Bella and the Wandering House

One morning, Bella woke up to something strange.

It wasn't her breakfast, which was muesli with banana.

It wasn't Dad, who was flicking wildly through the newspaper as if speed-reading was an Olympic sport and he was going for the gold medal.

It wasn't Mum, who was rushing around with the car keys in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, muttering, ‘I'm late! I'm late!' as if she was the White Rabbit from
Alice in Wonderland
.

Those things might be strange to you, but
they were not strange to Bella. For Bella, they were every morning things. So when she had finished her muesli with banana, and the Olympic newspaper reading and White Rabbit muttering had stopped, she grabbed her school bag and headed out the door with Mum and Dad.

The same as every other day –
out the door, down the path, into the car, off to school.

But when Bella stepped off the veranda, she stopped. Because her feet were not on the path. They were on the grass and in the flowerbed that ran alongside it.

‘That's strange.' She pointed at her feet. ‘Look, Mum.'

‘Bella!' Mum frowned. ‘You're trampling my violets!'

‘Sorry.' Bella lifted her foot. She hopped onto the path and looked back at the house. And as she did, a shiver prickled her skin. Because what she saw made no sense. The front steps ran down the veranda – the way
they always had, the way they must. But where they should have met the path – the way they always had, the way they must … they didn't.

Instead, things were crooked. It was as if the world had shifted sideways a little, in a quiet sort of way – a way you wouldn't notice if you were rushing off to work jangling keys but only if you were paying a certain kind of attention.

‘Come on, Bella!' Dad climbed into the car and started the engine.

‘But the path,' Bella said. ‘It's crooked, see?'

‘Crooked?' Dad frowned.

‘It's like something moved in the night. What could –'

‘Moved!' Mum laughed. ‘Oh, Bella! What a wild imagination you have.' She hurried Bella to the car. ‘Come on. We're going to be late.'

Bella stared back at the house. Everything else seemed to be in the right place – the cubbyhouse, the trampoline, the washing line where a row of shirts fluttered in the breeze
like colourful flags. High above, Bella's curtains flapped in her window, almost as if they were waving to her.

She smiled. No matter how she was feeling, looking at her funny round window always made her happy. Partly it was because it made her think about Grandad. The way he had insisted on helping to build her little upstairs bedroom. The way he had picked up his hammer with a twinkle in his eye and said, ‘What a girl needs here is a perfectly round window.'

And partly it was because she loved its cosy shape. Grandad had made the frame wide like a bench, so she could sit inside it, her back curving neatly against the smooth sweep of the wood.

The window was her special spot for
reading and dreaming. There was just enough sun and just enough shade and she loved the way the leaves from the twisty gum tree dappled the light into curious patterns across the floor.

As Bella thought this, she caught her breath.

Because there were no leaves in the
window now. The branch that should have stretched across the corner stopped at the edge of the frame.

‘Something
has
moved,' she said. ‘Look!'

Dad caught Bella's eye in the rear-view mirror. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Oh, Bella. You're such a dreamer.'

Bella bit her lip. Mum and Dad were always saying things like that. And even though they smiled when they did, they sighed too, as if it would be better if she got on with things that mattered – things like eating her muesli and remembering her library bag and getting out the door on time.

Grandad called Bella a dreamer too but it was different when he said it. He spoke softly, as if he liked the feel of the words on his tongue. As if he was happy to let them sit there and didn't want to turn them into something else, something quick and sensible.

My little dreamer.

‘Oh,' she said, because hearing Grandad's
voice in her head had reminded her. That today was Tuesday and that meant something special. It meant that instead of getting picked up from school, Bella walked to Grandad's house and spent the afternoon there.

It meant she got to sit at the table in his little backyard and eat crackers and fruit and a sticky pastry in a paper bag from the shop around the corner. She got to watch him potter about at his workbench, whittling or sanding a piece of wood, fiddling with a spring or a funny little mirror for his latest project.

It meant today was the best possible day to have woken up to something strange. Because Grandad loved strange. He wouldn't sigh and click his tongue and hurry Bella from where she was to somewhere else. He would sit at the table and listen. He would lick his sticky fingers and nod.

Who knows? Maybe he might even have an idea.

Grandad licked vanilla slice from his fingers and nodded.

‘Are you sure it wasn't just the bricks moving in the path? Paving can do that sometimes.'

Bella shook her head. She told him about the tree.

Grandad frowned and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, that's no good. A girl needs a tree in her window.'

Bella popped the last bite of doughnut into her mouth and chewed slowly.

‘I wonder what would cause such a thing?' Grandad looked around his tiny yard as if the
answer might be hidden there somewhere.

The thought made Bella smile. She couldn't imagine finding anything out here. From the front, Grandad's place looked exactly like the other little houses around it. But the backyard was a different story altogether.

Instead of a tidy garden with bright flowers and little statues, perhaps a birdbath or a small pond, he had piles of wood and boxes overflowing with metal pipes and old machine parts – odds and ends of all shapes and sizes he had salvaged here and there.

Mum and Dad were always offering to help clean up, to
get rid of some of the old junk
. But Grandad said he didn't want to throw anything out. You never knew when something might come in handy.

He was right, too. He was always using bits and pieces for his projects. Last week he had been working on a periscope. It was a long tube with funny bends in it and mirrors inside. He said it helped you see around corners – or
at least it would once he got the mirrors in the right spot. When Bella had looked inside, all she saw was a daddy-long-legs spidering its way up the tube.

Grandad followed Bella's gaze to his workbench. ‘Ah. My periscope. Did I tell you I got it working?' Before she could reply, he pushed his chair back and began picking his way to his workbench between the piles of odds and ends. ‘See?'

It was longer now. He had added extra sections here and there; they twisted out from each other like crooked elbows.

‘It's what they use on submarines, you know. So they can see what's happening on the surface while they're underwater, when they're all the way out there in the middle of the ocean, in the …' He trailed off with a heavy sigh, staring over Bella's shoulder. Even without turning, she knew what he was looking at. On the wall just inside was a framed photo of his old boat, of the three of
them – him, Bella and Grandma – standing on the deck waving.