by Pete Hautman
“I summon you from dreamland with my magic raven feather,” she said.
Stuey scratched his nose and lifted his head. Elly was wearing a bright-pink tank top and even brighter green shorts. The clash of colors made his eyes sizzle.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Something about dead trees.”
“Oh.” He felt a little fuzzy. Maybe he had been sleeping.
“I looked out my window and saw you. At first I thought you were the Mushroom Man.”
“Who’s that?” Stuey asked.
“He’s very mysterious. I call him the Mushroom Man because I saw him in the woods picking mushrooms. I hope he didn’t eat them because they could be poisonous. And then I came out here and saw the purple cast on your arm so I knew it was you and not the Mushroom Man so I didn’t call the police or anything.”
“It’s not a cast. It’s a splint. I get to take it off tomorrow.”
“How did you get so dirty?”
“I walked across the woods,” Stuey said.
“I walk in the woods all the time but I never get all muddy. You must’ve gone in the swamp. Why didn’t you stay on the paths? Did you see any alligators?”
“There aren’t any alligators here.”
“You never know. I saw a giant snapping turtle once. It was as big as a car.”
“It was not.”
“Well, a toy car. A really big toy car.”
Stuey sat up. He felt better — not so dizzy, but still really tired — and his wrist was throbbing.
“I brought you a present.” He took the fox picture from his backpack and handed it to her. “It’s a fox.”
Elly straightened the somewhat wrinkled sheet of paper and examined the fox.
“That’s a good fox. I didn’t know you could draw.”
Stuey flushed with pleasure. “I’m pretty good at it,” he said. “My mom’s an artist. She paints pictures of birds and stuff for greeting cards.”
“I know how to make French toast,” Elly said.
“I went to my secret place,” he said.
“The secret place you won’t tell me about?”
Stuey nodded. “Sometime I’ll show you.”
“My secret is a place too,” Elly said. “It’s called the Castle Rose.”
“Is it a real castle?”
Elly nodded seriously. “It’s a long ways away. In an enchanted forest.”
Stuey pretended to believe her.
“I’m wearing the compass you gave me.” He showed her how he had tied it to the string around his neck.
“It’s not a compass. It’s a magic amulet,” she said. “It brought you here.”
“Elly Rose!” Mrs. Frankel came out of the house. She was wearing a blue dress with white and black polka dots. “What are you — oh! Is that the Becker boy?”
Stuey nodded and stood up. The blood seemed to rush out of his head; he almost fell over but caught himself.
“Why, you’re covered with mud, sweetie!”
“He walked all the way here through the woods,” Elly said.
“Look at him! He’s pale as a ghost!” She put her hands on his shoulders and bent down and looked in his eyes. “Are you feeling all right, sugar?”
“He made me a picture of a fox,” Elly said.
“I’m just sort of tired.” Stuey heard his own voice as if it was coming from far away.
“I’m calling your mother.”
Stuey’s mom was really mad. As soon as they got in the car she launched into him.
“What on earth were you thinking! Traipsing off through the woods when you’re supposed to be convalescing!”
Stuey had never heard the word convalescing, but he got the idea.
“The doctor said I was okay,” he said.
“You scared poor Maddy Frankel half to death. You know she almost called an ambulance?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stuey . . .” His mom’s voice softened. “You have to give yourself time to recover. You had a serious concussion.”
“I just got kind of tired is all.”
“Well, I don’t want you in that woods for at least another week, you hear me?”
“Okay.” He was too tired to argue.
That night after dinner, Elly Rose called.
“I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she said.
“I’m okay. Except my mom’s kind of mad. She says I’m still convalescing.”
“I put the fox on my wall.”
That made Stuey feel warm inside. “I can draw horses too.”
“I’m getting a horse. My dad says I can’t have one because we don’t have room, but I’m getting one anyways. White with brown spots. I already have a name for him. Spotster.”
“My mom says I have to stay home for a whole week.”
“You know what you should do? You should invite me over.”
“Okay.”
“I can get my mom to drive me over tomorrow. She didn’t like it when I rode my bike.”
“I thought you were free-range.”
“I am, but she says two miles is too far.”
After they hung up he went to find his mom. She was in her studio working on a painting of a crow. She’d been working on the same painting for days.
“How come you’re still doing the crow?” Stuey asked.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She set aside her brush. “I just can’t seem to get the feathers right.”
“Can Elly Rose come over tomorrow?”
“I suppose that would be all right. I’ll call Maddy Frankel and make sure it’s okay with her.”
“Can I have some paper to draw on?”
“Of course.” She opened a sketchpad and carefully tore out a sheet of white drawing paper. “What are you going to draw?”
“A horse with brown spots.”
Elly Rose and her mother showed up the next day at noon. Stuey and his mom met them on the front walk. Elly was carrying a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
Mrs. Frankel buried her fingers in Stuey’s hair and told him how much better he looked. After a bit more fussing over him, she looked around the house and told Stuey’s mom how charming and unusual it was.
“It’s been in my family for three generations,” his mom said. “My grandfather built it.”
