I Soar

"I SOAR"

Chapter 1

"What is that place?" said Amy´s mother.

"What place?" said Mrs. Rooks, shading her eyes with her hand and looking where Amy´s mother was looking.

"That big, dark . . . place. Over there. On the horizon."

By now we were all looking, peering off into the distance. We looked like explorers, I thought. Like sailors looking for land. Amy, her mother; Mrs. Rooks, and I; and about eleven other girls and women who made up our group. Brownies and Girl Scouts and Girl Guides; mothers and daughters; sisters and friends; in our annual twinned-cities get-together. Way out in the middle of nowhere, camping on a British hillside, trying to stay out of the rain. No television, no refrigerator; no movies or library just down the street. No street. Just tents and grass and heather. And rain. Rain for two whole days, in steady downpours or clinging mists like living fog. For two days.

We´d managed OK. Girl Scouts manage to. We may wear green uniforms, but we´re not greenhorns. And Brownies and Girl Guides are just as cool. Plus it rains more in Britain than it does in Arizona, so, as Bryony said, the British girls were used to it.

I wasn´t, but I was OK with it. Better than camping out in the desert. No tarantulas, and so far nothing anywhere near as big as a gila monster.

It was Amy´s mom that was worried about us all getting pneumonia. Amy´s mom was a great worrier. She was also a great organizer and storyteller. She knew all about wildflowers, and she was one of only two grown women I knew at the time who weren´t afraid of lizards (as long as the lizards weren´t gila monsters). That´s why she was along on this trip. She wasn´t our leader. She´d just volunteered to help, like Mrs. Rooks and Mrs. Lennox. And I think she was beginning to get a little desperate about the weather.

So when the mist had finally cleared, and we could actually see past our immediate surroundings, I guess she wanted to see something bright and shining on the horizon. And not a big, dark, looming . . .

"What is that place?" she asked.

"A ruin," Mrs. Rooks said, and turned away from it. "Come along, girls. Teatime."

That was Mrs. Rooks. Hearty, bracing as the cold she seemed to love, and no-nonsense about lizards and spiders and making fires in a downpour. She wasn´t the British girls´ leader, either. But they all seemed ready to follow her anywhere.

I would´ve. I liked her. She knew things. Not just how to light a fire, or tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones, or about first aid and things like that. She knew all that stuff, but she also knew how it felt to be really good at some things and really bad at others and not want people to know you were either. She didn´t talk about it. You just sort of knew she knew.

At least I did. I didn´t know how I knew; but that, too, was something none of us talked about. I didn´t know why, not then.

So anyway, we all started getting tea--some of us helping Mrs. Rooks with the fire, some of us setting out the mugs and spoons, the tea canister and the milk, the cookies (biscuits), and the sugar and napkins. It was always real tea with Mrs. Rooks. Not teabags, but real tea leaves in a canister. That wasn´t what she called the container she kept her tea in. She called it a tea caddy, but to me a caddy was a boy who carried your dad´s clubs on the golf course. This tea container looked like my mother´s flour and sugar and other canisters back home--so that´s what I called it. A tea canister. Mrs. Rooks had put me in charge of measuring out the tea from it. She didn´t let me help her with the fire, but she didn´t make me feel like it was because I was a klutz, let alone a fire hazard. She didn´t let her own daughter help with the fire either, and Joan was a lot less klutzy than I was. Bryony and Alice always helped Mrs. Rooks with the fire, while Joan and Amy did the mugs, and I got to measure out the tea.

I liked doing the tea.

I figured Mrs. Rooks had more than one canister, and that she put them out in her tent according to the time of day, or her mood, or maybe our mood--the general mood of the group. All the canisters looked exactly alike, even down to the chips and dents. I´d heard of matched sets--but this set was weird. Sometimes I pretended it wasn´t a set, but just one canister, and that it was the tea in it that changed according to the time of day or our moods. Amy´s mother talked to her houseplants and garden flowers, and wildflowers, at home. She said it helped them grow. So I pretended tea leaves could change according to people´s moods. I pretended because I thought it might be true, even though I figured it would sound weird to the other girls. Yet so many things seemed possible here, in the mist and the mountains. There was so much here besides us; hidden, like so much of desert life, but you could feel it.

At least I could.

While I was measuring out the tea, and Alice and Bryony were helping with the fire, and Amy and Linda Jo and Catriona and Joan were getting the mugs and spoons and cookies and sugar, Amy´s mother borrowed Mrs. Lennox´s binoculars and started looking through them.

They were really good ones. Mrs. Lennox used them for birdwatching back home, and I´d seen hawks through them, and roadrunners, as well as gila monsters and planets and stars and nebulae.

I figured Amy´s mom was using them now to see if she could spot our two leaders coming back from their recce. Mrs. Posey and Mrs. Powell-Jones had gone off after lunch in Mrs. P-J´s Land Rover to scout out a laundromat.

I think Mrs. Rooks would have been happy having us do our laundry in a stream, the way my ancestors did in Arizona--but at the time I didn´t think even Mrs. Rooks would expect clothes to get dry here. Even with the rain having let up, and the fog lifted, the air was still heavy with moisture.

But when the tea was ready and we all gathered round the fire, minus Mrs. Posey and Mrs. P-J, Amy´s mother said to Mrs. Rooks, "What is that place, Rowena?"

"What place?"

"That old ruin. What is it? A castle? A fort?"

"How should I know?" Mrs. Rooks asked, with a little laugh.

"Well, somebody ought to know," said Amy´s mother. "If it wasn´t something important, something historic, they ought to tear it down. It´s an eyesore."

"They´ll never tear it down." Mrs. Rooks gave another little laugh, as if she thought the idea of that was as funny as the idea of her knowing what the place was.

The only problem with that was, it made most of us want to look at the place through the binoculars. And Mrs. Lennox wasn´t real keen on that idea. She had let us use them back home, to look at roadrunners and gila monsters, and at stars and planets and nebulae, if that was on our program; if those were what we were studying for a badge or something. We weren´t here to study ruins, though--and maybe a lot of moisture isn´t good for binoculars. At any rate, Mrs. Lennox didn´t seem to want us all looking through them, passing them around, adjusting and readjusting the focus.

Catriona was one of the girls who got to look through them, and Mrs. Lennox looked, and her daughters, Bonnie and Dawn; and Joan got to, and I got to. And then before any of the others got to have a turn, Mrs. Posey and Mrs. P-J came back in the Land Rover, and said they´d found a laundromat in a village about five miles away and we had to load up everything and get going because the laundromat closed at seven o´clock.

And Mrs. Lennox was asking me for the binoculars back, and practically breathing down my neck and reaching for the strap although I´d barely had time to get them focused.

I handed them back to her reluctantly, and as I did so I saw Mrs. Rooks and Joan exchange a glance, and I thought Mrs. Rooks mouthed the words "Don´t worry" to her daughter. I wondered if the glance and the words had anything to do with what Joan had seen through the binoculars.

"Just think, girls," Mrs. Rooks said aloud as we all gulped down the last of our tea, "when we come back here tonight for the owl count, we´ll have nice dry sleeping bags to look forward too. And clean clothes for tomorrow."

"We´ll have clean clothes, all right," said Mrs. Posey, emptying the teakettle onto the fire, "but we´ll have more than sleeping bags to look forward to tonight. P-J and I have booked us all into the pub in the village."

"A pub?"

It was the first time I´d ever seen Mrs. Rooks look flabbergasted.

