She had the satisfaction of seeing the pity in Mrs. Lambert’s eyes turn to astonishment. She caught hold of her damp skirts and sketched a curtsy, pointing her grubby toes. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I enjoyed the ride — tremendously. Good-bye.” With one violent twist, she jerked herself free of Rory’s hands and sprinted for the safety of the crowd.
In the dreams, Caroline’s hair was brown, not golden. The girl was kneeling beside her, patting the sand of Maud’s newly built castle. Caroline’s head was bent, and her curls tumbled down, concealing her face. They were glorious curls: lush, tangled, silky, the sort that Maud had envied all her life. But they were not golden. They were the color of molasses — several shades lighter than Maud’s sparse locks, but distinctly brown.
“I almost drowned today,” Maud told Caroline. She groped in the sand, searching for the shell she used as a spade.
Caroline handed it over. “You didn’t drown,” she contradicted. “You got water up your nose. I’ve had that lots of times.”
Maud shut her lips tightly. It was just like Caroline to contradict her. Caroline thought nothing important could happen to anyone but herself.
“It’s an awful feeling,” Caroline said kindly, “getting water up your nose. Did you cry?”
“No,” denied Maud, doubly annoyed because Caroline hadn’t realized she was being snubbed.
“I always cry,” Caroline confided, as if there were nothing wrong with that.
“You’re a crybaby,” Maud said disagreeably. She looked up from the sand castle. It was early morning, and the gulls were swooping over the water, gleaning for food. There was no one on the beach but the two children. The freshness of the morning reminded Maud that she never left the house by day, which in turn told her she was dreaming. “I don’t see why you’re always bothering my dreams,” she told Caroline.
Caroline didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you haunt your mother’s dreams?” demanded Maud. “She’d like that, probably. I don’t want you.”
“I can’t,” replied Caroline. “She’s too miserable.”
“She’s miserable because you drowned,” Maud said accusingly.
“Yes, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” Caroline pulled one leg up to her chest and fingered a scab on her knee. Her petticoats were snow white and frothy with lace — real lace, Maud thought savagely. What a waste.
“I wish you’d tell her about my shoes and stockings,” Caroline said.
Maud frowned at her sand castle. “I don’t know about your shoes and stockings,” she retorted. “Why should I tell her about your shoes and stockings?”
She waited for Caroline to reply. Then she saw she was alone. The sand lay around her in smooth hills. There were no marks, no footprints — not even a hollow where Caroline had been sitting.
Maud twitched in her sleep. The sheet she held to her throat was moving. Someone was pulling it away from her. Maud opened her eyes and saw that the someone was Muffet. It was early morning and the hired woman was glaring at her. Maud sat up, blinking. Even half-asleep, she grasped that she was in trouble.
Muffet pointed to the window. Before it was a chair, draped with the striped dress Maud had worn the night before. Maud had placed it there to dry. Muffet stumped over to the dress, held it up, and rubbed the fabric between her thumb and fingers. Sandy, the gesture proclaimed. Wet. You’ve been down to the ocean.
Maud groaned. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets and racked her brains for an answer. She wondered if she could persuade Muffet that, even though she never left the house by day, it was all right if she played outdoors at night. It wouldn’t be easy. Of all the people in the household, Muffet was the most difficult to mislead. It was really too much, Maud thought with a stab of self-pity, the number of lies she had to keep track of now that she lived with the Hawthorne sisters.
Muffet had not finished stating her case. She marched over to the bed and pointed to a few grains of sand that had ended up in Maud’s bed. She fingered a lock of Maud’s hair. Her gaze was intensely critical.
“I know,” Maud agreed. “My hair feels awful — I think it’s the salt water. Do you suppose I could wash it today?”
Muffet took out her tablet. She scrawled MAUD NOT GO IN WATER OR MAUD DEAD.
Maud read the message, appreciative of the fact that Muffet was using the word or, which was new to her. It had taken Maud some pains to teach the meaning of or. Maud wrote MAUD NOT DEAD, tapped her chest as if to prove it, smiled placatingly, and returned the tablet to Muffet.
Muffet snorted, exasperated. She sat down on the bed and proceeded to draw. Maud gazed over her shoulder, fascinated as the seascape took shape — a long line of rocks leading from shore to sky, the curving waves, last night’s waning moon. Between the waves there was a head, and two arms raised in desperation. Muffet put down her pencil, lifted her hands, and began to gasp for air. It was a vivid and ugly pantomime of a person drowning.
Remembering the night before, Maud felt her skin prickle with gooseflesh. Had Muffet seen . . . ? No. The shore had been deserted. Maud pushed the thought aside. The ocean had frightened her the night before, but she had every intention of going back to it. She took the tablet and tried to draw a picture of herself playing in the sand. She mimed making a castle, pulling the bedsheet into peaks. She assumed her most pleading expression. I only play in the sand.
Muffet’s eyes narrowed.
Maud pinched the grains of sand from the sheet and let them trickle onto the tablet. Beside them, she wrote the word SAND. Then she wrote MAUD WORK IN SAND — Muffet hadn’t yet learned the word for play.
Muffet snatched the pencil and wrote MAUD IN WATER. She went back to the dress and wrung out the hem, producing a few drops of moisture. You weren’t just playing with the sand; you were in the water.
Maud threw up her palms, asking for mercy.
Muffet jotted down MAUD IN HOUSE and held the tablet so Maud could see.
Maud shook her head. She took the tablet and wrote HOT IN HOUSE. MAUD GO OUT HOUSE. She stopped with the pencil in her hand. She wished she had the words to tell Muffet how much she wanted to go out. The attic was not just hot; it was suffocating. She was sick of being a secret child, of feeling lonely and invisible and forlorn. Outside was the freshness of the wind and the ocean and the magic of the carousel. An idea came to her. She seized the pencil and began a sketch more complicated than any she had tried before.
She began with an upside-down triangle, for the carousel’s canopy, and drew four stick horses, two up and two down. She drew herself standing to one side and made a dotted line going from her eye to the merry-go-round. Surely Muffet would understand that staying in the house was hopeless when there were things like that just beyond the back door.
Muffet was interested. She sat back down on the bed and watched the drawing take shape. After the fourth horse appeared, the light of recognition came into her face, and she raised one hand, miming the up-and-down motion of the flying horses. Evidently she had seen the merry-go-round.
Maud nodded. She wrote MAUD GO OUT HOUSE. MAUD GO SEE — she drew an arrow and printed CAROUSEL under the flying horses.
Muffet took the tablet from her. Her pencil moved rapidly, fleshing out the horses, changing the upside-down triangle into a cone. She often corrected Maud’s drawings — Maud suspected that her stick figures were as distressing to Muffet as Muffet’s clothes were to Maud. She watched respectfully as Muffet rounded out Maud’s self-portrait with sleeves, a sash, and hair.