Trina couldn’t wait to tell Augustine. No stone unturned. She left Augustine’s costume on the table with her sewing supplies, but she grabbed the note and the lace curtains and ran upstairs to her room.
“Augustine,” she said, bursting through the door and kneeling in front of the dollhouse. “I have the most wonderful surprises!”
Augustine ran to her window and peered up at Trina with her bright doll smile. “First, here is your nightgown.” She hung Augustine’s nightgown on the post of her bed. “Second, a letter from my mother,” Trina said. She held out the card so Augustine could see the gold C and then she read the note to Augustine. “I know she says she’ll try, but if she’s looking forward to it and if she’s going to be that close, she’ll have to come to the party.”
“It is a beautiful letter, Citrine. What a wonderful surprise for you.” Augustine leaned farther out her window, straining to see around Trina’s back. “And is there also a surprise for me? Is it my costume? Should I close my eyes and wait patiently?”
Trina shook her head. “No, it’s not your costume. I have a few finishing touches left to do on that. But yes, Augustine, close your eyes.”
As soon as Augustine’s eyes were closed, Trina lifted the tiny brown wire curtain rods from Augustine’s bedroom windows, wove them in and out of the tops of the lace curtains, and set them back in place in their tiny brackets. “Now you can open your eyes and turn around.”
Augustine spun around and cried out, “Thank you, Citrine!” When she pulled her new curtains across the window, dots of light speckled the floor. “They are beautiful.”
Trina hung the other pair in the other bedroom. “Miss Dale taught me how to sew.”
Augustine clasped her hands together, overcome with joy. “Ah, yes, Miss Dale. Did you see how she put the fork in my hand?”
Trina nodded.
“That made me very, very happy.”
“Augustine, you’re so funny,” Trina said. “The littlest things make you happy.”
“As the littlest things should,” Augustine said. “If all the little things make for happiness, there is more happiness, is there not?”
“Yes,” Trina said. “There is.”
And Augustine really was right. It was the little things. Little by little, Goldenrod had come back to life. Little by little, luck was coming back to New Royal. Little by little, Trina had made friends. And little by little, Trina had found out about her mother. And now, after all these years, she was going to see her mother in real life.
Trina placed the note card from her mother on top of the postcards on the mantel. Little things like hopes and dreams really could turn into big happy things.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Citree-een, Citree-een.” At first Trina thought her mother was calling to her, but then she realized there was only one being in the whole world who sang her name that way. She opened her eyes to see Augustine sitting on her pillow at the end of her nose.
“Today’s the day, Citrine. Today’s the party.”
Trina sat up so quickly, Augustine tumbled from Trina’s pillow into the covers.
“I overslept. How in the world did I oversleep? Of all days!”
Augustine righted herself and straightened her nightgown. “I have waited anxiously for this day, Citrine. I cannot believe it has come. Is my costume ready for me?”
“Almost,” Trina said. She had so much to do she didn’t know where to begin. “A list. I need a list.” She grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper and made a list of the final preparations. Then she set Augustine in her bedroom. “I’ll finish your costume this morning, and then I have to decorate the house. I’ll be back later to help you get dressed.” She pulled on her shorts and T-shirt and shoved the list in her pocket.
“Citrine,” Augustine said before Trina could get out the door. “I would prefer to sit at my table with my mother and father so we may talk about the party.”
Trina hastily set Augustine at the dining room table with her parents. Then she raced downstairs and ate her oatmeal in seconds flat and ran outside to pick the last of the daisies, several giant bouquets of chrysanthemums, and armfuls of goldenrod. She was putting all the flowers in a big bucket of water when she noticed what looked like a shiny steel bathtub sitting by the stump of the old oak tree. It was another special delivery, but this one wasn’t a mystery. Edward’s dad must have delivered the horse trough before she woke up.
“Good morning, Princess,” her dad said as she came into the house.
“Today’s the day,” she said with a big grin on her face.
