Free The Door in the Forest by Roderick Townley Page A

earlier from the well and heated on the stove. Now it was poured into two basins, one with soapy water, the other clear for rinsing, with a lantern above them hanging on a nail.
    Emily was struggling to open the grease jar.
    Her grandma smiled. “You’ll never get it that way.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Righty tighty, lefty loosey.”
    Now the girl really didn’t understand.
    Bridey made a little circle in the air with her finger. “The other way. Counterclockwise.”
    “Ah.” The top screwed off easily.
    The old lady gave her one of her pay-attention looks. “You’ll want to remember that.”
    “Righty tighty.”
    “Lefty loosey, yes. Don’t laugh.”
    Emily shrugged. “I guess you heard what happened today,” she said.
    “Why don’t you tell me?”
    As they finished drying the pots, Emily told her grandmother the details. The old lady looked grim but not surprised. The suds had shown her two soldiers fewer. They’d also told her the map was in danger.
    “Is it still hidden in last spring?” Bridey asked.
    “No, I took it out to look at it.”
    “Where did you put it, dear?”
    “Oh!” Emily said, realizing. She fished it out of the pocket of her dress, rumpled and slightly torn.
    “Is this how you take care of things?”
    “I’m sorry. I forgot about it.”
    A male voice interrupted. “Forgot about what?”
    Emily whirled around to face John Sloper, lounging against the doorway. He saw Emily’s quick movement. “I’ll take a look at that, if you don’t mind.”
    Emily held the paper behind her.
    “
Now that we know you can talk.
”
    Emily flushed. There went two secrets in a single moment.
    Sloper’s hand was out.
    “It’s mine!” Emily said.
    “Nonetheless.” The hand remained extended, and Emily finally brought out the map. The captain went over to a hanging lamp where the light was better. “What is this?”
    “I don’t know,” Emily said honestly.
    “Then why do you have it?”
    Bridey spoke up. “Didn’t you ever make treasure maps when you were a boy?”
    Sloper gave her a look that said
This is not worthy of you
. “I didn’t make them on hundred-year-old parchment.”
    “What makes you think it’s anything like that old?”
    “Seventy or eighty, then. I wouldn’t put it at a day less.”
    Bridey sighed. “No,” she said, “you were right the first time.”
    He frowned at the document. “So what is it?”
    “It’s a family thing. Nothing that concerns you.”
    “Well,” said Sloper, waving the page in the air, “maybe it’s your family that does concern me. Your daughter, Miranda, for instance. A traitor with the rebels.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “They loved her. They took inspiration from her. She even sang to them.”
    “Where did you hear such nonsense?”
    Emily’s eyes flitted back and forth between the grown-ups as if watching a tennis match. Tennis with an explosive ball.
    “She has confessed as much.”
    Point to Sloper.
    “What have you done with Miranda?” said Bridey quietly, the hint of a quaver in her voice.
    “We put a few questions to her.”
    “And she answered them? Just like that?”
    “Not just like that.”
    Bridey stared into the sink. The soap bubbles covering the dishes had no wisdom to offer. “Did she tell you about this?” She nodded at the map.
    “We didn’t know about it, so we didn’t ask. But I’m asking now.”
    “And I’m telling you it has nothing to do with your ridiculous wars. You yourself can see it’s much older than the Uncertainties.”
    Sloper turned the page back and forth, considering. “True, the parchment is old. That doesn’t mean the writing is.”
    The woman had no answer.
    “For all I know, it could show the location of weapons caches. Or meeting places. Putting it on parchment could be a ruse.”
    Bridey leaned against the sink. She wasn’t used to standing up so long and her legs were aching. “Captain, that’s far-fetched, and you know it.”
    “If it’s not subversive, why