by MJ Ware
* * *
Moonlight lit the hallway as Jinnie eased her door open and peered toward Grandma’s room. They’d tried to run away the last two nights, but Bryan kept falling asleep. Uncle Martin’s limo would be arriving in the morning, so she’d made her brother drink three cokes this time.
He started jumping on the bed, the battered headboard banging against the wall.
"Bryan!" She quickly closed the door, leaping onto the mattress to drag him down. "Stop the noise!"
He buzzed in slow circles around the room. "Do we know where we’re going yet?" His blond hair stood up in every direction, eyes bright with caffeine.
"The museum." Her fifth grade teacher had read a book to them, Mixed-Up Files something or another, and it gave her the idea. A brother and sister had lived in a museum for weeks.
Bryan froze in place. "Whoa. We going to sleep there too?"
"Maybe." Jinnie clutched her backpack, stuffed with her camera and photographs and a few clothes. She really had no idea, but that wasn’t going to stop her. "Now let’s go."
Bryan followed closely with exaggerated marching steps, dragging his suitcase along the floor.
"Can’t you pick that up?" she asked, wincing at every bump and scrape.
"It’s too heavy."
Jinnie sighed and grasped the handle. "Here, let’s trade." She passed him her backpack.
She opened the door to the bedroom, checking the hallway again. Still silent and dark.
They crept toward the living room, Jinnie straining under the weight of the suitcase. Bryan resumed marching, his sneakers thudding on the wood floor.
"Stop!" she hissed.
They paused again, listening for sounds of Grandma Wishner in her room. Jinnie moved forward, sweat beading across the face, her back already aching. She’d have to set the suitcase down soon.
The clock in the living room suddenly chimed. She hefted the bag against her thigh and wobbled forward. "Hurry, we can get out the door while there’s noise."
Bryan started marching again, but Jinnie didn’t have time to make him stop. Clearly three cokes had been way too much.
They crossed the living room, and Bryan rammed into a side table.
Jinnie didn’t dare say anything. Six chimes, only five to go.
Bryan darted around the table, knees still high. Just go, she thought. Come on.
The door creaked lightly as it opened into the night. "Get through!" she whispered.
Bryan slipped outside, and Jinnie stepped onto the porch, pulling the door closed.
"We made it!" Bryan said, his face in shadow. He started darting up and down the front steps.
Jinnie lurched forward with the bag. They couldn’t walk too far with this overloaded suitcase. "Please calm down. What do you have in this thing?"
"Electronics. Tools. Books." Bryan peered out into the street.
"What are the books for?" Jinnie didn’t have much use for those. She’d pretty much given up on reading in second grade when she got that stupid label. Learning disabled. Whatever.
"I like books."
Jinnie braced the bag against her thighs. "Your funeral."
They both stared across the shadowed lawn, Bryan bouncing lightly in place.
"Stay out of the light," Jinnie said. "Stick close to the houses until we get to the bus stop." The routes ran most of the night in this part of Houston. They could take the 73 down to the station, sleep in the bathroom like she’d seen in a movie once, and then go to the science museum in the morning to scope out a place to hide when it closed. She didn’t have a plan beyond that.
They tiptoed past Grandma Wishner’s window. The lights were all out. Jinnie held the suitcase with both hands, swinging it away from her body to take each step.
Suddenly the handle broke. The suitcase sailed forward, crashing against the house in a clang of metal.
"Jinnie!" Bryan leapt for his bag.
A light popped on overhead. Jinnie flattened herself against the wall, hoping Grandma wouldn’t see them if she looked out. The glass pane slid up with a swoosh.
But Bryan couldn’t leave his suitcase alone. He tipped it over, and the contents settled with another clatter.
Grandma leaned out the window and looked down, a white cloth pinned to her head. "What on earth are you children up to?"
Jinnie and Bryan looked at each other. There was no getting out of this one.
"Get on back in here. You don’t want me to come out."
Jinnie clutched the broken suitcase as she trudged inside. Grandma waited in their room, arms crossed. When they set down their bags, she opened the closet door. "Take off your shoes," she said over her shoulder.