“You’re right.” He hooked his tool belt around his waist. “Today’s the day I fix the downstairs toilet. I figure the last thing we need is for the darn thing to flush itself and scare away all our guests. Especially after all your hard work. What’s on your agenda?”
Trina pulled the list from her pocket. “Pick flowers, hang streamers, finish lanterns, and make wand.” She skipped the part about finishing Augustine’s costume.
“I think I’ll be painting trim most of the day.”
“Except when you help with the streamers.”
While her dad fixed the toilet valve, Trina made the little doll a pointy hat by stitching a stiff piece of blue ribbon into a cone shape. Then she attached long, thin strips of a sheer white fabric to the point with a dab of glue and stuck a sequin on the very tip.
Lastly, she grabbed a long, slender stick from the woodpile. She sanded its rough spots and tied lots of colored ribbons to it. It didn’t look like a wand Hermione would have used, but it was pretty.
She cleaned up her sewing station and was about to take Augustine’s dress to her room, but she was afraid Augustine would demand something else. And she didn’t want her dad to find the costume, so she folded up the dress and the little hat and carefully put them in her pocket.
Trina spent the rest of the morning outside, punching holes in a few more tin cans for the last of the lanterns. The biggest of the tin cans she saved to use as vases for the flowers.
But the day was already getting away from her. “Poppo,” she called up to her dad. He was painting the trim on one of the turret windows. “We’d better put up the streamers.”
She made them a couple of peanut butter sandwiches while she waited for him to clean up and put away all his tools. They gobbled down the sandwiches standing in the kitchen, and then her dad carried his two tallest ladders into the foyer and set one under the chandelier and one against the wall.
“Look,” he said, pointing through the front door as Mr. Hank’s flatbed truck came rolling through the gate. “Hank and Miss Kitty are here. Perfect timing. We need all the help we can get.”
“And Miss Dale is right behind them,” Trina said. She ran to outside to greet everyone.
Miss Kitty bulldozed past her, carrying a tray of cookies. “Be careful with those brownie boxes, Hank,” she hollered over her shoulder. “They could use your help out there,” she said to Trina, and then to her dad as she went up the stairs, “Lots more dishes and extra chairs to bring in.”
“I’ll get the chairs,” her dad said.
Charlotte and Edward hopped out of the backseat of Miss Dale’s car. It took both of them to pull out a rainbow piñata. “We filled it with candy and a bunch of toys and things we got at the dollar store out on the highway,” Edward said.
“I paid for it with my own money. Except my grandmother helped,” Charlotte said.
Trina was awestruck. “Wow, Charlotte. That’s really generous.”
“Hi, Citrine,” Miss Dale said as she popped open her trunk. It was full of boxes with various fabrics poking out of them. “Costumes,” she said excitedly, but then she frowned, counting them. “One for your dad, one for Charlotte, . . . Edward, Aunt Kitty, and me. Oh, thank goodness. For a second I thought I missed one.”
“I’ll help you,” Trina said, reaching for a box that clinked when she picked it up.
“That’s your dad’s,” Miss Dale sa
id mysteriously. “Don’t peek.”
“I won’t,” Trina said, and she meant it too, even though she was desperate to know what it was.
“How can we help?” Charlotte asked.
Trina looked around the yard at the trough and the bucket of flowers. “Edward, why don’t you fill the trough with water? And then fill it with apples. They’re in the kitchen. Charlotte, could you put candles in the lanterns? And then can you fill some of the bigger cans with flowers and set them along the porch and walkway?”
As Trina passed through the foyer on her way upstairs, Mr. Hank and her dad were standing on the ladders, twisting the yellow streamers from the chandelier and taping them to the crown molding. The foyer was beginning to look like a giant pinwheel. “It’s exactly as I pictured,” she said, twirling around and around like Augustine to take it all in.
