Three Wishing Tales

by Ruth Chew

  The box slid off Peggy’s lap and fell through the branches of the tree. It crashed against the stone bench and bounced to the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” the bird said. “I must have kicked it during take-off.” He flew down to the box. “Anyway, it did the trick. Your box is open now.”

  Brian started to scramble down the tree. Peggy came slowly after him. She was careful not to rip her coat.

  When Brian reached the foot of the tree, he ran over to the box. “It’s cracked in half, Peg. And it’s empty. Whatever was in it must have fallen out.”

  Brian looked on the ground around the box. “There’s so much snow it’s hard to find anything. Of course, it would help if we knew what we were looking for.”

  The mockingbird was hopping around on the ground by the bench. He picked up something shiny and flew up into the tree to show it to Peggy. She was sitting on the bottom branch now.

  The bird perched on a twig near Peggy. She took the object out of his beak. It was the ring from a pop-top can. “People are always dropping these in the park,” she said.

  The mockingbird stared at the ground. “I have very sharp eyes. I just wish I knew what you were looking for.”

  A second later the bird gave a chirp. He dived down and pulled something out of the snow.

  Brian glanced at it. “Another ring from a pop-top can.”

  Peggy had climbed down from the tree. The bird fluttered over to her and perched on her shoulder. She took the shiny thing out of his beak.

  “Brian,” she said. “Maybe this is what was in the box.”

  Brian came over to see.

  Peggy was holding a little key. It was different from any they had ever seen. The handle was all carved with fancy designs. And the key was the same color as their mother’s wedding ring.

  “It must be made of gold,” Peggy said. “I’d better take care of it.” She put the key into the pocket of her coat.

  “I wonder where the lady with the shopping bag went,” Brian said.

  The mockingbird was perched on the bottom branch of the beech tree. “If you follow me, I can show you.” He fluttered over to a tree on the other side of the walk.

  Brian was cold from standing still. He was glad to run after the bird.

  Peggy dropped the pop-top ring into a trash basket beside the stone bench. She picked up the broken pieces of the wooden box and threw them into the basket too. Then she went after her brother.

  The mockingbird flew from tree to tree in the park. At each tree he stopped to wait for Brian and Peggy to catch up with him.

  They crossed the highway that went around the park. There was no traffic on it today. Cars were not allowed in the park on weekends.

  The snow was still falling. Brian and Peggy followed the bird across a broad meadow to the shore of a lake.

  “Look, Peg.” Brian pointed to the ice forming at the edge of the water. “It’s starting to freeze.”

  The mockingbird flew close to the lake. Brian and Peggy walked along the stone wall that rimmed the shore. They passed the place where the yellow water lilies bloomed in the summertime. Now they were just a tangle of brown stems in the water.

  At one point the lake was narrow. An old iron bridge arched over it. The bird swooped down and flew under the bridge. Peggy and Brian followed him.

  Close against the side of the arch they saw the woman in the brown coat. She had spread a layer of newspapers on the ground and was sitting on them. The snow could not fall on her here.

  The mockingbird flew down onto the newspapers.

  “Oh, there you are, my pretty!” the woman said. “And you want your supper, don’t you?” She reached into the shopping bag and took out the blue tablecloth. Then she caught sight of Brian and Peggy.

  The woman quickly stuffed the cloth back into the shopping bag. She jumped to her feet. Peggy thought she looked frightened.

  “What do you want?” The woman looked around at the shadowy places under the bridge. “Is that cat with you?”

  “No.” Brian walked over to her. “He doesn’t like nasty weather.”

  “We thought he was your cat,” Peggy said.

  “Oh no.” The woman blew on her hands. They were red with cold. “I don’t trust that cat,” she said.

  “What cat can you trust?” the mockingbird chirped.

  The woman didn’t seem to understand the bird. “I’ll give you something to eat in a little while, lovey.” She grabbed the handles of the shopping bag to hold it shut. “Isn’t it time you children went home for supper?”

  “Are you going to stay here?” Brian asked.

