“I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Rachel.” She uses the warning voice. I hate that. It’s like a threat: Do it or else (insert horrible thing that might happen). I’ve tried to explain how important my writing is, but she just doesn’t get it.
“I’ll do it when I’ve finished the homework.”
She takes the hint and leaves. I do some math problems and the French translation, all of which takes more than half an hour. Since she hasn’t come back up to hassle me about having a shower and going to bed, I write some more of my story, adding a witch who looks like an eccentric old woman with dogs and turns out to be immensely powerful.
“Mess with me at your own peril,” I mutter as I save and close the document. I put my school stuff in my bag for the morning, then go over to the window.
Mrs. Mac is out there again. Not on the footpath, but in her front garden, shining the torch up into the trees. Looking for owls? Hunting for a lost cat? I’m about to close the curtains when she looks straight up at me. She kindly doesn’t shine the torch into my eyes. She gives me a little wave. I wave back. Then she’s gone. I don’t feel embarrassed to be caught watching her. I’m weirdly happy that she saw me and was nice about it.
When I get home from school the next day, there’s mail sticking out of our box, so I take it inside, call out “Hi!” to Mum so she’ll know I’m there, then check the letters to see if there’s anything for me, unlikely as that is. They are all bills or junk mail, except for one. It’s a longish envelope with interesting stamps on it. They’re all pictures of monsters: a dragon, a weird horse with too many legs, a thing that might be a phoenix. It’s from the UK, and it’s addressed to Mrs. M. MacEachern at number 29, which is the Bridge House.
I wonder what the M is for—Mary? Millicent? Myrtle?
Mrs. Mac might be waiting to hear from a son or daughter, a grandchild, a dear old friend she hasn’t seen for years. I should take it over to her. I should knock on the door and give it to her. That’s more friendly than stuffing it in her letter box. And I might get a peek inside the house.
I’m not going to say, Hi, Mrs. Mac. That would be rude. But I have no idea how to pronounce MacEachern. I get out my phone and search for a pronunciation guide. YouTube gives two ways of saying it, mac-EECH-ern, and mac-EK-ern. Since the first one’s the name of an American high school, I go for the second one. I practice a couple of times. I tell myself not to be nervous; she did wave to me last night.
The gate creaks as I open it, and from inside the house there’s muffled barking. I picture myself in hospital, swathed in bandages from head to toe. I hear my mother and Mr Briggs saying, I knew those dogs would cause trouble. I’m calling the council right now.
I hesitate then swallow and lift my chin. All right, I’ll do it. I won’t be bookish, shy Rachel who barely talks to anyone at school. I’ll be a brave and bold adventurer with head held high.
I reach the door, which has a fresh coat of paint in glossy dark blue—when did that happen?—and knock three times. There’s a frenzied yipping and a scuttling sound, then claws scratching on the other side of the door.
Footsteps.
“Sybil, no!” says Mrs. Mac, and the scrabbling stops. The door opens and there she is, with the tiny dog in her arms and the huge one beside her, and a couple more bouncing up the hallway behind her. “Wait,” she says over her shoulder, and they do. “Oh, you’re the young woman from across the road.” She gives me a close look, sizing me up. “Hello.”
“Hi, Mrs. McEachern.” My voice shakes. Why am I so pathetic? I hate myself sometimes. “I’m Rachel. This letter’s for you—it was in our mailbox.”
She’s holding the dog and doesn’t have a hand free to take the envelope.
“Lovely,” she says, backing into the house. “Will you bring it in? And close the door behind you—Sybil is liable to bolt at the slightest opportunity.”
I do as she asks. I may be breaking the family rules about stranger danger, but I can hardly do otherwise, since Sybil is thrashing around as if she’s seen a demon. Mrs. Mac sets her on the floor. The little dog hurtles off down the hallway.
“I thought that small one couldn’t walk,” I say.
“Ah. Come through and I’ll explain. Cup of tea?”
“I can’t stay long.” I follow her toward the back of the house and try not to gape. The place may be old and neglected, but it’s still amazing. I don’t know where to look first. The ceiling’s a riot of plaster flowers and animals and things that might be cherubs or strange fairies. The carpet runner has a long dragon on it that would once have been brilliant red on a deep blue background. It’s faded badly, but I can still see all sorts of delicate details: people in tiny boats, a bug-eyed monster guarding a tall palace, and a field of flowers with crows flying over it, and…
“That carpet has a hundred stories in it,” says Mrs. Mac, looking back at me with a crooked smile. “Every person who looks at it finds new ones.”
I’m speechless, because the carpet has put several new stories in my head, where they’re jostling to be first in writing order. With test week coming up at school, that’s not a good thing. But it feels great, like a door opening on a wider world.
I follow Mrs. Mac through to a big kitchen, where there’s a long table with five chairs, none of them matching; and an old-style stove, the kind that uses wood or coal. Lots of things hang from the ceiling: herbs and garlic and stuff, but also a string of little silver bells and three pottery owls in different sizes.
At the back of the room, overlooking the river, a row of windows lets in the light. Some have stained glass; some are plain so you can see the water and the trees and probably kookaburras and magpies and spiders. On the outside there are spiderwebs in every corner.
“Live and let live,” murmurs Mrs. Mac, apparently reading my mind as she puts a kettle on the stove and gets out cups and saucers. “They keep the flies out. Please, sit. Now, would you like ordinary black tea, or Earl Grey, or a herbal brew? I make my own mixtures; you might enjoy this one. Lemongrass, peppermint, marigold, a touch of this and that.” She opens a squat earthenware jar and offers it for me to sniff. “What do you think?”
Awkward Rachel, who hates speaking up and getting things wrong, would ask for ordinary black tea because it’s the safest. But this house calls for courage.
“That smells interesting. I’d love to try it, thanks.” I perch on the very edge of a wooden chair and watch Mrs. Mac potter about the kitchen.
Sybil does a great job of getting underfoot, but Mrs. Mac doesn’t step on her even once. When the tea is ready, in a pot that looks like some sort of creature but I can’t tell what—a toad, maybe?—Mrs. Mac clicks her fingers and says quietly, “Dogs!”
Just like that, they’re all around us; Sybil and the deerhound and the two from the hall—sturdy brindled Staffies. They sit, watching us.
“This is Finn,” Mrs. Mac indicates the deerhound, “and these are Minnie and Paddy, or Minerva and Patrick if you want to be formal. One named for a goddess, the other for a saint. And Finn, of course, was a great hero. Then there’s Sybil, and her brother over there.”
There are dog beds all over the place, from an oversized one that must be Finn’s to a tiny one with built-up sides. A head pops up from that one, round eyed and big eared. That dog’s just asking to be called Yoda. When Mrs. Mac lifts him out of his bed, I see that his hind legs are deformed.
“Oh, poor thing,” I say.
“Here, hold him while I pour the tea. One hand under his rear end, that’s it, and one around his chest. Take a firm hold. He won’t break.”