Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast Read Online Free PDF Page A

baby-sitter, having already done a bit of sitting for other kids herself.
    â€œI’d rather stay home,” she said. “I brought a book.” She had The Hobbit, which she was about to read for the fourth time.
    Aunt Marilyn sighed and picked up her pocketbook and binoculars. “I won’t be long.”
    She will, though, Harlyn thought, especially if an interesting bird suddenly crosses her path.
    As soon as the car left the driveway, Harlyn bolted out the back door and into the garden. This time the fairy was harvesting handfuls of mint from the herb patch. The little silvery pack was almost full.
    Turning her face carefully to one side so as not to breathe on the fairy, Harlyn watched it out of the corner of her eye. Clearly it knew she was there, for she was much too big to be ignored. It ignored her nonetheless.
    â€œCan I help?” she whispered.
    The answer was as indistinguishable as before, high pitched and foreign and fast, but Harlyn took it as a yes. She knelt down and began to pull bits of mint leaves off, tearing them into tiny pieces that she handed to the fairy. The fairy took them, not at all gratefully, and tore them into even smaller bits, then stuffed them into the pack until it was overflowing. Then, without so much as a wave, it flew off.
    â€œWell—and thanks to you, too!” Harlyn called after it.
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    She said nothing about seeing the fairy again when Aunt Marilyn came home. And what with one thing and another—making Toll House cookies and peanut-butter pie and helping Aunt Marilyn put stamps in her albums—the day flew past. At bedtime Harlyn borrowed a bunch of bird books, knowing that—though they had wings—fairies were certainly not birds. Probably not even a related genus or species. But the books were worth checking out anyway.
    Besides, it pleased Aunt Marilyn, who didn’t like Harlyn reading books like The Hobbit. She thought fantasy stories were trashy, even dangerous, and said so often. “Empty make-believe” was one of her favorite phrases.
    Harlyn checked through the section on hummingbirds with special care. They were certainly the right size, and their wings beat as quickly as fairies’ might. So it was just possible that...
    â€œNuts!” Harlyn said aloud. “It was a fairy. It spoke to me and it was carrying a bag.” Besides, her mother’s delusions were about people trying to kill her and UFO aliens kidnapping her. Crazy stuff. Harlyn put the book down. She knew what she’d seen.
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    Harlyn dreamed all night of hummingbirds who called her name, and of eagles the size of roses quarreling with the hummers. When she awoke, the sky was gray and rain was slanting down so hard that the rose arbor looked as if it were behind a very dirty curtain.
    â€œHouse cleaning,” Aunt Marilyn said in a cheery voice. “That’s all you can do on a day like this.”
    Harlyn thought wistfully of her book. She was at the riddles pan, which she loved. But it wouldn’t do to make a fuss. That would mean a well-intentioned lecture from Aunt Marilyn with unsubtle references to living in fantasy worlds. So Harlyn helped dean.
    It was while she was working on the windows over the kitchen sink, the ones usually kept open for the robin who had adopted Aunt Marilyn, that she found a pink rubber band and three red berries, dried and shrivded, set side-by-side. Harlyn didn’t want to climb off the counter just to throw them away, so she shoved them into her pocket, meaning to dump them when she was finished with the windows.
    â€œAnd what,” she said to herself as she scrubbed at one particular spot on the windowpane, “have I got in my pocketses, my precious?” She hissed with gusto, like Gollum, or like an overworked kettle. But by the time she’d finished the windows, she’d forgotten to throw out the berries.
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    In the afternoon the rain ended and a glorious rainbow settled