“He’s awake,” one of the girls whispered.
“Go on, ask him,” said another.
A boy stepped forward. “What’s your name and where are you from?”
Fargus opened his mouth, knowing it was futile. He did his best to say his name but nothing emerged—only a kind of sigh.
“Are you from Gulm?” the boy asked.
Fargus shook his head.
“Did you bring us any news?”
Fargus shook his head again.
One girl began to get impatient. “Can’t you talk?!”
Fargus looked at her, defiance building in his belly, and shook his head again.
The children seemed to collectively deflate with disappointment and they drifted away, no longer interested in this newcomer.
Fargus was glad to be ignored as he assessed his new environment. The round room had no apparent door and the walls curved into the ceiling. The absence of doors or windows made Fargus feel claustrophobic.
He stood up and circled the room. As he neared other children, they would move away. He felt diseased, completely unwelcome. He was desperate to know where he was, but he could not catch anyone’s eye long enough to ask.
Finally he stopped circling the room, sat down, and stared at the others. Fargus observed them for well over an hour, and he concluded only one thing.
These children frightened him.
They weren’t like other children. They didn’t skip or jump or shove one another. They didn’t make up things or sing for no reason. They weren’t silly. They sat or stood in groups and talked in low whispers.
It reminded him of when he’d been young and his parents had taken him to a neighbor’s house for dinner. The adults had sat and talked and talked, and Fargus couldn’t wait to get away and return to his real life of throwing things. He felt that way now, out of place and bored. He wished he could tell Ida about it.
Where was she? Did she know he was here? And what about Josephine? He hoped they were both nearby. He wanted to leave this place as soon as possible.
Suddenly everyone was in motion, scurrying this way and that as if they’d been given a signal, but Fargus hadn’t heard a thing. The children grew more and more agitated and all whispering stopped. A mounting energy permeated the room and Fargus could sense that something was about to happen. All the children migrated to one side of the room, leaving Fargus by himself. He felt sick to his stomach. The silence tasted like cold chalk.
Then he could hear faint footsteps outside. They grew closer and closer, but came at an unbearably slow rate. Fargus’s heart thumped in his chest, each beat a warning cry: run, run, run. A large door, invisible to Fargus the moment before, slowly opened on the far side of the room. The other children closed in on themselves like a sea anemone. Fargus was even more exposed and alone.
An old man with a crooked back and a little orange hat entered the room. He was nothing like the dragon that Fargus had been expecting, and the boy exhaled. In fact, the old man looked a little foolish, which in turn made him look kind. The man approached Fargus, took off his hat, and introduced himself. “Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Seaworthy. I have come to invite you to lunch with your host. Do you accept?”
At the mention of lunch Fargus’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday. He looked back at the children. They were so close together that their breathing seemed to intermingle into one lung gasping for air. He knew they were afraid, but he couldn’t imagine it was because of this old man. He wanted to ask them what he should do. But he was just as afraid of these pale, trembling children as he was of Mr. Seaworthy. He nodded his acceptance at the man, who smiled pleasantly and replaced his little orange hat. “Wonderful. Won’t you come this way?”
Fargus followed him out the door, which promptly slammed shut behind him.
TWENTY-TWO
Josephine sat in a shady spot in the overgrown field behind the Jarvises’ house, practicing her sewing but without much success. After she made a stitch in her cloth and pulled it tightly, as Alma had taught her, the thread would come out of the needle, and Josephine would have to hold the needle up to the light and try to get the fraying thread back through the tiny eye. It took countless annoying jabs to finally get it through again.
As she went to make the next stitch, she would remind herself not to pull too hard this time. But as soon as she stabbed the cloth with the needle and began weaving it through, she would forget and do it again. Her teeth ached with concentration.
Recently it seemed her mind had turned to mush. Trying to wrap her head around hard facts was like trying to read a newspaper that had been rained on. For Josephine, who had always relied on her sharp mind, this was the worst kind of frustration.
She sighed, looked up, and screamed when she spotted an older boy standing not two yards away from her in the field! He was staring at her as if she were some kind of rare bird. He was tall with a wide forehead and freckles, and he wore a brown cap that sat on his head at a slight angle. He moved toward her and spoke gently. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Alma!” she cried. “Bruce!” They had warned her against talking to anyone from the town, even children.
“No! Please be quiet! I’m here to help you. My father sent me to make sure you and the others were all right.”
Josephine froze. “What others?”
The boy was confused. “The friends you arrived here with, the girl and the boy.”
Josephine looked as though she might laugh. “Friends? But I don’t have any . . . friends . . . do I? No. I’m certain I don’t.” She dropped her sewing and her face crinkled as if she had been accused of forgetting her homework.
The boy was now looking at her as if she were a helpless toddler. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“My name is . . . um . . . it’s . . .” She looked up at the sky, hoping the clouds might spell it out for her, but nothing came.
“My name is Ned. I’m the sweeper’s son.” Ned had never met anyone who couldn’t remember her own name. He smiled and took a step closer to her. “What have you got there?”
She was befuddled and he motioned toward her fabric and thread. She shrugged at the cloth as if it belonged to someone else.
Ned looked deep into her eyes, which were an extraordinary amber, but they looked a bit dull, as if they had been dipped in wax. She smiled at him blankly, having already forgotten the conversation they were having. Ned began to wonder if the Jarvises had done something to this girl.
He decided there wasn’t a moment to lose. He crossed over to Josephine, picked her up, and slung her across his back like one of his brooms. Josephine squealed protests and yelled for Alma as Ned scuttled away from the Jarvises’ farm as quickly as possible.
Josephine beat her little fists across his back, but it was no use. He was stronger than she was. Ned walked on for twenty minutes before he found what he was looking for—the Cherry Spring. No matter what time of year it was, this spring was always sure to be mind-numbingly cold. Or, as Ned hoped in this case, mind-awakeningly cold. He approached the edge of the water, swung Josephine back and forth three times, and then threw her into the icy spring.
