The Wicked Small People of Whiskey Bridge by Jon Oplinger & Elizabeth Cooke

Author:Jon Oplinger & Elizabeth Cooke [Oplinger, Jon & Cooke, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462049769
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2011-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Winter Comes To Whiskey Bridge

Winter came that night. It was a mean, snowy, blowy winter, angry about having to wait so long.

“I’m going to stay in Whiskey Bridge and give everyone headaches, and nose-drippy colds and make you all shovel snow and slip and fall and stay indoors until you get sick of watching television,” said Winter with a sneer. For the Big People of Whiskey Bridge it was a bad winter. For the Little People it was very nearly the end.

The Little People were never so cold as that first night when sleet came riding in on winter’s wind to coat everything with ice and sway the pine trees and make the leaves in the rhododendron forest curl up tight and rattle together like glass rods. Fearful and forlorn, the Little People huddled together for warmth.

Upstairs in their beds, Timothy and Xandre heard the wind moan and the sleet hammer upon the windows. Rudy made his nervous clucking bark, prowled the house and finally went upstairs and sat beside Xandre’s bed.

“Are you worried about our friends?” asked Xandre. Rudy moved closer and offered his nose to be scratched.

Xandre got up and made her way down the hall trailing her fingers along the wall in the darkness. “Timmy,” she called as soon as she got to Timothy’s room, “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” said Timothy. He would have said “Yes, twerp,” except that Xandre only called him Timmy when she was worried.

“It must be very cold under the porch,” said Xandre. Grandma Arsenault had told Xandre that she had been cold in the orphanage. Xandre didn’t remember but she was sure that Tia Julia had done her very best to keep her warm. So Xandre knew that she must do the same. Xandre didn’t want anyone to be cold.

Timothy had been thinking about that too. They could have said to themselves that maybe the Little People were used to the cold, or that the Little People had lots of straw or that the Little People had some other way of keeping warm, but, being children, they did not. They decided, instead, to try to help. Together, Timothy and Xandre crept quietly down the stairs, past their parents’ bedroom, and down into the basement.

At night the basement was always an adventure. It was cluttered with tools and boxes and old toys. The furnace fire cast dancing shadows. When the furnace was not on, the basement was pitch-black. But you never knew for how long it would stay pitch-black because suddenly with a pop, woof and a roar the furnace would go on again and that was always scary even though you knew it was going to happen. Basements are always scary places at night.

On tippy-toe, Timothy and Xandre crossed the basement. Carefully, quietly Timothy climbed onto Mr. Arsenault’s workbench. He put his mouth close to the crack that led to the space beneath the porch.

“Manco, Ollantay, are you there?” whispered Timothy.

The wind moaned and Timothy could feel the ice cold draft coming in from beneath the porch.

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