Dandelion Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

faeren letters. She read the “A Lert” quickly, and then slowly, and then she stared at the signature and the note.
    She sighed and flipped the paper away from her. Henry had been trying to go through the cupboards by himself. What else could they mean by “tampering and transportation”? Of course he'd been trying. He got mad at her when she did anything on her own, but he would never include her in anything if he didn't have to. The only reason she even knew about the cupboards at all was because she'd caught him chipping the plaster off his wall in the middle of the night.
    But she had the key. Henry may have tried to get through the small doors, but it wasn't possible. He needed her. And now he was either blind or going nuts or both or faking everything but his swollen eyelids. She could have helped him. They could have gone through dozens of cupboards by now.
    She wondered where he kept Grandfather's journal. Probably tucked under his socks, where he kept everything.
    Henrietta slid down the bed toward his nightstand-dresser and reached for the top drawer. Before her hand touched the handle, three sharp cracks burst from the cupboard wall behind her. She jumped and turned, scanning over the cupboards' formation. None of the doors were open.
    Three more cracks rattled in the wall, and on the second, her eyes caught something behind the glass in the little post-office box. She moved back to the foot of the bed, crouched, and stared at the cloudy panel. The end of a stick, a cane, slid up against it from behind and rapped sharply. Then it withdrew. After a moment of silence, a folded piece of paper replaced it.
    “Henrietta?” Anastasia's voice came up the stairs. “Do you want to come down? What are you doing?”
    Henrietta twisted and spoke over her shoulder. “No thanks,” she said. “I'm just thinking.”
    “What about?” Anastasia asked.
    Henrietta stood up and moved to Henry's dresser. His sock drawer was empty. Socks only. “Just Henry!” she yelled. One drawer down, beneath Henry's T-shirts, she found what she was looking for: the two volumes of Grandfather's journal rubber-banded together and a small key.
    “Zeke called for Henry,” Anastasia said. “Penny's talking to him.”
    “Good,” Henrietta said. She moved quickly back to the post-office box and inserted the key. With nervous hands, she pulled out the heavy paper and reshut the door quietly.
    “Have you seen the raggant?” Anastasia asked. “I don't know where he is.”
    “Dad says he leaves sometimes. He always comes back.” Henrietta looked down at the folded paper in her hands. “I just want to think right now, Anastasia. Why don't you look for him? Check the barn. He likes the loft.”
    Henrietta waited. Anastasia would come all the way up, or she would go away. She couldn't just keep yelling up the stairs.
    “I don't know,” Anastasia said. “Maybe I will. I hate it when Penny talks to Zeke. It's so boring to listen to, and I don't want to just sit around thinking about Henry being blind. It makes me feel sick.”
    Henrietta bit her lip and didn't say anything.
    “Fine,” Anastasia said. “I'll go bug Penny.”
    Henrietta turned the paper over in her hands. It was rough, almost fuzzy around the edges, and its surface was textured like a window screen. It had been folded and was sealed with a sprawling tree in black wax. She slid her finger beneath it.
    The page was asymmetrical, and a stamp of the same tree was set near the top. The note was sloppily handwritten and spots of ink were flecked throughout.

    Henrietta didn't know what
ablution
was or
ansbettment
or
the morph,
but she didn't need to. Henry had been talking to someone, and she knew who it was. She'd seen one of his letters before, and it had sounded just as halfway nuts as this one, wicked even.
Fork tungs
were probably lightning, and that meant that Henry had been talking to him last night, last night after he'd sent Henrietta away. And whoever this weirdo