Orphans of Stone: HomeComing: A Curious Middle Grade Fantasy

by Rae Craig

  At that instant the lightbulb exploded like a lightning strike, raining shards of glass onto their shoulders. Prickly numbness swept up from Harriet’s hand into her chest, making her gasp. Dad switched on the living room light and rushed over to see his daughter collapse onto the stone steps, her hands clutching her chest. Mom brushed by an open mouthed Ella to kneel next to her daughter.

  Dad stopped to check Ella. “Are you okay? Did you get shocked?”

  “Just a tingle.” Her hand trembled as she raised it to her mouth. “What’s wrong with Harriet?”

  Donnell sank down next to his daughter. He felt her pulse and checked her breathing, then looked across to Jenny. “She’s okay, wait a minute and she’ll come around.” He reassured Ella with a glance. “Probably just too much excitement today.”

  Harriet heard them talking from far, far away, but the voices faded to a deep silence and the darkness enveloped her.

  Harriet floats in an endless, water-filled world. A world with no terror, no death. She simply exists as part of the smooth flowing liquid. Water swirls over her face, but breathing is not necessary here. For the first time since Clarence died, she is not alone. Comfort and connection flow around and through her. She relaxes for the first time in 347 days.

  Familiar voices buzzed at the edge of darkness.

  “Leave me here!” Thinks Harriet as loud as she can.

  But the buzzing sharpened into her mother’s clear, insistent statement repeated and repeated. “This can not be happening- it’s too soon. There must be something wrong. This can’t happen yet. She’s not ready. She’s too young.” Over and over.

  Comfort and connection dissolved away, replaced by a sharp step that pressed into her side. Harriet was alone again.

  She opened her eyes. Mom and Dad knelt next to her with Ella rooted below, all of them tense and watchful. Harriet felt on display and did not like it.

  She sprang to her feet and faced Ella, ignoring her concerned parents. “Let’s go upstairs and read more of the diary.”

  Dad put his concerned face away. “I’ll go too, I want to look for something in the family history box.”

  Jenny watched them climb the steps from where she knelt, her furrowed cheeks deep in shadow.

  In the bedroom the chest sat propped up on Harriet’s bed. Dad said. “You’ve got this arranged like an egg in its nest. I’ll take it downstairs to sort through.” But first he helped pull out the trundle bed.

  Ella said, “It’s like camping out.” She glanced at Harriet. “Can I sleep there?”

  Pleased, Harriet said, “You can have the lower bunk.” She pulled a pair of pajamas out of the drawer.

  “The quilts are made of stars.” Ella smoothed her hand over the red stars scattered across the tan swirled fabric. “I’ll dream about the night sky.”

  Dad said. “Harriet calls it her Shi-octon quilt. You’re sure to stay warm with the Deffers’s wool batting in them.” He started for the stairs. “We’ll be going to bed too, in just a little while”

  Ella flipped the rock book shut when Harriet came back from washing up. “No rose crystals. They do look like rose quartz, but brighter and oily. I’ll check my books at home, but that oiliness is a mystery.” Instead of being disappointed she was intrigued.

  They climbed under the quilts with both windows cracked open even though it was cool outside. The warm chimney would take care of that.

  Ella said, “I wonder what happens with the spider.”

  “I’ll read this time.” Harriet opened the diary, looking for where they had left off.

  “Sunday, Sept. 23- We sang in the morning. Later with Carrie and Heart, we drove the buggy out to the southwest and brought home sweetbriar buds. On the way we took a box of flies to Norman Mac’s spider.”

  The girls grinned at each other.

  Harriet continued:

  “Monday, Sept. 24- Rained most of the day. Norman Mac called on us to deliver his spider’s poem of thanks. This is an exact copy:

  Since the famine is broken, I am content.

  I assure you with thanks and joyful surprise.

  When fed from the little round box that you sent,

  I eat with gusto the neighborhood flies.”

  They laughed at the silly poem.

  Ella said. “The spider story just gets better. I hope Mom will know what happened to Norman Mac and if he and Heart really did like each other.”