"Steady on, Rowena," Mrs. P-J said, smiling. "We´re not booking them in for a pint and darts. The pub´s got guest rooms. Seven of ´em. We´ll double up, and be all warm and dry, and Wendy can take her girls back to the States without a sniffle among the lot."

"Back to the States!" Amy looked at me. She seemed almost as upset as Mrs. Rooks had. As upset as I felt, or Joan. "Is it time to go home already?" Amy added in an undertone.

I couldn´t believe it either. It felt like we´d just gotten here. Two days getting here, two days sightseeing and traveling to the campsite, two days here.

Two days left, I thought. Eight days in all, to Britain and back home. Two days left, one for getting back to the airport, and one for going home.

"Two more days, honey," I heard Amy´s mother telling her as they walked off towards their tent. "Then two weeks at Grandmother´s, and then back to school."

I shared the tent with them but I didn´t want to go back with them and pack and help take down the tent. I´d been looking forward to the owl count as much as Joan had said she was.

I headed over towards her now, to where she and Mrs. Rooks were rinsing out the mugs.

"She needn´t have poured the water out on the fire--" Mrs. Rooks was saying as I joined them. She broke off and looked at me.

"I wanted to see the owls," I said, handing her my mug.

"So did I," said Joan.

I realized she looked more upset than I felt. I turned to her mother. "Do we have to go to the village?" I asked. "Do we have to spend the night at the pub? Can´t we do our laundry and them come back here and do the owl count?"

Mrs. Rooks looked at me with that "no-nonsense, girl" look of hers. Then suddenly her face relaxed into a smile. "We´ll see," she said. "After all, it won´t be dark until quite late. Maybe P-J and Gail will change their minds about staying the night at the pub. Pubs get quite noisy at times."

She glanced away, off towards the ruin Amy´s mother had asked about.

What is that place? I wanted to ask her. But I didn´t want to be laughed at the way she had laughed at Amy´s mother. I always hated being laughed at, especially by someone who´d seemed to like me; someone who seemed to think I was OK . . . until I did something klutzy or weird.

And even if I´d been brave enough to ask, suddenly it was too late to do so. Mrs. P-J was coming over, hurrying us up, and we had to separate and go pack and take down our tents. It wasn´t until I was crammed into the back of the Land Rover, with Amy squashed against me and Catriona across from me and Linda Jo in my lap, that I had a chance to ask Joan if she knew what the place was. And she was sitting in Bonnie´s lap, all squashed in with Dawn and Catriona, and when I tried to ask her she said she couldn´t hear me.

I could barely hear myself over the rumbling of the Land Rover, and Valerie and Alice giggling in the front seat, and Mrs. P-J grinding the gears. I wished Joan and I could´ve ridden with her mother and Amy´s mother in the Rooks Mini instead of Mrs. Posey and Mrs. Lennox. But then I figured Mrs. Rooks probably had enough to put up with, with Amy´s mother´s questions about the ruin, and wouldn´t want me asking about it as well.

Especially since to me it hadn´t looked like a ruin.

I wished I knew what it had looked like to Dawn and Bonnie, and to Joan.

But there just wasn´t time to talk about it. The drive out of the campsite was too noisy, and once we were out on the paved road Mrs. P-J made us all start singing. Mrs. P-J had a way of making us do things--it had nothing to do with physical force or verbal brutality; she just started doing the thing she wanted you to do--whatever it was--and you just sort of got dragged along doing it. I always figured that was why she was a leader, and I never thought I´d make a very good one.

So anyway we all drove into the village singing Girl Scout and Girl Guide songs, and even old favorites of Mrs. P-J´s like "Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile!"

I felt like I was having to pack up my wishes to see the owls and to know what the place was that I´d seen through the binoculars. The only trouble I felt like I had was that I wasn´t getting a spare moment to talk to Joan or anyone else.

Mrs. P-J unloaded us in front of the laundromat, and Mrs. Lennox and Amy´s mother supervised our loading our clothes and things into the washing machines. There were three double-load ones, and one triple-loader; and there was a lot of grumbling among the girls about how long it would take to wash AND dry all our sleeping bags, and couldn´t we just dump them straight into the dryers without washing them? or hang them on a clothesline somewhere?

"If you can conjure a clothesline out of thin air," said Amy´s mother, "you can hang your sleeping bags on it, and anything else you want to dry. But since I don´t see a clothesline in this laundromat, and since The Girl Scout Handbook doesn´t have a chapter on conjuring, I think you´d better just accept that we´re going to have to be patient and take turns washing and drying everything.

"And yes, I do mean washing everything," she went on. "I know how I would feel if Amy brought home a sleeping bag that had been dried in a hot dryer without having been washed first, and I can imagine how your mothers would feel. How would you feel, Rowena?" she added, looking at Mrs. Rooks.

Mrs. Rooks smiled, and I could tell that on the drive from camp she and Amy´s mother must´ve decided to shelve their question-and-answer session about the ruin.

"Come along, girls," Mrs. Rooks said. "Queue up for detergent, and I´ll hand out change."

I got in line obediently with the others, behind Amy and in front of Joan. The line snaked across the front of the laundromat, between the row of single-load washers and the plastic chairs by the window. The window was plate glass, and looked out onto the village street, and the stores across the street, and the mountains beyond.

And nestled among the mountains, and jutting out from their smooth greeny-grey slopes, was the jagged black outline of a roof, with towers and gables and chimneys . . . and there was smoke rising from the chimneys.

It wasn´t fog, and it wasn´t mist, and it wasn´t clouds. It was smoke. I could almost smell it. Among the scents of laundry detergent and bleach, damp sleeping bags and clothes, and fish and chips being fried somewhere down the street, I could smell the smoke that was rising from those far-off chimneys. It wasn´t like diesel exhaust from trucks and London buses, and I had never smelled coal smoke, but I knew that this was the smell of fuel burning. I didn´t know how I knew. I just knew.

"Joan," I said, turning around to look at her.

She didn´t seem to have heard me. She was looking out the window. Gazing off beyond the roofs of the stores across the street, towards that craggy jumble of towers and gables and chimneys in the distance. I looked at her looking, and I knew that she knew about that place, like her mother knew about things besides first aid and mushrooms and how to make fires. And I knew that she wanted to see that place--whatever it was--up close; that she wanted to go there even more than she wanted to go back to the campsite and see the owls.

And I felt like I knew why. Because I wanted to see it up close, too. I wanted to go there.

What is that place? I wanted to ask her.

"An eyesore." Amy´s mother paused beside me, looking out the window, shaking her head. "I can´t imagine living with that hulk looming over me all the time. Why don´t they tear it down?"

"It´s a castle," I said.

She turned and give me a sharp look. "A castle!" She laughed. "Well, maybe it used to be, Tracy. A long time ago. But now it´s just an old ruin." She shook her head, and, still laughing, went to help Amy, who had gotten some detergent and some coins from Mrs. Rooks and had gone to load her stuff into one of the washers.

I had reached Mrs. Rooks now, and I put out my hand for some money and some detergent. I looked at her, and she looked at me, and she smiled, but not like she was laughing at me.

"What is that place, Mrs. Rooks?" I asked her.

"What does it look like?" She didn´t sound no-nonsense now, but more like she sounded when she asked me what kind of tea I´d like us to have this afternoon, or if I´d ever had baked beans on toast for supper.

"It looks like . . ." I glanced out the window again, and then back at Mrs. Rooks. She was still smiling, and suddenly I felt brave. I knew she knew, and that she wasn´t going to laugh at me, or think that what I was going to say was weird. "It looks like a castle," I said.