“Really! My grandparents were originally from here! But I grew up in New York. We just moved back. I wonder if our grandparents were acquainted, back in the day.”
The two women went inside, both talking at once.
Stuey said, “Is your mom going to stay?”
“Once she starts talking she kind of doesn’t stop,” Elly said. “You have a big house.”
Stuey pointed up at the third floor. “That’s my room up on top. It’s the only bedroom on the third floor. Gramps’s room was right under mine, the one with the shades drawn.”
“Is it spooky?”
“Not really. But we have a lot of room.”
“Do you want a cookie? I made them myself. Mom helped.”
“Let’s go to the orchard. There’s a picnic table there.”
“We can have a cookie picnic,” Elly said. They walked around the house and back to the orchard. Elly stopped at the gravestone.
“Is it real?” she asked.
“It’s my grandpa’s. He’s buried here.”
“That’s definitely spooky. We have a gravestone in our basement, but it’s made out of plastic. My dad puts it out on Halloween.” She looked up. “You sure have a lot of apple trees!”
“My grandpa planted them,” Stuey said. “They’re all different kinds of apples, only most of them get kind of wormy. We don’t believe in spraying. They’re organic.”
“We have a cherry tree. My mom is going to make cherry pie. We have a rhubarb plant. She made rhubarb pie. It was kind of yucky.”
They sat at the picnic table and ate cookies until there were only two left.
“We should
save those for our moms,” Elly said. She stood up and looked toward the back of the orchard. “You have a really big yard.”
“It’s ten acres,” Stuey said. “Only part of it is grass though — if you keep going through the orchard you get into the woods.”
“I’m bored,” Elly said.
“Do you want to bring the cookies to our moms?”
“No. They’re even boring-er.”
Stuey tried to think of something not boring. He remembered the golf green in the poplars.
“You want to see the fairy circle?”
That got her attention.
He said, “I mean, I’ve never actually seen a fairy there, but it’s kind of cool.”
“Where is it?”
“In the poplar grove.”
“Is it far? My mom says I’m supposed to stay here.”
“That’s boring,” Stuey said with a grin.
Elly grinned back and looked toward the house. “They’ll be in there talking forever.”
“Let’s go.”
They crossed the meadow and slipped through the ring of poplars to the circle of creeping bent. Elly had a peculiar expression on her face. Stuey was afraid she was going to say it was boring, but she sank to her knees and ran her hands over the smooth green surface, then looked up at him, eyes wide with wonder.
“Do you think the fairies are watching us?” she asked.
“For sure.”
“I wish I had fairies at Castle Rose but I only have elves.”
“How big are elves?”
“Well, they’re invisible so it’s hard to say. Probably the same size as Grimpus.”
“Grimpus?”
“My cat.”
“Oh yeah. Your one-eyed cat that doesn’t like people.”
“Except for me. I think he might be part elf because sometimes he’s invisible too.”
“Same with the fairies. Actually, this is just what’s left of an old golf green. The whole woods — everything between your house and my house — used to be a golf course. My great-grandfather built it, but then when he died my great-grandmother had to sell it.”
Elly gave him a look. “You’re making that up,” she said.
“I’m not. It’s true. And when I grow up I’m going to make a lot of money and buy the woods back again.”
“How?”
“I’ll be a bootlegger.” He liked the way Elly was staring at him. She didn’t speak for a few seconds, which was unusual. “Maybe a murderer too,” he added.
“Why did your great-grandma sell the golf course?”
“It was haunted.”
Elly Rose grinned and nodded. “With fairies and ogres?”
“I’m not sure about fairies and ogres,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure there are ghosts.”
When they got back, their moms were in the orchard standing by the picnic table.
“Where have you been!” Stuey’s mom said.
“Just in the meadow,” Stuey said. It was sort of true; they had just crossed the meadow.
His mom gave him a suspicious look. “I was afraid you’d gone off exploring.”
“We saved you two cookies,” Elly said.
Mrs. Frankel looked sideways at Stuey’s mom and said, “I think it’s time for us to leave, Elly.”
“But we just got here!” Elly said.
“It’s time to go.” There was something weird about the way she said it. And Stuey’s mom seemed really stiff, with her arms crossed.
“Just a minute,” Stuey said. “I have something for you.” He ran to his room and grabbed the picture he’d made. Back outside, Elly and her mom were already in their car. Stuey handed Elly the picture through the car window.
“It’s Spotster,” he said.
“This is the most boring-est boring week ever,” Stuey said to Elly Rose, using her favorite word.
“What boring thing are you doing?” she asked.
“Talking to you on the phone.”
“I mean except for that.”
“TV, reading, games, drawing. I’m making you another picture.”
“What of?”
“It’s a surprise.” He was drawing a picture of her cat, Grimpus. He had never seen Grimpus, but he figured one-eyed gray cats all looked pretty much the same, especially the invisible ones.
“My mom doesn’t want to drive me over there anymore, and she won’t let me ride my bike. She’s being weird.”
