop and started moving some of the paintings to see if the hall might be hidden there when a shout stopped her, echoing through the attic.

“
I found it!
”

Henrietta and Gary followed Rose's triumphant exclamation along a row of ceramic plant containers sitting on narrow plant stands and wooden magazine racks until they reached a large stack of luggage.

Rose's voice seemed to emerge from under the pile. Henrietta held out her candle and saw a narrow, dark space framed by an alligator-skin purse, a wooden hatbox, and a denim-sided briefcase.

“Are you
under
?” said Henrietta.

“It goes through,” said Rose's muted voice.

Henrietta and Gary knelt and squirmed one after the other into the luggage tunnel. Henrietta held her candle carefully, remembering the part in
Don't Strike Those Matches
when a flame ignited a boy's hair. The tunnel ran for about fifteen feet, and they emerged in a little room formed of the backs of several bookshelves and one wall of the attic. Rose jumped up and down in triumph when they arrived, pointing toward her find.

The cat hall was right there, at the intersection between wall and floor, a miniature doorway just large enough for a wild housecat to squeeze through—or a kid. Its frame was carved with intricate designs, and a message had been engraved over the lintel. Gary leaned down to read it.

EAT OUR COBWEBS, CHASE OUR RATS.
IN THIS HOUSE WE LOVE OUR CATS.

Henrietta peered through the cat hall. “It's dark outside. Time must be passing out there—it looks like the middle of the night.”

“I don't get it,” said Gary.

“It's unpredictable,” said Rose.

Henrietta knelt and stuck her head through the cat hall. Below lay the narrow lane of plastic turf that ran between the back of her house and the back of the neighbors'. Neither house had any windows on this side—it was an unused area. Henrietta felt dizzy as she contemplated the drop. She pulled her head back in. “It's really far,” she said.

“It's not too bad,” said Rose. “We just need a landing pad.”

Before Henrietta could formulate a follow-up question, Rose took her candle and crawled back out through the luggage, into the attic proper. Henrietta and Gary looked at one another, and Gary shrugged. Rose soon returned, dragging the blankets and pillows they'd slept on.

“Landing pad,” she said again, and pushed the blankets through the cat hall, letting them fall to the ground outside. She stuck her head through and looked down. “We'll need a lot more.”

They all went into the attic and located as many soft objects as they could find—bedding and ornamental pillows, towels, a few old teddy bears, two bath mats, seven throw rugs, pants, shirts, a fluffy down parka. . . . Henrietta quickly lost track of it all as they dropped one item after another onto the growing pad below.

“Good enough,” Rose declared finally, peering down through the cat hall at the prodigious pile. She pulled her head back in and stood. “Gary, you first.”

“M-me?” said Gary.

“You're tough, but sometimes you don't realize it,” said Rose. Gary opened his mouth to make a retort, but closed it again. He blinked several times, realizing that Rose was correct. In fact, her assessment was one of the truest things anyone had ever said about him. With a thoughtful, determined frown, he blew out his candle and set it aside. He lay on his belly and entered the cat hall feet first. He began wiggling through. “It's chilly outside!” he said as he progressively disappeared. “Okay, this is as far as I can go, so . . . I'm going to drop. Wish me luck!”

“Good lu—” said Henrietta, and Gary was gone. Henrietta and Rose scrambled forward and looked out after him. He was lying on the landing pad. For a moment, he was still, and then he rolled onto the ground, got up, and showily dusted himself off. “I'm okay!” he called up. “It was . . . fun! You next, Henrietta!”