Ticket to Faerie Read Free Page B

shoulder. "Only two kinds of people visit Giserella: those
who bring her presents that she likes and those she eats for
supper."
    Alyssa shuddered, and dismissed the idea as folderol,
another one of Dad's favorite words. When she got to the path that
led back to the road, she set the jug down. She couldn't carry it in her
arms all the way back to the coach stop. After she stared at it for a
few minutes, she pulled Max's leash from her pack, strung it through
the two handles of the jug, and attached the clip to the loop. She
lifted the leash onto her shoulder, resting it on the padded strap of
her pack, and set off to follow the path back toward the road.
    "Wrong way." Max headed in the other direction.
    "But that's the way we came." Alyssa looked around,
confused. She couldn't see Giserella's cottage.
    "That's the way here; it's not the way back." Max kept
walking.
    "Now, hang on a minute. That just doesn't make sense. Why
can't we retrace our steps?"
    "Because this is Faerie, love," the mouse said. "The way in
isn't the same as the way out."
    Alyssa muttered under her breath. And, I'm supposed to
believe a stupid white mouse and a dog who gives away my stuff. But she trudged off in Max's trail. The dog slowed until she caught up
with him, and then resumed a brisker pace.
    "Max, I've got to carry this pack and the jug. Don't go so
fast."
    "At this rate, it's gonna take us a couple of days to get to the
coach stop." But he slowed his pace a little.
    "How come we can't make it back to the coach stop in a
couple of hours? Only took us that long to reach Giserella's."
    Max ignored her.
    Stupid, stupid, stupid. Struggling to keep up with Max,
Alyssa didn't have enough breath to rant out loud.
    As they walked, the path became a road and the forest
drifted into meadows. The meadows slowly became tilled fields of
tall pink grass on one side and some kind of orange, bean-like crop
on the other. Off in the distance, Alyssa occasionally saw an
odd-shaped house or barn. One, although freshly painted, had such
strange construction it looked like it would keel over at any minute.
A little later, they passed a shed near the road with one wall and its
roof missing. Odd shaped pieces of wood, rusted tools, and other
debris littered the ground around it.
    Alyssa had walked several yards past the mess when she
stopped, turned around and walked back. She set down the jug and
pulled a couple of round pieces from the pile of wood. Wheels .
    Max sat down in the road.
    Miss Lisle wiggled her whiskers. "What in the world are you
up to?"
    "If I have to traipse around Faerie for another day or two,
I'm not lugging this jug." Alyssa dug through the pile and found two
long poles, a shorter one, and a few square flat pieces with holes in
them. "My shoulder's killing me already." She stripped off her pack
and set the mouse on top of the jug.
    She mucked around in the mess until she found a hunk of
metal big enough to use as a hammer and a couple of dozen nails in
various sizes and stages of rusting. Good thing Mom talked Dad
into letting me take woodshop. One after another she held pieces
together and pounded in nail after nail. She put the shorter pole
through holes in the side pieces and attached that to the wheels. In
the end, her contraption didn't look half bad. "Max, will you pull the
jug for Grandma?"
    He tilted his head to one side. "I suppose. Your grandma
always gives me a big rawhide bone for Christmas." He licked his
chops.
    With him standing between the longer poles and the mouse
making useless suggestions, Alyssa played with the leash until she
came up with a way to attach it around the dog's chest, and leave
enough slack to fasten it to the poles. She lifted the jug up into the
makeshift cart. Well that will give my shoulder a break, at
least .
    She bent down and rubbed at the red marks in between her
big and second toes. This sucks. Shoulda changed into my sneakers
when I found out how much walking I'm expected to do. She
yanked her socks