The girl beams at her.
“What’s your name?”
“Elsie.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Elsie. I’m Beatrix. Shall we walk you home, and I’ll show you all the best places along the way for faerie spotting?”
Elsie nods eagerly.
Beatrix spins a tale as they walk. She points out a hollow in a gnarled tree in the minster cemetery and explains that faeries prefer the new moon to the full one, so their twinkling dresses can shine like stars in the dark. She tells Elsie to check under the tiniest shells on the beach and to peek into the mossiest cracks of the old wall at dusk. Elsie soaks it all in, transfixed by Beatrix’s words. Beatrix feels like dirt. Time has changed faeries, too, and now every word she speaks of them is a lie. The truth would give Elsie nightmares.
They reach the front door of a redbrick row house, and Beatrix kneels in front of her. There is one truth she has to share. “The most important thing to remember about faeries is this,” she says. “Never callout to them. Never speak to them. And no matter what, never, ever trust them. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Elsie says gravely.
Beatrix smiles at her. “I knew you would.”
She straightens and knocks on the faded red door. A scrawny woman with blond hair falling loose from her bun answers. She takes one look at Elsie standing on her front step and bursts into tears.
It takes an entire pot of tea to calm the woman enough for Beatrix to discover that Mary Taylor wasn’t crying tears of relief because her lost daughter had been found. They were tears of shame and horror, because she hadn’t even realized her youngest child was gone. The poor widow is overwhelmed: her eldest son sent to the front in September, her husband lost to it in October. And now she is alone at home, taking in extra washing and mending work to make ends meet, with six children to care for, at least one of whom is too headstrong for her own good.
Beatrix takes their teacups to the sink. It’s overflowing with dishes. Mary frowns as Beatrix sets to washing them.
“Enough of that,” she says. She hands Beatrix a dish towel. “You’re going to miss the train if you don’t hurry.”
Beatrix dries her hands. There’s a basket of clothes in the corner of the cramped kitchen, and linens on the line out back waiting to be brought in. Small muddy footprints are dried onto the floor, and dinner sits half prepared near the stove. Children shout from the next room. Mary looks on the verge of tears.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Beatrix asks. “I used to be a governess. In London.”
Mary waves her off. “I’m sure I can’t afford that.”
“What about room and board? I could use a place to stay.” Because somewhere between the station and the sink, she has decided to do just that.
January 19, 1915Great Yarmouth, England
“Now can we go?” Elsie whines, her arms crossed on the kitchen table, her chin propped on top of them.
Her mother sighs, a half-peeled potato in her hand. “There’s still too much to do, and the train won’t arrive for another hour.”
“But I’ve done all my chores.”
“So have I,” George agrees from the seat next to hers, swinging his legs beneath his chair.
“We all have,” Ada adds from the corner.
Her soft voice is drowned out by the sudden whistling of the kettle. Clara quickly pulls it off the stove for her mother and swats Arthur’s hand away from a pie cooling on the rack next to it. He scowls at her, and John laughs at them both from the doorway. Beatrix can see from a glance he’s grown again, already taller than the mark his mother drew on the doorframe last month.
Mary glances at Beatrix, and Beatrix nods. The chores have been done in record time, and properly at that. Now all six children have stuffed themselves into the kitchen.
“Well,Istill have too much to do,” their mother says. She has declined their help in preparing supper. Today, she wants it to be perfect.
“Shall I take the children for a walk to the station?” Beatrix asks.
“Please,” Mary agrees.
Beatrix pulls off her long white apron and hangs it from the hook behind the kitchen door. “Come along, children. Coats, hats, mittens, and off we go.”
The children file past, jostling one another as they all try to fit through the door at once. Mary pulls Beatrix aside.
