The Unseen by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Author:Zilpha Keatley Snyder [Snyder, Zilpha Keatley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-54858-0
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2004-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

During the next few days Xandra continued to think about the things that had happened in the basement. Mostly about what had happened after she had used the Key, but before the sinister clumps of darkness began to appear. She thought particularly about the fuzzy little shape that had looked and acted a lot like Stinky. Would he come back again if she went back to her basement hideout? As time went by she became more and more sure that some of her other basement orphans might turn up again if she was brave enough to go looking for them.

She didn't, however, do anything right away. At home and at school she went on doing ordinary things, which, as usual, included a lot of reading and daydreaming. And although she did see Belinda every day, she didn't make any special effort to talk to her. After the day Belinda had told her that the monsters were her own reflection, Xandra had quit riding the downtown bus. Belinda, she told herself, must have wanted it that way since she didn't even bother to ask Xandra why she'd stopped riding with her. So that was it, and everyone seemed to be happy, except that once in a while Xandra found herself thinking of something she'd like to say about a book or an idea, the kind of thing she wouldn't be able to discuss with most of the people she knew. At those times she wished that—that things could be different.

And every evening, back in her own room, Xandra climbed onto her bed and snuggled down among her animals and waited to see if anything would happen. But nothing did. So that's that, she told herself. It's all over. But the truth was, she didn't want to believe it. To believe that the whole enchanted feather thing was over, or else that it had never really happened in the first place.

It wasn't until Saturday morning that she finally made up her mind to go back to her basement hideout in spite of what had happened, or what she thought had happened, the last time she was there. “Just to look around,” she whispered, imagining that she was talking to Belinda. “I won't try to use the Key. I just want to go back to where I took care of the animals. What would be wrong with that?”

So it was that early on a Saturday morning, while most of the Hobsons were still asleep, Xandra crept down the back stairs and around the house until she came to the steps that led down to the basement. On the bottom stair she stopped for a moment, for one last aboveground, daylight moment, before she took a deep breath and opened the door.

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