Katie scarcely listened while he listed the events surrounding Mr. Pollard. Her fright had grown until it was making her shake. She’d read in school about the old days when witches were burned or tied to a stool that was used to hold them under water in an attempt to make them confess that they were witches. If a person didn’t drown, Mrs. Anderson had explained, that proved to the villagers that that person was a witch, because how else could she have lived after being dunked and held under? And, of course, if the “witch” drowned, proving that she had not had supernatural powers after all, why, that was too bad. They’d simply made a mistake.
They didn’t still do things like that to people they thought were witches. But what might they do, if they were afraid of her? Afraid of what she could do?
Up to now, her powers to create winds and move things about had been part nuisance and part entertainment. Now, Katie saw quite clearly that they could also be incredibly dangerous. And unfortunately, the powers were so small, so weak, that they didn’t give her any protection against those who might want to harm her because she was different.
Mr. Armbruster, she thought furiously. She’d had nothing to do with his pigs and had only made fruit drop a few days sooner than it would have fallen, anyway. She certainly hadn’t made his ladder fall over so that he broke his arm. She could see that she ought not to have had anything to do with him at all; it had been a serious mistake to entertain herself by stirring up winds around him that blew the leaves off the trees so that they drifted onto the lawn he’d just raked, and by rolling apples under his feet so that he’d skidded on them.
Mr. and Mrs. Armbruster had been in church the times the papers had slithered around, too, and everybody had started sneezing. Mrs. Armbruster had sneezed so hard that the flowers on her hat went askew, and her face had been red before she stopped. Katie had never especially liked them because they were always cross and short-tempered and had forbidden her ever to pick any more of the blackberries along their fences. That was quite unreasonable, in Katie’s opinion, because the bushes were on the outside of the fences along the road, and mostly Mrs. Armbruster didn’t even pick them all for her own use.
They had never been able to understand where the berries went after Katie learned that she could sit on the far side of the road and pluck them through the air, one by one, sailing them directly into her opened mouth.
That had been mildly entertaining until the time when she had almost sucked in a bee by mistake, thinking it was a berry. She’d realized her error just in time, and luckily the bewildered bee had chosen to return to its honey-filled blossom rather than teach her a lesson with its sting.
And now those horrid Armbrusters were saying something bad about her. Katie sank onto the stairs and pressed her face against the stair railing. Mrs. M. knew a lot of things about her, and if Mrs. M. wasn’t a real friend, she could certainly fill Mr. C.’s ears with what he wanted to hear.
Mrs. M. was standing now with her hands on her wide hips, scrunching up the most wildly flowered muumuu Katie had yet seen, glaring at Mr. C.
“Look, I’ve got better things to do than listen to what some idiot farmer thinks about a perfectly nice little girl. I don’t know what you think you’re up to, moving in here and pretending to make friends with her, but don’t expect any help from me in causing trouble for her.”
“I’m not trying to cause any trouble, Mrs. Michaelmas. I’m trying to straighten out the trouble that’s already there. I can see I’m going to have to show you this.”
Katie heard Mrs. M.’s indrawn breath and pressed harder against the bars in an effort to see what it was Mr. C. was showing her. It was small, because he held it in his hand; he must have taken it from his pocket.
Mrs. M. reacted like a balloon with a slow leak. She seemed to shrink in size, as the air and the antagonism seeped out of her.
Katie could see the woman’s face, and it look frightened now, rather than angry. When she spoke, Mrs. M.’s voice was unsteady. “What do you want of me?”
“I want to know what that child can do. Make things move, make winds blow, that kind of thing.”
Katie held her breath. Beside her, Lobo appeared on silent cat feet, his amber eyes gleaming. When he leaned against her, Katie put a hand on his soft fur simply from habit—she’d always liked cats, even before she found out they could talk to her—but her attention was still on the scene below her.
“What do you want with a little girl who isn’t even ten years old yet?” Mrs. M. asked. “She isn’t much more than a baby.”
“Some people think she’s a very dangerous baby,” Mr. C. said in a quiet voice that just barely carried to the listener on the stairs. “Her old neighbors think the police should investigate how her grandma came to fall down those cellar steps and die in the fall. Surely you can see why it’s important to learn the truth?”
Katie was unaware of drawing the big cat into her arms, unaware of the solid furry weight of him.
They thought she’d killed her grandma? Was that what they thought? How could anyone believe such a terrible thing?
Katie felt as if she were suffocating.
“You must be crazy, or those neighbors are,” Mrs. M. said, but she sounded as weak as Katie felt.
“Now you see why I have to know about Katie,” Mr. C. said. “Let’s go upstairs, Mrs. Michaelmas, where we can talk in private.”
Upstairs. Katie heard that word and rose silently to her feet and fled, carrying Lobo with her.
11
SHE DIDN’T REALIZE, UNTIL SHE’D locked the apartment door behind her, that she had Mrs. M.’s cat.
He was warm and comforting against her chest, but there was no real comfort in him. Lobo couldn’t help her.
It wouldn’t do any good to be locked inside the apartment, either. The manager had a key, and they could come after her. Besides, Monica would let them in when she came home, if the manager didn’t.
