Blackthorn Winter Read Free Page B

no—help! Help! Come quick!
    I knew no one had spoken—not really—but why was there this sudden voice in my head? It seemed to be a child's voice, high-pitched and frightened. It was somehow a familiar voice, but not one I could place.... I rubbed my nose—hard—and coughed, trying to rid myself of the strangeness. The smell disappeared along with the voice as Liza darted ahead of us, switching on lamps. I blinked in surprise—and pleasure—and was happy to push the weirdness out of my mind.
    We were in a simple whitewashed room furnished with a cushiony couch and matching armchairs in rose-patterned fabric. There was a built-in bookcase along one wall—filled with books—and a large, old-fashioned sort of cupboard that stood open to reveal a very modern television. There was a large stone fireplace with a wood-burning stove set inside, topped by a carved wooden mantel. The cold flagstone floor was mostly covered by a thick rug in an oriental pattern of dark reds and blues. The fading light came through diamond-paned windows that looked out into the dusk of the dripping garden. This, at last, was worthy of my Christmas calendar.
    "Your sitting room," Liza announced proudly, as if she herself were responsible for its charm. "Now through this door is the kitchen and eating area. And there's the bath, converted from what used to be the larder, I think. No shower, I'm sorry to say! I know Americans like their long showers. Half of the villagers still use woodstoves to heat their homes, but Quent has recently had central heating installed in here, plus a brand-new water heater. So there should be plenty of hot water..."
    Well, I was relieved to hear
that,
because the only thing I hadn't liked at Grandad's was how there was never enough hot water for a really good bath. And right now the thought of a good long soak in a really hot bath was just what I wanted. But Liza's next words made me sigh.
    "I bet you can get two full tubs a day. I'd make the kiddies share, Hedda, that's what I'd do, and save the other for yourself! You can keep warm and snug with the woodstove, too—and look here, outside the back door there's a pile of wood already stacked and ready. Now, bedrooms are upstairs—four little ones. They're practically cupboards, but at least you'll each get your own."
    "This is just wonderful," said Mom, wandering into the kitchen. She turned back to beam at Liza. "And
you
are wonderful for finding the cottage for us, Liza. I can't thank you enough. It has everything we need."
    "It doesn't have a computer, does it?" I asked Liza. I hadn't seen one yet, but maybe upstairs...
    "No—" She sounded surprised. "I would have thought you'd bring your own."
    "I would have thought that, too," I said, giving Mom what she and Dad called my "dagger" look. "But Mom said we didn't need one here."
    "I just wanted to keep everything simple," Mom said. "My old laptop was on its last legs, so I didn't bother to bring it. Anyway, I want the kids to make friends here—not just e-mail their friends back in California all the time or play computer games. We'll get a new setup eventually. But I don't see the rush."
    "No fair," complained Edmund, the computer game addict.
    This was a sore subject with me. It was bad enough to take us away from Dad, but that we couldn't e-mail him and would have to rely on phone calls and old-fashioned letters seemed unfair—not to mention ridiculously dark age. It felt like Mom was deliberately cutting us off from Dad. She insisted that wasn't the case at all, but she was the one who kept throwing around phrases like "need to find myself again" and "must immerse myself in the artistic community," both of which made me want to puke. Plus, I loved instant-messaging my friends Jazzy and Rosy, and of course Tim every day. Without e-mail, I would be totally out of the loop.
    "Well, I know Quent's got several computers, Juliana," Liza told me cheerfully, as if she could