  Harriet reached up to the lamp on her bedside table and turned out the light. The quilts were warm and a full moon shone in the window. While Ella’s breathing eased into sleep, Harriet’s thoughts raced from Aunt Lottie’s gift to barding lessons with Theo Laird, but kept returning to the stairway. What did Mom mean: she was not ready yet? Ready for what? How could Mom stay so calm through the last 347 days and then have a fit about Harriet laying down on the stairs?

  She tried to bring back the comfort of floating in the smooth waters, but she could not settle her mind, and, what had made her so sure she was not alone? But with a swirling change of thought, the memory of Dana’s bottles catching the sunlight made her smile. There! That was a tiny bit of the connected feeling. But then her worry about the marker chased that away. Dana must have watched her when she hurled that marker. What did he think of her? Why had he hidden in the woods and watched her?

  Mom and Dad whispered as they came up the stairs and softly opened her door. Ella slept quietly in the trundle and Harriet calmed her own breathing.

  “Come to bed Jenny.” Dad said softly. “They’ll be fine. We’ll talk to your mother about it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.” Thought Harriet. “How can I bear going to the farm when it’s not Grandma’s anymore?” Memories of overnights at the farm smoothed out her thinking. She and Clarence had snuggled to either side of Grandma at bedtimes, listening to stories about her growing-up adventures in Shi-octon. Those memories calmed her and Harriet drifted to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Carrie’s Journal

  After breakfast Dad called them in to his roll top desk in the living room. He handed a miniature leather book to Harriet. “Grandma Carrie kept a journal before Grandma Jameson was born. It’s sort of a companion for Aunt Lottie’s diary.” He pulled down the roll top. “We’re setting up Mom’s furniture in the display window this morning, but we’ll be back for lunch.”

  He and Mom walked out the front door.

  Ella ran back upstairs for Aunt Lottie’s diary and they compared the books side by side on the kitchen table. Both were smaller than their palms and leather bound, Aunt Lottie’s brown and Carrie’s tan.

  Ella picked up Carrie’s. “The first few pages are in pencil. She lists her name as Carrie Freeman on the first page.”

  “She must have used the book before she married Dr. Don and moved to Shi-octon”

  “Here’s the first page written in pen.” Ella leaned over the diary. “Okay. Here goes.

  April 1- March was very stormy, but April 1st is a beautiful day. Daddy commenced painting the Pew family’s house.

  April 15- sowed beds of parsnips, parsley, carrots, spinach, radishes.

  April 18- George spaded for new strawberries and I baked bread. Got a letter from Heart.

  George went out on a patient call and brought home a beautiful bunch of bloodroot flowers. Daddy still painting the Pew’s house.”

  Ella looked up. “This is about gardening. I wish she’d tell more about their everyday life. Do you want to stop now?”

  “But now we know this street is named after the Pew family. Read two more entries, then we’ll go over to the old cellar.”

  “May 6- False alarm of rain. In the afternoon we planted sweet corn, beets and spinach.

  May 7- Carried off a load of rubbish to the old brewery cellar in the afternoon and then spread sawdust on our ice.”

  Harriet interrupted. “Read that last entry again.”

  “Carried off a load of rubbish to the old brewery cellar in--”

  “Stop! Could
the cellar hole be the old brewery?

  “That would explain why it’s filled with trash.”

  “Read the next entry.” Harriet leaned forward in her chair, expecting something exciting.

  “May 8- Cold and damp. Pew girls brought a lovely bunch of cowslips. I wish Aunt Lottie’s

  bottle was empty, the flowers would look pretty in it. Yesterday I put that dear bottle on

  the entry table in the morning. The beautiful glass stopper caught the sun and

  spread it into rainbows. Put flowers in a drinking glass instead.”

  Ella said. “I’ll read the next one too.”

  Harriet leaned her elbows on her knees and clutched her hands together.

  “May 9- Cannot find Aunt Lottie’s lily of the valley bottle and I fear it has disappeared forever.

  A dear little bottle. I shall search again tomorrow.”

