Far From Home Read Free

shrubs when Cora called from the Tea House, “Look what I found!” Clarissa gathered her crutches, stuck their crosspieces under her armpits and grabbed the handgrips. She made her way up the steps and into the house.
    Cora was down on her knees. Her straight, black hair, usually drawn from one side to the other and held with a barrette, hung over her. Beside her were broken boards and an opening in the floor. Cora looked up at Clarissa, her eyes popping.
    Clarissa eyed her cautiously. “Why are you puffing and blowing like a pothead whale?”
    Cora’s voice filled with wonder. “I’ve found an old box!” She leaned down, her hands moving quickly to wipe twigs and dried leaves off the brass surface. She straightened to pick up a stick lying on the floor. Then she tapped on the brass-overlaid box.
    Clarissa peeped down, puzzled. “It looks like it’s been here a long time.”
    â€œWe were never up here this late in the year; leaves and grass likely hid it. But I can’t remember these boards being broken off. Anyway, look!” Cora leaned closer.
    Clarissa followed her look. “The box’s got scenes etched in brass and raised so that even a blind person can feel the picture and tell a story. There’s men, some standing and others sitting around a table. One man is drinking from a jug.”
    Cora tipped her head to her shoulder and squinted. “On the side there’s a crowd of men inside a place with brick walls and a fireplace with some jugs on a mantel above it. A crowd of ruffians drinking their pint and gambling – sure, that’s what it looks like to me.”
    â€œWell,” Clarissa said, “Peter did say his father told him yarns about an ancestor coming down from L’Anse aux Meadows on snowshoes after the rest of the Norsemen died off. If the man was a trapper and had a trapping path from here to over the hills, perhaps the box belonged to him or his relations.”
    Cora was sceptical. “There’s no Norsemen on it. Sure, there’d be horns.”
    â€œThey didn’t all have horns; it was mostly the Viking warriors who had horns on their helmets,” Clarissa said quickly, remembering stories she had read. “Some of them wore caps like everyone else.”
    Cora hesitated. “I don’t know if I want to open the box. My mind’s splitting into wantin’ to and not wantin’ to open it.” She tightened her arms against her body and looked around. She whispered, “Someone could be watchin’ us. I want to let it be.”
    Clarissa shrugged. “A weasel or red fox might have us in its eyes. Most humans are a ways from here. We can cover the box until next summer and think about it, or next Saturday we could sneak away with a hammer and knock off the lock.”
    Cora recoiled, her blue eyes like two china platters. She whispered, “What if ’tis a fairy box?”
    â€œA fairy box!” Clarissa’s face screwed up in disdain. “I told you I don’t believe in fairies. I barely believe in imagining them.”
    The girls looked out through the open doorway; the sky was like an old man’s face overgrown with grey hair and a grey beard, one dull eye visible. The wind dallied in the air like a ghost. It grew stronger, moving its fingers through the fallen leaves.
    Cora shuddered. “I’m all abiver. Let’s go. It gets dark quick in the fall. We got to get down before Old Keziah finds us gone.” Old Keziah was the nickname the children stuck on Miss Elizabeth after she washed out their mouths with a hunk of lye soap.
    Cora ran outside and gathered an armful of fallen spruce branches. She hurried inside and dropped the branches as fast as she could over the box. Then she fitted the broken floorboards back in place as well as she could. Clarissa got up from her stoop reluctantly. She slipped her crutches into place, and the girls made their way down the