by Emily Asad
After lighting the candle and stuffing it into a holder at Mrs. Akakios’ feet, I sit on the bench facing her. It’s so tranquil here, like having my own little world of calm. I haven’t felt this peaceful in months. Eventually, I start to get uncomfortably cold. I should probably get back to the mansion before Amelia starts to scold.
“Need something warm?”
I jump up at the voice. It’s the beautiful ghost, all bundled up in a classy blue coat and holding out a Thermos. If she’s really an imaginary friend, like Phoebe claims, then how can she hold things? “Alexis?”
“No. She’s been forgotten. It’s up to you to unforget her.”
“Cynthia?”
“Phoebe never says that right. It should be pronounced Kynthia. Your name is Greek, too, though it should be spelled with an X. Xenia.”
“I know. It comes from ‘xeno,’ meaning stranger. Foreigner, guest, alien. Someone different. It fits my life so far. I hate that.”
“It also means ‘hospitality,’” she counters. “Someone who takes care of those in need. I can be hospitable, too. Care to try the nectar of the gods? It’s my own recipe, with cinnamon and a pinch of cayenne pepper.”
Ghost juice doesn’t sound appetizing. But it’s probably rude to refuse her offer. So I stand there, shivering with cold. She pretends to not notice. Instead, she pours hot cocoa into a strange, flat drinking bowl with two handles.
It’s frothy and thick and warms my fingers through my mittens. As I drink, I can see a scene at the bottom of the bowl. When I’ve drunk it all, it’s a little girl playing in front of a giant dollhouse. I nearly drop the drinking bowl.
Kynthia takes it back and pours some for herself, offering a silent toast to the statue.
“You’re not a ghost,” I say. “Are you Artemic?”
“The original,” she replies. “An old family friend. But since you’re so good at keeping secrets, please keep mine. Neither Amelia nor the Ambassador need to know about me.”
“Why not?”
Her brilliant silver eyes sparkle in the starlight. She bypasses my question. “Some people learn about love, don’t they? You already know about a mother’s love, but there are different kinds. Fathers’ love, protective and fierce. Brothers, playful and teasing. Boyfriends, tender and comforting.” She winks at me. “And friends of all ages who can help you believe in yourself when your world is falling apart. Tell me, Hospitable Stranger, what have you learned of love in the time you’ve been here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
As before, her silver eyes command me to speak.
Images begin to flash through my mind. Mr. Akakios, breaking the news about my missing mother as gently as he could. George, teaching me his trade as if I were his daughter. Henry, playing chess to cheer me up. Nathaniel, handsome and flirty, with his easy smile. Diana, Gary, Michael, who honestly seem to enjoy my company. David’s not on the list of people who love me. But he flashes to my mind anyway. “I’m learning,” I reply.
Kynthia nods. “There are people who run from love, or who have been trained to run. You strike me as the sort of person who was trained to run. Maybe you don’t have time to invest, or energy. But you’ll never be happy until you find the courage to surrender.”
The conversation is taking a rather intimate turn, coming from a complete stranger. My frown deepens. “What do you know about me? Did you talk to the school counselor?”
Kynthia tinkles a laugh. “I read souls, my little she-bear.”
She-bear. The term seems familiar, something I studied once for a research paper. I’m missing something important. But what?
“I heard about your mother,” she continues. “You must feel awful right now. But you know, there’s always hope.”
Everyone keeps saying the same thing. It’s lost its meaning. I’m startled when she grips my chin and forces to meet her bright silver gaze.
“There’s hope,” she repeats in a voice full of conviction. “You must not stop believing.”
“What would you know about it?” Suddenly angry, I jerk my chin away. “Can you say for sure my mother is alive?”
“Little one, some things take faith. Others take action. You are here to complete an action that faith cannot.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“Yes. And it’s taking you long enough to solve the one I gave you.”
I get defensive. “I’m making progress.”
“It’s not enough yet. You’re going in the wrong direction.”
