Greenglass House (28 page)

Lizzie and Mrs. Caraway began to clap slowly. Grinning, Milo joined in, then Meddy. Mrs. Hereward looked up with a scowl on her face, as if she thought they might be making fun, but Fenster beamed and took a bow. Surprised, Mrs. Hereward smiled awkwardly. Then she bowed too.

It was amid this applause that Milo's parents arrived on the scene. “What's the commotion?” Mrs. Pine asked blearily.

“I believe, with Mrs. Hereward's help, we have survived Fenster in the kitchen,” Mrs. Caraway announced. “How about I take over and do the dishes?”

Fenster shook his head. “My mother, may she rest in peace, would never forgive me if I let you do that. Never leave a space you've used without you leave it shipshape.”

“I quite agree,” Mrs. Hereward added. “I'll wash, Mr. Fenster, and you can dry.”

Mrs. Caraway sank back onto the bench. “So close,” she mumbled. “So, so close.”

Milo laughed and carried his box into the living room to put under the tree. A moment later, Mr. Pine came in and sat next to him on the hearth. “Did you find your present, Milo?”

“Yes! Is it really your Odd Trails character? The . . . the tiercer-signaler guy?”

“Sure is.”

Mrs. Pine joined them a few minutes later carrying three mugs. She handed one to Milo and one to his father, then sat on the floor by the tree and listened with a smile while Mr. Pine reminisced about Odd Trails games he'd played as a kid, including one for which the cook on his father's ship had been the game master.

The fire smelled good, the tree smelled good, even the cakes (for the moment) smelled good. Milo sipped his hot chocolate and settled into a blissful calm. The house might be lousy with weirdoes, but for now, at least, he could still have Christmas Eve with his parents. Even Meddy seemed to sense he needed this time without her. Once he saw her peek over the back of the loveseat, smile, then sink away out of sight.

But the peace couldn't last long, of course. At last Mr. Pine clapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “I'd better go give Brandon a hand.”

“Take the thermos,” Mrs. Pine told him. She kissed Milo's forehead and got up too. “Odette,” she called, “you ready to start breakfast?”

Mrs. Caraway peered into the kitchen. “I think so.” She grinned. “Looks like the dishwashers are just wrapping up.”

A few minutes later, the triumphant bakers emerged. The old lady held a cup of tea in one hand, and she'd ditched the polka-dot apron. Fenster went straight to the foyer and started pulling on his coat. He seemed to have forgotten the lacy purple monstrosity he was still wearing.

Mrs. Hereward sat on the couch, leaned back, closed her eyes, and sighed. Milo caught Meddy watching over the back of her seat again. They exchanged a glance, and she padded across to join him. Then Milo picked up the gold-wrapped present and went to sit next to the old lady. “Mrs. Hereward?”

She opened her eyes with a contented smile. “Yes, Milo?”

He held out the box. “I found this in my attic a couple days ago. I thought you might like to have it and my mom and dad said it was okay.”

“Goodness, really?” She took the present hesitantly. “I really don't know what to say.”

“Open it,” Milo said, bouncing a little in anticipation.

She unwrapped it with agonizing slowness. Milo's mother was the same way—she acted like the world would end if the paper tore. He forced himself not to hurry her along. Then, at last, she opened the lid of the box and saw the lantern.

“What on earth—?” She lifted it out by its chain. “You . . . you found this?”

“Turn it over,” Milo suggested. “Look on the bottom! It has—”

Mrs. Hereward spotted the flame symbol and breathed in sharply. “Oh, my.”

“Remember in your story? How the wishing-stick guy scratched a symbol on Julian's shoes, and on his knife and his lantern?”

“Yes,” she said softly, wonderingly. “Yes, I remember that part.”

“And I thought . . . Well, there's that lantern on the gate on your bag. Maybe the relic your ancestor bought wasn't the knife, it was the lantern! A lantern would be useful on a ship, wouldn't it?”

Mrs. Hereward nodded. “It certainly would.”

“Maybe it's not really Julian's, but I thought you might like it anyway.” Milo reached into the open box and took out the bottle and the tinderbox. “And look. There's a flint in here, and some oil. We tried it out last night, my dad and I. The flame burns blue!”

