Long Lost, стр. 12
Naturally, Hazel and Pearl knew none of this.
They had spent the day apart, Pearl shut in her bedroom, Hazel rambling the woods, not exchanging a single word. They even took their dinners separately, Pearl with Mrs. Rawlins and Mrs. Fisher, the cook, in the kitchen, Hazel claiming a headache and withdrawing early to her room. By the time Pearl went up to bed, her sister’s room was dark.
As quietly as she could, Pearl pulled the dresser away from the secret channel. But when she peered through the hole, ready to whisper Hazel’s name, something about the silence on the other side pushed her back again. If Hazel still wouldn’t apologize, Pearl wouldn’t do the peacemaking for her. Fuming, she climbed into her own bed instead.
A few hours later, when the man and woman of the house returned from the gala in their chauffeured automobile, they found the girls in bed, thunder receding into the distance, and faithful Mrs. Rawlins waiting up for them with a pot of hot tea.
The grand house settled into silence.
But outside, on the second floor of the carriage house, young Charlie Hobbes lay awake.
The clamor of the storm had woken him, and something in the air, something heavy and watchful, refused to let him sleep again. He rolled onto his side to gaze out the window. And there, at the very edge of the lawn, he spied something moving through the trees.
It was tall; taller than any wild animal that made its home in those parts. Its body was dark and indistinct, and whatever face it had was concealed; by clothing or shadows, Charlie couldn’t tell. It walked like a human, on two legs, and yet there was something inhuman about the scale of its body, the hunch of its head into its shoulders, and the way it moved, twitching, groping, then going perfectly still.
Charlie’s lungs seemed to freeze.
He watched, breathless, as the dark shape trailed along the yard’s edge. It halted once more, staring up at the grand house.
Charlie blinked hard. The dark shape appeared to waver. Where before it had seemed solid, now it looked more like the emptiness between wind-shifted trees. Had his eyes been deceived by a shadow? As Charlie squinted at it, the shape seemed to dissolve into the woods, swallowed up by the darkness like a wet leaf sinking into a stream.
Many minutes passed before Charlie moved again. At last, overcome by exhaustion, he sagged back onto the pillow. Come morning, the memory of the dark shape seemed no more important than a dream, though it was one that remained, clear and strange, in his mind.
That is, until a nightmare took its place.
Fiona turned to the next chapter with an eager little shiver.
It was late the next afternoon when Mrs. Rawlins looked up from polishing the silver to glance out the kitchen windows. A serving spoon slipped from her hands and clattered to the floor.
As she would describe it to everyone later, Mrs. Rawlins’s first thought was that she had seen a ghost.
The pale, fragile form drifting out from between the trees with trancelike steps and haunted, hollow eyes barely looked alive at all. But as it tottered nearer, Mrs. Rawlins recognized the linen underdress that she herself had hemmed. And finally, beneath its blue pallor and stunned stare, she recognized Pearl’s familiar face.
Mrs. Rawlins let out a scream.
The man and woman of the house were out paying calls, but in an instant, Mrs. Rawlins, Mrs. Fisher, and the housemaid had all rushed out onto the back lawn. Mrs. Fisher wrapped Pearl’s bare limbs in a quilt. Mrs. Rawlins shouted for Mr. Hobbes and Charlie to leave the gardens and come quick.
Pearl was bundled inside.
The others clustered around as Mrs. Rawlins steered her to an armchair.
The girl was too cold even to shiver. Her hair hung wet and lank down her back. Mud clung to her shins. Scratches and scrapes covered her bare arms. Her eyes, when they chanced to meet anyone else’s, would stare without focusing, as thoughtless as mirrors.
“Pearl!” Mrs. Rawlins shouted again and again. She shook the girl’s chilled arm. “What happened? Did you fall into the river? Pearl?”
But Pearl did not, or could not, answer. Her unseeing eyes drifted past the housekeeper’s face.
“Mrs. Fisher, run and fetch the doctor,” commanded Mrs. Rawlins. “Pearl, can you hear me? Pearl, what happened to you?”
At last Pearl’s lips moved. “She . . .”
Mrs. Rawlins snatched up the word. “She what, child?”
“Gone,” whispered Pearl, her gaze still floating above Mrs. Rawlins’s head.
Mrs. Rawlins rocked back on her heels, the chill of terror sweeping through her. “Who is gone, child?”
Pearl’s lips moved once more, but no word came out, only a sucked-in gasp. Her eyes glimmered with a spark of consciousness.
For the space of several heartbeats, no one moved.
“Hazel,” Pearl breathed at last.
“Dear god,” Mrs. Rawlins whispered. “Where, child? Where is Hazel now?”
“It took her.” The glimmer in Pearl’s eyes seemed to crystalize. “The Searcher.”
Mrs. Rawlins blinked. “Pearl, where did you last see Hazel?”
“The Enchanted Kingdom,” said Pearl dully. “Then . . . it came. It took her. And I ran. Into the water.”
Mrs. Rawlins whirled toward Charlie and Mr. Hobbes, who stood beside her, working their caps in their hands. “Maybe there’s a tramp or a wild animal out there,” she told them. “You know where she means. That bit of old forest past Parson’s Bridge. Go. Hurry.”
Mr. Hobbes nodded. He grabbed Charlie by the shoulder and rushed him out the back door.
“Go from house to house,”