"A castle," she repeated. Agreeing? Denying? Affirming? I couldn´t tell.

"Here," she said, and put some coins and a packet of detergent into my hand. "Go on now. Next girl! Come along, Joan!"

Her eyes looked past me, over my shoulder, and I stepped out of line and headed towards the washer where I´d left my clothes. Maybe Joan would come to the washer next to mine and we could talk.

But Joan didn´t. Mrs. Rooks put her to work handing out money and detergent, and left Mrs. Lennox and Amy´s mother in charge at the laundromat while she herself went off with

Mrs. P-J and Mrs. Posey. The three of them returned shortly with fish and chips and soft drinks for all of us, and while we ate Mrs. P-J and Mrs. Posey told us about their new plans for us for tonight. Instead of the owl count, we were going to drive to a nursing home a mile or two outside the village. We´d sing songs, and visit with the residents, and maybe help the office staff if they had any tasks for us to do.

"And then," Mrs. Posey smiled around at all of us, "we´re going to do something that I´m sure we´ll all enjoy every bit as much as we´d enjoy an owl count, and that will earn each of you who help even more points than spotting owls would!

"We´re going to have a party and celebrate the birthdays of three members of our group. Tracy Winslow, who will be eleven the day after tomorrow; Joan Rooks, who will be eleven one week from today; and Amy´s mother, Mrs. Warren--"

"Who will be in charge of refreshments and party favors," Amy´s mother finished for Mrs. Posey, with a look that made all of us--even Mrs. Posey--laugh. "And I´ll take Joan and Linda Jo and Catriona," Amy´s mother went on, "and we´ll go shopping, while Mrs. Posey and Mrs. P-J divide up the rest of the jobs among the rest of you. Come on, girls."

The four of them left the laundromat, and Mrs. Posey and Mrs. P-J went around assigning other jobs to each of us who were left. I was told to help Mrs. Rooks make a list of who would room with whom at the pub, and I set off quite happily for my very first visit to the local branch of this famous British institution.

I´d had no idea I´d be given a birthday party in Britain. I´d figured I´d be spending my birthday on a plane and in airports, traveling from Britain to Arizona, and be given my presents when I got home. I´d never expected the first present to be a business visit to a pub. I felt really grown-up as I walked along with Mrs. Rooks. I´d known that turning eleven meant starting middle school, meeting new people, studying new subjects. Things that sounded scary, but exciting too. Visiting a pub--making room assignments--didn´t sound scary. Just exciting. Fun. I liked organizing things as much as Amy´s mom did. Not organizing people--telling them what to do and getting them to do it--I´ve never cared about that kind of organizing. But making lists, putting things in order--whether it was names of owls or names of Brownies and Girl Scouts and Girl Guides on a roommate list--that was the kind or organizing I liked doing. And I liked helping Mrs. Rooks.

We walked up the street to the pub together, and in the distance the smoke rose from the castle chimneys, and the outlines of the roof showed clear and sharp against the mountains and the sky. And as I noticed that, I noticed that the sun had come out. The clouds were drifting apart, like great grey battleships, and the sun was shining down between them, gilding the smoke that rose from the castle chimneys.

"Mrs. Rooks--" I started to say--but she spoke first.

"Tell me, Tracy," she said, "which of the teas do you like best, of all the kinds we´ve had these past few days?"

"Well . . . I loved the Gunpowder Green we had yesterday. I liked those big leaves. It was like they´d grown on a tree, and I´d picked them myself, and dried them, and steeped them.

"And I liked the tea we had at that tea shop in London, but I don´t know what kind it was.

"And I liked that blend you made for Alice, when she started feeling sick to her stomach on the train, and you let the rest of us have some so we wouldn´t feel sick. What was that? Camomile? It didn´t taste like peppermint . . ."

"It was an old family recipe. Yes, I thought you enjoyed that. I´ll make you up a bag to take home, for the flight, shall I?"

"Great! Thanks." I smiled at her, and she smiled at me; and then she sort of seemed to frown; and then she said, "You know, Tracy, when you turn eleven--"

But at that moment something huge flew by overhead. Something with wings that moved, something that wasn´t an airplane but that breathed out fumes like . . . not like coal smoke or diesel exhaust or contrails . . . it breathed out the fumes from its nose . . . from its nostrils--

"What is that?" I said, staring up at the sky.

It wasn´t a jet, it wasn´t an owl; and gila monsters didn´t fly--

"What does it look like?" Mrs. Rooks asked.

I glanced at her; she looked at me, and then up at the sky. I looked up again too, but whatever it had been had gone.

What had it looked like? I asked myself.

And suddenly I smiled. Turning eleven didn´t mean I was going to have to grow up all in one day. And anyway I wouldn´t be eleven till the day after tomorrow. And one of the things I liked about Girls Scouts was that, while we were taught to be mature and responsible, we were also encouraged to be creative. To use our imaginations. I mean, after all, we had Brownies. They could´ve called us something unimaginative. Mundane. But they didn´t. They´d called us Brownies. Magical, mysterious, sometimes mischievous creatures. Brownies. So--

"It looked like a dragon," I told Mrs. Rooks. "A dragon, flying towards the castle."

"A dragon," Mrs. Rooks repeated.

"Here we go," she went on, and reached out to open the door of the pub. "Come along, dear. Let´s have a look at these rooms."

Chapter 2

I could see the castle from every guest room at the back of the pub. The casement windows opened out over a lawn that sloped down to a little creek, and across the creek were woods, and then mountains, and the castle among the mountains. I didn´t need Mrs. Lennox´s binoculars to see it from here, but I wished I had them to make out the tiny objects flying around near the towers and gables and chimneys. Too big for bats or owls--and I didn´t think bats or owls flew in daylight anyway; too small for dragons.

"Mrs. Rooks--" I said, from the window of the last room at the back of the pub.

She didn´t seem to hear me. She was peering into corners and under furniture, and nodding approval, as she had in each of the other rooms we´d checked. No dust bunnies under the beds, no cobwebs in the corners. The rooms were so clean that even the old beams and plaster walls seemed to sparkle like the windows and mirrors and the sinks.

Running water, I´d thought when I´d seen the sink in the first room; and I´d smiled. Indoor plumbing. A hot bath. The second present of my eleventh birthday.

"Go and fetch me a broom, Tracy," Mrs. Rooks said. "Look in that cupboard we saw outside the bathroom.

"What do you see?" I asked, watching her crane her neck to peer out the window and up towards the eaves.

"Only an owl, dear. I want to shoo it away. If you´ll just fetch the broom--?"

An owl in the daytime? I wondered. But Mrs. Rooks had on her no-nonsense face again, so I hurried out of the room and down the hall to the cupboard.

Sure enough, it held brooms, as well as mops and dustpans and other cleaning equipment. I reached for the nearest broom--and jumped back as one of the others seemed to fall towards me. I threw a hand up to shield my head--and the broom handle settled into my hand as if I had reached out to take it. It was a weird-looking broom: it looked like someone had taken a bunch of birch twigs, tied them into a round bundle, and stuck a branch into the middle for a handle. The broomstick was bent and knotty, like a branch with its bark peeled off. It looked rough, but it didn´t feel splintery.

"It looks as old as the pub does," I said to Mrs. Rooks, handing the broom to her when I got back to the room.

