Bronze Pen (9781439156650)

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

S
HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THAN
to tell her parents about the woman in the cave. But somehow, sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas while her mother ironed and her father read, Audrey had begun to talk. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but it had suddenly seemed absolutely necessary. And once started, there was no way to stop.

“That cave on Wild Oaks Hill? Way up on that steep hillside, in this weather?” Audrey's mother interrupted before she'd barely begun to explain the situation. “How on earth would an old woman manage to get up there?”

Putting down his newspaper, Audrey's father said, “Do you suppose we ought to do something, Hannah? If the poor thing is homeless, she probably could use some help.”

Hannah Abbott, Audrey's mother, came to a quick and firm decision. “Of course. She probably needs to be put
in an institution. The police should be notified, and the sooner the better.”

“The police?” Audrey and her father asked in unison. And then they went on, talking at once. “No. Not the police,” Audrey was saying while her father was asking if that wasn't overdoing it a little. “I shouldn't think it would take a squad of Captain Banner's troopers to bring in one old woman.” He was grinning. Audrey's father always grinned when Greendale's chief of police was mentioned. When he had been editor of the
Greendale Times,
he'd gotten to know the spit-and-polish captain only too well. “Just think what a tough decision the captain would have to make,” he went on. “He might have to decide whether it was worth getting his shiny boots dirty. Why not notify someone in social services?”

Audrey's mom always used to laugh at her husband's jokes about Old Spit-and-Polish Banner, but this time she didn't even smile. Instead, she said sharply, “And wait two weeks while they complete all the necessary paperwork? I don't think that's a good idea.” She was speaking so loudly that Beowulf, the Abbotts' oversized Irish wolfhound, who was sprawled out under the table, raised his head and let out a reproachful bark. Beowulf disapproved of raised voices.

“Well, you do have a point there. Captain Banner it is.” Audrey's father was heading toward the telephone when he slowed his wheelchair, his open hand pressed against his chest. “Do you suppose you could make the
call, Hannah? I don't feel quite up to dealing with our heroic captain at the moment.” Audrey knew what the sarcastic way he said “heroic” meant. But while Captain Banner was easy to joke about, there wasn't anything funny about the pain in John Abbott's chest.

Audrey's mother paused, iron in midair, her famous eyes (Hannah Elgin Abbott had been named the Girl with the Most Beautiful Eyes in her high school yearbook) narrowing with concern. “Yes. Yes, of course, dear,” she said. “You go rest until dinner is ready. Don't worry about it. I'll call Captain Banner just as soon as I finish this blouse.”

But as soon as her husband disappeared down the hall, Hannah turned back to Audrey. “But first, young lady, I do want to know how you happened to find this woman. You surely remember that when the Mayberry twins were forbidden to go anywhere near that cave, you were too? Of course, you were pretty young at the time, but later, I believe it was after the Mayberrys moved away, you told your father and me that you would never go there again because the cave was—I think the word you used was ‘sinister.'”

Hannah Abbott's smile had a softer, reminiscent look to it as she went on. “Yes, I'm sure that was it. I remember your father and I laughed about it being such a grown-up word for a five-year-old to use. Do you remember telling us the cave was a sinister place?”

“I guess so.” Audrey shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I might have said that.”

She probably had. She'd been using the “sinister” word for a long time. It was an important word for a writer to know—a mysteriously threatening word that was especially useful when you were writing mysteries or scary fantasies. The game in the cave certainly had been awesomely mysterious and scary. She could still remember how excited she'd been when James and Patricia Mayberry let her play, even though they were so much older.

Of course, the most mysterious and sinister part of the game had been the cave itself. But the whole thing—the Mayberry twins' habit of playing the role of evil pirates one day and their terrified, helpless victims the next—had been absolutely thrilling.

But that had all been years ago, and when the Mayberry family moved away, Audrey really had stopped going to the cave. There had been no pirates' cave adventures for Audrey Abbott for at least six or seven years now. Oh, she'd been back briefly once or twice, just to take a quick look around and remember how exciting it had been, but that was all. That was all, that is, until…

“I know,” she began trying to explain. “I do remember promising not to go there anymore. And I wouldn't have gone back, only I was following a—I mean, I was just following the path, taking a walk up there on the hill, and I
happened to glance in the cave. That's all I was doing, just glancing in.”

“So you glanced in the cave and you saw this old woman?”

Audrey shook her head. “Not very well,” she said. “At the back of the cave it's too dark to see much of anything. But I heard her. She talked to me.”