When Trina came back downstairs, she helped Miss Dale and Miss Kitty set up the food. She found a big white tablecloth among the stolen goods and laid it across the dining room table. Soon the table was covered with trays of wrapped sandwiches and brownies. Vats of hot dogs and baked beans were plugged in to get cooking. Bags of buns and chips were set out, along with stacks and stacks of white plates from Miss Kitty’s diner.
Mr. Hank and her dad moved into the parlor and strung more streamers. And then Mr. Hank hung the piñata from a hook on the porch ceiling and tied the rope to the railing before he went home to get his wife.
The party would begin in less than an hour.
Now it was time for everyone to put on their costumes. Luckily, Trina could offer everyone a private dressing room. She grabbed her wand and showed Miss Dale and Edward and Charlotte upstairs to the other bedrooms.
“I’ll be in here,” she said, ducking into her own room. “Augustine,” Trina called softly, holding the costume behind her back as the little doll ran to her window. Without being told, Augustine closed her eyes.
Trina draped the little blue gown across Augustine’s bed and placed the tiny veiled hat next to it. “There. Now you can open your eyes.”
Augustine opened her eyes and put her hand to her chest as if she couldn’t breathe. “Oh, Citrine! I shall be the princess Briar Rose. How did you know? Please, dress me at once!”
Trina, familiar with Augustine’s bossiness, obeyed happily.
The dress fit perfectly—almost. It was a bit bumpy at the waist, and the hem was a little uneven, but Augustine didn’t seem to mind. And the pointed hat, with its fluttery veil, was perfect. Delighted by her princess costume, Augustine floated down her staircase, twirled up to the dining room table where her mother and father waited proudly, and swayed as if she were dancing in the arms of her prince. “I believe I shall wear this dress forever and ever.”
“I’m glad you like it, but forever and ever is a very long time, Augustine. You can wear it to the party, but then I think you should save it for special occasions.”
“You make no sense to me, Citrine. What is more special than forever and ever?”
Augustine was right. For someone who loved fairy tales, there was nothing better than forever and ever. “You win,” Trina said. “And now it’s my turn to get dressed.”
Augustine twirled around the room as Trina pulled her Hermione Granger costume out of the grocery bag. Both the skirt and the blouse were so big that Trina decided to wear them over her own shorts and T-shirt. She snapped the tie around her neck, slipped her arms into the black cloak, plopped the witch hat on her head, and picked up her wand.
Trina looked at herself in the mirror, pleased with her costume. She was waving her wand in the air when she heard a little noise at her feet. Augustine had tripped and was creeping backward on her hands and knees, escaping Trina’s shadow with a frightened look on her face.
“What’s the matter, Augustine?”
“Are you a witch?” Augustine asked.
“Yes,” said Trina, before it dawned on her why the little doll was now cowering by the door to her house. “But I’m a good witch. I bring houses back to life and I reunite little dolls with their parents,” she said.
“How can I be certain?” whispered Augustine.
“Because I do good deeds and cast good spells.” Trina cupped her hands around Augustine and said in her kindest, most magical voice, “Apples and candy make me glad, but Augustine’s the best friend I ever had.” Trina pulled off her witch hat and dropped it to the floor. “See? It’s just me.”
Augustine’s fearful look disappeared. She stood up again and pirouetted at Trina’s feet, humming sweetly. “Will there be music at the party, Citrine?”
Trina hadn’t thought of music. The only hope was the old record player. “Yes,” she said, just to make Augustine happy.
Augustine stopped dancing and peered up at Trina. “Then I must ask a favor of you, Citrine. Would you please stand my mother and father together in the parlor? They would very much like to dance during the party this evening. Could you assist them?”
“Sure,” Trina said, reaching to pick up her witch’s hat.
“I mean now,” the little doll said. “I do not want them to be forgotten.”
Trina was surprised by how demanding Augustine was being, but then again, if her own mother and father had a chance to dance for the first time in a hundred years, she would be anxious to see it happen too. She picked up the father doll, straightened his legs, brushed a bit of lint from his trousers, and walked him over to the mother doll.