She nodded, and looked very pleased as she took the broom. I expected to see her open the window and nudge an owl down from the eaves, but all she did was stand the broom on end, propping it against the wall just inside the window, bristles uppermost, like the open end of a horseshoe. Then she turned to me, and took an envelope out of her pocket.

"Just nip down to the laundrette and give this to Joan, will you?" she said, holding the envelope out to me. "I must see the landlady about a camp bed for this room, but I´d like Joan to have this as soon as possible."

I took the envelope. It was heavy, of thick yellowish parchment, and was sealed with real sealing wax. I wondered where it had come from. Had the landlady brought it to the room while I was out getting the broom? If she had, wouldn´t I have seen her come up the stairs, which were right by the cupboard?

"Let me see," Mrs. Rooks was saying, "seven rooms, two people to a room, and three in this one--give me your list, dear."

I handed it to her and turned the envelope over, curious to see a return address. There was none. Just green handwriting:

Miss Joan Rooks

The Last Room at the Back

The Ship and Bottle

Glenlarich

"Off you go," Mrs. Rooks said, and I hurried out of the room and down the stairs, eager to deliver the envelope to Joan and to find out what was in it.

But I didn´t find out. Not at the laundromat. Joan was too busy folding clothes to open the envelope. She took it--almost grabbed it--when I held it out, and shoved it into her pocket, and thanked me, and then started talking about the planned visit to the nursing home. And then Mrs. Lennox came over and told us to unroll all the socks we´d just matched up and to fold them flat; and I didn´t have a chance to ask Joan about the envelope even if I´d felt she wanted to tell me about it. The other girls didn´t seem curious about it. They didn´t even seem to have noticed it. They were too busy folding clothes and taking sleeping bags out of washers and stuffing them into dryers. I went on helping Joan fold the socks and things, and we talked about the visit to the nursing home.

The visit wasn´t bad. I´d expected the place to be a retirement home, full of old people, like visiting all your grandparents, and their brothers and sisters, all at once. But there were people of all ages here--mostly grown-ups, with some teenagers, and they were recovering from surgery, or doing physical therapy, or learning how to use wheelchairs and crutches and things.

Not all of them seemed glad to see us--some of them didn´t look glad about anything, and I didn´t blame them. But a lot of them seemed to enjoy our singing, and some joined in with us, and two of them even brought out a guitar and a flute and played along with the guy who played the piano.

We sang a lot of Girl Scout and Girl Guide songs, and of course Mrs. P-J´s favorite, "Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile!" Then we took requests, and there were a lot of songs I didn´t know, and neither did Amy or the other American girls. But the British girls knew a lot of them, and the ones they didn´t know, the residents seemed happy to sing for us and teach us. And we did some hymns that people requested, and some of the best Beatle sing-along songs, like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Yellow Submarine" and "All Together Now."

And then we stayed to help the office staff straighten their desks and sort mail and file papers. And by then it was time for the residents to have supper and we were ready to go and have our party. So back to the pub, and there was a HUGE cake, and three kinds of ice cream, and party favors for everyone instead of just presents for Joan and Mrs. Warren and me.

And after that, free time. The first real free time we´d had. Some of the girls wanted to go for a nature walk. Some wanted to take hot baths and wash their hair. And some wanted to go shopping for postcards and other souvenirs.

I wanted to talk to Joan, but I couldn´t find her anywhere. Mrs. Rooks seemed to have disappeared too, and I figured they´d gone off somewhere for a mother-daughter birthday outing of their own. Mrs. P-J had given us our room assignments, and I´d learned I was sharing with Joan and her mother, so I figured I might get to hear about the envelope and its contents sometime that night.

Meanwhile I decided to pack all my nice clean clothes, and when I finished doing that I thought I´d take a bath and wash my hair.

But when I went to the window to close the curtain so I could change out of my clothes into my bathrobe, I saw another huge winged thing shoot past in the sky. And behind it flew a boy on a broom.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Far off in the distance I could see a winged creature zooming towards the castle. But there was no boy on a broom.

I opened the window and leaned out to see up to the eaves and down onto the lawn. Nothing. No boy, no broom; no owl, no bird of any kind.

I started to close the window. But just then I heard a door open below where I stood, and a girl´s voice called out, "Charlie!"

And I saw a boy walking up the lawn from the creek towards the pub. He looked like a teenager. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. He had bright red hair and sideburns, and he was carrying a broom over his shoulder.

The girl ran down the lawn to meet him. He swung the broom down off his shoulder and put his free arm around her, and they kissed--then broke apart quickly.

"What are you doing here?" the girl asked.

"I came to get the egg," the boy replied.

"Now? With Mum in the kitchen getting supper? Charlie, we´ve got a house full of guests! Didn´t you get my owl?"

"Yes." The boy laughed and tried to give the girl another kiss. "I got your owl, but I wanted to see you. We´ve got hundreds of owls at the castle, Heather. I can see one anytime I like. What we haven´t got is lovely Muggles."

He tried to kiss her again, but she didn´t seem to want him to.

"You´ve been out chasing dragons again," she said. "You´re always like this when you´ve been out chasing dragons."

"Yes. Cool creatures, dragons. Fun to chase. But what I wanted to do was see you."

"Alright, alright!" Heather was laughing now as she tried to stop him kissing her. She didn´t seem to be trying very hard. "Charlie, I can´t give you the egg now. It´s in the Aga, and Mum´s in the kitchen. I can´t just walk in there and get the egg. She´d see it."

"Then invite me to supper and I´ll get the egg," said Charlie. "I can get it without her seeing."

"I know you can." Heather glanced around, looking nervous. She didn´t look up, but I stepped back away from the window anyway. I felt like I´d been spying on my sister and her boyfriend.

And as I realized that was how I felt, I realized what I´d been doing. I´d been eavesdropping.

I felt guilty suddenly, and ashamed of myself. Spying on your sister is one thing. Eavesdropping on total strangers is something else. I knew it wasn´t cool, and I knew it wasn´t worthy of a Girl Scout.

I also knew that the reason I hadn´t realized I´d been doing it earlier was because the whole scene has seemed so unreal. Like an illustration in a book of fairytales, or a campfire story come to life. Where I came from, people didn´t fly on brooms, or chase dragons, but we did hear stories about humans who had turned into animals and about animals who had appeared to humans and spoken with them. I didn´t know anyone personally who had had any experiences like that, but I did know people who knew that the deserts, and the canyons, and the mesas, were home to stranger creatures and weirder happenings than city dwellers like me had ever seen. I had heard tales of eagles and other birds bringing people messages, and I wondered if an owl had brought the envelope for Joan. Was that why Mrs. Rooks had sent me for the broom? Had she wanted me out of the room so I wouldn´t see the owl deliver the envelope? Why? She knew I had already seen the castle. And the dragon. But she hadn´t seemed upset about it. She hadn´t laughed at me or acted like I was weird.

What had been weird was that broom practically falling out the cupboard right into my hand. Maybe that was why Mrs. Rooks had sent me to get it? I wondered. Had she wanted to see which broom I would bring back, rather than not wanting me to see the owl?

I wished she were here now. I wished she´d been here when the boy Charlie had flown by on the broom, and when he´d come walking up the lawn with the broom over his shoulder, and during his conversation with Heather.

They were still outside talking. I heard the word "Muggle" again, and something that sounded like "Quidditch." But I wasn´t trying to listen anymore.

I picked up my bathrobe and my shampoo, and left the room, heading for the bathroom. If the landlady was getting supper for her houseful of guests, maybe I´d get to talk to Mrs. Rooks and Joan while we ate.

