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“Well, Miss Moore, I don’t think your father would have wanted Dougal to fight anyone, just as I don’t intend to really. But I can use Dougal to show you that you don’t need to be big to be strong.”
“Okay, yes. Yes, please.” The little girl’s face dropped again as if, conversation over, she was remembering that she was sad.
“I don’t know any girl chauffeurs,” Maddie said after a minute. “All our lady domestics are cleaners and cooks. And one gardener, but mother always says she’s built like a man.”
“I see, does she?” Finn tried to keep the disapproval out of her voice. What a rarefied environment this child was growing up in. “That’s odd.”
“Is it? Why?”
Finn wrinkled her nose and pretended to think about it. “I know lots of girl drivers,” she said finally. “And girl police, and girl fire-fighters, and girl lawyers and doctors. I spent a summer driving one of the smartest people in England around a couple of years ago. She’s a judge and she was presiding over a very difficult and high-profile case. I drove her everywhere, and she would have made you lose your breath for how smart and strong she was.”
“My mother says smart is irrelevant,” Maddie said with a shrug.
Finn swallowed. “Perhaps you misunderstood.”
“No. She tells me I’m wasting my time reading so much when I could be playing with my friends. My mother doesn’t like me very much, Seraphina.” She was silent a moment. “What a strange name that is.”
Finn smiled, but her heart was breaking for this odd little child. “You can call me Finn, if you’d like. That’s what my friends call me.”
But Maddie shook her head. “I like Seraphina. It’s strange, but it’s pretty. What does it mean?”
Finn’s smile was transient. “It comes from the word seraphim; do you know what that means?”
Maddie shook her head.
“Well, we’re in the perfect spot to find out. Will you help me find a book?”
“Oh, I know all these books,” Maddie said enthusiastically. “Which in particular would you like?”
“Something on faery lore and angels,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Goblins and trolls, witches, that kind of thing.”
Maddie was warming to the theme. She’d never had someone spend so much time talking to her for the sake of it. She had been a neglected child, borne to a father who was in poor health and a mother who’d only had a child as a safety net in the event of divorce.
“I know just the one. At least, I think I do. But you shall have to help me get it. It’s up very high.”
“It is?” Finn queried. “Then how do you know about it?”
Maddie’s cheeks flushed pink. “I come in when they’re dusting. I’m not supposed to. But it’s the only time they pull the books down and I can see all of them.”
“I see,” Finn smiled. “Good thinking.”
Maddie was surprised. “I like you. You’re not like other grown ups.”
“No,” Finn agreed after a moment. “I suppose I’m not.”
“I thought you’d reproach me for being where I’m not supposed to be.”
“Heck no,” Finn demurred. She stopped walking as Maddie did. “I’ve spent my life being where I wasn’t meant to be. If you ask me, that’s a child’s prerogative.”
Maddie repeated the word as if hearing it for the first time in her life and liking very much how it sounded in her mouth. “It’s that one,” she said finally, pointing at a very old looking book with ruby leather and gold writing on the spine. “Can you reach it?”
“I think so,” Finn frowned. Though she was petite, she didn’t want to undo all the good feminist instruction she’d just been giving. She stood on tip-toes and wiggled her fingers beneath the bump of the spine, hooking it loose and catching it in the palm of her hand.
“Good job,” Maddie smiled encouragingly, and her exhalation of breath echoed Finn’s as she brought the book lower still. She crouched so she was nearer in height to Maddie and opened the front cover. The frontispiece was an exceptional illustration of several river fairies with leaves for hats and nuts for shoes. She ran a finger over it admiringly before flipping to the back of the book.
She scanned the index until her eyes alighted on the word seraphim.
“There,” she said exultantly, turning to the page it suggested.
