Gold Dust Letters

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  That night during the banquet, Angela stared and stared at him. Before her eyes, he turned younger, and happier, and gentler, and kinder, and more open and interesting in every way. Though she could not completely trust these changes yet, she began to want to find out more about him. He began to seem like the sort of person another person might be friends with.

  Only about the gold dust did he refuse to explain. He refused many more times that night—until the friends’ eyes began to droop, and they agreed, at last, to go to bed. (How they hated to end the banquet, though. It was as real as any fairy’s ever was, they said.)

  He refused the next morning when, changed back into Mr. Harrall in his business suit, he greeted them all at breakfast.

  “Well! What a night you girls had!” he boomed out when they arrived, rather late, in the kitchen. He winked at Angela and handed Georgina a glass of orange juice.

  Mrs. Harrall, who was cooking pancakes at the stove, looked around in surprise.

  “Were the girls still up when you got home?” she asked him. “I forgot to tell them you were coming back from South America earlier than expected. Thank you,” she added, a bit severely, “for calling and letting me know your plans ahead of time. For once.”

  Angela and Georgina saw Mr. Harrall’s jaw tighten. He was about to say something back when Poco sat down next to him with a plate of pancakes. Catching his eye, she drew a pair of white gloves from her pocket and put them on.

  “I’ve heard that South America is where a lot of vampire bats hang out,” Poco said, picking up her fork. “Did you happen to see any when you were there?”

  “Not a single one. I’m sorry,” Mr. Harrall answered, with a pleased expression. He started to butter his pancakes. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Vampires never show themselves to businessmen. They have no interest in such people.”

  “I suppose it’s because businessmen are too tough.” Georgina said, sitting down on Mr. Harrall’s other side and taking out her gloves. “The vampires have trouble getting through to their blood.”

  “That is very likely,” Mr. Harrall said, smiling grimly.

  Angela brought her plate to the table and drew up a chair across from her father. She took out a pair of white gloves and put them on, too.

  “There are some people who say that if a businessman has a certain kind of dust,” she began, “a certain, special kind of gold dust, it softens him up a lot. Then he has to watch out for vampires like everybody else.”

  Mr. Harrall cleared his throat. “That may be,” he replied, “but I did not have such dust on my trip. And I don’t have any now. But I do have some shells, and these stones with holes in them, that you might be interested in.” He reached into his suit pocket and brought out several handfuls of things, which he placed in the middle of the table. “You forgot them and, who knows, they might come in handy.”

  “Oh yes!” The friends leaned over the pile to choose the ones they knew to be theirs.

  Mrs. Harrall had turned all the way around from the stove by this time. She was staring at the gloves, and at the shells and stones, and at everyone in confusion.

  “What is going on this morning!” she exclaimed. “I think I’ve missed something.”

  She turned off the stove and sat down at the table, and demanded to know what had happened last night. (“Because I can see something did!” she said.) So the three friends chimed in and told her about Pilaria, and the letters, and the extraordinary fairy banquet. They explained what fairy handshakes were, and how to protect yourself against spells. Angela’s mother was astonished. She looked at Angela’s father with disbelieving eyes.

  “You did all this?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Magic letters on the mantelpiece? It sounds so unlike you.”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “And a banquet? You must have cleaned up after yourself. There wasn’t a fork or a plate out of place when I came down this morning.”

  “There weren’t any forks or plates used,” Angela put in quickly. “Everything was made or specially invented.”

  “Well, I am completely amazed,” Mrs. Harrall said to Mr. Harrall, a frown gathering on her brow. “I never would have thought you had time for such things. You certainly never had time before.”

  “So it seemed,” Mr. Harrall replied, “but I found some.” He glanced unhappily across the table at his wife. “I found some time and magic I didn’t know I had.”

  Then, though it was Saturday, he pushed back his chair and went off to work. The friends were relieved to see him go. His face had turned stiff and angry again. Only after the back door had slammed behind him, and Angela’s mother had stood abruptly and gone upstairs, did the three girls remember the really important thing. There was still—still!—no explanation for the gold dust.

  A whole week passed before the group could meet alone again. The sleepover had been magical and wonderful, but now real life rose up like a mighty river and swept everyone and everything into its stream.

  School took a great deal of concentration. And after school, Poco had math tutoring, or Georgina had to visit the dentist, or Angela was picked up by her mother to go shopping. Though these distractions did not stop the friends from thinking, they had no chance for conversation with each other.

  So it was with a sense of time passing and mysteries waiting that they gathered in Georgina’s backyard on a chilly Saturday morning the next weekend. There were a hundred things to talk about. If only the wind were not so cold!

  “I am beginning to think,” said Georgina with a shiver, “that, even though it’s impossible, Angela’s father must be telling the truth. He really doesn’t seem to know anything about the gold dust.”

  Angela raised her head. They were sitting in a sort of huddle on the grass. “I forgot to tell you. It’s stopped,” she said. “No dust comes out of the letters anymore. I’ve opened each one of them, many times. The writing is the same, but there’s nothing inside.” Her face appeared thinner and whiter than usual. She leaned back and gazed bleakly at the sky.