* * *

I didn´t get to talk with them, but I did get to meet Heather and Charlie. They didn´t eat with us, but he helped her bring the food into the dining room where we ate. All the girls in our group thought he was really cute and sexy, and giggle and blushed whenever he came near any of us to refill our glasses or mugs or bring more bread or butter. He was really nice, too, and treated us like we were all his little sisters; and Heather was nice too and didn´t act like we were silly little girls with crushes on a boy who was her age and not ours.

It was the best meal we´d had in two days; much better than any we´d eaten in camp, and with more variety than the wonderful fish and chips we´d had at the laundromat. There were eggs, and sausage, and what looked like ham but was called bacon; and kidneys, the idea of which sounded terrible but which were delicious; and mushrooms, and tomatoes, and blackberries with cream; and hot fresh bread with butter and honey; and glasses full of cold milk and mugs full of hot sweet tea.

I thought about the egg hidden in the kitchen range. I wanted to ask Charlie and Heather about it but not in front of everyone else. So after we had eaten I asked if I could help clear the table and wash the dishes. But everyone else in our group thought that was a good idea, and wanted to help too, and Heather and Charlie thought that was a good idea. Heather´s mother, the landlady, was shocked at first, and not in favor of it: we were guests; guests weren´t supposed to clear tables or wash dishes. But we were also Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and Brownies, and she had a lot of customers in the bar, and we weren´t old enough, or trained, to help in there. Heather was old enough, and so was Charlie. But Heather´s mother didn´t want Charlie helping in the bar.

"The jukebox does weird things," he told us, helping us stack plates on a tray to take out to the kitchen. "And the darts start missing the dartboard when I go in there. I don´t do anything on purpose, but things just happen."

"Do people get mad at you?" I asked him. "Do they laugh at you?"

He gave me a long look, as if he were surprised by the questions but not mad at me for asking them. Then he gave me a grin, and nodded. "Yeah," he said.

I grinned back at him. "I hate that," I said.

"Me too." He set the tray down on the kitchen counter next to the sink, and Dawn and I started to scrape the plates and hand them to Catriona and Amy to be washed. Joan was wiping off the cooktop of the Aga. It was a huge old solid-fuel stove with all kinds of doors in its front panel, and I wondered which one of the them the egg was hidden behind. I wanted to ask, but not in front of the other girls; and besides, I remembered that Charlie didn´t know I knew about the egg. I didn´t want to tell him I´d overheard him and Heather talking about it. He was so nice, I didn´t want him to think I was worse than weird. So I didn´t say anything about it, and he went back to the dining room to get another trayful of plates.

And something went POP! in the Aga.

Charlie was back in the kitchen before any of us could move. Even Joan, who was standing right in front of the Aga, hadn´t had time to jump back. She stood motionless, her dishcloth in her hand, her eyes locked on one of the doors in the stove´s front panel.

Charlie opened the door, and bent down to peer inside. Then he shut the door, straightened up, and glanced around at us all. I saw his eyes meet Joan´s, and hold for a split second. Then he looked at the rest of us again, and said, "Go and get Heather, girls."

The others, all but Joan, hurried out of the kitchen, as another POP! came from inside the Aga. I started out after them, but Joan said, "Not Tracy," and I turned back, to have Charlie´s eyes meet mine.

"Tracy, eh?" he said. "You´re one of the Arizona lot, are you?"

I nodded.

"Ever seen a gila monster´s egg hatch?" he asked.

I shook my head. "We´re not supposed to bother them. They´re dangerous, and they´re a protected species."

"Well, so is this little fellow in here." Charlie tapped the door he had opened. "He´s a Hebridean Black, and I´ve got to get him home. I was hoping to manage it before he hatched, but it sounds as though he´s already started. Do you two think you could give me a hand with him?"

I looked at Joan, and she looked at me. I wished her mother were here. But Mrs. Rooks and the other women in our group had stayed in the dining room, wiping off the tables and sweeping the floor.

I wished I had gone on out with the other girls. I wished I were upstairs, safely soaking in a nice hot bath, or back at the campsite counting owls. I wished I weren´t almost eleven years old and growing up. I wished . . . no, I didn´t wish I weren´t a Girl Scout.

But why, I wondered, did Charlie want Joan and me to help?

"Shouldn´t we wait ´til Heather gets here?" I asked.

Charlie looked at Joan, and Joan looked at him. Another POP! came from the oven.

"What do you want us to do?" Joan asked Charlie. "Help you fly him to the castle?"

I stared at her, and then at Charlie; but he didn´t seem the least bit surprised by her question. "That, or keep an eye on him while I got look for Professor Draganescu," he said.

Now Joan looked at me. She didn´t look like she knew who Professor Draganescu was, and Charlie didn´t seem to know where he--or she--was. And Heather wasn´t here.

Joan and I looked at Charlie. "We´ll help you," she and I said at the same time.

Charlie grinned. "Brilliant. OK. Run and get your brooms and meet me out back."

Joan and I hurried out of the kitchen.

"We´ll have to ride double," she said as we started up the stairs. "OK?"

"OK?" I repeated. "Wait a sec." I stopped short, and since I was ahead of Joan on the stairs, she had to stop too.

"Ride double on what?" I asked.

She looked puzzled. "On that broom. In our room." She laughed, but I really couldn´t appreciate the rhyme right now.

"I thought we were just gonna get our jackets or something," I said. "I mean . . . can you fly a broom?"

I thought the question sounded really weird, and Joan looked like she thought so too. But what was really weird was the answer she gave me. "Sure," she said. "Can´t you?"

My legs suddenly felt kind of shaky, and I sat down on the step.

"We´ve got to hurry, Trace," Joan said. "Heather won´t be able to keep the others out of the kitchen forever."

"They were supposed to bring Heather to the kitchen," I reminded her.

But she shook her head. "That was only what Charlie told them. I think he really wanted her to keep them out. I mean, can you imagine what they´d say if they saw a dragon hatch in the kitchen?"

I took a deep breath. "It really is a dragon, then. That egg. It´s a dragon. And it was a dragon that Charlie was chasing. On that broom. So Charlie´s . . . he´s a . . . "

"He´s a wizard," Joan said. She laughed, but it didn´t sound like a mean kind of laugh. It sounded teasing. Sisterly. Friendly. "I thought you knew," she went on. "Mum told me you´d seen the castle, and a dragon, and she told me about the broom. We reckoned you´d already got your letter."

"What letter?"

"From school." She pulled the parchment envelope out of her pocket. "Like this one, only from the school in America."

"Which school in America?" I asked. I was starting to get a headache.

"Whichever one you´ve been accepted into." Now Joan looked like she was the one with the headache. She looked as confused as I felt.

"There are tons of schools in America," I told her, standing up. "There are tons in just Arizona. And you don´t get accepted. You just go. To the one in whatever district you live in."

"Weird!" Joan followed me up the stairs and down the hall towards our room. "You just go? You don´t have to worry about not being accepted?"

"They can´t not accept you. They have to let you in. It´s the law. Unless it´s a private school, and you´ve applied to it."

"You mean you have to apply? The school doesn´t just accept you? Weird!" said Joan again.

No, I thought. What´s weird is this conversation.

Then I opened the door of our room.

The broom still stood propped against the wall just inside the window. The curtain was still open, and Charlie was outside the window, on a broom, hovering in mid-air. He was balancing a kettle in front of him on the broomstick. The kettle was teetering, and its lid was clattering like the lid of a saucepan that´s about to boil over.

