Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

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      “May I try something?” she asked. ”Would you mind?”

      Not knowing what she intended, I, of course, had no way of deciding, but I’d grown up so far expecting adults to have substantially benign intentions when they asked questions like that, so I stood mute.

      Aunt Claire moved to an end table, pulled out one of the little drawers in it, and took out a folded scarf, one with flower patterning similar to that on the scarf the girl in the picture wore. Folding it into a triangle, she smoothed it over my head tying it beneath my chin in a bow. ”There,” she said with a note of triumph in her voice. ”Look.”

      Pointing to the wall mirror, she turned me in that direction, then back to the picture. Even I was amazed by how much I looked like my aunt when she was about my age. ”We could almost have been twins,” she said. While I was struggling for some way to respond to this, I caught a flash of color racing past the living room window. There was a knock on the door and a call of “Claire!” in a girlish treble.

      The Secret Box

      “Come in, Monique! It’s our little lighthouse girl,” my aunt confided. I was caught, so to speak, like a deer in the headlights and just stood there where I was as a small whirlwind in pink pedal pushers and blond ponytails came gusting through the door.

      “This is Monique,” Claire said unnecessarily. ”Monique, this is Ninian. You know, the one I’ve been telling you about?”

      “Well, hello!” Monique actually hugged me in excitement. ”I’ve been hearing all about you. We’ll have such fun!” In the same breath she asked, “Do you sleep in the tower room?”

      I nodded.

      “I’ve got to tell you a secret,” she whispered. ”Can she show me her room?” Monique asked. Of course I thought at first she was talking to me. Claire hadn’t offered to show me her room, and why would anyone be asking my permission? but my aunt responded, “You children just run along,” she said. ”We’ll finish the look-around later. Maybe I can find some refreshments.”

      Without time to process what I’d just heard, what I’d just experienced, I led the way to my room. Monique pulled the door closed behind us. I’d not visited with that many girls in my home before or that many kids at all, come to think of it, so had no strictures about bedrooms and doors open or closed, and she obviously desired that what passed between us wouldn’t go farther. Monique pointed at my closet door.

      “That’s where,” she said.

      “Where what?” I asked.

      “Where the ladder is,” she illumined. When I’d noticed the ladder that morning, I’d found it kind of creepy that I had a hole right from my room into the attic but had decided I was just being silly.

      “I know,” I said.

      “I’ve stayed here before,” Monique told me then. ”Lots of times. My mom and your aunt are—good friends.” She made an unh-hunh noise in her throat as if there should be more meaning to that than the words alone expressed, but I didn’t catch her meaning.

      “I’ve been told to leave things alone in other people’s houses,” she went on, “but this is your house too, isn’t it?”

      I considered a little. ”I suppose. It’s my room for the summer anyhow.” I’d not have reached this sort of decision on my own, but Monique made the whole thing sound so reasonable and so definitely right. ”Is there something wrong with the ladder?”

      Monique put her mouth up against my ear and the little hairs inside tickled as she whispered, “There’s something up there.”

      “What?” I asked, not so sure I wanted to know.

      “A box,” she told me.

      “A box?” Now she had me whispering too.

      “A carved wooden box,” she said, “with stuff written on it.”

      “Really? What does it say?”

      “I’ve never seen it,” Monique demurred. ”I’d have to show you.” Without further remark, she was into the closet and climbing up the ladder. ”Up here,” she called gasping a bit with the effort of pulling over the top. I began to follow, then remembered the flashlight Aunt Claire had given me the night before. I scrambled back down and reached for the tall metal cylinder standing on my almost empty dresser. ”Come on,” Monique urged.

      “I’m getting a light,” I said and was up there with her as quickly as I could with the flashlight clamped between my chin and chest. The attic was empty mostly, a few boxes, a few of what might be gardening tools, some rolled up rugs and old sofa cushions, and a polished, dark wood box with carved lettering on it, sitting on the attic floor, maybe five feet from the opening. I flicked on the flashlight and crawled closer. In the unaccountably clean surface of the box was written

       The key to things without is that locked safe within.

       The thread that runs, however far, must tie yet end to end.

       The open hand alone can grasp the things unknown.

       No question lies upon the tongue with no answer nearby to be shown.

      “Wow,” I said. ”You’ve never seen this before?”

      “No,” Monique said as if by reflex. Then she added, “I’ve heard about it though.”

      “Wonder what it means,” I said.

      “I think it’s a way to open the box,” she opined.

      I thought of my sketchpads and drawing pens still in the satchel. ”Wait a minute. I’ll go get a pencil and a piece of paper.”

      “Don’t bother,” she told me. ”I have it by heart.”

      “I thought you said you’d never seen this thing before.”

      “I’m a quick study,” Monique said mildly.

      “Wow,” I said again, rattling the lid, trying the fastenings. It seemed latched. There was a lock plate with keyhole and nothing I did could open it.

      “No good doing that,” she objected. ”It’s locked.”

      I remembered, just then, the noises I’d heard the night before, a door opening and closing (or a lid?), something sounding not big enough to be a door for a house or room, maybe more like a cabinet or a chest. Then I recalled that Monique had watched us drive in late last evening.

      “Monique?”

      “Hmmm?”

      “You weren’t over here last night were you?”

      She gave a delighted little laugh. ”Of course not, silly! What makes you ask a thing like that?” I told her about the sounds I’d heard. She was quiet for a time then. ”Maybe you’re the one,” she said.

      “Nin-ian! Mo-nique!” Aunt СКАЧАТЬ