The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [55]
Barbie said “Oh!” behind me. “Wow. It’s adorable, Seb!” She shaded her eyes and looked around, taking in the mossy clearing, the trees where squirrels chased each other, and the boulder with the dip in the middle where birds took baths. Then she lifted her eyes to scan the looming wall where bulldozers had stopped cutting away the surrounding mountain in a sheer drop. And she looked scared.
At that moment, I saw it like new myself. The cliff face had changed in the two years I’d been coming here. The trees at the top edge had gradually lost their grip on the eroding soil. Some of them had toppled over completely and were hanging upside down by their roots. A few were even clinging to life, by the looks of the green haze of buds at the ends of their limbs.
Dark jagged stripes marked the rock where water had run down and washed dirt away. Water still trickled now from yesterday’s rain. The moat around my hideout had overflowed its banks with frothy colors. And now dark clouds were gathering overhead again.
“We should hurry up and do what we came for,” Barbie said. “I want to get home before the storm hits.”
16
We went into the cave and set down the chickens. “Nice place you have here,” Barbie said, looking around approvingly.
Once you were inside, the cave got tall enough to stand up in for about the size of Jed’s castle, and then it tapered down very quickly to the floor. My shelves framed the shallow edges so it felt like an attic room. I kept the stone floor swept clean and covered with a raggedy old quilt for a rug.
“So that’s where that quilt went!” Barbie said. “You rotten thing. Grum accused Pa of throwing it in the garbage.”
“Where do you think I found it?”
I felt in my pocket for the magic glasses. If the cave didn’t swim with colors like the cavern, our plan probably wouldn’t work. And I’d rather have the hens alive again, laying eggs, than spending eternity as garden statues.
“Yee-ha! Barney’s gonna be a happy cock-a-doodle-dude tonight.” I handed Barbie the glasses so she could see. The Hole in the Wall swam with colors, all right. If anything, the patterns shone brighter than in the big tunnel cavern. Or maybe they just seemed that way in the small space.
My back felt itchy all of a sudden. I tried to reach around and scratch myself, but I was too stiff. I stood against the wall and rubbed against the rough rock, but that made my back itch even more.
“Hey, Barbie, could you scratch my back for me? I can’t reach it.”
She started scratching over my shirt, but that didn’t do much for me. “It feels like bugs crawling all over me. Maybe they were in the wicker pack. Can you see anything?” I yanked up my shirt.
Barbie screamed.
I screamed back.
Then I said, “Why are we screaming?”
“Sebby,” she said. “You—your back. Have you looked at it in the mirror since yesterday?”
I wasn’t in the habit of looking at my front in the mirror, much less my back. “No,” I said. “What’s wrong?” I stepped closer to the daylight and craned my neck around, trying to see what she saw, which of course only gave me a sore neck. The panicky look on Barbie’s face got my heart beating faster.
“You know those colors from the paint that stuck to you in Odum’s studio? Well, some of them must have sunk through your clothes! The colors are on you. They look really pale under your skin. It’s like you have a tattoo!”
“But I thought you said you saw colors fly off me yesterday in the cavern!”
“I did!”
“Well, look through the glasses and tell me what you see.” I handed them to her and showed her my back again.
She gasped. “Wow! The colors look really bright, and they’re swirling beneath your skin. That must be what’s causing the itch.”
Her warm fingers made little wimpy pokes at my skin, like when she’s afraid to touch something. “Your magic tattoo feels cold and hard like the bathroom floor! Does it hurt?”
“Come to think of it, yeah! My back’s been killing me all day. And half the night. It’s stiff. I can’t move very well. I thought it was from you standing