She turned around with her arms full of sneakers, flip flops, sandals—every pair they owned.
"Now hand me the ones you’re wearing too," she said. "There will be no more sneaking out tonight. Not unless you want to run away barefoot."
Jinnie fell back on her bed, burying her face in her arms. She’d failed. Failed again.
Grandma sat next to her, arms loaded with shoes, her weathered face pale and tired. "Jinnie, I wish things could be some other way. I don’t want to see you go."
Bryan sat on the floor, untying his knotted laces. "Will it be awful?"
"Oh no," she said. "Think of all the things you’ll have—rooms of your own, and clothes, and a fancy private school."
"Nothing is worth living with those people," Jinnie said.
Grandma closed her eyes a moment and took a deep breath. "There’s no doubt that your Uncle Martin is light years different from your daddy. Sometimes I wonder how I could have raised two boys so opposite. But he is a Wishner. And you’re a Wishner. And we’ve all got to stick together."
"I don’t want to stick myself anywhere near them," Jinnie said.
Grandma pulled her shoe pile further up her lap. "I think you’ll discover that things are going to change for you very soon. I’ve protected you, but soon you’ll learn you’re more powerful than you think."
Jinnie snorted. "Right, that’s why we have no say on anything."
Bryan’s cheeks bloomed pink as he passed his shoes to Grandma. "Are mom and dad ever coming back?" he asked. "You said you didn’t believe Uncle Martin."
Grandma relaxed her arms. The shoes slid down her lap and onto the floor, a cascade of worn canvas, rubber soles, and dirt. "I think all of us are about to have a whole lot more faith in our family."
Jinnie didn’t buy it in the least.
* * *
Jinnie scowled out the window of the limo the next day, red and yellow flowers whizzing by as she and Bryan hurtled toward Austin and their new home.
She slid her finger along the ridges of her camera, trying to decide if she should ask Robert to stop and let her photograph the blooms. She couldn’t tell if he was a good guy or not. He worked for Uncle Martin. Probably not.
Bryan started flipping the lid on the trash compartment in the console between them. "Do you think they’ll be mean to us?"
Jinnie turned away from the window. "Ha. They’ll never leave us alone. Like pets." Guinea pigs, actually.
Bryan pulled the collar of his yellow sweater away from his neck. "Are we going to have to dress like this all the time?"
"They’re sending us to a private school. It’s probably going to get worse. Uniforms." Watching him, Jinnie felt the urge to tug at her own fancy dress. Her aunt left specific instructions about what they should wear for the trip, and Grandma had just silently handed them the clothes that arrived with the driver and the limo.
The window separating their compartment from the front seat rolled down with a gentle hum. Robert glanced back at them. "Almost there. You kids ready?"
They didn’t answer. Bryan’s cheeks had turned splotchy again.
The sunlight behind the mansion looked as though Aunt Barb had special ordered it. Light spilled across the lake, creating a hot line of gold that led right up to the dock and their back yard.
Robert pressed
a switch in the dash and huge iron gates opened silently, leading to a curved driveway that circled before a fountain of a woman pouring water from a pail.
Jinnie stared at the enormous limestone house. Her aunt and uncle opened the double front doors and stepped out onto the marble porch. A gust of wind caught the fluttering scarves of Aunt Barb’s outfit, and they whipped around her thin body like a maypole. Uncle Martin put his arm around her, smiling broadly beneath his moustache.
Robert opened Jinnie’s door. The dry breeze pushed the loose sprigs of hair from her ponytail into her face.
"Come on up, children!" Aunt Barb called, gesturing with her long arms. "We have a surprise."
A photographer lugged an oversized camera and a tripod out the front door. Jinnie strained to see what sort of gear he had, but Robert pressed behind her and Bryan, pushing them up the stairs.
"Our first family photo!" Aunt Barb said, shifting slightly to angle her hips and shoulders. "Come up here with us."
That would explain the clothes. They had been forced to wear them for over three hours just to take a picture. Jinnie lumbered up the stairs, her feet heavy. Bryan also seemed to hesitate, and she ran into him when he stopped abruptly on the last step.
