Gold Dust Letters Read online

  “Sure! Go ahead!” Georgina placed her hands on her hips and looked down furiously. “Now, Poco, listen! I am not going to stand here in the middle of this street and wait while you talk to another rabbit,” Angela heard her say as she walked away. “Get up! Get up this minute!”

  Whether Poco did get up, or whether she lay on the sidewalk for the next hour being stepped over by passing foot traffic (which she was perfectly capable of doing), Angela never found out. This was because all plans for the following afternoon fell apart. Poco had to go to her grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner; Georgina was forced to go with her parents to a museum; and Angela was stuck with her family at home. Not until Monday morning, during music class, were the friends able to meet again. And what Angela reported then, in whispers between songs, instantly erased all other thoughts from their minds.

  “I got another letter!”

  “You did?”

  “Yes! On the mantelpiece again.”

  “From Pilaria?”

  “Yes! But I hadn’t even written her.”

  “You hadn’t?”

  “No!”

  This brief burst of communication was interrupted by that most dreary and endless of songs, “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Poco, who had a good voice, sang loudly.

  “Is it written in purple ink?” Georgina whispered when the song was finally done.

  “Yes!”

  “Gold dust?”

  “Yes!”

  “On the same paper, tied with gold thread?”

  “Yes, exactly the same.”

  “What does it say?”

  At this moment, Mrs. Henderson, the music teacher, came down hard with both hands on the piano, and the conversation was drowned out by unearthly wails of “Oh-oh say ken yoo seeeee?” This is one of the most impossible songs to sing ever written and requires huge gulps of air to get through the lines. Georgina and Angela were so dizzy by the end that they could only fall back in their folding chairs and wait for the next song to be announced.

  “Tell us at lunch!” Poco leaned over to say—just in time, because three seconds later she was chosen by Mrs. Henderson to come up to the front of the room and practice a solo for the fall concert.

  It turned out to be that old screecher “Over the Rainbow.” Poco led off the verses in a clear, high voice.

  The rest of them came in on the fluttery parts, sounding, as Georgina hissed to Angela, like a lot of idiot birds taking off into the air.

  “How can someone so little sing so loud?” Angela whispered back. There was really no answer to this, and Georgina did not bother to reply. They were both exhausted from music by this time and slumped down and sang in tones inaudible to the human ear for the rest of the class.

  It was no good having Angela tell them about the new letter. Georgina and Poco would have to see it if they were going to believe.

  “Of course I didn’t bring it to school!” Angela said at lunch. “It’s much too precious to carry around.”

  So the friends walked to Angela’s house after school, and when Georgina and Poco had called their mothers to say where they were, everyone went to Angela’s room and sat on her bed.

  Angela had hidden the new letter in a shoe box in her closet. Now, sitting cross-legged on the bed, she unfurled it with cautious fingers, at every moment expecting the gold dust to fly out. And suddenly, poof! It did! Georgina reached for it, but too late. The dust vanished almost as soon as it hit the air, like a puff of smoke. It was the oddest thing.

  Even odder was the letter. Angela read the page of beautiful purple writing out loud while the others hung over her shoulder following the words.

  “ANGELA:

  I, Pilaria, known also as the Gray-Eyed Faerie, salute you and beg for your ear. Your letter was a great wonder to me, who has had no friend in the human world for many years. I had forgotten how pleasant it can be to talk with a mortal being, especially one who is a child with such interesting thoughts as you. Chocolate boxes that never empty! Old happinesses like these have long been lost to me. Will you tell me of other wishes that you have? I would like to know you and your secrets better.

  Respectfully yours,

  PILARIA

  of the Kingdom of the Faeries,

  Eighth Tribe, Fourth Earth,

  Under the Sun-Star Aravan,

  May It Shine on Our Land

  Forever and Ever”

  When Angela had finished reading, she looked up at her friends with such glowing eyes that neither could doubt she believed in the letter absolutely.

  “Look at it!” she cried, holding the page up. “It comes from another world. I know it! I can feel it! Pilaria is real. And she is lonely for a friend.”

  “How long do fairies live, do you think?” Poco asked. “From this letter, it sounds like she’s been around for hundreds of years.”

  “I don’t know,” Angela said, “but I can imagine that she would sort of run out of friends if she lived long enough.”

  “Wait a minute!” Georgina interrupted. “None of this adds up. If Pilaria has been hanging around all these years, why did she never try to write to Angela before? She could have left a letter on the mantelpiece anytime in the last nine years. Instead, she waits until Angela writes a dumb letter about a box of chocolates that does something completely impossible, and then she starts asking to be her friend. This doesn’t sound fake to you?”

  “No!” said Angela.

  Poco looked less sure. “But who else could be doing it?” she asked Georgina. “And why? And what about the gold dust? It’s strange, you have to admit.”

  Georgina shook her head. “I’m not saying it isn’t strange. I’m saying we haven’t investigated well enough yet. For instance, how do these letters get onto Angela’s mantelpiece?”

  “Someone puts them there?” Poco ventured.

  “Right! And our next investigation will be to see who.”

