The Gold Dust Letters
Investigators of the Unknown
Janet Taylor Lisle
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Preview: Looking for Juliette
A Biography of Janet Taylor Lisle
Chapter One
ANGELA HARRALL TOOK AN interest in magic. Not the silly hocus-pocus of birthday party magicians, or the dumb card tricks her older brother was always playing on her. Angela wasn’t a stupid person. But the real magic that is present at unexplainable happenings, the power that haunts a house or works quietly behind the scenes in secret, hidden worlds—oh yes, Angela adored that sort of thing. She was a believer in the unknown, and that was why she wrote her crazy letter in the first place.
Georgina Rusk wouldn’t have done it. She believed in the unknown, too, more or less, but not in writing to it. And little Poco Lambert, well … she was an animal-lover who spoke mostly to pets.
“I can’t believe you actually wrote to her,” Georgina said irritably, on the Saturday morning that Angela’s mysterious answer appeared. “I mean it’s so ridiculous, writing a letter to your fairy godmother. Nobody bothers with that stuff anymore.”
The three friends were at the Rusks’ house, lounging on their big back lawn. The day was a warm one, one of those early October beauties when summer takes a last wistful turn before giving up the stage to autumn’s chill.
“Well, I bothered with it, and I got an answer back,” Angela replied. “It was on the mantelpiece in the living room when I came downstairs for breakfast this morning.”
“So? Anybody could have written a letter and put it there. In case you’ve forgotten, three other people live in your house: your mother, your brother, and your father.”
“And your Siamese cat,” Poco said sweetly to Angela. “Don’t forget her.”
“Her cat!” exclaimed Georgina. “Good grief!”
“Siamese cats are very talented,” Poco went on. “People don’t yet know all the things they can do.”
Georgina rolled her eyes. “All right, where is this fantastic letter?” she asked Angela. “You said you were going to show us, and you didn’t even bring it with you.”
“Yes I did.”
“Well, where is it? I suppose you’re going to tell us it’s invisible. It’s from one of those fairy godmothers that only appear to people who believe in them. Like Tinkerbell. But if we clap our hands together really hard and fast, the magic will go to work and—”
“George, ssh!” said Poco. “Look!”
While Georgina was talking, Angela had reached into the cotton vest she was wearing and taken something out of an inside pocket. It was a piece of paper, rolled up, with a thin gold thread tied around the middle. She held the paper up triumphantly for them to see, and when she did, a very fine golden dust flew out of one end and fell to the grass in a shimmering stream.
“Wow!” exclaimed Poco, reaching out to the place in the grass where the dust had fallen. She tried to pick some up, but it had disappeared.
Georgina said nothing, but her eyes widened.
“That happens every time I go to open the letter!” Angela exclaimed. “I can never see where it comes from. Look, there’s nothing inside.”
She unrolled the paper, which was thin but stiffer than ordinary paper. It made a crinkly sound as it came unfurled. Angela showed Poco and Georgina the open letter. There wasn’t a bit of gold dust on it anywhere. Strange-looking purple writing covered the page. The friends leaned forward together and read the following:
With great honor I present myself: Pilaria of the Kingdom of the Faeries, Eighth Tribe, Fourth Earth, Under the Sun-Star Aravan, May It Shine on Our Land Forever and Ever.
ANGELA HARRALL:
“Your message has been received. Unfortunately, boxes of chocolates like the one you requested have long been out of stock. A hundred years ago they were all the rage, but fashions change. The kingdom has not filled such an order in fifty or sixty years and no longer prepares them. We are sorry that we cannot grant your wish in this matter.
Respectfully,
The Gray-Eyed Faerie,
PILARIA
“Good grief, Angela. What kind of chocolates did you ask for?” Georgina demanded, after she had read all the way through.
Angela blushed. She was a stocky child who was known for her excellent appetite. “Well … I read about a box of candy that could never be finished,” she explained. “The girl in the story asked for one from her fairy godmother, and she got it. It was great. Whenever she put the cover back on, all the chocolates she’d eaten grew back again so she could start all over.”
There was a long silence while everyone read the letter again. And again. The purple script was beautiful. It descended the page in marvelous loops and swirls and looked vaguely Chinese. Pilaria’s signature was elegant beyond words.
“This was not done by a Siamese cat,” Poco announced finally.
“No.” Georgina tested the papers thinness between two fingers. “It might be old airmail paper,” she said doubtfully.
“It’s too stiff,” Angela said.
“I’ve never seen writing like this,” Georgina said. “Or ink this color.” She paused. “But the letter is stupid. Nobody would ever believe such baloney. ‘Eighth Tribe, Fourth Earth, Under the Sun-Star Aravan.’ I mean really!”
Angela looked at her angrily. She rolled the letter back up fast—it seemed to want to roll up by itself anyway—and slipped the circle of gold thread around it. She was preparing to put it back in her vest pocket when Georgina gasped. Poco sat forward, her eyes round with astonishment. “The gold dust!” she cried. “There it is again!”
A rather larger amount of dust had dropped out of the letter and was falling in a shining river toward the ground. But once there, the stuff completely disappeared, just as it had the first time.
