The Pantry Door, Julie Steimle [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

helped me up, and everything was frozen all around me,” Katy said, watching Nissa’s eyes widen with each word. “Then Grandma yesterday said something to me. Tempus fugit. That means—”

“Time flies,” Nissa murmured, slowly nodding. “I forgot.”

Katy then nodded. “So you see—Mr. Fugit is Father Time. Which means he can travel through time, make it freeze. But I don’t know why he knows your father. I think…I think this land is magical.”

However Nissa slowly shook her head. “No. That isn’t it. I once asked Daddy if the land had magic, and he smiled at me and said ‘just natural magic, honey.’ No. I always knew it was him. Daddy brings in the magic.”

Blinking at her, Katy grew puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Shrugging, Nissa sighed. “The kids call him a devil. Adults call him a genius. But Daddy says nothing about it…except he told me one story. I thought it was a joke. But now after what you just said, I’m not so sure.”

“What story?” Katy scooted closer to Nissa, perhaps at last the answer to all her questions would come.

Lifting her head, Nissa looked at Katy apprehensively. “Daddy once told me this fairytale, saying it was how his parents met. He said, once upon a time there was a man who could never die, and so he lived and lived watching generations of people live, grow old, and pass on year after year as he traveled the world. After centuries of this, he became really lonely, but he did not want to marry a mortal, knowing that he would only watch her die. That is until one day he was walking along the shores of a sea somewhere in Europe. I think the Mediterranean Sea or someplace like that. And he saw a beautiful woman swimming in the water singing the most entrancing song. He didn’t realize that it was a mermaid (though Daddy called her a water nymph when he told the story) until he got closer to speak with her. She sang to him, beckoning him to join her in the water, and he obliged her because he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He didn’t know she was trying to drown him, but by the time he was deep under the water not drowning at all, she became surprised. She was so surprised to find he wasn’t mortal, so she listened and accepted his marriage proposal.

“Daddy said they lived together for many years, way beyond that of most human beings. They had two children, both the same age. One boy and one girl. But the mermaid was bored of living with this man, and she wanted to return to the sea. She took her daughter with her, and the man kept his son. Then Daddy said to me, ‘I am that son.’” Nissa sighed and shook her head. “He was so serious, but I thought he was pulling my leg. Remember I told you funny strange people come to visit? That woman from Europe that flirts with Daddy, I think she’s the girl in the story.”

Katy blinked. “His mother?”

Nissa shook her head. “No. His sister. But she doesn’t visit often, and she doesn’t ask me to call her ‘aunt’ either.”

It was difficult to believe, but at the same time, nothing else seemed to make sense. The man whom Nissa’s father called Pop could just very likely be his father. Father Time was Nissa’s grandfather. That explained a lot of things. If a man like that moved into her Grandfather Schmidt’s house, visited by so many magical people, undoubtedly his influence would affect the house, the land and draw in magic things—even through time. Maybe that’s what Nissa’s father meant when he was surprised Mr. Fugit had interest in other generations. Surprised, but pleased.

So then, what kind of man was Nissa’s father? Certainly he wasn’t a devil. He was something else entirely. Something special.

“What are you thinking, Katy?” Nissa’s eyes were fixed on her. She bit her lip, nervous as if afraid she would lose her only friend.

Katy looked up, blinked a second then smiled. “I was just thinking how amazing it is that I got to meet you.”

A tear rolled down Nissa’s cheek. She embraced Katy and squeezed her tight in a hug. “Thank you.”

The Goodbye

 

After morning gardening, Grandma Schmidt took Katy into Fillmore where they ordered a personal sized, cheese-covered combination pizza to go. They shared the pizza with very little conversation. As soon as her grandmother settled down for her nap, and Katy had locked all the house doors in case some Gibson tried to sneak in and cause trouble, she climbed up through the cupboard and waited for Nissa to arrive, playing her flute with barely a written tune at all.

Katy played her feelings mostly, thinking about the magic of the room and wondering if the magic would end once Nissa left for boarding school. She hoped the cupboard door would always remain open for her to visit, even if Nissa could not join her. In a way, she wanted the magic to linger even if it called up pixies and drew out gnomes to stare at her from under the bushes. Katy had seen three that morning. They sat in the shade under the grape vines and leaned against the wood frame like a pair of construction workers on their lunch break. She had blinked at them, rubbed her eyes, and still saw them there, so she just shrugged and continued working. And when she had walked back between the sheds to the house with her grandmother, she could have sworn she saw three pixies scampering about, jumping from leaf to leaf then lifted up on the wind. It was like her eyes had been opened, simply from her association with Nissa.