Audrey's mother could narrow her large eyes into lash-fringed slits of suspicion. “How do you suppose she managed to get there? How in the world could an old woman climb all the way up that steep hillside?” Hannah Elgin Abbott's smile changed again, and now there was a familiar edge to it. A suspicious edge that had always meant that, while she wasn't exactly going to say so, she really didn't believe a word that Audrey was saying.

Audrey knew what her mother's smile was implying and why—and suddenly her cheeks were hot and she was clenching her teeth. It was true that when she was younger, she sometimes made up things that didn't really happen and people who didn't really exist, like the friendly ghost who lived in her closet and the baby dragon who liked to hide under her bed. But that had been a long time ago, and the only stories she made up now were the novels she wrote in her secret notebook and never mentioned to anyone, particularly not her mother.

She wanted to argue, to tell her mother how much she resented the implication that even now, when she
was twelve years old, she still didn't know the difference between what was real and what wasn't. But it was no time for an argument, not when her parents were about to make such an awful mistake.

In spite of her best effort to cool it, Audrey could feel her voice tightening to an angry squeak as she went on. “Mom, you really don't need to call the police. I mean, I don't think there's anything they can do for—for someone like her. I only told you because I thought you might let me take her something from the garden and maybe a blanket. I don't want you to—”

“Woof!” This time Beowulf 's bark was an even sharper reprimand.

“Shh!” Hannah told Beowulf, glancing down the hall toward where her husband was trying to rest.

Audrey felt guilty. She should have known better than to let Beowulf know how angry she was—not when her father might hear the bark and guess that she and her mother were arguing again. Reaching down, she patted Beowulf 's huge shaggy head and scratched behind his ears until he sighed and wagged his tail.

“Shh! Good dog,” Hannah said, and then to Audrey, “I didn't mean the poor thing should be arrested. It just seems from what you've told us, that she obviously is homeless and probably not able to take care of herself.”

Her mother didn't understand. Neither of them did. She should have known they wouldn't. Audrey Abbott
should have known she couldn't explain the woman in the cave to her parents. They wouldn't understand even if she started at the very beginning—especially if she started at the absolutely unbelievable beginning—and the white duck.

T
HE VERY BEGINNING HAD BEEN ONLY A
week before, when Audrey had sneaked out of the house to escape some visiting “family friends.” Some old friends of her mother's, actually, from way back when her mother and all three of her visitors had been students at Greendale High School. Classmates who nowadays had nothing better to do than sit around asking stupid personal questions, such as, “But, Hannah dear, how have you been able to manage with poor John so ill for such a long time?”

One of the women, the one named Maribel, had asked that very question when “poor John,” Audrey's father, had just wheeled himself out of the room and still might have been within earshot. Remembering the simpering, phony sympathy in the woman's voice, Audrey couldn't help cringing—and biting her lip in anger.

According to Audrey's mother, the visitors were “well-meaning,” but there were other ways to look at it. The
way Audrey saw it, the way anyone would who'd looked through those old Greendale High School yearbooks, was that at least a couple of the visitors had come to gloat more than to sympathize. To gloat because back in their high school days they probably had been jealous of Hannah Elgin, whose glamorous senior picture had been labeled the Girl with the Most Beautiful Eyes, and who had been elected Homecoming queen two years in a row. While the “well-meaning” visitors…Well, Audrey had seen their pictures too—not that they were that much to look at.

But when Hannah Elgin Abbott's husband had become an invalid and the old Elgin house, which had once been one of the nicest in town, was…Audrey had seen them sneaking sideways glances at the old-fashioned TV, the saggy couch, and, in one corner of the living room, the dirty old baby crib mattress that was Beowulf 's sleeping pad—not to mention a few badly scarred chair legs, which he'd cut his teeth on when he was an enormous puppy.

That was it, all right. Audrey was certain of it. Not that she was a mind reader, but you didn't have to be psychic to know what those snooty women were up to, in their expensive outfits with shoes that matched the color of their dresses. Bright green shoes to go with a green polka dot dress, believe it or not.

So Audrey had escaped while the three visitors were still sitting in the Abbotts' living room talking to Audrey's mother and perhaps to her father again, if he had begun
to feel a little better. While Audrey, herself, was in one of her favorite writing hideouts, sitting cross-legged on a slightly damp patch of grass on the highest terrace behind the house, with her secret notebook and a nicely sharpened pencil, trying to get over being angry by putting her mind on her latest story.

As usual, it began to work almost at once. After only a few minutes she calmed down enough to really get into it. That was one of the great things about being an author, even a secret one. It was usually possible to get your head so full of the people you were writing about that you could, at least temporarily, block out all kinds of other stuff—and people.