What was she going to do?
Would Mrs. M. tell him how she could manipulate objects without touching them? Mr. P. would, of course. He’d already talked about the wind slamming the door into his face, and his briefcase coming open, and the rock that hit his foot; and of course Mr. C. had come on the scene when Mr. P.’s money was blowing around when there was no wind anywhere else.
Would they arrest her? They didn’t burn witches at the stake any more, or use that dreadful dunking stool, but they locked up people if they thought they’d killed someone.
Could they seriously believe she’d done something like that to her grandma? Would they take her to trial, to prove it one way or the other?
How could they prove anything? They might prove that she had played silly tricks, the ones in church and the ones on the neighbors, but she couldn’t prove she’d had nothing to do with Grandma Welker falling down the stairs.
She supposed the Armbrusters had told Mr. C. about the incident shortly before the accident happened. They’d all been there, in Grandma’s back yard, and they knew Grandma Welker was angry because Katie hadn’t done her chores while her grandma was in town, the way she’d been instructed to do. When the Armbrusters brought her home and Grandma found the kitchen still a mess, Grandma Welker had spoken quite crossly.
Katie had not intended to disobey. She’d simply been absorbed in a fascinating book called Jack-in-the-Box Planet, about a boy named Willie who had a robot who was supposed to be his servant but who had actually become his jailer. And as often happened when Katie became immersed in a book, she forgot about everything else.
So she had been sitting on the porch swing, eating from a bowl of cherries and making a little pile of pits beside her on the floor, when Grandma’s cross voice brought her back to reality.
“I’ve told you and told you,” Grandma said through tight lips, “not to make a mess with pits on the porch.”
Still only halfway out of the world of Willie and his Major-Domo, Katie had acted without thinking. She slid the pits off the edge of the porch and tumbled t
hem through the grass.
The Armbrusters, behind her, didn’t see that, but Katie’s grandma did. She didn’t mention the cherry pits, however, but asked about the dishes. Had Katie cleaned up the kitchen and washed and dried the dishes?
Katie swallowed. “I forgot them. But I’ll do them right now.”
She almost ran into the house, taking the precious book with her; she still had a few pages to read, and she wanted to know as quickly as possible how it came out, but she knew she had to do it when her grandma wasn’t watching. Grandma didn’t value books all that much; she’d even burned one, once, when she’d caught Katie reading it after she was supposed to have been asleep. Katie had had difficulty in forgiving her for that. She’d had to fish the remains out of the fireplace late that night and carefully lay out the brown pages with the charred edges to find out how it ended.
Grandma Welker’s voice had floated after her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that child. The next time Monica comes, or Joe calls, I’m going to have to tell them I’m getting too old to cope with a child like Katie.”
She hadn’t listened to the rest of it. The Armbrusters and her grandma had stood there talking, however, for at least ten minutes before Grandma Welker came inside, and she still looked upset and angry.
And, half an hour later, she’d cried out and pitched down those steep cellar steps and hit her head on something.
Katie had been very frightened. She’d gone to the telephone and called for help. The ambulance, first, because obviously her grandma was seriously hurt. And then she’d called Mr. Tanner, and when he came a few minutes later (he only lived a short distance down the road, so he got there before the ambulance did), he told her, very gently, that her grandma was dead. He had taken her home with him, and he’d called Monica, and taken care of the things that had to be done. He’d even remembered to take along Dusty, and had promised to give the old dog a home for as long as he lived, there on the Tanners’ little farm.
And now, Katie thought, looking around the apartment where she had lived for such a short time, now the police were after her because they thought she’d pushed her grandma down those stairs. Mr. C. must be a policeman, mustn’t he? Why else would his identification have scared Mrs. M. into cooperating with him? The Armbrusters must have said something to the police, those wicked, wicked Armbrusters, who had no reason to think anything of the sort.
You’re hurting me.
The words came to her mind as if they’d been spoken, though of course Lobo hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t even meowed.
“I’m sorry.” Katie relaxed her hold, still cradling him against her. She had never cried, and she didn’t cry now; the tears were there in her voice, however. “Lobo, what am I going to do? I couldn’t bear it if they locked me up.”
Would Monica stop them, or try to stop them, from putting her in jail? Or would Monica think that was where she belonged?
“She might. She thinks I’m peculiar, too; and if she gets the idea I had anything to do with Grandma falling down the stairs . . . if only I had someone to talk to, someone like my father. I don’t think he’d let them lock me up, but I don’t know where he is . . .”
Katie sank onto the nearest chair, stroking Lobo’s head and back, trying to think. She had no one to turn to, no one to help her.
Unless . . .
What about those other children? The ones who might be like her? Would they be able to help? Would they understand?
They seemed her only hope.
She had no way of knowing, of course, whether just because those other kids had been born the same month as she had, they would be like her. Or that they would help her. Yet she did know that Kerri Lamont was different, too; surely Kerri would understand what was happening to Katie. Kerri might not be able to do anything about it, but Katie didn’t know what else to do. Finding the other children seemed the only possible action she could take.