“So give me a hint. Who’s the timber wolf?”
“There is no timber wolf.”
“Am I the boat?”
She holds up her gloved hand. “When you’re ready to solve it, you will. You can only restore balance to this family once you balance yourself. In the meantime, I have a gift for you.” She withdraws a pendant from her pocket - a dice-sized cottage on wheels, identical to the one I’m building with the Whitmans. Its golden roof opens to reveal an itsy galley, eating booth, and sleeping loft inside. Turquoise shingles, gold trim, and a bright coral door decorate the exterior. She fastens it around my neck. “You never sketch the outside of your gypsy wagon, so I hope I guessed the colors right.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“You and Phoebe are well-matched. You have my blessing.”
“For what?”
She smiles and turns back to the statue. “I’m going to sing her to sleep now. If you need a lullaby, you’re welcome to stay.”
Her soothing hum works on me, too – until I notice it’s the same one David plays on his guitar. I bid her goodnight and then head back to the mansion.
It’s only as I’m falling asleep on my bed that I wonder how I navigated the maze without making a single mistake.
CHAPTER THIRTY:
TINY HOUSING
Amelia lets me eat Sunday brunch with Phoebe, who considers it a wonderful new form of tea party.
“You look like a ten-year-old now,” I tell Phoebe when she struts and twirls so I can see her new self, an entire inch taller since last night. She’s wearing bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed shirt.
“I’ve been practicing. Look what I can do.” She takes a miniature Red Ryder wagon from her jewelry box and places it in a clearing on the floor. The air fills with a buzzing sensation. Green flecks sparkle at her fingertips. Suddenly, the wagon begins to grow. When it reaches its original size, it stops growing.
“Impressive.” I kneel and inspect it. It’s warm.
“I’ve never been able to grow things before,” she says. “Just shrink them. All Artemics can resize things.”
“What other powers do you have?”
“I don’t know. It depends on our goals in life and how we choose to be of service. I’ll find out when I grow up, I guess. Everyone gets a talent with an element. Some of us are good with weather, or water, or growing plants. Alexis knew all about metal. I think my talent will have to do with wood, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do yet.”
“Well, keep practicing. You’re doing great.”
“I hope so. It’s exhausting, though.” She flops onto a sofa and passes me a box of imported Belgian chocolates.
I choose a dark square with raspberry filling. “Ready to learn about design, then?”
She bites into an oval that drips caramel juice down her chin. “Sure.”
I can’t wait to tell her about my Tiny House or my cottage designs, but she won’t understand them until I teach her some basics. So I keep myself to explaining how to measure square feet, making sure doors swing the best way into or out of a room, and how each room needs a source of lighting or ventilation.
“Most of all, I try to arrange windows and doors around the furniture I want in the room.” I give her my spare graph book. “This one’s for you. I wrote down some typical measurements so you can start designing your own – see, a two-person couch is usually three feet by five or six feet, but a three-person couch is three by seven.”
She catches on quickly. Although her first design has several flaws, she’s a total natural. Within the hour she knows as much about design as I do. I’ve only had five weeks with George, but she asks all the right question and figures out the rest. We settle on a plan big enough for a family of six – a rather ambitious first project, but she insists.
Then she leads me to her workshop – a corner of the room that looks much like George’s basement – and I talk her through building a foundation and measuring interior versus exterior walls. She cheats and uses entire panels of wood for the walls, which saves a ton of time, and she’s got pre-wired doll lights that she staples to the walls rather than embedding the cables. We don’t need insulation, either.
We work through dinnertime. Amelia tells us it’s Phoebe’s bedtime, but doesn’t press the issue. The moon is high in the sky by the time we finish our fully functional dollhouse.
“Let’s go inside and try it out!” Phoebe cries.
When she reaches for me, I cry out and stumble backward over a box of miniature two-by-fours. “Don’t touch me!”
Her smile fades. “I was just going to take you inside.”