“Yeah, mine too. She said your mom was dredging up ancient history.”
“Dredging?”
“Yeah. She said sometimes when bad things happen it takes forever for people to get over it.”
“So they’re mad about something that happened a long time ago?”
“I guess. Which is weird because you guys just moved here. But we’re still friends, right?”
“Best friends,” Elly Rose said.
Saturday morning, Stuey’s mom finally consented to let him go play in the woods.
“But not too far,” she said. “I don’t want you trekking all the way to the Frankels’ again. And no swinging from vines.”
“I promise,” he said. All he really wanted to do was go back to the deadfall. He threw a juice box and an orange in his backpack, put the compass around his neck, and headed off through the orchard. The apples were only the size of walnuts, but he picked one anyway. If Elly Rose could eat an acorn, he could eat a green apple. He gnawed on the bitter, sour flesh as he crossed the meadow.
The tall grasses were sagging with dew; by the time he reached the poplars his jeans were soaked from the knees down, but he didn’t mind. As he approached the oak knoll he tried to be as quiet as possible. He had once seen a flock of wild turkeys there eating acorns. Halfway up the hill he stopped and listened for their distinctive soft clucks.
Instead he heard someone humming.
Stuey remained perfectly still. He couldn’t tell what the song was, and maybe it wasn’t really a song at all. It sounded like da-dee-dah-dah, dah-dee-dah over and over again. Stuey crept forward until he could see the top of the hill. At first he saw nothing but trees — then one of them moved.
It wasn’t a tree. It was a man. A man with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing camouflage that looked like tree bark.
Stuey crouched behind a log. The man was walking slowly in a circle, humming his little tune. He stopped and bent over. Stuey saw the flash of a knife blade. The man cut something on the ground, put it in a cloth bag hanging from his shoulder, and continued circling. Da-dee-dah-dah . . . A few steps later he stopped and bent over again. He held up his prize. This time Stuey could see it clearly — a bright-yellow mushroom.
The Mushroom Man! Stuey’s heart was pounding so hard he was afraid the man would hear it. Looking down, he saw several of the yellow mushrooms on the ground next to him. The Mushroom Man would be coming his way soon.
Slowly, as quietly as possible, he crawled backward down the hill until the Mushroom Man was out of sight. He wanted to run home and call Elly to tell her what he’d seen. But he also wanted to go to the deadfall, because that was what he’d set out to do. He could call Elly later.
He took out his compass. He could head northeast from the cedars, then angle south once he was safely past the Mushroom Man. It was an unfamiliar route, but he was pretty sure he’d be able to find the deadfall eventually.
It took longer than he expected. He had to retrace his steps a few times to avoid a patch of nettles and a shoe-sucking bog, and got so tangled in a buckthorn grove he thought he’d never get out. And then he had to run to escape a cloud of biting gnats. Finally — scratched, sweaty, muddy, itchy, and exhausted — he saw a familiar crown of dead branches.
He took off his pack and dragged it with him into the cool, quiet interior.
“Welcome.”
Stuey’s heart stopped. He looked toward the sound of the voice, at a small figure tucked into the smallest nook.
“Welcome, brave knight, to Castle Rose.”
“How d
id you find me?” Elly wriggled out of her nook.
Stuey was speechless.
Elly jumped up on the slab and spread her arms. “I told you I had a castle! This is where my throne will go. And my dragon will perch on the roof. You’re the first person ever to find it. I must’ve summoned you here with my magic.”
Stuey said, “I . . .”
“Speak, brave knight! Your queen commands!”
Stuey said, “This is my secret place.”
Elly tipped her head. “Yours?”
He nodded.
“No,” she said with utter certainty. “This is Castle Rose.”
“Well, I was here first.”
“No you weren’t.”
They stared at each other, neither of them speaking for what felt like a long time. Finally, Elly Rose sat down on the edge of the slab.
“So we have the same secret place?” she said. “No more secrets?”
“I guess — except this isn’t a castle. It’s more like a . . . like a ship. I mean, it moves.”
“Moves where?”
“I don’t know. It always comes back to the same place. And sometimes I hear stuff, like music and voices.”
“Me too.” Elly nodded several times. “Voices arguing, but they don’t make any sense. It’s kind of spooky.”
Stuey sat down next to her. “You know what? Maybe it’s a ship and a castle. A castle that moves!”
“I read a book about that. I read lots of books. I read one about a girl who travels through time, and a book about a girl that lives in a cave, and one about a little dog that turns into a wolf.”
“My grandpa wrote a book,” Stuey said. “It’s called the Book of Secrets. Nobody has ever read it.”
“If somebody read it, it wouldn’t be a book of secrets anymore.”
“I mostly like books with pictures. I like to draw.”
“We can hang pictures here. It’ll be like our own secret moving castle, with pictures. This can be our meeting place while our moms are mad at each other.”
“I don’t get how come they’re mad.”
“I asked my mom. She said some people don’t like Jews.”
Stuey was confused. “But . . . we’re not Jewish,” he said.
“We’re Jewish, silly.”