  Harriet sprang up. “That’s it! This bottle is definitely Aunt Lottie’s. The bottle got mixed up with the trash and Carrie never found out what happened.” She locked eyes with Ella. “The glass stopper must still be in the cellar.”

  Ella’s smile filled her face. “We have a couple hours till lunch.”

  “Let’s get some old shoes from the back landing.”

  She wrote on the kitchen blackboard: ‘digging at the brewery cellar’.

  Tying on their shoes by the back door, Harriet said. “It’s lucky we wear the same size.”

  “Yeah. Mom wouldn’t appreciate my new shoes being messed up. There’s a story about our moms playing in the hay loft and your mom losing a brand new shoe. We’ll have them tell it at supper.”

  “I love stories about my parents when they were little, especially if they got into trouble.”

  Ella laughed and stood up. “Where are the shovels?”

  “We’ll use trowels. We have some we used for a archaeology project. After we read about excavating the outhouse pits, we did some research to get the right trowels and Dad had a friend that owned an old abandoned farm. We excavated for two weekends.”

  “Didn’t it smell? What about the germs?”

  “The pit hadn’t been used for so long that the fill was just regular dirt, but we wore gloves and masks and took showers after we dug, just in case.”

  “What did you find? How far down did you go?”

  Walking toward the garage, Harriet said. “Only a couple of feet, but we found lots of stuff; like buttons, broken glass, broken pottery, toy parts, coins.”

  “What’s the best thing you found?”

  “A toy horse with movable legs. At first it was just lots of broken pottery and we didn’t know what it was. We dug up all the pieces and then we set up a work table in our basement. You could tell which pieces belonged together because the patterns matched up. But pieces were missing and the hardest part was figuring out how the legs attached to the body.”

  Harriet pushed hard to open the sticky door on the back of the garage. “I’d show it to you, but I haven’t found it yet. Mom must have packed it in with the good dishes.”

  There was enough light from a gritty window to find the trowels and lift them off their nails. Now properly equipped, they walked across the grass toward the cellar. Hearing noises from inside the thicket, they slipped through the gap. Down in the cellar squatted a boy. Dana Rethic heard them and looked up.

  Harriet snapped. “What are you doing?” She jerked forward and Ella gripped her arm. Ever since Dana had placed that marker in her hand, Harriet felt he knew things about her she was not proud of.

  “Hi Dana.” Ella said. “Are you treasure hunting?”

  “I’m getting one more bottle.” He watched Harriet for her reaction.

  Harriet’s muscles relaxed so Ella let go and said. “Did you leave the bottles on the porch?”

  Dana deliberately nodded his head, keeping his eyes fixed on Harriet.

  Ella asked. “Are they all from here?”

  “Most from here.” He pointed down at his feet with the shovel.

  Ella said, “Have you dug over there?” pointing to where they had found Aunt Lottie’s bottle.

  “No and now that you live here,” He looked to Harriet. “I’ll ask permission, but I wanted to get one more bottle. I saw a corner of it the other day, but didn’t have time to dig.”

  Ella waved her trowel in the air. “Show us where. We’re ready to do some archaeology.”

  They clambered down into the cellar and knelt in a circle. With the spring rains the glass had become covered with dirt again and they would have to find it.

  Harriet used the flat edge of the trowel to delicately scrape away a thin layer of soil. The other two watched her, then without a word, she handed Dana the trowel. He copied her movements gracefully, with no practice or instruction.

  Holding her trowel out in position, Ella said, “I’ll try.” Her movements were not as confident as Dana’s, but were more successful. “I feel a lump right here.” She reached down to gently touch the spot.

  Harriet eagerly leaned forward. Even more delicately than before, she scraped until she too felt the lump, then she used the trowel’s pointy tip to outline the object. A lump of knobby old glass appeared.

  She said. “If this was a real archaeology dig we’d photograph this in place and draw it on a site map. Mapping artifacts over an area can tell you how people lived, but since this was a dump, that probably wouldn’t help much, so I’ll just pop this out.” She gently pulled and out popped an egg shaped ball of glass, mostly covered in cement-like dirt.

