Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

Author:Patti Callahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Being Brave

Exams are finished, and my brain feels as if it is made of soft pudding. My pack is heavier than usual as I’m carrying my things home for holiday. So this time I will take the shorter way home instead of the path I prefer on the Severn Way running alongside the river. From the railway station I trudge along the Foregate Road and see Worcester Cathedral’s tower grasping for the low clouds. I hoist my pack and head toward the London Road and home. It does not escape me that the London Road in Oxford is the one that leads toward Mr. Lewis’s house, and this one to mine.

Beneath the fatigue, I’m slightly annoyed. Mother said she would pick me up with the car and she didn’t show, perhaps mistaking my arrival time. But the air is light and cold, and the walk isn’t so bad; the sky is deep blue, without a cloud to be seen. Neighbors along the mile wave at me as I pass: Mrs. McReady, standing with her broom on the front stoop pretending to sweep but in truth watching for any impropriety she can report at teatime to her friends. And Mr. Litton, coming home from a trip to market and opening his front door.

On this holiday break, I plan to sleep to my heart’s content and read stories to George. I’ve brought with me The Light Princess because it was written by the same author as Phantastes. If Mr. Lewis loved George MacDonald, perhaps there is something deeper in these tales that George will also love.

We will figure it out—George and I. We will piece these stories together and deduce where Narnia was born.

I turn the corner to home and see that the gate to our cottage is flung wide open.

Something’s wrong!

No smoke rises from the chimney, smoke that usually signaled comfort and family. Paying no mind to the icy walkway, I run into the cottage, drop my pack, and rush through the kitchen and then to George’s empty room.

Fear like barbed wire snags my breath. I know better than to guess why the rooms are empty—there can be as many reasons as there are wild dreams. I fling open the wardrobe: empty. On his bed are scattered pencils and the open notebook. I glance quickly—pages and pages of drawings of lions and castles, scenes of the stories I have told him. In each one, George has added a lion: sometimes roaring, sometimes resting or just watching.

I drag in a few breaths and rush back to the kitchen. Mum knew I was coming. Before leaving, I’d rung her from the residence hall.

I see it: a note on the kitchen table, the place where most of my life has unfolded.

At hospital.

I flip the torn paper over but there is nothing to console me, nothing to tell me why or when. I’d phoned three hours ago, so this is no planned doctor visit. The left-open gate already told me that.

I grab my satchel and

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