Crewel Lye Read Online Free

eye eyed her stonily. “You again, twerp? If you try to pass this point, I'll see that you get the brush-off for sure. You won't be able to sit down without blistering the chair!”
    “I've got something for you,” she said, taking out the dead luna moth. “Let me just scrape out some dirt beside you here--” She dug a little hole.
    “That doesn't look like much,” the headstone said. “If you dig too deep, you may encounter something you don't like, sweetie-pie.”
    “I just want to bury this closer to you than that,” Ivy said and dropped the dead moth in the hole. Then she swept the dirt over and patted it firm.
    She stood and watched. If what the headstone had told her was true--
    It was. The headstone began to change. The human features weathered into anonymity and assumed a greenish cast. Then a new form took shape. It was the head of a luna moth, with furry antennae and lovely color.
    “That's very pretty,” Ivy said and walked on by.
    The stone-moth's antennae waved frantically, but there was no sound, for moths did not make sounds in the human range. The giant brush was not roused, and Ivy passed the dread region without hindrance. She had navigated the final hurdle, thanks to her creativity. She had used a dead moth in a way no one had thought of before.
    She walked around to the castle door and pushed it open. A young and pretty woman came to meet her. “Why, hello, Ivy--you surprised me. Why didn't you use the carpet to fly in, as you usually do?”
    Ivy didn't care to explain about being grounded; Zora was very nice, but no adult could be completely trusted in a matter like that. “This is business, Zora”, she explained. “I have to see Good Magician Humfrey.”
    Zora shrugged. She was a zombie, but it was almost impossible to tell, for no flesh fell from her. She had been baby-sitting the Good Magician for two years because it was her talent to make people age faster. She was married, but when she turned on her talent, other people became nervous, fearing they were aging, too. Ivy didn't understand why anyone should object to getting older; maybe they had all forgotten what it was like to be a child. But it seemed they did fear age, and the older they were, the more they feared it. So Zora's husband Xavier tended to absent himself when Zora turned on.
    Ivy understood the practical aspects of all this, if not the emotional ones, and wasn't worried. She often visited the Good Magician herself, enhancing Zora's talent with her own, so that Humfrey aged at several times the normal rate. It would not be long, as such things went, before he was an adult again; meanwhile, he seemed to be enjoying his second childhood.
    Zora escorted her to Humfrey's playroom. The Good Magician was now about Ivy's size, which meant he had averaged about three years for one, for he was small for his age. “Hi, Ivy!” he said. “Come to put some more years on me?”
    “No, this is a business call,” Ivy repeated. Humfrey she had to trust, even if she didn't want to. He knew everything anyway, or seemed to, that being his talent. Physically, he was now a child, so perhaps would not be inclined to betray her to the grown-ups. “I'm grounded for no reason and had to sneak out.”
    Humfrey smiled in a too knowing way. “No reason, as you define it, being the leading of your grandfather in a merry chase through tangler, jungle, and gourd, all because you didn't stay on course or heed his warnings, and causing the Night Stallion to shoot fire from his nostrils when he saw the damage to his haunted house set?”
    “That's what I said,” Ivy agreed uncomfortably. “No reason at all. So let's make this quick, before I get in trouble for even less reason if they discover I'm. gone. I need an Answer.”
    “That will be one year's service,” he informed her. “In advance.”
    “Well, I've already added more than that to your life by enhancing Zora when she ages you, so we're even. And if I do it much more, you'll owe me