  Ella said excitedly. “Let’s clean it off at Mac’s faucet.”

  They climbed out using the path through the low garden. The creek had gone down and soon they could explore the woods along the stream. As they walked across the folly garden toward the tap, Harriet watched Ella, but today the blue eyed girl acted completely normal.

  Water flowed over the old glass into the gravel below, washing the dirt away. The girls stared down at the glass ball laying in the tray.

  Ella asked. “Could it be?”

  Harriet answered. “It is!”

  They passed the egg shaped ball back and forth. Facets cut into the glass did not sparkle, but the frosty glass did glow softly in the sunlight, its weathered surface matching the lily of the valley bottle.

  For a few minutes Dana watched them with interest, thinking they would explain, but finally he gave them a nudge. “You know what that is?”

  Harriet answered. “It’s a story. Let’s get a drink and we’ll tell you.”

  They sat on the porch steps drinking lemonade. Harriet got the diary and the journal and they read Dana the entries about Aunt Lottie’s gift and the rubbish trip to the old brewery. Dana turned the glass stopper over, absorbing the shape through his fingers.

  He said. “Carrie never knew it got mixed in with the trash.”

  Without a word, Harriet jumped up and ran inside. Sitting back down between Dana and Ella, she held Aunt Lottie’s bottle on her knee. “Carrie said she put the bottle on her entry table to catch the sunlight. I think that’s when the bottle got mixed up with the rubbish.”

  Ella laughed. “One time I put the milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge. I switched it back before anyone noticed though.” She smiled to include them in her silliness.

  Harriet asked. “May I see the stopper?”

  Dana handed it to her. The bottle on one knee and the stopper on the other, she grasped the stopper’s ball end and slid the tapered end into the bottle.

  Dana commented in his unhurried way. “That completes a circle.”

  With crunching footsteps, Mom and Dad returned. “Hello Dana.” Mom said and looked at Harriet. “What’s the meeting about?”

  Harriet held out the bottle with its stopper and Dad took it carefully. “It’s that scent bottle you found yesterday. Where did you find the stopper?” He passed the bottle to Mom, who sat in the twig rocker Dad had carried back from the store.

  Mom turned the bottle over. “I think t
his is a story.”

  Harriet nodded. “A family story. We found out a lot today.” She turned to Ella. “Ella, would you read the entries?

  “Sure.” She smiled with pleasure. They listened, hearing the way the past and present fit together: Aunt Lottie’s gift, the old brewery, the missing scent bottle and the diary and the journal. When she had finished, everyone stared at the bottle, once again on Harriet’s knee.

  Mom said. “That’s all clear, but where did you find the stopper?”

  Harriet said. “Dana came to dig up a bottle he’d seen a few days ago. It turned out to be this beautiful stopper.”

  Ella added. “We used the archaeology trowels and they worked great. The stopper was on the other side of the cellar from the bottle. We never would have found it without Dana.”

  They turned to the watching boy. Dana thought for a moment. “I hoped for something special.”

  Dad laughed. “You got your something special. Poor Carrie- she never knew what happened. For you to find it so quickly and also have the journal and diary that explains the circumstance--that’s amazing.” He was excited, but Mom watched Harriet with questions in her eyes.

  Mom stood up. “It’s time for lunch. How about grilled cheese sandwiches? Dana will you join us?”

  “Thanks, but I have a sandwich in my pocket. Can I eat it here?”

  Dad said. “Dana, you’re welcome to sit on our porch and eat a sandwich any time.” His grin made the boy know he was both welcomed and teased. The adults went into the house.

  Harriet went in to get lemonade refills. Mom was grilling sandwiches, but Dad wasn’t in the kitchen. Backing through the screen door juggling three glasses, Harriet found Dad on the porch opening an old folding table.

  “Harriet, I brought you two Donnellson photos from the family chest. You should see the people you’ve been reading about.” He laid them on the table, which would probably stay on the porch, knowing him. Mom called and he went in. Harriet, Ella and Dana gathered around the table.