  “Are you all right?” Poco asked her. “You look a little down.”

  Georgina scowled. “Let’s stick to the issues, okay?” she snapped. “Our investigation is almost finished. There’s just this last maddening piece that won’t fit into the puzzle. I’m sure there’s an answer. What else has been going on over at your house lately?” she asked Angela. “Any more lights or strange things happening?”

  “No.” Angela took her hands out of her pockets and rolled over heavily onto her stomach. “My father moved out. He’s getting an apartment. Not far from here. Pretty close, really. I get to go and visit him next weekend.”

  “Oh, Angela. That’s terrible!” Poco put her arm around Angela’s shoulders. Georgina looked shaken.

  “Did your parents have a fight?” she asked. “They didn’t seem that bad when we were there.”

  Angela shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Well, what happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, something must have happened,” Georgina said. “Otherwise they would still be together.”

  “It’s not explainable.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not explainable? Everything’s explainable!”

  “George!” cried Poco.

  Angela looked at Georgina levelly “My mom’s been a lot happier since my dad left,” she said. “She doesn’t even mind that my brother might go to live with him for a while. She says we’re all reasonable people and can work it out.”

  “Do you think you will?” Georgina asked.

  “I don’t know.” Angela pulled some blades of grass out of the lawn. “My dad is being really nice. We’ve been getting friendlier and friendlier. I might even go to South America with him on a business trip sometime. He says he wants to show me a real vampire bat.”

  The friends laughed.

  “Well, everybody knows that your mom is the best mother,” Poco said. “At least you
don’t have to be mad at anyone.”

  Angela reached out and yanked up a whole tuft of grass. “But I am,” she said in a low, trembling voice. “At both of them. Why did they have to wreck our family?” Tears dropped suddenly down her cheeks.

  Poco hugged her again. “You’ve still got us,” she whispered. “We’ll always be your friends.”

  Georgina knotted her fist. “It’s like that stupid gold dust,” she said angrily to Angela. “It makes me so mad I feel like crying, too. How could anything like that happen? We all saw it. We know it was real. But it’s unexplainable. There’s no way the dust could have got in the letters.”

  “Oh, that’s easy.” Angela sniffed. “That was magic.”

  Poco nodded. “I think the gold dust was one of those incredible pieces of real magic that rise up out of the unknown,” she said. “And now we’re going to start wondering what we really saw. Or people will say we’re crazy. Or we’ll grow up like Angela’s dad and forget everything.”

  “Not me,” Georgina said. “I’ll never forget.”

  “Me, either,” said Poco and Angela together.

  They all looked fiercely at one another.

  “Maybe the unknown is not so unusual,” Georgina continued after a moment. “Maybe there are a lot of unexplainable things that happen every day, only people don’t usually notice. You know, because everyone is working nonstop and going through hard times. I was thinking that we might want to start a special operation.”

  “What kind of operation?” Poco asked.

  “Investigating,” Georgina said. “We could be secret investigators of unexplainable things.”

  “Investigators of the unknown!” Angela said, sitting up.

  “Right! I would like to find out more about invisibles, for instance,” Georgina declared. “If the gold dust was real, that means there must have been other powers at work in your house that we didn’t see. Maybe your dad was getting some help.”

  “Maybe,” Angela said.

  “And we never did get the full story on Juliette. She could be at the bottom of everything.”

  “That’s true,” Poco said. “Juliette has a most maddening way of talking in circles. It’s hard to tell where she begins from where she ends. Of course, that is nothing compared to spiders, who can get you tied up in complete knots. Or circus ponies …”

  Angela shot a warning glance at Georgina, who immediately raised both hands to her mouth and called through them.

  “All Investigators of the Unknown will please report to the Rusks’ kitchen immediately for popcorn and hot chocolate,” she announced in a long bellow, “before we freeze out here and turn into invisibles ourselves!”

  “Okay! Let’s go!” cried Angela, jumping up.

  “Or ringworms,” Poco was continuing on. “Not that I have ever talked to a ringworm, but I’ve read that they—”

  She was grabbed by two pairs of hands, hoisted to her feet, and hauled away across the lawn.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Investigators of the Unknown series

  One

  GEORGINA RUSK AND POCO Lambert were shocked when their friend Angela Harrall told them the news. She had only just found out herself, from her mother at breakfast that very Saturday morning.

  “You’re moving!” Georgina screeched. They were all up in her room, sitting on the bed. “But Angela, how can you? What will you do without us!

  “I suppose I’ll think of something,” Angela replied with a little sniff. “I won’t just dry up and blow away, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That is what I mean!” Georgina couldn’t help saying. “We are the three best friends in the entire universe!”

  It was true. All that fall they had been cosmic friends. They had spent afternoons doing their homework at one another’s houses and Friday nights going to the movies. They had played slapjack in Poco’s kitchen and practiced calligraphy in Angela’s with her father’s special pen.

  They had pooled their money to buy a bottle of rather expensive blue nail polish and painted their fingernails and toes. Afterward, since he seemed to be looking on so eagerly from his cage, Poco had painted Edward’s whiskers. He was Georgina’s hamster.

