Crewel Lye Read Free Page A

and get her feet all wet; that would be awkward to explain to her mother! Irene might have no time for Ivy when Ivy wanted attention, but she would appear like magic the moment those little feet and shoes got wet; that was the way mothers were. Also, Ivy wasn't sure just how fast her sight might recover, after too great an exposure to that light; how awful it would be to be blind! If she came home blind, they would feed her nothing but--screaming horrors!--carrots, because they had a magic yellow ingredient that was good for vision. There was no question about it: she had to find a different way.
    “Come on. Ivy,” she chided herself. “You're smart enough to figure out how to get through a little light!” Whereupon she became smart enough; confidence was wonderful stuff, especially when abetted by magic.
    Ivy returned to the dark alcove and reached inside. Sure enough, there was a dark lantern. She brought it out, and its darkness spread all around her, converting day to night. Fortunately, she was able to see a little dim light ahead, around the corner, and she headed for that.
    As she rounded the corner, the effulgence surrounded her--and was met by the darkness radiating from the dark lamp. The two struggled and canceled out, and an approximation of normal daylight returned. A small globe of darkness remained about the lantern itself, into which her arm disappeared, while the bright lantern remained too bright to gaze upon. But in between were the shades ranging from night to day. If Ivy had been of a more philosophical bent, she might have realized that life itself was like that, with the impossible extremes of good and bad at either side and many gradients between, through which normal folk navigated with indifferent success. But she was as yet too young for such a thought, so she shoved it aside and proceeded through the shades of gray until she rounded another corner. Then the dark lamp became too dark, blotting out everything; she set it in an empty alcove and went on.
    But a new threat materialized. A small winged cat screeched and circled above her. When she tried to take a step, the cat circled lower, claws extended. This was too little to be a cat-bird; it was a kitty-hawk, and it would not let her pass.
    She looked in her blanket bag, where there was one stone, the dead moth, and the mare shoe. She might throw the stone at the creature, but she doubted she could score; the throwing arm of a five-year-old girl wasn't strong. So she left that stone unturned. She needed another way.
    As she pondered, the kitty-hawk circled lower. Ivy was right at the edge of its attack range and the creature hesitated. Probably it didn't want to get too close to the brilliance around the corner, as that would blind the kitty-hawk as readily as it blinded her. So this was a safe place to pause.
    Ivy watched the creature, noting the separate components of its body. The hawk-wings were of the bird kingdom, with brown feathers, and there was a feathered tail to match; the head and legs were of the cat kingdom, with white teeth and claws. She wondered which kingdom was dominant. Did the creature lay eggs or give live birth? Animals had more direct and crude ways of reproducing themselves than people did; maybe cabbages didn't grow for animals. She blushed to be thinking such naughty thoughts, but still, she was curious. She knew that some creatures birthed and others hatched, or maybe it was the other way around, and people arrived under cabbage leaves, and then there was the matter of the storks--
    Ivy frowned, because that reminded her of Baby Brother Dolph again. Too bad the stork hadn't brought him, because then there would have been a chance of dropping the bundle into a nest of cockatrices, or maybe onto a bad-tempered needle-cactus. She could almost see the needles flying out, striking the little cockatrices, who naturally glared balefully about, turning everything around them to sludge. Or was it stone? Anyway, the little