"We´d better hurry," said Joan. She pushed past me into the room. I reached out to steady myself against the doorframe, and the broom leaned away from the wall and glided towards me, and stood itself on end, bristles down, handle fitting right into my hand.

Chapter 3

"Just slide off the windowsill," Joan told me.

She was sitting on the broom, outside the window. I had taken the broom--or it had taken me--across the room to the window, and when Joan had opened the casement the broom had slid out of my hand, to hover in mid-air next to Charlie´s broom. Joan had slipped out onto the broom, as easily as slipping onto a float from the side of a pool; but even though she and Charlie had encouraged me with smiles and reassurances and even offers to give me a push, I couldn´t make myself slide off the windowsill onto that broomstick.

It was so skinny! So flimsy looking! It wasn´t solid like a horse; and horses were scary enough, and their backs weren´t nearly as far from the ground as this broom was. It didn´t even have a seat like a bicycle.

"I wish it had training wheels," I said, trying to make a joke.

Joan smiled, but Charlie just looked puzzled.

"Come on, Trace," Joan said. "We really must get going."

"We won´t let you fall," Charlie said.

He had steered his broom close to Joan´s, and was steadying the kettle with one hand and holding his other hand out to me. He had put on a pair of heavy gloves made of some kind of blue leather like I had never seen before. Joan was wearing a similar pair that she had taken from a shopping bag on her bed.

I wished I could lean out and fall as easily onto the broom as it had fallen into my hand. But my teeth were chattering and I was shivering too hard.

"I can´t," I said. "I´m sorry. You guys go on without me. I´ll stay here and . . . and keep the others from wondering where you´ve gone."

"They won´t wonder," said Charlie. "Heather will know, and Mrs. Rooks, and they can handle the others."

"Yeah. Come on, Trace," said Joan. "I want you to see Hogwarts up close. You may never get another chance to."

I knew by now that Hogwarts was the name of the castle, and that the castle was a school; the school Joan would be going to. She had told me that while I had sat on the windowsill trying to get up enough nerve to get on the broom behind her. And Charlie had told me he was a student at Hogwarts and was spending the summer holidays there, helping Professor Draganescu with his research.

"He´s from Romania," Charlie said. "He came here to study our British dragons. I´m going to go and work with him when I leave school. He´s asked especially for me."

Charlie didn´t sound at all like he was bragging, just very excited. I could tell he was really excited about the dragon egg, too, and I knew he was in a hurry to get it home and find Professor Draganescu.

"You guys go on," I said again. "I´ll see you when you get back, Joan."

Charlie shook his head. "You must come, Trace. Just let go of the window frame, put your hands on Joan´s shoulders . . . now put your foot out . . . and slide . . . off . . . the windowsill!

"Good girl! I´ve got you! You´re not going to fall!"

I was sitting on the broomstick behind Joan. I was holding onto her for dear life, and Charlie was holding onto me. I could feel his hand, strong and broad and warm through my jacket and his glove, steadying me, centered between my shoulder blades.

My feet were dangling, there were no stirrups or pedals, but the broom wasn´t moving like a horse or wobbling like a bicycle or weaving and bobbing like a float. It was just hovering there, perfectly still, in mid-air.

"All right there?" said Charlie.

I nodded. I couldn´t breathe enough to speak.

"Let´s go, Joan," Charlie said.

And we went.

We flew away from the window. Away from the pub, over the lawn, across the creek and above the woods, zooming toward the castle.

We flew silently, except for the sound of the wind in our ears and the clinking and crackling sounds from the kettle Charlie held. There was no roaring of engine, no thudding of hooves, no bouncing or jouncing. There was just flight. Just us and the air and the broomsticks.

And the stars and the moon in the clearing sky. And the lights in the windows of the castle ahead.

They were not the glaring, steady lights of electric bulbs. They were softer and warmer looking. They shone in huge windows and in tiny ones. I thought at first that some of the windows were of stained glass, but as we got closer I realized that it was not the windows that were different colors but the flames behind them. There were ordinary yellow-orange flames, like candlelight and firelight; and there were blue flames, like on a gas stove; and green flames, like those I´d once seen when our Girl Scout troop had gone to a shop to watch a coppersmith at work. There were purple flames, too; and flames that changed from yellow to orange to red to purple to blue to green back to yellow again.

What is this place? I wanted to ask Joan and Charlie. What kind of school is Hogwarts?

I opened my mouth, but even as I started to speak, the kettle erupted.

The lid flew up with a clank. There was a long cracking sound. And then POP! POP! POP!--bits of eggshell burst out of the kettle and shot off in all directions.

Charlie let go of his broom to grab the lid. He tried to shove it back down onto the kettle, but there was a hiss, and a sort of crackling hiccup, and a dragon poked its head and shoulders up over the kettle´s rim.

It was very definitely a dragon. It had black scales, and nubs that looked that the beginning of horns, and what looked like wings trying to open against the lid Charlie was trying to press down over it.

I stared at it, and it stared at me out of brilliant purple eyes. Then it lunged right at me.

The broom Joan and I were riding swerved sideways, away from Charlie´s. I grabbed Joan around the waist, and the broom jerked back towards Charlie´s broom. Charlie let go of the kettle and the lid, and put one hand around the dragon´s chest, and another over its wings, trying to fold them down to its back. He was gripping the kettle with his knees, and had the lid tucked under one arm where it looked about to slip out and fall to the ground far below.

Joan let go of our broom and reached out to grab the lid with one hand and the kettle with the other. I could no longer keep my arms around her waist, but I was afraid to let go of her in case she fell. I grabbed the back of her jacket with one hand, and with the other I grabbed Charlie´s broom. I didn´t know what made me do that. I had seen TV cowboys grab the bridles of runaway horses, and once I had wheeled a friend´s bicycle home for her, riding my own bike and "ponying" hers alongside with one hand on its handlebar. This was more like grabbing the bridle of a runaway horse, except that I´d never seen a cowboy have to deal with a dragon that was trying to fly away.

Charlie was talking to the dragon, in a quiet voice and a sort of baby-talk. He had one hand on its horn-nubs now, so it couldn´t twist its head around and bite any of us, as it seemed to be trying to do. It was also trying to flap its wings, but now that Joan had hold of the kettle and the lid Charlie was able to keep the wings folded under his arm. But he couldn´t do anything about the dragon´s tail. And that was whipping around in every direction. I tried a couple of times to grab it, but both times I tried it flew out of my reach and both our brooms swerved.

"Let it go," Charlie panted after my second try and failure. "Just hold onto the broom. And be glad this little guy´s just a newborn. If he were a day or two older he´d have a spike like an arrowhead on the end of that tail."

As it was, the tail just had scales, and a series of what looked like they would soon grow into sharp ridges.

"And they´re said to be helpless at this age!" Charlie laughed, but the laughter sounded a bit breathless. I could see sweat beading his upper lip and trickling down from his hairline.

"Almost home now," he gasped, and for the first time since the kettle had erupted I took a moment to look at something besides the dragon and Charlie and Joan and the broomsticks.

The castle was very close now, just across the sparkling waters of a lake we were halfway over.

I gasped. "We´re flying over a lake!"

Charlie laughed again. "Is that a problem?"

"What if we--what if we fall?"

"We won´t fall," said Joan. "You´re very good at this."

"You´re both of you very good at this," said Charlie. "How´d you like to come with me to Romania?"

"I haven´t even started at school," Joan replied. "I don´t know enough."

"I don´t know anything," I said.