“Blue flame,” Mrs. Hereward murmured. “I don't think I even remembered to mention that.”

“There's a blue flame in the story?”

She nodded. “In roamer tales, unearthly fire always burns blue.” She shook her head disbelievingly. “It's impossible, of course—it was foolish to think there might be such things as relics of this nature in the real world at all—but . . . yes, Milo, I believe I will decide to say ‘What if?'” She gave the chain a little twist. The lamp rotated slowly. “Anything is possible, isn't it?”

“Sure.” Milo nodded vigorously. “Anything's possible.”

“And you're certain your parents don't mind your giving this to me?”

Milo took his father's Christmas Eve card from his pocket and held it up with pride. Mrs. Hereward adjusted her glasses and read it. Then she sat back. “Well, if that's the case, I am honored and delighted to accept your gift. What a very kind thing to think of. I believe I will put it in my room so I don't lose it.”

She put a hand awkwardly on his shoulder for a moment, then collected the pieces of her present and disappeared upstairs.

The smells of breakfast cooking brought the remaining guests down, one at a time: Georgie, still looking downcast; Mr. Vinge, sporting yellow socks with red zigzags; Dr. Gowervine, looking the same as always; and then, last of all, Clem and Owen. It looked like a good night's sleep had done wonders for the newcomer.

“Milo?” Mrs. Pine called. “Want to go out and tell the mechanics to take a break?”

Milo was much more interested in waiting to see if there had been a theft the previous night, but it didn't look like anyone was on the verge of that kind of announcement. With the exception of Georgie, everyone seemed to be in reasonably good spirits. So he suited up for the cold and slipped outside.

The slick of gray clouds had spread across most of the sky now, but there was still enough sunlight on the icy surfaces of the world to make Milo wish for a pair of sunglasses. He pulled his collar up, tucked his chin down against the biting air, and started around the side of the house, staying in the path his father, Brandon, and Fenster had stomped flat.

The generator lived by itself in a brick shed off the back of the house. Milo knocked on the door, just in case “working on the generator” involved anything dangerous that he shouldn't barge in on. The door opened and Brandon peered out. “Yessir, Milo?”

“Mom says can you stop for breakfast?”

Brandon smiled, then looked over his shoulder. “Oy, you two think we can break for chow?”

“I think so.” Mr. Pine sounded pleased with himself. “Fenster, give it a go.” A moment later a sputtering, choked noise made Milo flinch away from the door. He stumbled over his own feet and landed on his backside, crashing through the icy top crust into the softer snow beneath. As he picked himself up, the sputter settled into a rhythmic coughing, then into a low rumble. The three men filed out, looking satisfied. Milo's father scrubbed at his hands with a shop rag. “Let us go, gentlemen,” he declared with a grandiose wave of the rag, “and claim our reward.”

“What's that noise?” Milo demanded. “Does that mean it's working again?”

Mr. Pine winked. “Come along and we shall see what we see.”

Their return was greeted with a standing ovation from the denizens of Greenglass House. The power was back on, from the curvy white glass chandelier over the dining table to the Christmas tree glittering warmly in its corner.

Milo left Mr. Pine, Fenster, and Brandon to their congratulations and plopped onto the loveseat next to Meddy, who was leaning over the back, staring thoughtfully at the tree and fiddling with the sleeve of her cloak. “Anybody say anything interesting while I was gone?” he whispered.

“If you mean, did anybody claim something went missing last night, then no.” Meddy glanced over her shoulder. “But I think Mrs. Hereward's trying to be all sneaky and finish the cake before Fenster remembers it still needs frosting.”

As if he'd overheard Meddy's words, Fenster broke away from the group in the dining room and made a beeline for the kitchen. Squabbling noises ensued. “Too late,” Milo observed.

Mrs. Caraway managed to herd everyone to the table to load up their plates for the most cheerful meal the house had seen in days, frosting disagreements notwithstanding. Milo sat on the floor and ate at the coffee table, leaving Meddy to watch Mr. Vinge and Dr. Gowervine in the dining room. Then, out of nowhere, Mrs. Hereward leaned over to Georgie, who was sitting beside her on the couch, and whispered, “Are you quite sure it's all right, my dear?”

