Worlds Unseen - Rachel Starr Thomson (beach books .txt) 📗

A loud, cheery voice interrupted her near slumber.

“Well, then,” Eva Cook exclaimed, her ample form filling the doorway to the kitchen and blocking most of the light from that part of the house. “You’re home. Did you get the parcel?”

Maggie sighed with the effort of pulling her body back into action. She reached a red-gloved hand inside her coat and pulled out a small packet wrapped in brown paper. She started to get up, but Mrs. Cook stopped her.

“No, dear,” she said, “Don’t you move. I know a tired body when I see one. Was it a really long walk?”

Maggie nodded. “Not too long, really, but I am tired. I always want to go to sleep after being out in the cold.”

“Winter’s coming after all,” Mrs. Cook commented, “though I had hoped we would cheat it this year.” She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and the light from the homey room came streaming back. She reappeared bearing a saucer and tea cup, steaming with hot tea.

“Here, dear,” Mrs. Cook said. “Drink this.”

Maggie took the cup and saucer and let the steam from the bittersweet drink warm her face. She took a sip and leaned back again with a smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “But you don’t need to fuss over me. You’d think I’d been gone as long as Pat.”

Mrs. Cook didn’t seem to notice Maggie’s teasing tone. “I’m just taking care of you, Maggie Sheffield. You know as well as I do that you’re not the strongest bird in the sky. One of these days you’ll catch pneumonia, and I’ll fuss then. How’s your cold?”

Maggie chuckled. “Much better, with your tea steaming all the congestion out of me. It’s been years since I was really sick. You needn’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Mrs. Cook said with a sniff. She caught sight of Maggie grinning at her and said, “Not about the likes of you.”

Maggie dipped her little finger in her tea, stirring it idly. “Something’s missing from the tea,” she said.

“Linlae leaf,” Mrs. Cook said. “I ran out and was too busy to cut more.”

Maggie set her tea aside and pushed herself out of her chair before Mrs. Cook could protest. “I’ll get it,” she said. She walked lightly to her guardian’s side and stood on her tiptoes to kiss the tall old woman’s cheek on her way out.

Mrs. Cook watched her march out the front door with a smile. She was so different from the old days, this girl. Eva could remember the days when even a hint of sharpness in her voice would send the little orphan into a fit of shivering, anxious fear. Maggie had been so small and skinny then, her auburn hair tangled and dirty.

“You don’t want that one,” the man from the Orphan House had said. “She’s no good for nothin’-too weak, and ugly besides.”

Mrs. Cook had seen through the dirt and grime to a child who desperately needed freedom. Margaret Sheffield was precisely the child she wanted.

She remembered clearly the first few days, when Maggie learned what it was like to be clean and well-fed and loved. She had accepted everything warily, as though she expected to wake up any moment and find the dream turned into a nightmare. Her greatest fear in those days had been that Patricia Black, herself an orphan, might prove to be an enemy. Pat, in true form, had taken the scared little thing under her wing.

Pat had cried the day that Maggie was sent off to Cryneth to live with John and Mary Davies, old friends of the Cooks’. Eva had cried, too, but she knew it was best. The mountains and Mary’s songs were what Maggie needed to heal.

Even now, Mrs. Cook had to fight back tears at the thought of the way those years in Cryneth had ended. She remembered how Maggie had appeared on her back doorstep, half dead and nearly unrecognizable. She remembered how Pat had run for the doctor at the Orphan House. She remembered the doctor’s words.

“She were never a well one. I don’t see how she’s made it this far, with all that smoke in her lungs. If I was you, Mrs. Cook, I’d be looking for a nice burial plot.”

But Maggie had recovered. Her hands and arms were forever scarred from the burns. She never told anyone exactly what had happened, although they found out later that John and Mary had been killed in a fire. Maggie had been seen digging through the still-smoldering ashes for some remnant of the happiest days of her life. The villagers had tried to help her but she had run away.

Somehow, Maggie had found happiness again. Somehow, she had put it behind her. And every time Mrs. Cook saw the young woman smile, she thanked the stars for the power that had brought Maggie all the way back to her doorstep in Londren, and home.

*

The linlae tree grew between the house and the iron fence. It hugged the wall like a vine, its silvery bark and the last of its light green leaves beautiful against the soot-smudged brick. Maggie smiled as she reached up into the thin branches, pulling them down so that twigs and leaves brushed her face and baptized her with the scent of life. The leaves rustled as she searched for a good bunch to clip. The warm autumn had been good to the hardy little tree; it was still green in the face of coming winter. Maggie started to hum to herself when a sound made its way to her ears. She frowned, releasing the branches so that they jerked away and quivered above her.

There it was again. Something was moving in the dark shadows behind the house. Maggie peered down the alley, but she could see nothing. A cat, she thought. It must be a cat.

