The Unadoptables

by Hana Tooke

  “They’re gone.”

  That voice sounded like her own, but it was far too high-pitched and raw to be hers, surely?

  Egg’s face appeared above hers. “It’ll be all right, Milou,” he said softly. “We’ll be all right. I promise.”

  Then Lotta was beside her too, more arms enveloped her, and Milou’s tear-blurred eyes lost their battle to stay open.

  * * *

  Milou woke to sunlight. She’d somehow slept through the dawn bell. Gassbeek was going to kill her. Panic stole through her and she scrambled backward, blinking furiously, trying to work out why the dormitory seemed much, much smaller and her bed much, much bigger. Gone were the drafty eaves, replaced with a low, mahogany ceiling. The brown, threadbare blanket she was used to had somehow transformed into multiple layers of blanket and a bright-green quilt.

  The memory of the previous night came creeping back.

  Gassbeek was dead.

  Milou was home.

  Her family was gone.

  Just as her heart began to break again, she spotted above her head, sitting on a low shelf, her cat puppet, its head sewn back on so deftly that it could only have been done by Sem. She shuffled upward to sit and pulled the pocket watch free from beneath her collar, rubbing a thumb over the inscription.

  Beneath the stars I found you.

  52:284040, 4:784040

  Under the moon I lost you.

  Even after following the coordinates all this way, Milou was still lost to them.

  Fenna and Lotta stirred, looking up at her through sleep-heavy lids.

  “Milou?” Lotta spoke gruffly, one pigtail sticking out vertically from the side of her head, the other loose entirely. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Milou whispered, climbing over Lotta. “I just need some fresh air.”

  Lotta yawned in response, her lids drooping closed again. Fenna, however, climbed out to join Milou as she peered through the doorway into the next room. The boys were still sleeping soundly in the other cupboard bed in the living room, Sem facedown, one long arm dangling to the floor, and Egg resting his head on his carefully folded soot-stained shawl. She closed the door quietly so as not to disturb them.

  Compared to the gloominess of the night before, the kitchen looked radiant. The shadows were gone, but the thick dust remained, curling around the shafts of sunlight and sticking to every surface.

  Milou began opening smaller cupboard doors near the sink. There was no food; only more dust. She tiptoed over to a wardrobe and opened one door. Her breath caught at the sight of the clothing that hung inside. Men’s shirts, jackets, trousers; all finely made, practical, and gentlemanly. On the other side of the wardrobe, Milou found an entire rail of dresses, cloaks, and scarves; again, finely made, but surprisingly small and . . . youthful.

  Sighing, Milou gazed around the sun-dappled, debris-strewn room. Her ears, neck, and shoulders tingled in a way she had never felt before: a coldness that seemed somehow, impossibly, to warm her—easing the tightness in her chest ever so slightly.

  At least she was home, she told herself, even if her parents were not.

  “I’m going to find them, Fen,” Milou whispered. “I’ve got a whole windmill full of new clues now. Which means I’m closer to finding them now than I was yesterday.”

  Milou reached into her mother’s side of the wardrobe and selected a long, green cloak—which was only slightly too big for her—and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she found a red one for Fenna to wear and thick cotton socks to cover their frozen feet. She cast a quick look at her sleeping friends and then took Fenna’s hand.

  “Come on, let’s search this place from top to bottom.”

  * * *

  The mechanism room was still dark, still empty. Despite this, Milou and Fenna climbed up and around every single cogwheel to check for clues. But there were no stray midnight-dark hairs or hidden messages carved into the wood for her to find. The walls groaned, and, high up in the thatched dome, there was an unusual scratching noise.

  The only thing Milou could find of any interest was a small square door on the side of the wall. She had to work at the latch with all her strength. It finally slid open, and Milou carefully pushed at the door, which opened out into the sky. Cold air rushed in, and, when Milou saw just how high up she was, dizziness overwhelmed her.

  The low-lying land of the polder looked entirely different in the light of day: a milky patchwork of frostbitten fields, crisscrossed with canals. Thatched barns were dotted around between the farmhouses, cows grazed in the fields, and cyclists moved slowly up and down the road, waving to one another as they passed. Everything was so spread out and luxurious, unlike the crammed, busy city she was used to. From this distance, Amsterdam was just a line of gray with a cloud of grayer gray above it. Had they really walked all that way?

  Milou closed the door, sealing the outside world away once more. She saw that Fenna had climbed to the very top of the room, her gaze fixed toward the noise above.

  Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

  “It’s probably just a bird’s nest, Fen,” Milou said. “A pigeon, most like.”

  Fenna sighed and nodded, then clambered back down, wiping dust from her legs.

  “I think we can safely say there is nothing up here,” Milou said. “Let’s go and find something useful.”

  She nudged Fenna toward the ladder, down to the puppet-making workroom. She had been steeling herself to explore this room, but even so, the sight of the puppets her father had crafted sent fresh waves of despair coursing through her. Everything was left out just so, as if the Poppenmakers had merely stepped out for the day. And yet, the thick dust coating everything showed that it had certainly been much longer than a day, or a week, or even a year.

