The Cherished by Patricia Ward
Author:Patricia Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00
Thirteen
Tom stands with his long ropy arms hanging and his head bent. He bears no expression, staring into the blackness of the cellar as if listening or waiting for something.
âShe broke the ward,â he announces at last. âDoorâs open.â
Jo gets slowly to her feet, the strange words muddling inside her head. Ward is from storybooks and fairy tales. Door could mean the trapdoor. But he means a different one, she knows. The one down below, where she found the raggedy bits of wing now scattered across the stone floor.
âDid you move the iron?â Hattie asks. She sounds frantic.
âIâI donât think so. I donât know.â
Hattie wipes her teary face with her forearm, then she clambers down the steps into the cellar. Tom stands aside, staring after her.
There is a door to another world, her daddy incanted in his storytelling voice. That was always the beginning, the words themselves a door to the magic closeness with him, to tales about fairies and children playing and singing and eating as much ice cream as they wanted. She used to imagine herself dancing into that world in a pretty dress, like the girl in Oz.
He never said it was that gash in the rocks, filled with blackness and cold.
Her mind isnât working right. What sheâs thinking is impossible. It has to be.
Hattie comes back up the steps. âItâs all there,â she says.
Jo feels dumbly relieved, as if she did something right. Tom nods, rubbing his jaw, then he nudges the trapdoor with his boot. For a moment it stands vertical, then it drops. Jo shrinks in anticipation of the bang, but instead the door lands on his other waiting boot. He releases the door with barely a thud. Hattie at once steps onto it and paces back and forth, making sure itâs fully closed. Tom watches her. When sheâs finished, she looks at him with a pinched, scared expression. âIt shouldâve lasted longer.â
âShe went poking around,â Tom says, as if Jo isnât right there.
His remote, indifferent demeanor is somehow worse than Hattieâs panic. âIâm sorry,â Jo whispers. They look at her, so she blurts, by way of an excuse, âWe had to come inâwe have to get the house ready to show!â
She shouldnât have said that. Of course she shouldnât have. Tomâs face hardens. His gaze travels the tattered, dark wing pieces strewn across the floor, his mouth twisted and bitter.
âThat may be,â he says. âDoorâs still open till it gets closed.â
âWhat does that mean?â
He ignores her, prods Hattie toward the outside. âWeâve got market to get to.â
Jo stumbles behind them. She almost falls, her body weak as jelly. Outside in the hot sun, Tom slams the door and bars it and claps the padlock shut. âWonât make a difference but a small delay,â he says, turning around and handing her the key. âYour mama should leave.â
The words donât register for a long, hot, sunbaked minute. Jo takes in his brown, angled face, the thinness of his lips. His lashes are unusually long and dark.
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