Uncle Martin laid his hand on Bryan’s shoulder, pulling him close. Aunt Barb turned Jinnie to the camera and tugged her hair out of the ponytail. Jinnie welled with resentment as the photographer peered through the eyepiece.
"Smile, children!" Aunt Barb said.
Just as the white light burst upon them, Jinnie thought, this is not and will never be my family.
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The Boots of Saint Felicity
By Jean Cross
Chapter 1 - Three Days to Go
Eloueese Turtlewine stood in her kitchen and gazed out of the window. It was a Tuesday morning. Eloueese Turtlewine often gazed out of a window, preferably her kitchen window, when she was thinking. She had just finished her breakfast. She had cleared and washed and dried and put away her dishes and her folded tea towel lay over the rim of her dry sink. She felt warm and full and ready to turn to the practical matters of the day. Then she noticed something odd. A small piece of paper was wafting slowly, carelessly, most certainly, into her back garden. She stood quite still and watched it brush her cornflowers, rise, fall and run along the tip of the grass, rise again and settle finally on the straw she had arranged to protect her strawberries. The small piece of paper blended so well with the yellowy colored straw that she would not have been able to tell it was there had she not witnessed the last stages of its journey to that spot. But she knew it was there and because she knew it was there, it would have to be removed. It was typical, she mused, that this type of thing would happen on a Tuesday. In her experience Tuesdays always brought trouble. Sometimes the trouble was small. Sometimes the trouble was big.
This proclivity for trouble was only one of the reasons why Eloueese Turtlewine did not like Tuesdays. In her view, Tuesday was a terrible waste of time. The very notion of it vexed her. In fact she was apt to deny that the day existed. She often started the period in question just as she had started this one, by sitting up in bed and proclaiming,
"There’s no such thing as Tuesday."
Habitually, as she got up and ready on Tuesdays she'd treat herself to a prolonged mumbly grumble, which in her experience were the best kind.
"Now I’ll have to spend the whole day pretending it’s Tuesday," she would often tell her towel as she removed it from the shiny brass hook in her bathroom, "just because everyone says it is! I’ve a good mind to go straight into Wednesday. Now, there’s a good old useful day!" she would inform the bread as she sliced. "But," she would reconsider as she mashed her bananas, "if I did that I’d just get ahead of everyone and eventually, I suppose, I’d have to stop and wait for them to catch up. Just like last time. Better to pretend it’s Tuesday," she'd concede to the toast as she spread the creamy butter. Her final comment on the phenomenon of Tuesday, for that week at least, came as she sat to eat her breakfast.
"It's just a hole in the week. And I've never seen a hole that didn't cause trouble eventually."
Eloueese Turtlewine didn’t much like mornings either, so that little piece of yellowy paper could not have floated into her garden at a worse time in the week. Nor could it have been a worse week. For this was the week that the Splickety Village was hosting The Important Person From Far Away Festival and as a member of The Committee To Organize Everything For The Important Person From Far Away Festival, Eloueese Turtlewine had lots of work to do in preparation for the big event. Some of this work she had scheduled for the void as her diary listed what most other diaries referred to as Tuesday and she was keen to get to that work.
She took a deep breath, marched stiffly across her kitchen, slung open her door and strode into her long, tidy back garden. She went directly to her strawberries, paused to consider how well they were coming along, then swooshed down to pick up the scrap of paper. She was about to scrunch it up when she noticed the words.
You should not
interfere
this time
She looked up. The beautiful bright sky was clear in all directions. She turned left and then right. She could see no one. Nothing stirred but the trees as a summer gust coursed through the valley which stretched out beyond the stone wall at the end of her garden. Her shoulders sank and she sighed. They were about to make a move. This was a big trouble Tuesday after all.
Eloueese Turtlewine put the piece of paper in her waistcoat pocket, took one more look at the sky and returned to her kitchen. There she sat at her table and opened the little drawer tucked just under the middle of the table top. She removed a small piece of paper, wrote a note and left immediately for the post office.
