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I force myself to stand on shaky legs. “Yes, Sister. I’ll get the water.” I make my way to the kitchen, winded after just a few steps, where I take down a copper pot and set it in the sink. As I wait for it to fill, I look at my reflection in the pot’s side: Sunken eyes. Pale skin. There are two winged horses standing behind me, their wings outstretched, almost as though to shelter me from rain, though there is no rain indoors.
I carry the pot back to the library and stand close to the farmer. He and Thomas act like they’re building a war machine, with all the engineering that goes into getting that tree to stand up straight in the bucket. I lean in, pretending to watch, and very quietly reach down and draw the handkerchief out of the scrap paper bin. I cough as I stuff it into my boot.
He won’t miss it, surely. To him, it is just an old, worn-out scrap he threw away. To me—to Foxfire—it is hope.
They finish, though the tree still slopes a little at the top. Mr. Mason tells us we must water it every day. He tells us we must be very careful, when we tie candles to the branches, that it not catch fire.
“And best set out cookies for Saint Nick,” he says with a wink.
Sister Constance’s mouth goes grim.
We watch through the windows as he lights his cart’s lantern, and leads the poor frozen donkey back home.
“Let’s make decorations!” Kitty squeaks. “We can make a paste out of lye. It’ll look just like snow on the tree.”
The children jump up. They start tearing through the scraps of fabric and ribbon that Sister Mary Grace brings out in her sewing kit. Others drag down dusty boxes from the attic, where Arthur finds shiny red metal Christmas balls that he gazes at with delight. Two of the three little mice run outside to gather pinecones, and Sister Constance doesn’t even say anything about the no-going-beyond-the-kitchen-terrace rule.
I glance out the open door, wondering when I can slip away to the garden to string up the handkerchief. Thomas, at some point, must have slipped away himself. I wonder if he is back in the barn, with Bog and the sheep. I wonder if he likes to be alone but not lonely too.
Susan holds up a string of white paper chains. “It’s so plain.” She suddenly spins on me. “Fetch the colored pencils Anna gave you! We can color the links green and red!”
The other children look up at me, their sticky fingers covered in paste.
Dread darkens me like a shadow. The pencils? Anna’s pencils? But she gave them to me.
I shake my head.
Benny huffs and looks at Sister Constance. “Tell her she must share!”
“Anna gave them to her,” Sister Constance says. “She can do what she wishes with them. If she chooses the path of generosity, as Anna so often did, then she will bring out the colored pencils. If she chooses to be selfish, well, then that is her choice.”
“But she’s being a baby!” Benny folds his arms, glaring. There is a wooden cross of Christ strung up behind him. If Jesus’s hands weren’t nailed to the cross, I think he’d be folding them at me too.
I fold my arms and glare right back.
If they want color—real color—then they are looking in the wrong places.
Benny glowers at me, then scoops up a handful of the snow paste on impulse.
“We all miss her!”
He throws the paste at my face.
It fills my mouth with the sudsy taste of lye. I sputter and cough, and Sister Constance grabs Benny by the ear.
“That wasn’t called for,” she admonishes.
“She’s a selfish little monster,” Benny spits out, while his ear is rapidly turning red. “She can’t just…She isn’t the only one…”
He disappears as Sister Constance drags him away, muttering something about staying in his room until the isolation makes his brain work properly.
I glance in the window’s reflection. The paste has turned my skin into a clumpy mess.
The other children are fighting the urge to snicker.
A monster.
The others won’t say it aloud, not with Sister Mary Grace’s watchful gaze right there, but I know they are thinking it.
