Free Zeely by Virginia Hamilton Page A

followed.
    Zeely plunged through stinging nettles. Often, she stamped them down for Geeder or stopped to hold a bramble aside. At such times, Geeder forced herself to look up at Zeely; always, when she did so, she felt awfully small.
    They stumbled into a clearing. Sprawling berry bushes grew in one dusty-green mesh that covered every foot of ground. Hedge trees surrounded the clearing in a perfect, enormous rectangle.
    Geeder looked up at the sky. The sun beat down fiercely, almost blinding her. Now Zeely carefully inched through the bushes to the great shade trees bordering them.
    “You must be careful,” Zeely said, so suddenly she startled Geeder. “There may be caterpillars on the leaves. I believe they like to drop on people.”
    Bees and dragonflies moved and sung a monotonous humdrum. The smell of decay and life was so strong that Geeder felt unable to breathe. But the bad feeling passed by the time she and Zeely reached the border trees. They sat down under low branches. For a moment, there was a stir of wind high up in the leaves.
    Geeder stared about at the berries which had grown ripe and then rotted and dried up on the bushes. “I didn’t know all this was here,” she said. “I don’t know where we are.”
    “We are near the road,” Zeely said, “but far away from where we entered.”
    They were silent for a time. Geeder didn’t want to stare at Zeely so she played with her necklaces. When she grew tired of that, she picked long blades of grass to play with. By stretching the grass between her two thumbs, she created a fine instrument. She blew her breath against her thumbs; the blades vibrated. After a few tries, she was able to make two pure notes of sound. All the time she played this way, her mind raced with thoughts of Zeely. She was proud to be so near her again, proud and scared and unable to think of anything to say.
    Zeely Tayber didn’t seem to mind the silence between herself and Geeder. She was relaxed, serene. As she viewed Geeder from head to foot, her eyes were full of a strange light and dark.
    Geeder sat across from Zeely. When Zeely began to stare at her hard, she became watchful and held herself more like a lady. She could not read Zeely’s eyes, nor could she fathom why Zeely was looking at her that way.
    What does she see? she wondered. What is it?
    “Your many beads are pretty,” Zeely said suddenly. “You have a lot of clothes?” She spoke as if Geeder were someone she had known for years. But her voice was halting, the way a person might speak when he hadn’t had anyone to talk to for a long, long time.
    Geeder was so startled by Zeely’s question, her mind went empty. “Why, I don’t know!” she said at last. “I’ve a dress to go to a party. I’ve got clothes for school. Mother buys them every fall and Christmas.” She felt ashamed that she hadn’t worn long pants instead of shorts to her meeting with Zeely.
    “A girl should have clothes,” Zeely said.
    “Miss Zeely, I think your dress is about the most pretty one I’ve ever seen,” Geeder said, shyly.
    Zeely touched the bodice of her robe with her long fingers. Geeder could tell she was pleased by the compliment.
    “I’ve had it a long time,” Zeely said. “Twice a year, I hang it in the sun so that the colors will catch and hold the light.” Very delicately, she gathered the skirt and smoothed it evenly about her feet. The colors leaped and glowed.
    Geeder didn’t know why they had started talking about clothes. Since they had begun to speak, she was bursting to ask Zeely about herself.
    “Miss Zeely, do you come from Tallahassee?” she blurted out. “I think somebody told me you came from there.”
    “No,” said Zeely, “we come from far to the north, from Canada.”
    “Canada!” Geeder said. The thought that Zeely came from such a place excited her. “I’ve never been there,” she said. “Was it cold?”
    “Where we were, it was cold,” Zeely said. “It snowed and there was not