Moon Window by Jane Louise Curry

Author:Jane Louise Curry [Curry, Jane Louise]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: KMWillis Books
Published: 2014-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

Blow Out the Candle and Come

Jo felt lightheaded. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the tree trunk’s rough bark.

“What was your name before?” she had asked.

“Fettes. Ellen Fettes,” Granty had answered.

Jo drew a deep breath, then swung down to a bough on the shadowed back side of the elm, and dropped to the snow-wet grass.

The girl who stood facing her was a little younger, a little shorter, but still eerily like herself, with the same red hair and dark eyebrows. They could have been sisters, or certainly cousins.

“Oh, my new dress!” Nell Fettes wailed softly. “It’s all schmutzy— and the lace!”

“No, it’s all right,” Jo said anxiously. She tried to hush her. “Your dress is fine. This one’s not really— it’s not yours.”

“Of course ’tis,” Nell whispered loudly. “Mama packed the parcel in my valise, and I opened it up first thing this morning. Mama had Mam’zelle Michel make it up from the plaid I liked so much at Gilmores’ shop.”

“Then if that was your birthday party in there, why didn’t you wear it tonight?”

“Because.” Nell gave a twirl to show off a dark green dress with a yoke and sash embroidered with a design of maple leaves in rust and red and green. “Because Granty gave me this one, and I didn’t like to hurt her feelings. It’s a copy of one in Godey’s Maga­zine.”

“Look—” Jo thought quickly. “Your birthday dress is right where you left it. Go look. I’ll even come with you. Just tell me what year it is.”

1897! In the light of the candle Nell carried, the house looked little different from the Winter­bloom Jo knew, but that only made it seem eerier. The two girls crept up past the second floor where the voices of Nell’s Granty and the housekeeper could be heard, to the Yellow Bedroom. It, too, was the same, except that the only painting on the wall was a small still-life of peony blooms.

Jo nodded at the open wardrobe. “There. You see?” Nell stared at the dress in the wardrobe. Beside its fresh colors and crisp linen lace, the rumpled dress Jo wore was only a faded, dusty echo.

Nell was bewildered, but she apologized nicely. “I’m very sorry I called you a thief, but if you’re not, why were you hiding up Granty’s tree? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“I’m Jo— Joanna,” Jo said, truthfully enough. “From Cambridge.”

Nell held up the candle­stick to give Jo a searching look, from the twigs and dead leaves in her hair to her stocking feet. “There were no foot­prints in the snow,” she announced accus­ingly. “I think that’s very odd, don’t you? If you don’t tell me how you came to be up Granty’s tree, I believe I shall have to tell her about you after all. You’re one of the cousins, aren’t you?” She watched Jo mis­trust­fully.

Jo hesitated. How else was she going to get up to the attic? And what would be the harm? asked a whisper in her mind’s ear.

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