  “But I know who!” cried Angela. “It’s Pilaria!”

  “What I mean is,” said Georgina, looking thoroughly annoyed, “we are going to spy and find out what the person who calls herself Pilaria looks like. Maybe she’ll look like a gray-eyed faerie, or maybe she’ll look like”—Georgina paused and glanced coolly at Angela—“your mother,” she ended.

  “My mother is not writing these letters!” Angela protested. “She has terrible penmanship. And anyway, she’s not interested in things like this. She works part-time in a bank, you know. In fact, no one in my family even knows about these letters, so please don’t tell them. No one knows I wrote the first letter. I put it out late at night, and found the answer early the next morning. Listen, the people in my family hardly have time to do all the things they’re supposed to do. These letters aren’t from them.”

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Georgina replied smugly.

  “Only if I say so!” said Angela, showing a bit of angry flush.

  “Well, Angela Harrall! I think you’re being absolutely—”

  Poco jumped into the conversation at this moment, and Georgina never did finish her sentence, which was just as well.

  “I am beginning to think,” Poco declared, “that Juliette might be Pilaria after all. She seemed to be hiding something when I talked to her last time. Cats have connections with the spirit world, you know. Some people believe they are really the eyes of the dead that have come back to watch us. Maybe Pilaria is a dead person.”

  “Poco! That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Angela and Georgina in the same breath. Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “Now I’ll never be able to trust that cat again!” Angela cried. “I’ll always be wondering whose horrible old eyes are looking at me.”

  Even Poco began to laugh at this, and the three girls went into an absolute storm of giggles and rolled off the bed and around on the floor. Soon, several knocks sounded on Angela’s door. They all sat up in terror of its being Angela’s father on a surprise visit home. But it was only Mrs. Harrall saying t
hat she was going to the store and would they all like to come and get ice-cream cones on the way? She was the nicest mother. She seemed to know what the friends wanted to do even before they knew it themselves.

  “Ice cream!”

  “Oh yes!”

  “We can work on our spy plan tomorrow afternoon. At my house,” Georgina whispered to Angela and Poco as they got into Mrs. Harrall’s car.

  So it was agreed. And not a moment too soon, for that night something even more amazing happened in the Harrall house.

  Chapter Four

  ANGELA THOUGHT AT FIRST that she would not tell her friends. Real magic is a fragile thing. One rude gust of outside air and it can fly to pieces. One cold eye, one unbelieving word, and the most marvelous constructions may collapse and turn to nothing.

  Angela felt protective of the magic that had risen up so unexpectedly in her house. Why it had come she could not begin to guess. That it really was there, in the shape of a lonely, old-fashioned fairy, she knew beyond doubt. There are some things a person knows, no matter how impossible they seem to others.

  By lunchtime, however, Angela was so swelled up with her secret that she could hardly eat. After lunch, she drew the friends together on the playground and, with a sigh, gave in and allowed herself to speak.

  “You saw Pilaria?” Georgina shrieked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Was she very little?” Poco asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You don’t know!” Georgina frowned. “I thought you said you saw her.”

  “I did.”

  “Well …?”

  “I didn’t see her body,” Angela said. “I’m sure it was there, but I didn’t see that part.”

  “‘That part’?” Georgina looked furious. “What other part is there?”

  “I saw her light,” Angela said simply, and Poco, whose head had been somewhat below the others’ because she was so short, stood up suddenly on her toes so as not to miss the next words.

  “It was late last night,” whispered Angela. “I made myself wake up. Then I crept downstairs with my flashlight and left Pilaria a note on the mantelpiece. It was just a stupid note saying that I had gotten her letters and wanted to be friends if she wanted to be. After I left it, I went back upstairs and shut the flashlight off. But then I had to go to the bathroom. When I came out, I thought I heard something, so I went to the top of the stairs and looked down. That’s when I saw her.”

  “What exactly did you see?” Georgina asked.

  “I saw a strange round ball of light come flickering along the downstairs hall,” Angela said, her voice quivering a bit. “It went into the living room, and I could see by the shadows it made in the hall that it went across to the fireplace. There was not one sound, but the light fluttered and stopped and fluttered again. Then it came out of the living room in a sort of blinding flash, and whisk! it disappeared.”

  “Whisk?” repeated Georgina, with a disbelieving look.

  “That’s what it sounded like,” Angela said. “Whisk! Then she was gone.”

  Poco dropped down off her toes and gazed thoughtfully at the ground.

  “I suppose all that fluttering was her wings?” she asked, glancing up.

  “I think so,” Angela said.

  “And the whisk was when she flew away?”

  “Oh no,” Angela said. “The whisk was when she disappeared and went back into her own world, the one that’s invisible to us.”

  Poco considered this for a moment.

  “Where was Juliette?” she asked Angela.

  “In the kitchen, I suppose. Under the radiator, where she always sleeps.”

  “But you aren’t sure?”

  “No,” Angela said. “Except I don’t think it was Juliette. Or a dead person. I wasn’t scared at all. I was happy!”

  “What about your note?” Poco asked.