“May I have this dance?” Trina said in a deep voice, to which the mother doll answered in a lady’s voice, “I would love to,” and then Trina laughed, but it felt as if the mother doll were laughing happily inside her.
Trina leaned the father doll against the mantel as she stood the mother on her pretty porcelain shoes and raised her delicate arms. Then she matched the mother’s right hand in the air with the father’s left hand. With two fingers on each doll, Trina glided the pair across their polished parlor floor, humming along with Augustine. She didn’t know the words, but she had learned the melody. The song sounded old and romantic.
Before she let go of the dolls, she made sure they were balanced, each holding the other up. A perfect couple. Trina stood and curtsied.
“Thank you, Citrine. Thank you! That was absolutely grand,” Augustine said, clapping giddily. “Soon Goldenrod will be once again full of friends and laughter and joy, is that not true?”
“Yes,” Trina said. “That is true.”
“And you no longer need to be afraid of the evil giant?” The little doll was standing on her tiptoes, trying to see herself in the mirror.
“No, I don’t have to be afraid of her any longer.”
“And Annie is safe?”
“Yes, Annie is safe, the town is happy, I’m a good witch, and you’re driving me crazy with all these questions.” Trina turned sideways to look at herself one more time in the mirror.
Augustine didn’t seem to mind Trina’s exasperated tone and smiled contentedly. “Oh, Citrine. It is all quite perfect then. With my beautiful house, my mother and father found at last, and knowing that I have helped you, our story has a perfect ending.”
“Ending?” Trina glanced down at the little doll.
“Yes, ending. Everything is how it is supposed to be. Except for one more thing.” Augustine held up her index finger. “Because I have helped you, you must now help me.”
Trina leaned down and straightened Augustine’s little hat. She had helped the little doll quite a bit, she thought, but she knew she hadn’t yet helped her with her most important mission. “Don’t worry, Augustine. I haven’t forgotten about helping you find your prince.”
Augustine shook her head. “No, that is not what I speak of. I am afraid I will have to wait for my prince to find me. After all, that is the proper way in my world. But I do know of another way you can help me.” Augustine looked toward the fireplace in Trina’s room and became unusually thoughtful.
Trina stopped looking at herself in the mirror. A sa
d tone in Augustine’s voice worried her. Something had changed. Trina couldn’t imagine what Augustine wanted her to do now, but something about her request made Trina feel uneasy. “What is it?” she asked.
“Will you read to me again the story of Briar Rose?”
Trina was relieved that the problem was a small one. But no wonder Augustine was sad. They hadn’t read a story in ages.
“Of course,” Trina said.
“That is so very kind of you, Citrine, but please listen carefully. I should like you to lay me in my bed where I will let myself fall asleep while you read. My mother and father shall stay as they are. When you are finished reading, please return our house to the little room where you first found me. Lastly, before you go, please secure the shutters of that room. And then close the door.”
Trina sat down on the floor, not sure she had heard the doll correctly. “What?”
“And promise me you will never open the door again.”
“What are you saying, Augustine? I don’t understand.” Trina felt a wave of sadness go through her. What was happening?
“Is that not what children do in your world? Do they not grow up and put their toys away?” Augustine looked at Trina earnestly. “I am very glad I awakened when I did, or you might have outgrown my world before I had a chance to wake up in yours. I will never forget our tea parties and our wonderful adventures. I particularly enjoyed the Land of School, Citrine. And I am glad to think I may have helped you, at least a little, to find your own family.”
“You mean—?” As much as she didn’t want to, Trina understood what Augustine was saying. “No, Augustine, I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“But you promised. Think of ‘The Frog Prince,’ Citrine. Think of the perils of a broken promise. The most horrible things can happen if you do not keep a promise. I kept my promise, and now you must keep yours.”
Trina couldn’t remember making any promise that meant giving up Augustine. And she wanted to tell the little doll that “The Frog Prince” meant nothing. That it was just a story. But how could she expect Augustine to understand, when stories were everything to the little doll?
The Secret of Goldenrod Page 26
