Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle

Author:Janet Taylor Lisle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

Hillary slipped out the back door of her house like a fugitive, her quilted jacket rolled up and clutched to her chest. Behind her, she heard her father start to hammer again in the cellar. She closed the door quickly, went down the porch steps, and walked to a place away from the house where the porch light did not shine on her. Here she stopped and put on the jacket, zipping it tight around her neck. She groped for her mittens in the pockets.

The night air was frigid. The temperature was going down to ten degrees, and more snow was on the way. Her parents had talked about it during dinner. The storm might come as early as tomorrow morning.

“Welcome to winter,” her mother had said cheerfully. “Maybe they’ll have to cancel school,” she’d added, smiling at Hillary.

Her wooly hat was in her pocket but the mittens were missing. Hillary wondered if they had dropped on the closet floor when she’d gone to snatch her coat, ready to leap into the closet herself if her mother appeared. Mrs. Lenox was upstairs reading, but it was too risky to go back now. The clock in the kitchen had showed just past 9:00 p.m., which was Hillary’s bedtime, though her parents sometimes forgot and allowed her to stay up later. One thing they would never allow, however, was an unexplained, late-night walk in the cold by herself.

Hillary’s unprotected hands were already stinging. She pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over them and gathered the sleeve ends with her fingers to close the openings. Then she walked across the driveway and went downhill into the dark. As she moved, her eyes sought the black bulk of Sara-Kate’s house, and when she’d found that, she leveled her gaze at the second floor, to the windows just under the line of the roof. And when those were picked out (for her eyes took several minutes to accustom themselves to the darkness), she looked straight at the one window, the window on the right overlooking the yard, and beamed all her powers of detection there. If Sara-Kate was inside, Hillary was going to find out this very night, this very hour, because no one—not even elves—can stay inside a house at night in total darkness. And if there is a light, even the faintest candlelight, even the smallest flashlight, it will inevitably show up to those looking in from outside.

Hillary knew how ingenious light can be at escaping, because of her own attempts to read under her covers or inside her closet after she’d been put to bed.

“But how did you know!” she would wail when her mother caught her in the act and took the little reading lamp away.

“There was a glow,” her mother would say. Or, “I saw some light coming through the cracks.”

Now Hillary trained her eyes on the window and looked for cracks. She ran her eyes across the whole expanse of Sara-Kate’s house and watched for glows. She came to the hedge and squeezed through just far enough for a clear view.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.