“Hey! Katy!”

With a grin, Katy stuck her head out the window. Nissa peered up, smiling. With her foot, Nissa tapped the ladder top, and it shot straight up from the grass. She climbed up as soon as it clacked against the window edge, carrying a paper bag in one hand and setting it right on the sill the second she arrived, almost breathless.

“Hi!” Nissa climbed up farther and sat on the sill, drawing up the bag. “Look what I brought!”

She opened the bag. Leaning over, Katy peered in. Inside was caramel corn, lots of it.

Grinning, Katy sat on her haunches. “Great! Then we can have a party!”

Together they looked through the rest of the magic book, and Katy told Nissa about the things she saw that day while Nissa bit her lip in concern, stringing beads into a necklace for herself.

Nissa murmured, “I don’t know, Katy. Daddy says we shouldn’t look for those things. He says they’re trouble.”

Sighing, Katy just shrugged. “I can’t help what I’m seeing. But, trust me, I pretend I don’t see them. If I play it cool and act as if I don’t know they’re there, then I bet they’ll leave me alone.”

But Nissa frowned, taking another piece of caramel corn and popping it into her mouth. She chewed, glanced at the ceiling and then at the cupboard door. “Maybe. But Daddy says once some doors are opened, they’re hard to close. He says you have to have the right key to lock them up.”

“Key?” Katy blinked, wondering about that. It made her think of her grandmother’s skeleton key. Her grandmother had stopped locking the fridge, but Katy knew she still kept it for the glass case containing her grandfather’s favorite wood instrument. But then that instrument once came to her through the magic of the room. She wondered. “How am I supposed to lock up what I’m seeing in the garden?”

Nissa shrugged, eating another piece of caramel corn. “I dunno. Maybe you’d better talk to my dad and tell him about it. He knows how to handle everything.”

Katy nodded. If she saw him again, she would ask him about it.

That evening after Katy climbed out of the attic room, she helped make dinner. And then she and her grandmother watched the Road to Rio. Laughing at Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the outside, Katy’s mind was back on the room and the conversation with Nissa. They only had two days left together. She had to make them count.

“Kathleen.” Her grandmother turned off the television when the film was over, pressing the button on the DVD player to take out the disk. “Tomorrow, how about we go to the library? We can pick up some books for you to read? You must be bored just sitting at home, trying to keep away from the Gibsons.”

Yawning, Katy nodded. “Morning or afternoon?”

“In the afternoon,” Grandma Schmidt said, picking up the remote and setting it back on the television.

Katy made a face. “Can’t we do it in the morning?”

She got a chiding look in response. “Kathleen Nielsen, what is wrong with going in the afternoon? We garden in the morning.”

Making an effort to rise from the couch, Katy wasn’t sure how to argue with that since gardening was a set part of the daily routine around Grandma Schmidt’s house and skipping it felt sacrilegious. Cringing as she said it, Katy replied, “I just—I just want to have the afternoon free.”

“To do what?” Grandma Schmidt tilted her head and folded her arms. “Six hours of music practice? Kathleen, I know you don’t practice for six hours straight. I listen to your playing, you know. Though I still haven’t figured out where you’ve been hiding to do it.”

Trying to keep her face from changing to pink, Katy managed a small shoulder lift, caught in half a shrug. “Oh, I’m just around.”

“Climbing trees, I shouldn’t wonder,” her grandmother said. But then she turned as if to go to bed. “Just don’t let anyone see you in a tree playing your flute. People might take you for an imp and try to shake you down.”

Katy wondered if that were true. With all the gossip about her being a witch and the influence of Nissa’s father on her and the house, it seemed likely that anything was possible.

Both of them parted for bed.

Or rather, Grandma Schmidt thought Katy had left for bed. However, as soon as the lights were out, Katy crept back upstairs, feeling the shadows and sticking close to the wall, hoping the floor below her would not creak under her weight. Unfortunately, sounds around her in the night had an amplified effect, making her ears perk at the slightest squeak and groan. The wood creaked under the linoleum tile as she inched her way to the cupboard door. Katy closed her eyes and caught her breath in her chest a number of times, sure her grandmother would jump out and catch her in the act of sneaking into the cupboard.

But no grandmother and no unexpected visitor stopped her. When she opened the cupboard door, it squeaked and the cool breeze from the upper floor stroked her face. Katy held her breath and climbed in. The journey up seemed longer, almost like the magic was drowsy, stirred only by her presence. But she reached the door at the top of the cupboard and climbed into the room. The window was open a crack, but that did not matter. Katy scrambled over to the