Georgie glanced across to the hearth, where Clem and Owen were sitting. Even Milo could see how blissfully happy they were to be sitting next to each other—so much so that he almost felt embarrassed for them. It was as if they couldn't hide how much they liked each other.

The blue-haired girl took a deep breath. “Yes, Mrs. Hereward. I'm quite sure. Thank you. Go ahead.”

Mrs. Hereward patted her lips with her napkin, picked up her fork, and tapped it gently against her juice glass. “Excuse me for interrupting, but, young man—it's Owen, isn't it?”

Owen looked up. “It is, yes, ma'am.”

“Of course, you understand that last night we were all very curious about you, but we didn't want to bother you while you were so very ill, or bother Miss Candler while she was attending to you,” Mrs. Hereward said a bit apologetically. “However, I couldn't help but notice that Georgie seemed to know you as well, and in the course of the evening she happened to mention your middle name.”

“My . . . middle name?” He looked at Georgie. “I didn't know you knew it.”

She smiled sadly. “Surprise.”

Mrs. Hereward patted Georgie's hand. “Not what you'd call a common name, Lansdegown. Have you ever run across anyone else who has it?”

“No, ma'am. Frankly, I've tried to track down information on it, but”—he spread his hands—“city records are bad to start with, and the records from my adoption don't include information on my birth parents. I was a foundling.”

Just like me,
Milo thought, leaning in to listen even more closely. Those who'd eaten in the dining room were drifting in now.

“Well, young man, I can help you. Would it astonish you to know that you and I might just turn out to be related?”

Now everyone was staring. Milo could understand why. It was the same reaction the Pines got now and then when they told someone that Milo was their son.

“Yes,” he admitted slowly, taking in Mrs. Hereward's pale skin and blue eyes. “Yes, that would be very astonishing.”

“I thought as much. So let me tell you a little story. I mentioned to Milo that an ancestor of mine built this house. There were two children in the family. The elder was a girl called Lucy. Her father was a British privateer who had remarried after her mother's death, and his second wife was a Chinese lady.” She paused for a sip of orange juice. “They had a son, Lucy's half brother, whose name was Liao. Until he was about six or seven, Liao and his mother lived in China while Lucy and their father lived aboard their ship. Then, sometime around the beginning of the War of 1812, the captain decided it was time to bring his family together in a place he hoped would stay out of the conflict. So he built this house and brought his loved ones to Nagspeake.

“It was the two children who came up with the name for the house. The privateer's surname was Bluecrowne, and at Lucy's request, the little boy Liao translated as best he could the two parts of the compound name—
blue
and
crown
—into Mandarin. Lucy, who was also very young at the time and who knew very little of the language herself, wrote it down phonetically. I could not possibly tell you how to pronounce the words properly, but the result, the name with which the family christened the house, was
Lansdegown.
”

Owen was listening wide-eyed and rapt. Milo couldn't blame him. This was exactly the kind of thing he'd always longed to know about his roots.

“I imagine, therefore,” Mrs. Hereward finished, “that you might well be descended from Liao's branch of the family; or perhaps someone of Asian heritage married one of Lucy's descendants. That may be impossible to know. But in any case, that's where the Lansdegown name comes from. Two small children translating the surname
Bluecrowne.
”

The young man shook his head. “This is amazing,” he murmured.

Milo blinked hard and tried not to cry. Emotions were welling up inside him that he didn't quite understand. It wasn't as if he'd learned anything about his own ancestry, and he didn't feel jealous of Owen. He felt happy for him—wildly, indescribably happy, just knowing that someone who hadn't known
anything
about his heritage could now know
something.

He wasn't the only one trying not to cry. Clem—plucky, poised Clemence O. Candler—had already lost the battle. She looked at Georgie with tears on her cheeks. “She asked if you were sure,” Clem said. “She asked your permission before she told. You knew?”

Georgie was blinking hard too. “I told my—
our
story last night, after you went up. I mentioned the name, and Mrs. Hereward put it together.”

“Milo thought I ought to tell you,” Mrs. Hereward said to Owen, “and this morning Georgie convinced me he was right.”