Free Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer Page A

at all,” Sally went on. “She’sjust very old. I guess she’s not used to children. Imagine thinking she was a witch! Wasn’t that funny?” She laughed. “Why, tomorrow we’re even going to make some gingerbread cookies.”
    A smile began very slowly upon Emily’s face. The curly corners of her mouth curled even more, and then she gave what sounded like a very relieved giggle. The other braid appeared over the edge of the window. “I like gingerbread cookies,” she said.
    “You know,” said Sally, “the house isn’t really scary at all, once you get used to it. It’s just very old, like Aunt Sarah. It’s awfully pretty inside. There’s a melodeon — that’s a little thing like a piano — and it plays a tune all by itself when you just walk through the room, even if you go on tiptoe. And besides that” — she paused dramatically and looked up at Emily, who was giving her all her attention — “there’s a very old doll lost somewhere in the house. There’s a picture of her on the wall of my room. She belonged to a girl who lived here a long time ago. No one’s ever found her.”
    Emily’s eyes seemed to grow larger and became an even deeper blue.
    “I’m trying to find her,” said Sally.
    Emily grinned. She seemed a quite different sort of girl now, one it would be a great deal of fun to know.

    “I’ll ask my mother if I can come out and play,” she said. And then she was gone. The last Sally saw of her for a time was the glittering tip of one flying braid. Then the window was empty, except for the half-drawn shade and its dangling cord, moving slowly back and forth like a pendulum, ticking away the minutes while Sally waited. She picked up a twig from the ground and stroked the fur of a foxtail with it. A small green apple fell with a soft plopping sound and rolled away in the deep grass.
    Then Emily was back again. Her face beamed her eagerness. “My mother says I can come over for a little while,” she said. “I’ll come around the front and through the alley.” She pointed.
    Sally was making her way through the tangle of bushes at the side of the house next to Emily’s apartment house when Emily herself burst through from the other side. She was wearing a pinafore covered with small yellow quarter moons that repeated the smile of her own curly mouth. “Hi!” she said.
    “Hi!” said Sally. They pushed through the bushes into the garden.
    “What should we do?” Emily asked breathlessly.
    Sally looked around the garden. Her eye lit upon the old barn, with the interesting glimmer of red that she had seen from her window showing in the crack between the doors.

    “Would you like to go into the barn?” she asked.
    Emily looked at the barn and then at Sally. She nodded.
    “What’s that red in there?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. I’ve never been in there either.”
    They walked through the blowing foxtails to the barn. “They tickle my legs,” said Emily. “I know,” said Sally. They giggled, just because it was so wonderful to feel like old friends already.
    Reaching the barn, Sally pushed at the doors. The old doors squeaked and groaned as if they had not been subjected to such treatment in many years. The space between them widened enough to permit the two of them to slip through into the barn. At the first squeak Emily’s hand had slipped into Sally’s, and so hand in hand, Emily a little behind, they entered.
    Sally blinked at the darkness inside. She could feel Emily’s breath on the back of her neck, and she squeezed her hand, feeling a little frightened herself. The dirt floor was spongy beneath her feet. She could feel its coldness through the soles of her shoes. The barn smelled, as barns ought to, of dampness and long-ago hay, and perhaps even of the horses who had once stood in the stalls. Sally imagined them turning their heads as the other Sally entered. Maybe she had carried sugar in her pocket for them, or an apple from the garden.

    Emily gave a