  Milou approached the desk—and something lying beside it caught her eye.

  A picture frame, its glass shattered. She picked it up carefully and blew the dust away.

  Inside was a child’s portrait of a man. His face was potato-shaped, one eye twice as large as the other. His nose was a backward L, and he was either wearing an upside-down bucket on his head or a top hat, Milou couldn’t quite tell. The only thing she could see for certain about this man was that he was happy; his banana smile stretched all the way up to his plum-sized ears. Below the portrait, in scrawling printing, was a poem:

  Dearest Papa,

  Your smile is the stuff of which dreams are made.

  Your eyes are two shimmering stars.

  Your heart is my center of gravity.

  And no love is as huge as ours.

  In the corner of the page, in a slightly messier hand, someone had written:

  By Liesel, 1872, Aged 10

  Milou’s ear tips prickled. Her breath hitched. The portrait was exactly twenty years old.

  “I . . . I think Bram Poppenmaker has another—” Milou swallowed. “He has another daughter.”

  She handed the picture to Fenna, who read it silently.

  “I suppose that explains the dresses.” Milou bit the inside of her cheek to stop more tears from falling. “I have an older sister. A daughter he kept.”

  Once again, her ears prickled, sharply and unpleasantly. Milou rubbed them hard, determined not to cry. There would be a logical explanation for it all. Somewhere. She just needed to keep searching.

  She turned back to the room and rummaged through every drawer, every shelf, every nook. There were no letters, no photographs, no personal documents at all. She dug into the stuffing of every puppet, looking for more hidden items or messages, but found nothing. She checked for loose floorboards or other secret compartments.

  Nothing.

  And it was as if she and her mother had never existed in the first place. No poems, no portraits, nothing at all to suggest a third person lived here. Nothing to suggest a baby—her—had liv
ed here either. Milou’s fingers shook as she wrote down the few clues she had found. Then she snapped her Book of Theories closed and headed down to continue her search in the kitchen.

  By now the others were awake, and dressed in Bram and Liesel’s clothing.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Sem said, sheepishly tugging at the collar of the striped shirt he wore. “It’s just so cold.”

  “Of course not,” Milou said, rummaging through the drawers beneath the green-quilt bed. There had to be more clues somewhere. “I’m sure my father won’t mind, Sem.”

  “I found this,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her. “Downstairs by the front door.”

  He was clutching a small stack of newspapers. Milou took them from him, blowing the dust off them.

  “They’re all dated 1880,” Sem whispered. “The most recent one is December 1880,” he added. “When you were . . .”

  Milou nodded in understanding, her throat constricted with emotion. They’d abandoned the windmill the very month Milou had been left on the Little Tulip’s rooftop.

  “Thanks, Sem,” Milou said, jotting it down in her notebook. “That helps a lot.”

  He gave her a tight, uneasy smile. “I still think you should be prepared for disappointment—”

  “I’ve had nothing but disappointment up until now, Sem, so what’s a little more of it going to matter? Good or bad, I need to know what happened. I need answers.”

  “There are so many books here,” Lotta said from the other side of the room. “It would take me months to read all these.”

  “Well,” Milou said, pulling herself together and standing. “You’ve got plenty of time to read them now that we don’t have to break our backs doing chores all day, every day. Though, of course, this place does need smartening up—”

  “We can’t stay here,” Egg said. He was sitting by the window, paper on his lap and a charcoal stick in his fingers, drawing.

  “What do you mean?” Milou asked.

  Egg grimaced. “I’m sorry, Milou, but we can’t stay here if your parents aren’t here.”

  “But—”

  “Egg’s right,” Sem said. “Five orphans squatting in an abandoned windmill with no adult in sight is going to draw attention from the neighbors.”

  “We can just tell them that my parents—”

  “They won’t believe us.”

  “Then we’ll just keep ourselves hidden,” Milou insisted. “No one needs to know we’re here.”

  Lotta shook her head. “We can’t hide smoke from the chimney, and we can’t stay indoors indefinitely. It’s just not practical, and it’s too big a risk. There may not be as many neighbors here as we had in the city, but there are enough to ask questions.”

  “But—”

  “They might alert the Kinderbureau,” Egg said. “If your parents aren’t coming back any time soon, then there’s no one to stop us from being dragged back to the orphanage and blamed for Gassbeek’s death.”

  Milou didn’t have an answer to that. Her parents were supposed to have been here to solve everything for them.

  “There’s no harm in staying one more night,” Lotta said. “That gives Milou time to search for clues, time for us to gather what we can to take with us, and time to think of where on earth we can go.” She blew out through pursed lips. “I suppose I can at least read one book in that time.”

  Milou sank onto the ledge beside Egg, resigned and defeated.