  “I like it better than the subway station,” the woman told him.

  “Oh,” Peggy said, “don’t you have a home?”

  The woman shook her head. “Not anymore.”

  “What do you sleep on?” Peggy wanted to know.

  The woman pointed to the newspapers. “These are nice and dry.”

  “I have a sleeping bag,” Peggy said. “I’ll lend it to you.”

  “No, no, dear. I’m sure your mother wouldn’t like that.” The woman patted Peggy’s arm. “Don’t worry about me. Old Annie will be all right.”

  “Is that your name—Annie?” Brian asked. “Can we call you that? Aren’t you Mrs. Something-or-other?”

  “Just call me Annie.” The woman smiled. “And what are your names?”

  “I’m Brian. And this is my sister, Peggy. I call her Peg.”

  The mockingbird flew onto a ledge under the bridge. “Peggy,” he chirped. “I’m hungry. And I can see she’s never going to feed me as long as you’re here.”

  The woman looked up at the bird. “He keeps me company. Don’t you, lovey?”

  “We have to go home,” Peggy said.

  “Good-bye, Annie.” Brian walked out from under the bridge.

  “Good-bye.” Annie waved to the two children.

  Peggy and Brian ran back along the lakeshore. They took a shortcut over a hill and across the highway to the gate of the park.

  Then they crossed the wide street and walked the two blocks to their house.

  Brian rang the doorbell. Mr. Dobson opened the front door. Puss ran to the door. He looked out at the falling snow.

  The children walked into the house. Peggy went to the hall closet. She hung up her coat and put away her boots.

  Brian sat down on the bottom step of the stairs to pull off his boots. “How was the game, Dad?”

  “Great!” Mr. Dobson leaned over to pet the cat.

  Mrs. Dobson was coming downstairs with a basket of laundry. “I thought you didn’t like Puss, George.”

  “A cat who roots for the Navy team can’t be all bad,” Mr. Dobson said.

  Mrs. Dobson laughed. “I suppose he did somersaults when Navy made a touchdown.”

  “Not quite.” Mr. Dobson petted the cat again.

  “What did Puss do, Dad?” Brian unzipped the ski jacket and went to hang it in the closet.

  “He hissed the referee when he gave Navy a penalty. And I never heard any cat purr as loud as this one did when Navy won the game.” Mr. Dobson took the basket. “I’ll carry this down to the laundry room for you, Helen.”

  Mrs. Dobson looked at Brian and Peggy. “I see you two were out in the weather again.”

  “We talked to the lady in the park,” Peggy told her mother. “She said Puss doesn’t belong to her.”

  “Who do you belong to, Puss?” Mrs. Dobson asked.

  The cat just rubbed against her legs and purred.

  “I’d better get busy with supper.” Mrs. Dobson walked to the kitchen.

  As soon as their parents had gone, Brian sat down on the floor beside the cat. “You sure got yourself in good with Dad.”

  The cat smoothed his whiskers. He looked at Peggy. “What did you do with the box you found this morning?”

  “We couldn’t get it open,” Peggy said. “So we took it to the magic tree.”

  “That was a good idea,” the cat said. “I wonder
why I didn’t think of it. Did the tree get it open?”

  “Yes,” Brian told him.

  “What was in it?” Puss asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Peggy said. “The box fell out of the tree and broke. The mockingbird found a key in the snow near it. But we’re not certain that’s what was in the box.”

  “Where’s the key?” the cat wanted to know.

  Peggy went to the hall closet and took the little golden key out of the pocket of her coat. She bent down to show it to the cat.

  Puss looked at the key. Then he sniffed it. His tail twitched. And he began to paw the ground. “No wonder nobody could find that key! It’s been at the bottom of the pool for ages.”

  “You mean you know about this key?” Brian asked.

  Puss nodded. His green eyes gleamed.

  “What does it unlock?” Peggy said.

  “I’ll show you,” the cat promised, “just as soon as it stops snowing.”