Angela shook her head helplessly. “That’s what always happens,” she said, tucking the amazing letter back into her inside pocket. “The gold dust never runs out. There’s always more inside no matter how much you look and look and can’t see how there could be.”
Chapter Two
THERE WAS NO WAY, after seeing Angela’s letter, that the friends could continue sitting in a backyard, however beautiful the day. Georgina demanded to be taken at once to the mantelpiece where the letter had been discovered. She wanted to know when the letter was found, who was in the house at the time, where they were—having breakfast? still in bed?—what had happened the night before, and a hundred other details.
Angela was very pleased by this flurry of questions, which showed that Georgina might not be so disbelieving as she pretended. She agreed to allow Georgina to inspect the mantelpiece on the condition that she tell no one about the Gray-Eyed Faerie’s letter. It was to be a secret until they found out more.
At this point, Poco announced that she would go to Angela’s house, too, but not to see the mantelpiece. Having spoken with such authority about the mysterious talents of Siamese cats, she wanted to look more closely at Angela’s. Perhaps, after all, she’d underestimated it.
“Do you know that Siamese cats were the royal cats of kings and queens?” she asked the friends as they walked, rather fast because of Georgina’s impatience, along the sidewalk toward Angela’s house. “They lived in temples and palaces in the country of Siam, and got used to lying around on silk pillows and peacock feathers. That’s why they always look so snobby.�
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“Do they look snobby?” Georgina inquired. “Angela’s always looks sound asleep to me.”
“Oh, yes,” Poco said. “Very beautiful but very snobby. But quite nice underneath when you get to know them. You should always give a person a chance and not judge by what you see on the surface.”
Georgina caught Angela’s eye, but neither spoke. It was so like Poco to confuse animals and people. There was no use going into the matter. To Poco, animals were people, and that was that. She could see no separation.
“Well, you check out the cat while we investigate the mantel,” Georgina said, rather nicely for her. “I think it’s important for us not to rule out anything. And we can take a closer look at the letter when we get to Angela’s room. I’d like to try to collect some of this gold dust and see what it’s made of.”
“You can’t,” Angela said. “I mean, it’s uncollectible. You can’t keep the dust in your hand. It just slips away. I tried it.”
“Well, now I would like to try it,” Georgina replied, in such a proud, nasty tone—as if Angela’s try could not be trusted while hers was of first importance—that Angela reached protectively for the letter inside her vest.
“You can’t,” she said. “I’m the only one who can touch this letter.”
“Angela!” Georgina came to a halt. “Don’t be stupid!”
“I’m not stupid,” Angela said, and the dark red flush that always showed when she was angry began to color her face. “I’m the owner of this letter. What I say is what we do.”
“Angela!”
Angela had started walking again. “What I say is what we do!” she yelled back over her shoulder to Georgina. “Or nobody is even coming into my house!”
“Okay, okay.” Georgina ran to catch up. “I’m sorry really. I didn’t know you felt that way about it. Don’t get so mad. I would never touch the letter if you didn’t want me to. But you’ve got to let me come and look at that mantelpiece.”
“Well, all right,” said Angela, walking steadily along. “Sometimes you get so bossy.”
“I’m sorry!”
During all this, Poco had kept walking. She was a good distance ahead by now, moving dreamily along the sidewalk on her elf-tiny feet. There was something rather otherworldly about Poco. She often acted like a person on another wavelength. She could look right at you and not hear a word you were saying. But then, out of the blue, she’d make some amazing remark that showed she was a hundred miles ahead of where you thought.
This is exactly what Poco did now.
“Wait! Wait for us!” Georgina yelled to her, but the little figure in front chugged ahead, oblivious to all. The friends had to run like Olympic racers to catch up. And when they did, and were puffing and panting by her side, Poco looked over at them with the sweetest expression and said, “I don’t know why you’re bothering with that mantelpiece. There won’t be any clues there. What you should look for is the ink.”
“The ink?” exclaimed Angela and Georgina together in astonishment.
“Yes,” said Poco. “If someone in Angela’s family wrote the letter, they probably wrote it there in the house. That means the bottle of purple ink would be around somewhere—say, in her mother’s desk or her brother’s room. If you found it, you’d know the letter was a fake. But if you didn’t …”
“That’s right!” breathed Georgina. “That’s exactly right.” She gazed at Poco suspiciously. “How did you figure this out? You were thinking about cats the last we knew.”
Poco shrugged and looked away. A second later she had caught sight of a pair of squirrels up a tree and had stopped and begun a conversation with them. This was so embarrassing to Angela and Georgina, who did not like to be seen doing crazy things in public places, that they slunk on by her and made for Angela’s house.
“Well, you two bushy-tails certainly look happy with yourselves,” they heard Poco’s voice say cheerfully, before they could get out of earshot. “What’s going on up there in the squirrel world? What did you say? Come on down where I can hear you better.”
“Good grief!” moaned Georgina. “Do you think she’ll ever get over it?”
