The Door in the Forest Read Online Free Page A

after a while, “time we were going. Ready, Emily?”
    Gwen didn’t like to admit she was relieved. It was tricky enough, in these lean times, to feed her own family. “Danny, why don’t you go with them and help get Emily settled?”
    Daniel glanced from one woman to the other. There went his day. “Sure,” he said.
    Ten minutes later, with the girl in the front beside her grandmother and Daniel jouncing about in the broken-springed backseat, they were on their way, raising a tunnel of dust behind them along the dirt road. Bridey had opened the split windshield to let in air, but then closed it against dust and bugs. Emily didn’t seem to notice. She stared out at pastures and windbreaks, a house, a horse, a barn all whizzing by at something like twenty miles an hour—a crazy speed!
    Between the seats, Daniel observed the silent girl in the front, with her cloth bag of belongings beside her. Her smudged dress, snub nose, and impossible hair gave her the look of a vagabond; but she had one prized possession at least, something in her lap she kept fingering. A toy? No, a necklace, he now saw. It looked like a cheap string of funny-shaped pearls.
    She rubbed them as she might a rosary, for luck and comfort. She could use a lot of both, he thought. Bouncing along, he found himself grateful for the racket the car was making—a “bucket of bolts,” the old lady had called it. It made the girl’s silence less awkward. Less
audible
, in a way. How long had she been like this? Daniel didn’t really remember her from when she’d lived here before.
    And how was it she hadn’t come to see her grandmother in all those years? The city was fifty miles away, far enough, but not one visit in six years?
    His reverie was interrupted by a startling sight. Up ahead, taking up most of the road, marched a company of soldiers led by a muddy staff car, several old Crossley military vehicles, and two armored trucks. Taking up the rear was a slow-moving, house-sized monster topped by a cannon barrel that protruded like a horn. The tank shimmered in its own heat waves while its great heart roared and metal treads clanked down the road. Daniel knew such things had been used in the Great War, which had ended back in 1918, five long years ago. Perhaps this weapon had been taken out of retirement and adapted for the little wars—the Uncertainties—that plagued his own land. But why would a tank be coming to Everwood, a nothing little farm town? Were they planning to shoot at cows?
    Grandma Byrdsong pulled her car to the side and yanked the emergency brake as the trucks rumbled past, and behind them the soldiers. Somehow, the men didn’t seem so impressive up close, and there were not as many as Daniel had thought. They looked weary and were not so much marching as trudging. More than one relied on a crutch.
    He looked to Bridey for an explanation. He assumed that, as the town’s one witch (something she neither admitted nor denied), she’d know everything. But she was gawking like a tourist.
    Emily, he realized with a start, was no longer in her seat, but huddled beneath the dashboard, with her skinny arms over her head.
That’s right
, he thought with a pang,
she’s had run-ins with these people before. They arrested her mom
.
    “It’s okay,” he said when the soldiers had passed. “They’re gone.”
    Emily didn’t answer. She stayed under the dashboard, and so did not see when Bridey turned off onto a narrow dirt road with a mane of brown grass running down the middle. She didn’t see the car climbing past elms and elderberry that ran leafy hands and scratchy fingernails along the roof and passenger side. Nor did she see the house emerging at the top in dilapidated grandeur, with circle drive and porticoed entrance; or the wild vegetable garden; or the big lilac tree that reached past the second floor; or the cats, some rumored to be feral, peering out from under the rotted porch.
    “Here we are,” called out Grandma