She shook off the uneasy feeling that had settled on her and finished clipping a branch. As she took a step toward home, something in the alley clattered. She turned, her heart leaping in her throat.

What was back there?

She turned to leave when the sound of a deep, racking cough sent shivers up her spine. That was no cat.

Maggie turned back around and walked quickly, deliberately, toward the safety of the front door. Pat, she thought, would have been in the alley by now, forcing a full confession from whoever was skulking in the shadows. Pity the fellow caught by her fierce questions. But Maggie was not Pat, and Pat was far away in Cryneth. She kept walking.

“Maggie Sheffield?” It was a trembling voice, old, and strangely familiar. It was deep with illness.

Maggie turned slowly to see a small, hunched old man step out from the shadows. He stood silhouetted against the fence, and Maggie could not see his face or his features. He stretched out a hand toward her. It was shaking.

“Maggie?” he asked again. He took a step forward and Maggie realized that he was about to fall. She dropped the leafy twigs in her hand and rushed forward, grabbing the old man’s arm to steady him. He looked up at her with weary, gray eyes.

“Thank ye, Maggie,” he said.

She knew who he was. The relief of recognition flooded her. Those gray eyes had regarded her kindly when she was a child in the Orphan House, and once they had watched her from the safety of the little house in Cryneth. In the Orphan House he had brought presents for the children once or twice a year-mittens and scarves, pieces of candy, sometimes even dolls for the girls and trains for the boys. She hadn’t known why he had come to the Davies’ in Cryneth. Evidently they were old friends. She had never known his full name-the children called him Old Dan.

She certainly had no idea what he was doing here now, hiding in an alley behind her home.

He began to cough again, and nearly doubled over with the effort. Maggie clutched at him, wishing she could somehow transfer strength from her body into his. He sounded as if he might never stop coughing. But the fit did come to an end, and he leaned against her, exhausted. She was alarmed at how thin and light he was.

“Come,” she said, guiding him. “I live here, just a few more steps. We’ll take good care of you.”

Maggie helped him up the steps and opened the door. The hinges squeaked out an announcement of her return.

Mrs. Cook appeared from the kitchen, already talking. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d run away out there. Heavens, Maggie, what took you so-” she stopped in mid-sentence.

“Heavens,” she breathed.

Maggie helped the weak old man into the high-backed chair near the fire. He nearly fell into it. Maggie removed his threadbare gloves and began rubbing his fingers between her own hands. She wanted to say something, but his eyes were closed and so she kept her mouth shut. When his hands felt a bit warmer, she took the muddy boots from his feet and set them near the fire to dry while she wrapped him in a blanket snatched from the arms of Mrs. Cook’s rocking chair.

The lady of the house emerged from the depths of the kitchen with a washtub full of hot water.

“Come on, Maggie,” she said. “In with his feet.”

Mrs. Cook pressed a hand against the old man’s wrinkled forehead. “Fever,” she muttered. “Maggie, get another blanket from the cupboard upstairs. A thick one. Make that two. He’s shivering.”

Maggie rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and threw open the cupboard at the end of the narrow hallway. She grabbed two thick blankets and flew back downstairs with them.

Mrs. Cook was stoking the fire, while the kettle shrieked its readiness in the kitchen.

“Get the tea, would you, dear?” Mrs. Cook asked in a tone of voice that made it clear she was not asking.

Maggie went into the whitewashed kitchen where the copper kettle rattled on the surface of the wood stove. She snatched it off and poured the water into a white teapot.

She reentered the living room with Mrs. Cook’s largest tea cup and saucer, as well as two more just in case, and ducked back into the kitchen to fetch the teapot. When she came back out, Old Dan’s eyes were open and Mrs. Cook seemed strangely agitated.

Maggie shifted her feet and licked her lips uncomfortably, feeling that she had missed something important.

“This is Old Dan.” She felt like a child saying the name, which was not really much of a name at all. “He’s a friend.”

“We know each other,” Mrs. Cook said stiffly.

Maggie’s eyebrows raised a good half-inch. “You do?” she asked incredulously.

“Evie and I are old friends,” Old Dan said weakly, with a tinge of humour in his voice.

Mrs. Cook stood abruptly and started up the stairs. She turned when she was halfway up.

“I don’t want him going up and down stairs in his condition,” she said. “We’ll fix up the guest room.”

Maggie nodded. Silently, she picked up the bucket of coal that lay beside the fire and took a box of matches from the mantle. She felt Old Dan’s eyes watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Mrs. Cook had seemed almost angry.

She took the coal and matches to a small, cold room just off of the living room. It had a fireplace of its own, and she knelt down to prepare the room for its new occupant. Soon she had a fire blazing, and the lonely little room seemed cheered. Starched white curtains hung by its windows, overlooking a single