Wink Poppy Midnight Read Online Free Page B

bearing one pink little wildflower in his hand and he gave it to me when I opened the door. I didn’t know what to do with it so I just held it in my fist while he stood there looking pleasant and awkward like the ordinary farm boy before destiny knocks and he’s forced to pick up the sword and take to the road.
    I let him inside and then, before I could change my mind, I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk in the forest.
    He looked out the windows at the setting sun, and then said yes anyway.
    I planned to take him down the path that went right by the Roman Luck house. The Roman Luck house was full of bad things and sadness and unforgivables, but I wanted to see what would happen.
    Midnight waited in our kitchen while I got ready. The Orphans surrounded him, asking him questions he didn’t know how to answer, mostly about whether he’d seen theghost of Lucy Rish yet in his house across the road, and if she threw apples at him or if they fell right through her old ghostly hands. He smiled and didn’t seem to mind all their asking.
    I put on a green cotton dress, because the tree spirits like green. It had been Mim’s dress when she was a girl, and had a white belt. There was only one little hole, in the back, where you could hardly see it.
    I forgot to brush my hair before we left, but I did remember to dust my arms and neck with powdered sugar. It made the mosquitoes come at you, but the night was blustery and I wasn’t worried. Besides, the unforgivables will feed on you, unless you give them something sweet. It distracts them and they leave you alone. Mostly.

T HE INSIDE OF Wink’s house was just as cluttered and chaotic as you’d expect a house to be with so many dogs and kids running wild. The kitchen was long and rectangular. I saw baskets of brown eggs on the wooden counter, and bowls of apples and bags of potatoes and onions. There were pots hanging from hooks on the ceiling, and a pile of foldedlaundry on the end of the table, and everything looked neat and tidy, in its own messy way.
    The walls were a bright turquoise blue and there was a working woodstove in the corner. Everything smelled like gingerbread, and Wink’s mother offered me a square piece as I waited. She was a short woman with big curves and wary green eyes and long red hair, no gray. She wore her hair in thick braids that crisscrossed her head in a style that looked both ancient and also sort of artsy and modern. She had on a black blouse-y shirt thing and a long skirt, lots of colors, and black boots with complicated laces. She looked like what you’d expect a fortune-teller to look like . . . but she also just looked like a mom. A mom who liked to dress interesting and cool instead of wearing beige pants and pastel-colored cardigans.
    My own mother was a cool dresser. She was a writer and wanted people to know it. She had big round tortoiseshell glasses and thick brown hair and swooping, draping clothes that she wore with plain brown cowboy boots. People used to stare at her when she went grocery shopping, and she liked it that way. So Wink’s mother made me feel right at home.
    The cake was dark, almost black. It tasted like ginger and molasses. I ate it at the counter. Sticky little hands kept reaching up to the cake pan as I stood there, and itdisappeared, piece by piece. The Orphans asked me questions as they took the gingerbread, fast, one after another, not waiting for my answers, like the questions were the only thing that mattered—
    What’s your name?
    Do you believe in ghosts?
    Have you seen the ghost that lives in your house?
    How fast can you run?
    Have you ever played Follow the Screams?
    Do you have any dogs?
    Do you like sailboats?
    I tried to count the kids. I did. But they all kept moving around, and they all had red hair and green eyes, except for one dark-haired, brown-eyed girl who smiled at me sweetly as she took her second piece of gingerbread. I decided there