  After supper Peggy worked on her math. She wasn’t very good at fractions. It was after nine-thirty when she finished. Brian was already in bed.

  Peggy took a quick shower. Almost as soon as her head touched the pillow, she fell asleep.

  During the night Peggy dreamed that she was a very little girl again. She had been eating bread and jam. And her mother was scrubbing her face with a washcloth.

  Peggy woke up. The cat was licking her face with his rough tongue.

  “Ouch!” Peggy sat up in bed. “What do you want, Puss?”

  “It’s stopped snowing,” the cat said. “You wanted to see what the golden key unlocks.”

  Peggy snuggled under the covers. “Can’t we wait until tomorrow morning?”

  The cat jumped off Peggy’s bed and ran to the window. He grabbed the venetian-blind cord in his teeth and pulled up the blind. At once the room was filled with moonlight.

  “There’s a full moon tonight,” the cat said. “It’s the best time to visit the castle.”

  The castle! Peggy remembered the stone towers rising against the sky. She threw off the covers and put on her bathrobe and slippers. Then she tiptoed down the hall in the dark to Brian’s room.

  “Wake up!” she whispered in her brother’s ear.

  Brian turned over and dragged the blanket over his head.

  Peggy shook him. “Hurry up! We’re going to see the castle!”

  Brian poked his head out from under the blanket. “What did you say?”

  “Puss says the best time to go to the castle is when the moon is full,” Peggy told him. “Put your clothes on, Brian.”

  Brian slipped out from under the covers. “Good thing Mom put our wet jackets in the clothes dryer.”

  “Shhh! We don’t want to wake Mother and Daddy.” Peggy went back to her own room to get dressed.

  Brian had given Peggy a little flashlight for her birthday. She took it out of her dresser drawer and used it to light the way down the stairs when she went to get her hat and jacket.

  Brian came down while she was pulling on her rubber boots. “It’s warm where we’re going,” he reminded her.

  “We still have to walk through the park,” Peggy said.

  Puss was sitting on the bannister post in the front hall waiting for them. “I hate getting snow on my paws. Would you mind carrying me?”

  When they were ready to go out, Brian picked up the cat. Peggy turned off the flashlight. She tucked it into her pocket beside the golden key. Then she quietly opened the door and stepped out onto the moonlit front stoop of the house.

  Brian and the cat came after her.

  Brian and Peggy and the cat were all alone on the snowy Brooklyn street. No one had shoveled the sidewalk. And the snowplow had not yet come by. The children picked their way through the drifts. In some places the snow was higher than their boot tops.

  It wasn’t until they were crossing the wide street by the park that Peggy remembered what her mother said: “Prospect Park is not safe after dark.”

  Peggy knew she ought to turn around and go home. But she wanted so much to see the inside of the castle. Brian seemed to have forgotten their mother’s warning. Peggy decided not to remind him.

  They went into the park by the gate. The ground was hidden under the snow. But they could tell where the walk was by the old-fashioned lamp posts and the stone benches placed here and there. The twigs and branches of the bare trees were icy. They sparkled in the lamplight.

  Peggy and Brian walked toward the old beech. Long before they reached it, they heard the lilting song of the mockingbird. He was perched on a branch close to the top of the tree.

  When the children came near the tree, the bird stopped singing and fluttered down. Peggy thought he was going to land on her shoulder. But when the bird saw the cat Brian was carrying, he flew up and perched on a low branch of the tree. “What are you doing here at this time of night?” he chirped.

  “We’re going to the magic country where it’s summertime,” Brian told the bird.

  The mockingbird cocked his head to look down at them. “Is that where the box came from?”

  “Yes,” Peggy said. “Thank you for finding the key for us.”

  Suddenly the cat jumped out of Brian’s arms. He landed at the foot of the tree. At once the mockingbird flew to a tree on the other side of the walk. He perched there to watch what was going on.

  Puss jammed his pink nose into the little hole in the tree trunk. His head went in, and then his shoulders. Soon only the end of his striped tail was sticking out. Then that too was gone.