  “It was gone this morning when I looked. Pilaria took it.”

  Georgina turned her back abruptly and looked off across the playground, where swarms of children were running back and forth and yelling. Then she turned to face her friends again.

  “Can we spend the night on Friday?” she asked Angela.

  “I don’t know. Maybe, if my dad isn’t there. I’ll have to ask.”

  “See if we can,” Georgina said. “Then maybe you could write another note and get the fairy to come back.”

  Angela’s eyes narrowed at this suggestion.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Something like that can’t be planned. I don’t like the idea of spying.”

  Georgina shifted her weight impatiently. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Poco beat her to it.

  “How about if we just came to spend the night?” she asked Angela. “Not to spy or anything. We would just be there with you, and if anything happened, okay, and if not, well, that would be okay, too.”

  Angela thought this over for about half a minute.

  “I guess that would be all right,” she said at last.

  “Yay, Angela! Great! Fantastic!” Georgina and Poco jumped for joy.

  “Don’t forget, I have to ask my mother,” Angela warned them. “If my father is going to be there, you probably can’t come. He’s been getting worse and worse lately. Even my mother hardly dares to talk to him.”

  “Well, ask her!” said Georgina. “Do it tonight so she can’t say it’s the last minute.”

  “That’s right,” Poco exclaimed. “My mom is always saying we can’t do things because we didn’t plan to do them at least three days before. It’s completely crazy. If we suddenly want to do something, why do we need to plan that we want to do it, and then wait around for three days for the plan to start?”

  The friends were about to begin a full-scale discussion of this weird behavior when the bell rang, signaling the end of recess.

  “Do you still want to come over to my house after school?” Georgina asked the other two, as they all ran across the playground.

  “Okay,” puffed Angela.

  “Can I hold your hamster?” asked Poco. “He’s an interesting person to talk to when he isn’t running around on that squeaky wheel of his.”

  The next two days passed slowly for the group. The weather turned bad. A ferocious storm let loose torrents of rain, followed by wind and hail, more rain, and finally a tornado watch that scared traffic off the streets—until the sun came out and an all-clear message was broadcast over the radio.

  This took place late Thursday afternoon while the friends huddled in Poco’s kitchen. They were supposed to be baking chocolate chip cookies but, feeling rather nervous about the tornado, they had ended up eating most of the cookie dough.

  “This is ridiculous,” Georgina said. “There’s only enough dough left for about three cookies. Let’s just finish it off. Then we won’t have to wait around for anything to bake.”

  “I’m sort of full, anyway,” Poco said.

  “Me, too.” Georgina scraped up one last wooden spoonful of dough and offered it to Angela. “Do you want the last bit?” she asked.

  “No, thank you.” Angela sat back in her chair and sighed.

  “What is the matter with you today?” Georgina asked. “You’ve been in a terrible mood ever since we got here.”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  “Has your mother said yet whether we can spend the night tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s the problem?” Georgina demanded. “Either we can or we can’t. Why won’t she decide?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Angela said, sinking down another inch in the kitchen chair. “Nothing is simple in my family.”

  “That is no excuse,” said Georgina. “Nothing is simple in anyone’s family. My little sister screams all night from bad dreams, and my father got his hand caught in the mower. And Poco’s brother crashed their station wagon into their garage door and now Mrs. Lambert
has gotten fired from her job, so they can’t afford to get anything fixed.”

  “Ssh!” whispered Poco, looking over her shoulder. “My mother doesn’t consider it being fired. She’s just staying home until the company finds some more money to pay her.”

  “Well, whatever!” Georgina looked thoroughly disgusted. “Things are tough for everybody.”

  Poco leaned close to Angela. “Is it your father?” she asked softly.

  “I guess so.”

  “He doesn’t want us to come?”

  “Oh no. He doesn’t know anything about it. He doesn’t care what I do as long I don’t bother him. It’s my mom. She’s been sort of down lately.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but my dad doesn’t stay with her at night anymore. He’s started sleeping downstairs in his office.”

  The friends were silent for a little while after this revelation. They all knew people whose parents were divorced.

  “Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Georgina said finally. Poco nodded.

  “I know.” Angela lowered her head. “He asked me to go bowling with him this Saturday. Alone. Without my brother or anyone. I said I didn’t want to.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. He just looked mad and went away without saying anything.”

  Georgina took the empty cookie-dough bowl to the sink and ran water into it.

  “Listen, Angela. Don’t worry about things like that,” she said over the running water. “Parents get into fights. You can’t let it bother you. You’ve got to carry on with your own plans. Ask your mother again if we can spend the night on Friday. It sounds like she forgot to decide anything because she got upset about your dad.”

  This was good advice, as it turned out. Mrs. Harrall really had forgotten that Angela had asked and, when she was reminded, agreed to the sleepover immediately.

  “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “It went completely out of my mind. Your brother is going hiking this weekend, so it’s a good time to have everyone. I’ll call Mrs. Lambert and Mrs. Rusk tonight, and then Poco and Georgina can bring their overnight bags to school and walk home with you tomorrow afternoon. Will that be all right?”