When Poco finished talking to the squirrels in the tree, she went to Angela’s house and started up a conversation with Angela’s Siamese, whose name was Juliette. And they had gone quite a distance—as far as tuna fish, in fact, which Juliette was very fond of, while Poco had to admit she couldn’t stand even the smell—when Georgina and Angela came to join them in the living room. The two girls had searched the whole house and turned up nothing.
“Not only no purple ink, but no ink, period,” Georgina said, walking over to the mantelpiece and staring at it disgustedly. Poco had been right. There were no clues there.
“And no purple pens and no purple paints!” Angela said excitedly. “No strange, stiff paper or thin gold thread, either!”
“And no gold dust, naturally.” Georgina turned around to face them. “We went through every drawer and every cupboard and every closet. Mrs. Harrall wanted to know what we were looking for, so I told her I’d lost my ring.” Having said this, she glanced suddenly at her left hand and snatched off the little moonstone ring she always wore. She shoved the ring into her jeans pocket and glanced up innocently.
“Well, Juliette knows nothing about it,” Poco said with assurance. “We’ve been over it several times. She believes it’s an outside job.”
“A what?” Georgina and Angela smothered laughs.
“That someone, or some force outside the house, wrote the letter. And her cat instinct tells her it’s an unusual being, someone who might be able to see us even though we can’t see them.”
Angela shivered and gazed around.
“Pilaria!” she whispered. “Maybe it really is the fairy Pilaria, of the Kingdom of the Faeries, Eighth Tribe, Fourth Earth …” She paused and listened, as if she’d heard something.
“… Under the Sun-Star Aravan. Oh, come on!” Georgina exclaimed. “It’s all so fishy.”
“That may sound bad to you, George,” Poco couldn’t help putting in, “but to Juliette—” Georgina let out a howl and tossed her head back and forth, as if Poco had finally driven her over the edge.
A door slammed somewhere farther back in the house. Very soon, loud, angry footsteps could be heard coming down the hall. The figure of Angela’s father loomed in the living room doorway.
“What is all this silliness that’s been going on all morning!” he shouted. “I can’t stand it anymore!”
There was a terrible silence. The three friends froze in their tracks. Juliette tried to escape under a table.
“I-I-I’m sorry, Daddy,” Angela finally managed to say. “We didn’t know we were bothering you.”
Mr. Harrall lowered his head and sighed. Then he looked at them through his little reading glasses and took three tired steps into the room. He was not a young father, not as young as Georgina’s father or Poco’s by any means. Now, with his scowling face, he seemed fearfully old. And threatening. The girls shrank away from him.
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” he said at last. His gaze became sad, suddenly. “I didn’t mean to shout. What I meant to do was to ask you, Angela, if you would mind sending your friends home now. I have a little more work to finish this morning. Then I thought the two of us could go out somewhere and …” Mr. Harrall stopped and considered. “And do something,” he ended lamely.
“Like what?” asked Angela in a doubtful voice.
“Well, I don’t know. Something. Your mother will be busy this afternoon and I said I would …” His voice trailed off.
Angela sighed and stood up. “Couldn’t I just go over to George’s house?” she said. “We’re working on a project. Then we wouldn’t bother you anymore and you could get some more work done this afternoon.”
Mr. Harrall shook his head. “No, I promised your mother I’d take care of you. It’s all settled, so if you’ll just tell your friends”—he peered at Poco as if she were an unfami
liar bug that had somehow crawled up on the couch—“to go home. Right now!” he concluded.
“Okay,” Angela said. “Is it all right if I walk them partway? Then I’ll come back.”
“Fine, fine,” her father said. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Okay,” replied Angela, and the friends headed with solemn faces for the Harralls’ front door.
Chapter Three
GEORGINA AND POCO HAD run into Angela’s father before, so they were not particularly surprised by the scene that ended their investigation of Angela’s house. Mr. Harrall was a “nice man” (according to Georgina’s mother) and a “big gun in the business world” (Poco’s dad), but he was not the sort of father who hung around with children, or cared to know them very well.
Loud noises upset him, and he didn’t like the downstairs television going while he was at home. Everyone knew it was because he had to work so hard. He left the house early in the morning and returned late at night, even on weekends. In fact, it had been rather a shock to find him there at all that morning.
“Can you come over tomorrow afternoon?” Georgina asked Angela on her way home. “I know you’ll have to check with your mom, but maybe your dad will have work or something.”
“I’ll see,” Angela replied. “I’m sorry he got so mad. He’s usually not that bad, but he’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Georgina said. “My dad gets really terrible sometimes. It’s something we just have to live with, I guess.”
“I guess.” Angela came to a halt. “Poco! What are you doing?”
“I think I saw a rabbit go in this bush.”
“Well, you can’t just lie down on your stomach in the middle of the sidewalk to look!” Georgina cried. “Good grief! You’re embarrassing us to death. Here comes a boy from school, too!”
“I’m sorry if I’m embarrassing you, George,” Poco said in a voice muffled by leaves. “I just want to find out if—”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Angela told Georgina quickly. “I’d better get back for lunch.” She could foresee a long and difficult struggle coming up. When Poco got onto rabbits, she could be absolutely impossible.
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