“No!” cried Moth. “It’s all in your head.”
Just back from the sale and sitting in Mrs. Dullahan’s kitchen, they were discussing how it had gone. We had returned from the sale in a sepulchral silence, broken only by Alpin, asking, “I have a house?”
“You heard her tease me about the boots that could take me straight home to Kansas.”
“You were weaing a white t-shirt with a cornfield printed on it, baggy bermudas and old trainers. She wanted to embarass you into buying smart and expensive clothes.”
“I have a house?” asked Alpin.
“I´m sure she has my shoe,” Michael took another sip of his tea. “It’s a danger for her to have it.”
“I have a house?” asked Alpin.
“I don’t see why you leprechauns think you make such stupendous shoes if you can’t design them so they’ll return home like horses when lost or like messenger pigeons do.”
“I have a house?” asked Alpin.
“I don’t see why people keep buying from that dreadful woman after the way she insults everybody,” said Michael.
“She offers great stuff that we can’t find or afford elsewhere and we’re desperate to have it. Even Mrs. Parry didn’t say she would boycott her when she told Magpie off. And, boy, did she tell her off!”
“I have a house?” asked Alpin.
Alpin was sitting at the kitchen table too with a dish loaded with sugar cookies before him. It was much larger than the one the rest of the group having tea there shared. But he hadn’t touched a single cookie of his, nor sipped his tea.
“I have a house?” asked Alpin.
I took my eyes from Alpin to the left pocket of my coat and drew a small forked branch out of it.
“I have a vegetarian wishbone, Alpin,” I said. “Would you like to play with me? You can choose sides.”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” said Alpin. “I have a house?”
“Why, Arley,” said Mrs. Dullahan, “your fingers are tainted blue. Why is that?”
I blushed.
“I’m sorry. I washed my hands but this won’t go. It’s ink from a felt pen,” I said. “I wrote a poem today.
Mrs. Dullahan clapped her hands.
“Oh, I would so enjoy hearing it! May we? Pleeeeeease!”
“I have a house?” Alpin raised his voice but everybody drowned him out seconding the Demon Bride, chorusing her loudly, calling for my poem.
“It may not be an adequate poem for a public reading. I was advised to exteriorize my fears and one way is to put them in writing. You might not like to hear about them.
“Do I have a house?” interrupted Alpin.
Everyone shouted they were sure they would be delighted to hear my poem.
“I have a nightmare.
Night after night
The boggle gives me no respite.
If it were someone mummy dear knew,
She might make it go away.
But she’s not acquainted with fear.
Or they’re not on speaking terms.
So it will stay, I fear. Right here.
My daddy says all I need do is laugh
To make it disappear.
But what it does is grin right back.
So it will stay, I fear.
Do I like it better with a smirk
Or with a visage drear?
That’s all the choice I really have.
At least, so I fear.”
Whatever they made of it, everyone cheered. Mrs. Dullahan was particularly enthusiastic. Her green eyes beamed on Arley with a bewitching emerald light.
“What a grand idea! And so well expressed! Bravo! Would you dedicate it to me?”
“I know I could write a much better one for you,” I said. I could not believe I had dared to say that, but I knew what I’d said was true.
“I have a house?”
“Mum, Alpin is changing colour. He’s awfully purple,” said Branna.
“Oh, would you do that for me?” said Miss Aislene. “A poem of my own! We’ll put both your poems on the fridge! This one right now!”
And the demon bride got up and put the poem I had read right in the center of a red paper heart in the middle of a multitude of colourful magnets on a gigantic fridge that dwarfed the kitchen.
This fridge was a magic treasure, and it stored a supply of food as endless as that of any magic hamper. It made living with Alpin possible. Having been made by the great Finbar O'Toora, it could speak, and it had a name to call it by, Frostine Isbert.
“Hand me that wishbone, Arley!” shouted Alpin, “I’m going to wish for a house! And you are going to wish for a house for me! That way there will be no chance I will lose! I will be sure to have it!”
Distraught, I looked nervously up at Alpin’s mother. This had not been my intention.
“Mum,” asked Fiona softly, “is it true we have houses?”
Mrs. Dullahan breathed deeply and then exhaled slowly. Leaning on my shoulder, she sank back into her seat like someone who knows a battle is lost.
“I was afraid this day would come.”
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