“Sure, but can I get back out again? I don’t want to get trapped like the Whitmans.”
“I didn’t think of that,” she says. “Wait a minute. Who told you about the Whitmans?”
“Everyone knows,” I lie. “They tell all kinds of stories at school…”
“None of them are true! Okay, so maybe some of them are. But I haven’t done stuff like that in a century. Ooh, if I had them here right now, I’d…” Her fingers twitch in revenge.
“You’d what?” I challenge.
She looks down at her hands, her anger fading to sorrow. She wipes her hands on her shirt as if trying to rub away the urge to shrink something. “I’d try to forgive them,” she says, her voice growing quiet. “I don’t blame you for fearing me. But I want to earn your trust. I’ll get better. I promise. And one day, if I can, I’ll fix everything I ruined.”
“That’ll be a good day,” I say, hoping to cheer her up. “So show me what you’ve got.”
She pops inside her newest dollhouse, as tiny as a paper clip. The lights work, but we don’t have a water source for the bathtub or shower. She’s got a collection of doll beds and chairs that were probably real once. Since our dollhouse was a little bigger than we planned, she has to make the furniture bigger, too. It takes a lot of grunting and groaning on her part. When she pops out again, she’s exhausted.
“That was fun,” she says. “Let’s do another one tomorrow.”
I’m pawing through her box of tiny furniture. Frowning, I ask the question that keeps ripping through my head: “Phoebe, where do you get all this stuff?”
“Daddy orders it for me, or I get it from the Internet. You can get anything online.”
“But this stuff isn’t made for dolls. How…”
She takes me into her closet, which has a door at the end. It opens into an empty study similar to the Whitman’s. “My seal ends there,” she says. “But I don’t use this room. Have you met Gary yet?”
I nod.
“When I want things, he brings them up and leaves them here. I wait until he’s gone to shrink them. He thinks it’s just a storage room for Daddy. He doesn’t know I’m here. Nobody does, except you and Daddy. And Amelia.”
Her big eyes fill with pain. I thought I was lonely when it was just me and Mamá in Minneapolis, but her world consists of even less. “You’ll get out of here soon enough.”
“I hope so. I used to think it was funny how people were so scared of me, but now… It just makes me sad. I was an awful little girl, wasn’t I? I’ve grown so much.”
She’s still little. Yesterday isn’t as far away as she makes it sound. But I don’t want to discourage her. “You’re nicer now.”
Something’s bugging me. I finally figure out what it is. She’s got dozens of beds, sofas, rocking chairs, bathtubs, dressers – you name it. Enough to make thirty houses, if she wanted.
Mamá can’t even afford one.
Let’s do another one tomorrow, indeed! She has no idea about real life, how hard it is for people to make a home for themselves. She’s a spoiled, rich little brat who’s been insulated from suffering and poverty.
I know I’m jealous, unreasonably jealous. And suddenly, I hate her, this little girl who has everything and takes even more from helpless people. Is it fair to hate a ten-year-old? Does that make me a really evil person, to despise someone so cute?
She’s staring at me, puzzled. “What did I say?”
I can only shake my head.
“Oh, please talk to me. I’m trying to fix things, but I need to know what I do wrong…”
How do you explain social inequities to a kid? It’s not her fault she was born into wealth. And it’s not my fault my father’s debt has been such a burden. “It’s nothing,” I say. “I just-”
She lunges at the necklace around my throat. “That’s adorable!” she squeals. “Is it a gypsy wagon?”
I flip to the design in my sketchbook, glad to switch the subject. “Have you ever heard of the Tiny House Movement?”
She shakes her head. “What’s that?”
“It’s the idea you can build an entire house in less than four hundred square feet, sometimes two hundred or even smaller. My Suitcase would fit into your closet.”
She looks around her nursery, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “Why on earth would anyone want to live in something so small?”
