Free Out on a Limb by Gail Banning Page A

backward by a lightning bolt.
    “Hey, a new sign,” Tilley said, catching up to me on the meadow side of the stream. “What does it say?”
    “Danger: Electric Fence,” I read. “Now that I do not believe. That fence is so not electric.”
    “It might be.”
    “It isn’t.”
    “How do you know?”
    “It’s wood, for one thing, and wood isn’t a conductor. I’ll show you.” I veered off toward the fence.
    “Rosie, don’t,” Tilley cried as I reached it. “I don’t want you to be like that stick man!”
    “I won’t be. See?” I leaned from my bike and laid my hand flat against the fence. “Not electric. This fence is lying to us.”
    “Like the guard dog’s a lie too, right?”
    “Probably.” A gate in the fence left a crack the width of the hinges. I got off my bike to peer for guard dogs. When I put my eye to the crack, all I could see was a narrow vertical stripe of the Manor garden, and the Manor itself beyond. “No guard dog that I can see.” I rattled the gate but, just as I expected, it was locked on the inside. Tilley and I walked around the fence looking for other cracks and open knotholes. “That carpenter guy did a bad job,” Tilley said. “Look, he didn’t hammer the nails right.” It was true. There was one place in the fence where nails stuck out two whole inches. Tilley and I wiggled them with our fingers until they were practically falling out. I managed to pull one out completely. “So,” I said, dropping the nail into Tilley’s hand. “Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence isn’t as great as she thinks it is.” We got back on our bikes and rode across the meadow to the treehouse.
    Two afternoons later, Tilley and I were sitting on the treehouse porch eating honey sandwiches. Tilley was a mess of honey drips. She stood up and started for the washbasin, but stopped suddenly. “Rosie,” she said. “It’s that car!”
    I jumped up beside her. Through the screen of oak leaves I glimpsed Great-great-aunt Lydia’s Bentley driving slowly out the stable door. At the speed of a parade float it bumped along the drive to the curly iron gates in the stone wall that separated the grounds from Bellemonde Drive. The curly iron gates magically opened for the Bentley. Or, it looked magical, but obviously Great-great-aunt Lydia had had them retrofitted with automatic openers. The Bentley paused while the gates opened, then disappeared onto Bellemonde Drive.
    “Great-great-aunt Lydia’s gone.” I turned toward Tilley. “The Manor’s empty. We can explore.”
    I hurried down to the shed, grabbed our hammer and rode my bike across the meadow. Stopping at the loose board, I began prying out nails. It was what Miss Rankle would call ironic. Before there was a fence to keep us out, I’d never considered trespassing into Great-great-aunt Lydia’s garden, but the fence had somehow dared me to get inside. I left just one nail to hold the board in place. I swung the board on the single nail and a gap opened in the fence. I stuck my head inside.
    “It’s big enough,” I said. “Good.”
    “Maybe we shouldn’t go in,” said Tilley, who had caught up to me.
    “Why not?”
    “Great-great-aunt Lydia will do that thing to us. The thing she does to trespassers.”
    “Prosecute us? No she won’t. That’s just another lie, like the electric fence and the guard dog.” I put one foot over the hedge, swiveled my hips sideways, and followed with my other foot. I was inside. It was weird. Before the fence had been built I’d stood about a foot away from where I was now standing, looking right at this very spot. But this familiar spot felt thrillingly different, now that I was inside. I was violating Great-great-aunt Lydia’s space.
    “Come on Tilley,” I said, all bad influence. Tilley slipped through the fence behind me, and we stood looking at the paths that wound through the garden. There were half a dozen to choose from.
    “Pick a path,” I said, and we began to explore. The path was