By Hannah Ogden Illustrated by Isabella Ronchetti Emma O’Malley was alone. Up in her attic room of her grandmother Josephine’s farm, she could hear the rain hammering on the roof. She shivered. The lights had gone out twenty minutes ago, and the only light in the room came from a flickering candle on her dresser. Dark shadows danced across the room like untamed ghosts. She got up from her bed where she had been sitting and went to the window. The rain made it impossible to see, but she could faintly hear her parents outside. Once the rain had started, they had run outside to check on the sheep that belonged to the farm. It rained quite a lot here in Ireland, but this storm had her parents worried. Telling Emma to stay in her room, they had departed. Emma’s grandmother had gone out to the barn to check on the barn cats, and they had all been gone for nearly half an hour. Emma hated the wait. She wondered if her sheep, the one she had been given for her birthday last year and had named Katie, was all right. Suddenly, Emma heard a crack of thunder overhead, and she jumped. She could not hear her parents any longer, as the rain had worsened. It came in sheets, rocking the house. Another crack of thunder boomed in the sky. Emma shivered. Were her parents all right? Suddenly Emma could stand it no longer. She went to her sock drawer and pulled on a pair of wool socks and a gray sweater over her T-shirt. A bolt of lightning lit up the room, and she flinched, but she continued dressing. She pulled a blue hat over her wildly curly black hair and made her way out her door. Her coat was hanging up somewhere in the hallway. She silently climbed down the ladder from the attic and down the hall. The house was freezing cold. Most of the walls were made out of gray stone, as the house was nearly four hundred years old. Emma grabbed a green raincoat from its hook, and she put it on, taking care to cover her head with the hood. Suddenly she heard the door open, and she spun around. A dark shadowy shape walked over the threshold, and the creature threw back its hood, revealing the tired face of her father. Suddenly Emma could stand it no longer “Dad!” Emma cried, and she threw herself at him in a tackling hug. “Emma!” her dad answered. He hugged her tightly, the smell of wet wool filling Emma’s nose. “Your mother is right behind me. We checked on the sheep, but the rain caused the fence to fall over,” her father said. “Emma.” Emma turned towards the door where her mother was walking in. She shut and bolted the door behind her. Her mother pushed back her hood, revealing her tangled mess of damp red hair. “Emma,” her mother continued, “we looked everywhere, but some of the sheep are missing.” Emma paled, her freckles standing out on her face. If her family lost some of the sheep, then the farm would not survive. They depended on them. “Which ones are missing?” she asked. Emma’s mother hugged her and said, “About ten others, and Katie.” Emma stiffened and drew back. “Where is the flashlight?” she demanded. She had no idea what she was doing, but she knew she had to do something. Her mother handed her the flashlight she was holding. “What do you need it for?” she asked, but she found out two seconds later as Emma switched it on and opened the door to the swirling darkness of the night. Emma shoved her feet into her rain boots, which were on the front step, and ran out from under the porch. The storm blasted her back. Rain pounded on her, and her feet stuck in the mud. She heard her parents shouting for her to come back, but she half ran, half battled her way on towards the barn. A faint light glowed out from one of the windows, like a lighthouse. Emma reached the huge front door to the barn just as a boom of thunder sounded. She flinched. Emma held the flashlight in one hand as she fumbled with the latch to the barn. She finally managed to pull it open, and she slipped inside. The wind banged the door shut. The rain was slightly muffled. Emma looked around the barn. Straw was strewn around on the floor, and the smell of kerosene met her nose. Emma figured that Katie and the others might be here, hiding in fear from the violent storm. She shined her flashlight around the vast room and stopped the light at the stairs up to the loft. She heard her grandmother’s voice drifting down the steps. Emma jogged to the bottom of the stairs and sprinted up them. Her grandmother sat on the floor of the loft, a blanket around her shoulders. And all around her were the barn cats. There were several of them, and they all sat clustered around her grandmother. Josephine had lit one of the kerosene lamps, and it emitted a soft glow around the room. One of the cats was lying across her lap, and another was strewn over her shoulder. At the sound of Emma’s footsteps Josephine looked up. “Emma!” she said. “Where are your parents? Did you come here by yourself? Oh, I hope they’re all right.” “Mom and Dad are fine. I came by myself. Grandmother, is Katie here?” Her grandmother shook her head. “Nay, I have not seen her. Is she lost?” “Yes, Grandmother, I have to find her.” “I was hoping you would say otherwise. Do you really mean to go after her?” “I have to. I can’t bear the thought of Katie and some of the other sheep wandering around in this weather. What if…” “Child, I know what you mean. But I’m sure they