"You know how to fly," said Charlie and Joan together. "As I said, you´re very good at this," Joan added.

"I´m not flying these brooms," I told them.

"Well, they certainly aren´t doing it." Charlie nodded towards the castle. Not towards any of the towers or gables or chimneys, or any of the windows, but down towards the scene now almost directly below us. Torches burned in brackets next to a pair of huge front doors, and in the hands of three people who stood on the steps staring up at us. One was a woman, one was a man, and one was . . . a giant. A man, but nearly twice as tall as the other, and at least five times as wide. The other two were wearing tall pointed hats, and robes that looked like the ones I´d seen pictures of wizards wearing in books, but the giant had on a more ordinary looking overcoat, and no hat. He had long shaggy hair, though, and a long thick beard. And it was he who called out now, "That´s him, Professors! And it looks like he´s got a dragon with ´im!"

"I´d better go down alone," Charlie said to Joan and me. "You two take the kettle back--"

But the woman on the steps below interrupted him.

"Come on down, Mr. Weasley," she called. "And you two as well," she added.

Suddenly I felt as scared as I´d felt back on the windowsill. The woman´s tall pointed hat made her look more like a witch than a wizard, but what frightened me more than her appearance was the tone of her voice. She sounded just like the principal of my old school. Really stern, really strict, and, right now, really angry.

And Charlie didn´t sound like he felt like laughing when he said, "Better do as she says, girls. I´m sorry about this."

We flew down slowly. The brooms seemed as reluctant as I felt to leave the safety of mid-air. We landed at the foot of the steps, and the three grown-ups hurried down to meet us, the two men both reaching for the dragon, the woman turning to Joan and me.

"They´re not students, Professor McGonagall," Charlie said.

"I can see that, Mr. Weasley," said Professor McGonagall. Her voice was frosty in the summer night air.

"They helped me with the dragon," Charlie said. "I couldn´t have managed without them."

"Yes, Mr. Weasley. Thank you." She sounded anything but grateful. The other professor and the giant now began questioning Charlie about the dragon. Professor McGonagall stood silent, studying Joan and me as if we were two weird and not at all marvelous creatures. I didn´t want to stare back, but I couldn´t help thinking that up close she didn´t look like my idea of a witch. She didn´t have any warts, and her nose wasn´t long and bent. She did have on a pair of glasses. They had square frames and were not very becoming, but they didn´t make her look ugly. They did for her what Charlie´s jeans and sweatshirt did for him. They made her look normal.

As normal as me, I thought. And I bit back a smile.

She didn´t miss it. "What´s your name, girl?" she asked me. She sounded a lot more no-nonsense than Mrs. Rooks.

"Tracy Winslow, ma´am--Professor," I corrected myself hastily.

Her lips twitched, but all she said was, "You´re an American."

"Yes, ma´am."

She turned to Joan. "And what is your name?"

"Joan Rooks, Professor."

"Joan Rooks." Professor McGonagall´s eyes narrowed for a second. "Have you received your letter?"

"Yes, Professor. It came this afternoon. Mum sent a return owl this evening." Joan´s voice shook. I could almost see her trembling. I hoped she wouldn´t get kicked out of school before she´d even started. Being accepted at a certain school--for her, this school--seemed a lot bigger deal here than it was where I came from. But then, I thought, there weren´t any schools like this where I came from. I realized suddenly that I very much wished that there were. Mom and Dad would never let me come to school here. It was much too far from Arizona. It had been hard enough getting them to let me come on this short trip. If it hadn´t been that Amy´s mother and Mrs. Lennox--

What was I thinking? I asked myself. Mom and Dad would never let me come to a school like this, no matter where it was.

"Good," I heard Professor McGonagall saying. "A word of advice, Miss Rooks. If you´re put into Gryffindor, watch out for Weasleys."

Her eyes seemed to twinkle for a second behind her glasses. "Although you might like to try out for Quidditch," she added.

Then she turned back to me.

"I´m afraid I don´t know much about the American schools, Miss Winslow. But I do know a bit about flying."

I didn´t doubt it for a minute.

"May I see your broomstick?" she said.

The broom Joan and I had flown on had stood itself on end, bristles down, once we´d landed and dismounted. It had leaned itself towards me and when I had put my hand out, almost without thinking, it had settled itself into my hand. Now, as Professor McGonagall put her hand out, I loosened my hold on the broom and it leaned towards her.

"Down!" she said. And the broom lowered itself until it was hovering, horizontal, at knee-level beside her. She put her hand on it, stood it upright, and gave it a gentle push towards me. It fell into my hand and settled there.

Professor McGonagall smiled. "If you´ll send me an owl once term begins at your school, I´ll ask Madam Hooch to get in touch with you. She´s our flying teacher and Quidditch referee; she´s also played Quodpot."

"Yes, ma´am," I said, because Professor McGonagall seemed to expect some response and I had no idea what else to say. What was Quidditch? What was Quodpot? And Gryffin-- whatever? How in the world was I supposed to get hold of an owl and send it from Arizona to Britain?"

"Thank you, Professor," I said.

"Very well." She gave Joan and me a nod. "You two. Off you go now."

She turned to Charlie and the two men. "Mr. Weasley!"

"Professor?" Charlie turned to face her, looking apprehensive.

"Your two friends are leaving. Say goodnight to them, and then go put that dragon in a cage. Do you want me to take five points from Gryffindor before term even begins?"

"No, Professor."

Charlie came over to Joan and me, leaving the dragon with the two men. "Thanks," he said. "I told Professor Draganescu how you helped. And Hagrid."

He nodded towards the giant, who grinned and waved at us. "Hagrid loves dragons," Charlie told us. "He´s glad you´re coming to Hogwarts, Joan.

"I wish you were too, Tracy. We could use you both on the Quidditch team."

I didn´t think this was the right time to ask what Quidditch was, especially since Professor McGonagall was standing there looking at us, practically counting the seconds.

"We better go," I said. "´Bye, Charlie. It was nice to meet you."

He grinned. "It was nice meeting you, Tracy. Good luck at school. See you in September, Joan."

He turned back to Professor Draganescu and Hagrid and the dragon. Professor McGonagall stood looking at Joan and me. Timing us, I thought. I started to hand the broom to Joan. She shook her head.

"You fly it," she said. "I´ll ride behind you." She smiled at me. "You can do it, Trace. You´re very good at this. I bet you´ll make the Quodpot team at school."

I smiled, and let go of the broom. "Down!" I said to it.

It hovered horizontal beside us. I swung my leg over the handle, and Joan got on behind me.

"What do I do now?" I whispered to her, feeling everybody´s eyes on me.

"Kick off," she whispered back.

I did so.

Up we went, into the air. Up above the professors and Charlie and Hagrid and the dragon. Up above the huge front doors and the torches. Up past the gables and towers, past the lighted windows; up past the smoke that rose from the chimneys. Then I turned the broomstick, and we headed for the pub. Back across the lake, and over the woods, towards the creek at the foot of the lawn. I held the broomstick in both hands, and Joan held onto me. The wind swept past my ears, and the broom flew smooth and level. I didn´t even have to think about how to fly it. All I had to do was enjoy soaring, swift and silent, through the air.

Chapter 4

I wanted to keep flying all night. I wanted to fly all the way back to Arizona on the broomstick instead of on a plane.

But I had to travel with the others. Like the others, Joan and Mrs. Rooks told me. And I couldn´t tell the others about flying on the broomstick, or about the dragon, or Hogwarts.