* * *
Bernie Brownfeather was getting ready to leave her house. She had just put the last of fifteen bobbins in her hair. Though it was short, Bernie Brownfeather did not like to take any chances. She had done up her buttons, put elastic bands around the bottom of her sleeves and trousers, made sure the strap on her bag was tightly secured and fastened her shoe buckles on the last notch.
"Bobbins, buttons, bands, bag, buckles... bobbins, buttons, bands, bag, buckles," she repeated to herself as she patted her head, pulled out the front of her cardigan so she could check her buttons, stretched the elastic bands around the bottoms of her limbs, which stung a little when she let them go, making her twitch and grimace, tapped the bag on her hip and swung each foot up behind her back to touch her buckle.
"Bother! What’s the other one? I’m going to be late."
She took a deep breath, released it slowly and started again, calmly and deliberately this time.
"Bobbinnnns, buttonnnns," it worked. "Belt", she exclaimed as she snapped her red belt from the back of the chair and quickly put it on murmuring "belt, belt, belt, belt, belt."
Bernie Brownfeather was rushing to school.
The fact that it was a Tuesday morning had little bearing on the matter. Bernie Brownfeather rushed to school most mornings, in fact, Bernie Brownfeather rushed to school every morning. It didn’t help that every day her granny caught her just as she was about to bolt out of the door to remind her of what her granny always used to say.
"Now Bernie," she’d say, "remember what my granny always used to say. She always used to say, the hurrier I go, the behinder I get. It's so true Bernie, someday you’ll understand."
Maybe so gran, Bernie Brownfeather would think, but I’ll never understand why you have to hold me back when I’m late for school to tell me about it. But she never said that to her granny. What she’d usually say was something like, "Thanks gran, love you, have to fly." That was exactly what she said on this, so far, ordinary Tuesday morning and it was true. She was grateful to her granny, she did love her, and she did have to fly to get to school on time.
On the whole Bernie Brownfeather was glad that she was one the flyers of Splickety Villa
ge but she was mature enough to realize that flying could be difficult, sometimes dangerous and could really mess up your hair. Forget about wearing hats, Bernie Brownfeather had lost so many hats. If you didn’t button your cardigan up tightly it could come flapping off. There was always the danger of bumping into small birds that were difficult to see until they were very close and if you so much as touched them they got so angry about it. More often than not something would fall out of an unguarded pocket, or a shoe would come off and land on someone’s picnic.
Bernie Brownfeather had devoted some time to figuring out how to fly safely and without losing things. She had developed a routine she called ‘the six bs’ to minimize the risk associated with flight. These days she never took off without going through her safety protocol and it seemed to be working. She hadn’t crashed or lost anything for a long time. And on this bright Tuesday morning Bernie Brownfeather’s journey to school was proceeding smoothly.
* * *
There are three schools in the Splickety Village. St. Felicity’s is named after St. Felicity, patron saint of sensible shoes, boots and hikers. The littleyears children of the Splickety Village attend St. Felicity’s. Their Head Teacher, David Davenport, is very pleased to have the very boots of St. Felicity in his care. The boots have been housed in a beautiful glass case under the Grand Entrance Arch of St. Felicity’s School for Littleyears Children for some time.
Then there is St. Hubert’s School for Middleyears Children, named for St. Hubert, the Best Dressed Saint. His fine cloak is kept in a glass case in the Grand Chamber of St. Hubert’s and as the principal, Dorothy Silkfingers, will be pleased to tell you, it is a wonder to marvel at.
The third school in Splickety Village, St. Ceciltine the Martyr’s School for Biggeryears children is named in commemoration of St. Ceciltine the Martyr who is said to have swallowed his own dagger and died in a just cause. The actual dagger of St. Ceciltine can be seen in the Grand Hall of St. Ceciltine’s School to this day, but nobody knows how it got there. The Head Teacher, Precilipe Twinepitter, is said to have repelled an intruder with the very dagger of St. Ceciltine one dark winter evening, but she will neither confirm nor deny the rumor.