“Lots of reasons. Some people can’t afford anything bigger. Some are college kids or retired people who don’t need so much space and don’t want to spend all day cleaning. Some people care about their green footprint – that means they’re trying to reduce their impact on the environment. They might even use composting or incinerating toilets or rainwater catch systems.”
“I’ll have to research that. Why do you want to build one?”
“Me? I don’t have a good reason, except they’re so cute and quaint and…” Phoebe’s blue eyes are nearly as compelling as Kynthia’s. My cheeks grow warm. The kid deserves a real answer, so I give it to her. “I knew my mother would never be able to afford a real house, so I started designing these.”
She continues to study me. “Zenia, are you poor?”
Coming from anybody but her, it would be an insulting question. But she honestly doesn’t understand the concept. “I have a steady job and a decent paycheck, and I know where my next meal’s coming from. I’m not that poor.”
She doesn’t respond. I think she’s trying to understand my answer.
I’ve had enough socialization for one day. “I’ve gotta get going, kid.”
“I know, I know. Dessert prep with Michael. Make me something good.”
“Actually, it’s Sunday. I don’t work weekends unless there’s a convention.”
“So stay! You can spend the night in my room. It’ll be a sleepover!”
The truth is that I want to ditch her so I can check in on the Whitmans. “I just need some alone time now, okay? But I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“No. But I’ll try.”
“Wait. Can I keep these to study?” She holds up my designs.
“Sure. Research the Tiny House Movement, key words Jay Schafer and Tumbleweed Homes. Ross Chapin Cottages, too. Those’ll give you plenty of ideas. Oh! And pocket neighborhoods. And the prettiest Tiny House out there today is called the Lilypad…” I could send her to so many websites, but that’s probably enough for one evening.
“Wait again! Do you want to help me put our new house on the shelf?”
She’s stalling, trying to keep me here. But another minute won’t hurt, so I follow her to the shelf where she keeps her miniaturized homes. I hold the new dollhouse while she makes space for it.
Only one doll sits on that shelf, her blonde hair matching Phoebe’s shade exactly. Those blue eyes are the same shade as Ph
oebe’s, too, and they’re so realistic she could blink any moment now. Her wooden body is exquisite, like the Whitmans were when I met them in doll form. She holds a chubby wooden child.
They’re too silent. I can feel it – they’re lost in an ocean of boredom. My heart nearly beats out of my chest. I know this sensation.
It’s Alexis, holding Baby John.
The missing dolls!
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:
STIFF REUNION
They look just like the Whitmans did when I first found them. But no emotions emanate from them. They’re so empty. Like fluffy white clouds or hold-your-breath-underwater empty.
I have to reunite them with the Whitmans. But I can’t tell Phoebe about my theory for reviving them or she’ll know about the dollhouse. Then she’ll probably get it moved back into her room, and I’ll have to ask permission every time I want to visit.
As Phoebe places her new house on the shelf with great care, I snatch the dolls and stuff them into my sweater sleeve. “Okay, now I really have to get going.” I don’t even wait for another plea from Phoebe. I just hurry out the door and make sure it’s shut tight.
My knowledge about magic is limited but I’m almost certain my hypothesis is right. Just to be safe, though, I leave the dolls on the creepy graveyard shelf with all the shrunken houses before I head over to the dollhouse.
I pop straight into Henry’s room, where he’s sitting at his desk writing in his journal. He’s surprised to see me, but even more surprised when I lock the door and put a finger to my lips.
“You married her!” I accuse in a whisper. It’s the only hypothesis I’ve developed that explains why Alexis could have turned to wood. If I’m wrong, then I’m out of options for getting her to turn human again. I hold my breath, waiting for his reply.
His pen makes a long, dark scratch on the page. “What?”
“You married Alexis without telling anyone. Not even your mother.”
“How did you guess?”
“You told me when Artemics marry humans, their fates entwine. Humans become immortal. That’s why the Ambassador is still around even though his wife isn’t. This is important, Henry. No more secrets. Tell me how you got married.”