Wink Poppy Midnight(16)
I found Leaf standing on the bank, leaning against a tree, inches from the muddy swirling rapids, doing the same f*cking thing.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, after we’d been there in the pelting rain for a while and had both just watched a red wooden door go floating past, and then a blue bike, and then a pair of black boots, tied together by the shoelaces, and then a little fox, on its back, its dead paws on its belly.
I went to the hayloft a lot after Leaf left on the bus. Sometimes the Bell brats were in there but when they weren’t I climbed the ladder and sat in the sun, hay, quiet.
And now Midnight was living by them, right across the street. I suppose he thought he was moving up in the world, and getting away from me, yeah, as if it would be that easy, as if, as if, why is everyone around me so undeniably dumb? I want to like people, I do, actually, but they’re all just so dumb.
I’d already felt Midnight edging away from me before he moved out to that dumpy farmhouse. And then I found him talking to Feral on the steps and he was just so into her, into the red hair and freckles and weirdness, I felt sick just thinking about it.
Well, if Midnight wanted to be with Wink and her fairy tales and her hayloft and unicorn underwear and overalls, then I’d show him who she was. I’d really, really show him.
MIDNIGHT FOUND ME as I was coaxing little blue eggs out from underneath one of the pretty white Silkies. I brought him inside to the kitchen and made poached yellow-eyes on toast for him and the Orphans. You need a big boiling pot to make poached yellow-eyes, which I like because using a big boiling pot makes me feel like I’m a witchie.
Mim was in her reading room, so I made coffee too. She didn’t like me to drink coffee. She said it would give me dark dreams. I didn’t give any of it to the Orphans, just me and Midnight, sipping from the same blue cup, fresh cream and brown sugar.
The Hero stood closer to me, after the hayloft. And he looked at me different too.
I told him the names of the Orphans, and we picked strawberries from the garden. I showed him how to squish his bare toes in the black dirt. We ate the berries ripe and juicy and hot from the sun, like Laura and Lizzie at the Goblin Market, For your sake I have braved the glen, and had to do with goblin merchant men. Eat me, drink me, love me. Hero, Wolf, make much of me. With clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips, cooing all together.
THE DAY SO far:
Gathering eggs, breakfast, playing hide-and-seek, weeding the big square garden between the house and the barn, playing fetch with the dogs, Mim making Caprese salad for lunch with golden olive oil and fresh-picked basil and tomatoes, us all eating it standing at the kitchen table, me drawing up a treasure map for the Orphans, us all following it to the back pasture, digging holes with rusty shovels, looking for treasure.
When the sun got too hot I went home to get my tools. Coins, handkerchief, cards, steel rings. They were in a box in the basement. I’d kept them hidden since Poppy found them several months ago and teased me about it for weeks. I did my magic tricks for Wink and company in the hayloft and the kids sat still and wide-eyed and didn’t even talk. Wink watched me closely and smiled her big, ear-sticking-out smile at the end.
After I put my magic stuff away, Wink pulled The Thing in the Deep out of the pocket of her overalls and started reading. She sat on an old quilt spread over a pile of hay, barefoot, overalls, the Orphans around her, and me. The sun was streaming in the hayloft opening, low and hazy. Which was the only way I could tell how late it was. Time seemed to have stopped entirely. I hadn’t had a day go by so dreamily, so lazily, since I was a little kid. Since before I understood the concept of time.
The tips of Wink’s fingers were still stained from the strawberries, tiny, pink-red little flicks as she turned the pages. Her lips were stained too. I watched them as they moved with the words, mouth as red as blood.
Bee Lee cuddled up next to me, head against my side.
The Orphans consisted of three boys and two girls. All redheads, except for Bee, who had deep brown hair. Bee had just turned seven years old. I knew this, because it was one of the first things she told me. The twins were Hops and Moon, the oldest boy was Felix, and last of all was tiny Peach, the youngest. The ten-year-old twins were the wildest. They always seemed to be trying to outdo the other. Who could scream the loudest? Who could get the dogs howling? Who could put the most hay down the other’s shirt? After that came Peach, who was about five or six, but had the same loud, rascally fierceness of the twins. Felix was maybe fourteen and had the look of his older brother, Leaf, about him. He was quieter than the others, though his eyes were lively enough.
Bee Lee was already my favorite. She was cuddly and sweet like the Bichon Frisé I’d had when I was little. She was always trying to squeeze her hand into mine, or put her dimpled little arm around my waist.
Wink had a beautiful reading voice. Delicate and slow. She read about Thief, about the death of his father, and the prophecy. She read about his journey into the Cursed Woods, just him and the clothes on his back and the sword his father left him. She read about how he needed to steal food, apples from orchards and pies from windowsills, to keep himself from starving. She read about how he sat by his small fire at night and sang the old songs to keep his loneliness at bay.
We heard Mim call out dinner just as Wink read the last word of the fifth chapter. She slipped the book back in her pocket. The Orphans jumped up and took off for the house, Bee Lee giving me a shy smile over her shoulder before darting down the ladder.