She was just getting into the second chapter of a story called “Heather's Alley Adventure,” in which a girl detective who can talk to animals was about to solve a terrible murder by talking to a witness to the crime, who happened to be a cat. At least the cat claimed to be a witness, only it was going to turn out that it was lying. And instead of helping Heather, it was actually trying to lure her to a dark alley where the killer was lying in wait.

She thought she had done a good job on the scary foreshadowing—describing the cat's evil yellow eyes and the mysterious shapes and sounds in the dark alley. She had just written:

The story was going so well that re-reading what she had just written had made the hair on the back of Audrey's neck start to quiver when she suddenly became aware of a sound that definitely had not been a product of her imagination. Something was moving through the bushes behind her back. Something real and solid. Dropping her notebook, Audrey jumped up, whirled around—and there it was. A large white duck was standing only a few feet away.

Even that first time, when the duck appeared so suddenly, Audrey wasn't terribly surprised. It was almost as if she had been expecting it. She hadn't, of course, but if the duck had seemed slightly familiar, she could think of a possible reason. One that went back to when her grandmother, Nellie Elgin, used to tell stories about a wonderful duck she had known when she was a little girl. A white duck named Lily who was her special friend and who had lived on the farm where she grew up. Grandma Nellie talked about ducks a lot, and because of having known an
intelligent duck like Lily, Grandma Nellie, who quite often fried chickens, refused to cook or eat ducks.

And now a white duck had suddenly appeared right there on the high terrace. A visitor who, while it did seem to be watchful and alert, didn't appear to be the least bit afraid. The word “tame” crossed Audrey's mind and then was quickly erased. Where this calm, dignified creature was concerned, the word “tame” somehow seemed like an insult.

Calmly turning its sleek oval head one way and then the other, the duck continued to eye Audrey as she sank down to her knees, held out an upturned hand, and whispered, “Hello, duck.” It nodded then, acknowledging her greeting, and after turning its head to inspect her with one eye and then the other, it waddled closer and bent its neck until its beak lay in Audrey's outstretched palm. A wide, yellow beak, as smoothly solid as a wooden ruler, and yet somehow warm and alive. For two or three seconds the duck's bill remained in her hand before it pulled away, turned, and disappeared into the surrounding underbrush.

Audrey jumped to her feet and pushed her way into the bushes, peering from side to side and calling out, “Here, duck. Come back, duck. Where did you go?” But it was useless. It had disappeared.

So that Saturday was the first meeting, but not the last. The very next day in the early afternoon Audrey once again visited the high terrace, this time bringing with her
some bread crumbs and, in a paper cup, a few spoonfuls of Sputnik's birdseed.

Once again she sat down exactly where she had been the day before and settled herself to wait—but not for long. She had only enough time to unwrap the bread and seeds and spread them out on a page torn from her notebook when suddenly it was there again. Once again inspecting Audrey with one eye and then the other, it moved forward and eagerly helped itself to the bread and seeds. And when the last bit of food had disappeared, it moved even closer and, once again, reached out to touch her hand with its bill.

After that brief moment of contact the duck raised its head, started away, and stopped to look back with a sharp nod that left Audrey absolutely certain that she was supposed to follow—and she did. To follow a duck who, like Lily in her grandmother's stories, knew how to lead people to places they should go. In Lily's case it had often been to where a person could make herself useful by turning over a stone or brick to uncover a tasty bunch of worms and sow bugs.

“All right. I'm coming,” Audrey said. “I'm following you. Where are the worms?” And she did follow, only a few steps behind, as the duck waddled with awkward dignity across the high terrace and through the grove of saplings on the far edge of her family's property—and kept on going. Kept going past several rocky places where there might be good
worm hunting and continued on, even when Audrey tried to tempt it by turning over a flat rock and a chunk of tree bark.

The duck's shuffling gait was not swift, but it seemed to cover ground with surprising efficiency. Skirting trees and bushes, on paths that were still damp from the recent rain, it paused to look back now and then before continuing on up the slope that led toward the foothills. Paused, and then, when Audrey was lagging too far behind, flapped its wings and nodded its head in a way that clearly meant for her to hurry. No longer bothering to detour around the muddiest places, Audrey made an effort to keep up, but as she slid and skidded on the narrow path, she thought, more than once, that the duck seemed not only confident, but also strangely demanding for a common barnyard fowl. A barnyard fowl, but on the other hand, perhaps something much more.

They'd crossed the first shallow gully and started up the next steep rise before Audrey began to guess where they were going. Guessed, and then wondered why. Why would a duck be going to such a place? Ducks, as far as she knew, were not cave dwellers.

But her guess proved to be a good one. The duck continued to follow the secret trail that Audrey remembered very well from the days of the Mayberry pirates. It wasn't long before it reached the bottom of an almost vertical cliff, and the entrance to the forbidden cave.