  “Edward has always secretly wished for blue whiskers,” Poco explained. “You know, like Bluebeard the Pirate? Bluebeard is his hero. He told me.”

  “Bluebeard the Pirate! Edward?” cried Georgina, who did not believe in pets having conversations with people. She frowned at Poco. “Why is it that this hamster only speaks to you? When there are so many other persons around he could speak to? Including me, his owner?”

  “I’m sorry, George, but I have no control over these things,” Poco had replied in an insulted voice. “I’ll mention it to Edward the next time we talk.”

  Cosmic as they were, the friends did not always get along. They were separate people with separate views of the world, so what could one expect? About the main things, though, they tended to agree, and that fall, more than anything else, they had agreed on the existence of magic.

  Magic. The word made their eyes darken and grow watchful. This was not the toy store variety sold in boxes. Real magic appeared where it was least expected, they knew, and then evaporated like mist before the hand could grasp it. It hid out in the ordinary and often managed to explain itself in ways that sounded completely reasonable. To catch magic at work, you had to be patient. You had to keep a sharp eye and a trusting mind. Only then would clues begin to show up—a puff of gold dust, strange lights in the hall—evidence that other powers, somewhere, were alive. Angela’s gold dust letters had revealed many things. The friends had been on the verge of discovering more when …

  “Angela Harrall, I order you to stay!” Georgina yelled, stamping her foot so hard that Edward was rattled awake in his cage. He poked his blue whiskers out the front of his little house and stared at them with worried black eyes.

  Poco said nothing. She dropped down on Georgina’s bed and curled into a ball, like one of those furry caterpillars found along the roadside at that time of the year.

  “Poco! For goodness’ sake. Get up and do something!” Georgina cried. “Angela is going to South America.”

  “To Mexico,” Angela said, looking a bit shaken herself. “My father needs to be near his business there. My brother, Martin, is going, too. We’ll be back in a year.”

  “A year!” Georgina clenched her fists. “What about your mother?”

  “Oh, she’s decided to move to California for a while. She’s thinking of going to law school.”

  Everyone knew that Angela’s parents didn’t live together anymore, though they weren’t yet actually divorced.

  “My mom will come and visit us a lot, and we’ll fly up and visit her,” Angela went on bravely. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll go to a school where I’ll learn to speak Spanish.”

  This was too much for Georgina. With a wild leap, she hurled herself onto the bed beside Poco. “Spanish!” she shrieked. “But what about us?

  Poco had begun to uncurl by this time. She sat up and turned to Angela with a serious expression on her face.

  “What is going to happen to Juliette?” she asked. Juliette, the Harrall family’s big Siamese cat, was a special friend of hers.

  “I don’t know.” Angela shrugged. “We haven’t talked about it.”

  “She won’t like Mexico,” Poco said. “Too hot. And the mice have tropical diseases.”

  “Maybe she should stay here, then.”

  “I think she should.” Poco raised her tiny eyebrows. “If she would like a place to stay, my house is available.”

  “I’ll ask my mother,” Angela answered. “It sounds like a good idea.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” screamed Georgina, who was not one to make changes without a great deal of fuss. “It sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Juliette will run away! Also, who will take care of your house? And you can’t just drop out of school. The teachers will be furious after all the time they’v
e already wasted on you.”

  Angela, who had been gazing fondly at Georgina during most of this tirade, narrowed her eyes when it came to the part about the teachers. A dark red flush appeared on her cheeks.

  “Please don’t worry, George,” she replied through thin lips. “Everything will be taken care of. Miss Bone is going to look after our house.”

  “Miss Bone! Who is she? We’ve never even met her, have we?”

  “She will be there whether you’ve met her or not,” Angela said. “And I will be in Mexico, so that’s the end of that!”

  Impossible as it seemed, Angela and her family were gone less than a month later. Their clothes were packed, their suitcases were shipped off, and a black limousine came and rushed them away to the airport.

  After a brief flurry of gardeners and cleaning people, the Harrall residence was deserted. The big house was closed up. Curtains were drawn. Lights burned in odd places, even during the day. Poco and Georgina couldn’t help going by on their walks home from school.

  As the days passed, a queer emptiness took hold of the yard. The trees looked barer, the bushes more forlorn. Even the little creatures that come and go so busily around a normal, lived-in house seemed, one by one, to disappear.

  There were no squirrels in the trees, Poco noticed after the second week. Few birds came to roost on the house’s broad roof. The mouse-sized moles that had tunneled so relentlessly into the front lawn and driven poor Mrs. Harrall to distraction went away. A family of rabbits nesting in one of the side hedges moved out.

  The reasonable explanation for these disappearances was certainly that winter had come. It was November. Most birds had flown south. Many animals were digging down into the earth or building homes in more protected places. Poco knew this, and yet …

  “No dogs walk through the yard anymore,” she pointed out to Georgina one day. “The fat groundhog is gone from under the apple tree. I have the strangest feeling that Angela’s house is being avoided.”