  Brian dived after the cat. The hole in the tree seemed to open up and swallow him.

  Peggy got down on her hands and knees. She poked her finger into the hole in the bark. “I wish you could come too,” she said to the mockingbird. “But you wouldn’t like digging through a lot of dirt. I wish there were some other way.” She took one last look at the bird. Then she pushed her way into the tree.

  Peggy found herself inside the tree. It was dark. She took out her flashlight and turned it on. The pit was right in front of her. Brian and the cat were already down in it.

  Peggy shone the flashlight between two thick tree roots at the side of the pit. “Look, Brian!”

  “It’s a little door!” Brian wiggled between the roots. “But there’s no handle on it, Peg. And it’s locked.”

  The cat looked up at Peggy. “Don’t you have your key?”

  Peggy climbed down one of the roots into the pit. She took the gold key out of her pocket and gave it to her brother.

  Brian stooped down to fit it into a keyhole in the door. He gave the key a turn. The lock clicked. And the door opened inward.

  Puss squeezed between Brian’s legs and stuck his head through the little doorway. He sniffed the air inside. “All clear.” He walked through the door.

  The door was just big enough for Brian and Peggy to crawl through. Brian went first, with the flashlight. Peggy took the key out of the door and put it back into her pocket. Then she followed Brian.

  Just inside the door a flight of steps led upward. The cat climbed the steps. Peggy and Brian went after him.

  A faint light came from above. Brian turned off the flashlight and handed it back to Peggy.

  At the top of the steps they came out of the ground. Peggy looked around. They were outdoors in the moonlight. The air was filled with the smell of clover. A dirt road led through a meadow to a wood. And high over the wood the children could see the towers of the castle.

  It was too warm now to wear their jackets. They stuffed their hats and mittens in the pockets and tied the jackets around their waists.

  Puss was already walking along the road. Brian and Peggy rushed to keep up.

  They walked around a deep hole. A little farther along they came to another one on the other side of the road. The children had to zig-zag between holes all the way to the wood.

  The road sloped upward. The woods were on the sides of a hill. And the castle was built on the top.

  After a while th
e road wound between the trees. There were dark shadows here. Brian and Peggy had to be careful not to fall into the holes in the road.

  They followed the cat up and up. At last they came to a high stone wall with towers along it. The wall was covered with ivy. The cat climbed from one stone to the next. Brian and Peggy followed him up the wall. They wedged their feet between the stones and grabbed hold of the ivy for support. Their rubber boots made it hard to climb. But they kept on going.

  Just before they reached the top of the wall, Peggy looked back at the road over the meadow. The deep holes made dark patches in the moonlight. From here Peggy could see the shape of them. “Brian, look!”

  Brian looked where she was pointing. “Peg,” he said, “those aren’t ordinary holes. They’re footprints!”

  “Maybe we ought to go back,” Peggy whispered.

  “I guess you’re right,” Brian agreed. “Those footprints are scary.” He poked his head over the top of the wall. “Wow!”

  Peggy peeked over the wall too.

  The castle rose in front of them. A full moon floated over it. And all the towers and turrets gleamed in the moonlight.

  It was so beautiful that both children forgot everything else. They climbed up onto the thick wall. There was a road around the top. Brian and Peggy crossed the road and looked down the other side of the wall.

  The castle was surrounded by a deep trench. A drawbridge went over it.

  “That looks as if it used to be a moat,” Peggy said. “But somebody has made it into a garden.”

  The moonlight glistened on a stream that wound through the center of the trench. Tall hollyhocks bloomed on one side of the stream. Five fruit trees grew on the other. Peggy saw a bed of cabbages. There were roses climbing over the drawbridge. And a honeysuckle vine was starting to grow up the side of the castle.

  Puss was waiting for them by one of the towers in the thick wall. Peggy and Brian walked toward the cat. When he saw them coming, he ran into the tower. The children followed him.

  They went down a winding stone stair inside the dark tower. At the foot of the stair a door opened into the moonlit garden.