Free Dancing Through the Snow by Jean Little

Children’s Aid, and were duller and smaller than the family’s own kids got.
    Mrs. Willis had always given her a book, carefully chosen, with her name written in it. She had tried to keep each of them and had managed to hold onto three. The others had vanished from her room at the Snyders’. She had wanted to complain, but she had learned, by then, to keep quiet. Her silence made the others fear her. She had liked that.
    But it will be different with Jess, she thought. Nothing scares her.
    And she heard again, deep within herself, the magic words,
my foster daughter, Min.
    “Hey, kid, move along,” Toby growled behind her. “I want to get through with this job before midnight.”
    Min scowled but speeded up a little.
    “As soon as we get it inside, I’ll go and get us some pizza,” Jess announced. “Do you realize, Min, that you’ve had nothing to eat since those blueberry pancakes?”
    It was true. And the very mention of the word
pizza
made Min’s mouth water and her slow pace quicken.
    “It’s a deal!” Toby shouted, hoisting the tree up onto his back. “Clear the way!”
    In no time flat the tree was standing in the bay window in the living room, as steady as though it still had its roots deep under the snow. Min smiled at it. It seemed to be basking in their approval, stretching out its branches in the warmth, bestowing upon them its spicy fragrance, displaying its soft needles for Maude to admire. She reached a slim paw to bat a springing bough.
    “Hearken to me, Miss Motley,” Jess said sternly. “This is not a cat’s climbing frame. Or a trampoline.”
    Maude glanced at her, twitched her tail and stalked away with her nose in the air as though she were deeply affronted by the very suggestion that she would revert to kitten tricks. Jess covered her face with both hands and they all laughed.
    “I’ll fetch a few more decorations to keep you busy before I go,” Jess said. She disappeared down the basement stairs.
    Min and Toby did not speak to each other as he went to work. The tree had been steadied even more in case of a possible pouncing cat when Jess came back with a stack of boxes holding lights and icicles and some homemade things — fat little angels shaped out of dough and painted in pastel colours. There were also origami birds and frogs and tiny coloured boxes.
    Min had never seen anything like them. She leaned over the array, her eyes shining. For a few blessed moments she completely forgot the small injured stray at the veterinary clinic. She almost forgot the boy.
    “This blown glass ball hung on my adopted grandmother’s tree years ago. She gave it to me on my first Christmas with them when I was seven,” Jess said. “It’s all greenish blue with no sparkly bits, but it seems far more magical to me than those others. Oh, and here’s the star for the top. Toby, you climb up on the stepstool and I’ll hand it up to you.”
    While Toby climbed the stepstool, Min took the blown glass ball and cradled it in her palm, trying to imagine it rounding out from the end of a glassblower’s pipe. She had seen a program on different arts at school and had been entranced by the vases and flagons that took shape so beautifully.
Magical
was the right word.
    Toby got the star fixed to the pointed twig at the very top and, as he began to come down, Jess said casually, “I was talking to your mother, by the way. You can spend the night if you like. The front bedroom is Min’s, but the attic is still all yours.”
    Toby shot his godmother a look. Min knew it held some special meaning, but she could not tell what.
    “Cool,” he said, pulling out a box of glass icicles. “We’ll have this job all done by the time you get back. No school tomorrow, of course, so I’m free. I said I’d ride herd on the Dittos tomorrow, though, while Mum shops, and on Christmas Eve too while she packs their stuff. You can imagine what it’s like trying to do those things with Grace and Maggot pestering