  She pressed her cheek against the cold window and peered out at the winter-ravaged polder, which now seemed as utterly miserable and desolate as she did. The only color in sight was the bough of the oak tree and the strange copper roof of the farmhouse next door.

  “It’s a shame we can’t stay,” Egg said softly. “There are so many wonderful things to draw and paint. Like that barn. I wonder why the Poppenmakers used such grand doors for a barn. They’re nothing like the simple wooden doors on all the others.”

  Milou looked at his drawing, then out the window, and saw that he was right. The Poppenmill barn did have unusually ornate mahogany doors, carved with swirling, flowering vines, much like the ones on the cupboard beds.

  Tingles erupted all over her scalp, and, before she even realized it, she was running out the front door, the winter wind whipping at her as she hurried down the weed-ridden path to the barn. She reached the barn door, panting and shivering, and tugged on it. The hinges screeched, and dust erupted around her.

  She stepped inside, her feet touching a spongy floor. Milou looked down at red carpet. She waved cobwebs away as she took another step forward, only to bump into something.

  A velvet chair.

  She blinked her eyes until they adjusted, then realized there wasn’t just one velvet chair but many. Rows and rows of them. Milou staggered past them, down a thin aisle, and stopped in the middle of the barn, directly beneath a gaping hole in the ceiling, through which the morning sunlight streamed in. At the far end was a huge stage, its tattered, moth-eaten curtains closed.

  Milou’s heart skipped in double time when she realized what she was seeing.

  It was a theater.

  And there, behind the curtains, was the unmistakable silhouette of someone standing on the stage, arms stretched out toward her.

  MILOU’S BOOK OF THEORIES

  New Evidence

  My parents left me a pocket watch, engraved with a riddle and coordinates, hidden in my puppet. It led me home, but they’re not here.

  Front gates chained with a rusted padlock. The sign has been vandalized, claiming that this windmill is haunted and dangerous.

  Windmill is empty of people, but not empty of their belongings.

  Clothes belonging to a man, my father, and to a girl, my sister.

  Portrait and poem made by Bram’s other daughter, Liesel.

  Newspaper stack by front door, all dated from twelve years ago . . . the year and month I was abandoned.

  Missing Evidence

  No hidden messages.

  No photographs.

  No hint at where they have gone.

  No sign of my mother.

  No sign of a baby (me).

  Perhaps, if I solve the pocket-watch riddle, I’ll know how to find them.

  FOURTEEN

  MILOU RAN DOWN THE theater aisle and leapt onto the front of the stage. The withered curtains fell from their rails as she tugged them open, raining down on her. She frantically disentangled herself from them.

  A girl stood before her, feet pointed, arms held out in a ballerina’s pose.

  A girl with large, unblinking eyes and bright-pink rosebud lips.

  A girl made of cotton and suspended on strings.

  A puppet.

  Milou silently scolded herself. She was a fool to have thought it could be anything else.

  Or anyone else.

  Warm, salty tears slid into the side of her mouth.

  “Milou!” Lotta called out from behind her. “What were you thinking? You could have been seen—Holy Gouda!”

  Milou quickly wiped at her cheeks and faced the others. They were all gawking at the theater.

  “This place is amazing,” Egg said, turning in slow circles as he made his way down the aisle.

  Sem was the only one looking right at her. “Are you all right?”

  He glanced at the ballerina puppet, his worried expression transforming into a sympathetic one.

  Milou blushed, then stepped around the puppet and into the shadowed area of the stage. To one side was a pile of wooden planks and half-finished set pieces—all of it stacked precariously. On the other side there was a large wooden ladder leading up to a puppeteering platform above the stage. Milou made her way toward it, then stopped.

&n
bsp; A lump of blankets lay, crumpled and frosted over, in the far corner of the stage.

  Milou’s ears prickled sharply, and her heart thumped. She nudged the pile with her foot, and it rolled open, revealing nothing but more blankets.

  Milou rubbed at her ears. Her Sense didn’t seem to be helping much at the moment.

  “Look,” Sem said, his voice tight.

  He pushed the blankets further aside, and Milou gasped.

  Claw marks.

  Just like the ones on her basket.

  “What if I’m too late?” Milou said quietly. “What if they’re—”

  “If they were dead, the windmill would have been cleared of their stuff and sold,” Sem said. “And they wouldn’t have left you the pocket watch to find them, either.”

  Milou hoped he was right.

  “It’s all so . . . confusing,” she said. “I need to find out what happened.”

  “I know you do.” Sem gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

  “This place really is full of possibility,” Lotta said, sitting down on one of the velvet chairs. “It’s a shame we can’t stay. I’m certain I could get the mill working again. Imagine all the things you could bake, Fenna, if we could grind our own grain.”

  Fenna smiled ruefully.

  “I’d love to learn how to use that sewing machine in the workshop,” Sem said. “I’ve always dreamed of using one.”

  “If only I’d found the pocket watch sooner,” Milou said glumly. “Perhaps my father might have still been here. It’s not fair that I’ve finally found my home, and I can’t even stay in it.”