"They wouldn´t believe you anyway," Joan said, as she and her mother and I got ready for bed. "They can´t even see the castle. To them it just looks like an old ruin."

"Even with binoculars?" I asked.

"Especially with binoculars," Mrs. Rooks answered. "Only magical folk can see it for what it really is."

She looked kind of sad as she spoke, and suddenly I knew. I didn´t know how I knew. I just knew.

"She can´t see the castle either, can she?" I asked Joan when Mrs. Rooks had gone to return the broom to the cupboard.

Joan shook her head.

"How come?" I asked.

"She´s a Squib."

"A what?"

"A Squib. A person whose parents are a witch and wizard but who isn´t magical herself. Or himself. My dad wasn´t magical either."

"But you are," I said.

"Yes."

"But how can you be, if your mom isn´t and your dad wasn´t?"

"Same as you are, even though your parents aren´t."

"But it´s not fair!" I protested. "My parents don´t know about it. Your mom does. And to know . . . and not be able to do anything . . ."

I stopped, and Joan said what I was thinking. "She can do loads of things."

"I know she can." I felt my face turning red. "She can do all kinds of things."

"She sent you to get the broom," Joan pointed out. "She wanted to see which one you´d get, and you got the right one."

"So she knew it would be there," I guessed. "She knew we were going to stay here?"

"She can´t read the future. I don´t know anybody who can, even if they´re magical. But I do know that some of the pubs and inns and things around here have at least one flying broom on hand. Heather and her mother aren´t the only people who are wizard-friendly. Mum reckoned there was a good chance there´d be a broom in that cupboard. And there was, and you brought it to her.

"That´s how we reckoned you could fly. Once Mum knew you could see the castle, and the dragon, she wanted to see what else you could do. She may not be magical, but she´s a good mother. And yours isn´t here. And none of the other mothers could see the castle."

"And none of the other girls, either," I said.

"Not all of the other girls got a chance to look at it," Joan reminded me. "But Amy´s been eleven for awhile now. And Valerie´s already twelve. And Bryony and Alice won´t be eleven ´til next year."

Joan grinned. "Mum didn´t know we would meet somebody needing help with a dragon, but I´m glad we did."

I grinned back at her. "So am I."

* * *

I had a lot to think about over the next two days. I had a lot of questions, too, but I didn´t say anything to anybody about the castle or the dragon or flying on the broomstick. Joan and her mother told me to send them an owl with a letter telling them about my birthday; but as with Professor McGonagall, I had no idea how I was going to get hold of an owl. I figured I´d just send them a letter the normal way.

We did all talk about Charlie, and about how cute he was, and how nice; and about how nice Heather was too. How when Charlie had sent the girls out to find her she had taken them into her weaving room and showed them her loom.

"That´s going to be our winter project," Linda Jo and Bryony said as we headed back to London on the train. "We´re each going to get in touch with someone who does weaving, where we live, and ask them to teach us, for our badges. It´ll be fun to see how it´s different and how it´s alike, weaving in Arizona and in Britain.

* * *

"What are you going to do for your project?" Bonnie asked me as our plane flew back to America. "Something with reptile eggs? Heather said you and Joan were helping Charlie with an egg they´d found."

I nodded. In the cushioned airplane seat, with its armrests and seatbelt, and the little window through which I could see only clouds and sky and could feel no wind, Heather and Charlie, and the pub and the castle, seemed worlds away and as unreal as I had always believe dragons and magic to be.

"He asked me if I´d ever seen a gila monster´s egg hatch," I told Bonnie. "I´ve never studied gila monsters."

"Might be interesting," Bonnie said. "And scary. They´re dangerous."

"And they´re protected," I added.

Like Hebridean Black dragons, I thought. Like castles. Like magic.

* * *

The plane landed in Phoenix. The arid, sunlit landscape rushed up to meet us, and with a great roar of engines and of tires on pavement we touched down and taxied.

I got my stuff down from the overhead cubbyhole and crowded out with the rest of my group and the other passengers. Amy and her mother were right in front of me, and I thought of how Mom would be glad to have a nice clean sleeping bag to put right into the hall closet instead of having to take it to the laundromat. I could help her wash and dry the rest of my things at home.

She and Dad were at the gate waiting to meet me. I hadn´t expected both of them to be there. It was my birthday, sure--but it was also a weekday. I hadn´t expected Dad to be able to take off from work. But there they both were. Mom was holding a birthday balloon, and Dad . . .

I stared at the envelope Dad was holding. It didn´t look like it contained a birthday card. It was made of parchment, and the writing on it wasn´t Mom´s or Dad´s handwriting.

"Happy Birthday, honey!" Mom and Dad hugged me. Mom handed me the balloon, and Dad held out the envelope. I looked at it, and then at him and Mom. They were both smiling, looking very happy.

"What´s this?" I asked, taking the envelope.

"Open it." Dad grinned.

I looked at the address first.

Miss Tracy Winslow

The Farthest Gate

International Concourse

Phoenix Airport

Phoenix, Arizona

I turned the envelope over. The flap was sealed with real sealing wax.

"When did this come?" I asked.

"Just now," said Mom.

"Who brought it?"

"Would you believe a roadrunner?" Dad asked.

I looked up at him. His eyes were twinkling behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

"Really? A roadrunner?" Not an owl? I thought. Roadrunners couldn´t fly . . . could they?

"Don´t be silly, Scott," Mom said, shaking her head at Dad. "How could a roadrunner bring a letter right into an airport?"

She looked at Dad, and he looked at her. Then they both looked at me.

"A phoenix brought it, Tracy," Mom said.

"Oh. Well. Sure. A phoenix. That makes sense . . ."

So why were my hands shaking? I wondered. I could hardly get the envelope open, and I nearly dropped the letter as I took it out and unfolded it.

HORNDRAKE HALL

SCHOOL OF MAGIC

Dear Miss Winslow:

It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been accepted at Horndrake Hall. I knew your great-uncle Arcturus when he was on the faculty here. He coached our Quodpot team during my student days, and also taught Dragonology.

The new school year starts on the day after Labor Day. A list of textbooks and other items you will need will be sent to you upon receipt of your reply to this letter.

Looking forward to meeting you, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Marcellus Elphinstone

Principal

I held the letter out to Mom and Dad, who looked as happy as if it were both their birthdays and they had just gotten the present they´d been wishing for.

"We know what it says, honey," Mom told me as we started out toward the concourse together. "Or at least, we´ve got a pretty good idea; don´t we, sweetheart?" she added, looking at Dad over my head.

"A pretty good idea," Dad agreed. "After all, you´re not the first one in the family to get one, Trace. It´s just been so long since Arcturus told me about getting his letter, that I´d forgotten all about it ´til Mom and I started planning for your birthday and she reminded me to be sure and order a cake with eleven candles and not ten or twelve."

He grinned at me. "At least you know where you get that kind of weirdness from."

"But what about . . .?" I stopped. I couldn´t ask them about the letter, and flying and seeing the castle, and . . . magic . . . right in the middle of the airport. "What about Great-uncle Arcturus?" I asked instead. "I didn´t even know I had a great-uncle Arcturus."

"You just don´t remember him, honey," Mom said. "But when we get home we´ll get out your baby book and I´ll show you a picture of you and him. It´s a very interesting picture," she went on, as we headed down the concourse towards the terminal. "It´s the only one like it in your book. I only have one like it in my own photo album, and that´s of my grandparents and Uncle Arcturus, taken the day he came home from his first year at Horndrake Hall. . . ."