She must have been squeezing him too hard again; Lobo suddenly pushed against her and leaped down, and she opened the door for him into the corridor. She didn’t see either Mrs. M. or Mr. C. when Lobo slipped silently through the crack. He scratched at the opposite door, meowing loudly, and Katie closed her own door before anyone could see her.
Did she dare to stay here in the apartment? Was it safe, now that Mr. C. had openly revealed himself as a police officer investigating her grandmother’s death? He wasn’t ready to arrest her yet, at least she didn’t think he was, but how could she be sure of anything? Probably he wouldn’t take her away before her mother came home, unless he became convinced that she was really dangerous. Then he might. What had Mrs. M. told him? If she admitted the things she knew Katie could do, would that evidence count against her even though it was all perfectly harmless? And if they brought her to trial, how could she possibly prove she hadn’t done a particular thing? There had been nobody in the house except herself and Grandma Welker, and old Dusty. Maybe Dusty had seen Grandma fall, although mostly what he did these days was sleep, the way old dogs did, so it was hard to tell about that. Certainly Dusty couldn’t help her. Nobody could help her, except maybe those other kids.
She had to find them.
Katie spoke slowly, aloud to herself. “I think I’ll go try to find that Dale Casey. I have his address. And then maybe when I come home, Mrs. M. will tell me if it’s safe to stay here in the apartment.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best she could think of at the moment.
She was still worried and frightened, but now that she had a plan, she didn’t feel quite so desperate. She got the slip of paper with the names and addresses on it and put it in the pocket of her blue shorts, along with the contents of her bank, which came to six dollars and fourteen cents. Then she thought she ought to fortify herself against what might be a long spell with nothing to eat.
She cut herself opening a can of tuna fish and wrapped a piece of tissue around her finger until it stopped bleeding. Even so, it wasn’t easy to make sandwiches without bleeding on them. She ate one and wrapped the other one to carry with her. While hunting for something else that would be easy to carry, she found a Hershey bar and put that into the Baggie with the second sandwich.
The cut was still bleeding and she decided the tissue wasn’t helping much. Maybe if she put a Band-Aid on it, tightly so that it held the edges of the cut together, the bleeding would stop.
Katie wondered if she ought to leave a note for Monica, in case she didn’t come home before her mother did, and decided against it. What could she say that wouldn’t incriminate her, if Mr. C. saw it?
If she was lucky, she’d find a way to come home safely, and Monica would never know she’d been away. If she was unlucky, well, a note might just lead the police to her sooner, because if she mentioned any names, Monica might well tell them where those kids lived, and they’d look there.
She decided, in the interest of saving time, to take the city bus to Dale Casey’s house. It only cost thirty cents and would save her a long walk.
She hadn’t ridden on a bus very often before, and she felt strange climbing aboard and dropping her coins into the little box beside the driver. He didn’t pay any attention to her, though, not even to notice that her eyes were silver-colored.
Katie sat next to a window, watching the other passengers and the scenery. The bus went through a business section, and a lot of people got on and off. Most of them were women with shopping bags, and a few were old men. None of them paid any attention to Katie, except a boy about her own age who sat across the aisle and tried to hit the back of the bus driver’s neck with spitballs. He wasn’t very good at it, but Katie thought it would be best if there was no commotion while she was aboard; in case Mr. C. ever asked any questions of the bus driver, she saw to it that the spitballs, made from old gum wrappers, went everywhere except where the boy was trying to put them. One accidentally landed in the hair of a lady with a bulging shopping bag, and Katie hastily made it slide off the blue-rinsed curls into
the bag with a naked chicken and a package of spaghetti sticking out of it.
The boy glanced at her suspiciously, although he couldn’t possibly know she had anything to do with his failures, could he? Katie stared back, her face carefully blank, and reached up with a finger to push her glasses back up onto her nose. She was proud of herself, that she’d remembered to do it with her finger.
She was glad when the boy got off the bus. He was the only one who’d even so much as looked at her.
She got off at the corner where Mrs. M. had told her to leave the bus. It was on the edge of a nice residential area, with shading trees and flowers and well-kept yards.
There were also dogs.
When an ugly little cur came dashing out at her, yapping furiously, from the porch of a big, comfortable-looking house, Katie decided it was time to find out for certain if she could communicate with dogs as well as cats.
“Go back on the porch at once,” Katie told him, “or I’ll bring the dog catcher to pick you up and put you in the pound.”
The dog, which had a long tail and floppy ears and short hair between the two ends of himself, shuddered to an abrupt halt.
“Have you ever been in a pound?” Katie demanded. “Do you know what it’s like?”
The animal’s expression was so funny she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so perturbed about her own situation. No doubt he was trained as a watch dog, and he thought he was doing his duty.
“Well, at least wait until someone steps on your property. Don’t bark at people on the sidewalk,” Katie told him, and walked on, leaving the dog looking after her in a bewildered way.
It was a warm day, and she was afraid the Hershey bar would melt, so she took it out and ate it. She was licking the chocolate from her fingers when she found the address she’d written down, the place where Dale Casey lived.