Fantasy
Doll Shop Magic
Doll Shop Magic By Joanna Calogero, 13 Illustrated by Lee Bee Pierce, 12 The mail I got was usually no more than a few coupon booklets, but today there was a business-like white envelope mixed in. Hmmmm, how odd, I thought. I waited until I was in my small doll shop before looking more closely at the envelope. “Alan J. Murphy,” read the first line of the return address. Alan J. Murphy was the man who I leased my small doll shop and upstairs apartment from, and Alan J. Murphy was not a nice man. This letter could only mean one thing, Alan J. Murphy caught up with my bills, or better put, he found out my bills weren’t caught up with him. I opened the letter. “Dear Sam Donalds, I am afraid your lease has not been paid ….” A nice man would not toss an old man into the streets. But, as I said, Alan J. Murphy was not a nice man. What was I going to do? Where would I go? I would have had enough to pay the lease if my shop was located in a better part of town. Twenty years ago, when I bought my shop, the whole town was a nice town, all over. But a lot can happen in twenty years, and a lot did, including a new owner of the building, too, that owner being Alan J. Murphy. I’ve held on to the shop, hoping that someday the town would return to how it was before. But that hasn’t happened yet. Anyway, people didn’t come to this side of town looking for a doll. “…if your lease is not paid within twelve days, I’m afraid you cannot remain on the premises.” Twelve days! That was all I had? Could I sell enough dolls in twelve days to pay the lease? Not likely. I went to my workroom and finished sewing the eyes on a small doll. But my heart was not in it. How could I get little girls to come and buy my dolls in this part of town? I couldn’t afford any advertising, so what could I do? I finished the doll’s face and started working on a small dress for her. I studied her face. She seemed like she was happy, so I looked around and found some pink material to make her a light, bouncy dress. Wait a second, I didn’t remember buying any pink material lately, where did that come from? Oh, well. I decided to use it anyway. “You could make a little girl very happy,” I said to either the doll or the air. I worked into the night, thinking all the time about my unpaid lease. Twenty years ago, if I had an unpaid lease, the owner would say, “Pay it as soon as you get it, and don’t worry about it.” Now, it’s “Pay it now, or get tossed in the street.” Many times in the night, I got so deep into my thoughts I didn’t even realize that I was making a doll. When the small dress was nearly done, I still had no solutions. I decided to sleep on it and turned in for the night. I awoke the next morning to the soft singing of a child’s voice. At first I thought it was a bird, but then I heard the sweet words, clear and simple. The singer was definitely young, which puzzled me. What was such a young child doing in this part of town this early in the morning? I decided to find out. I put on my warm bathrobe and went down the stairs to my shop. From the back of the shop I saw a small girl outside the window, completely alone. She had brown hair which curled at the end around her shoulders. She had huge brown eyes, which were too big for her face. She wore a thin, tattered jacket, which was buttoned around her face tightly because she was obviously very cold. She was looking slowly and longingly at each doll in my shop window. And she seemed to like what she saw. I continued from the bottom step and went to the door, picking up the keys on my way. I opened up the door softly so I wouldn’t frighten the little girl. She looked at me with her huge brown eyes. “Hi, would you like to come inside?” I asked her. She nodded in reply. “I’m Sam,” I told her. “What’s your name?” “Heidi,” she said in a voice as sweet as the singing which woke me up. “Were you singing earlier? It sounded beautiful!” I said cheerfully. I got another nod. By now, we were in the shop, and Heidi was looking around at all the dolls. “Do you like dolls?” I asked her. “Yes, they’re my friends,” Heidi said, a little more interested. “Do you know them well?” I asked her curiously. “I come and look at them every day. They like me, and I like them,” she said. “I can see that. They’re my friends, too. I make them,” I said. “Would you like something to eat?” Heidi nodded her head. “O.K., sit down at the table and I’ll fix something. How does French toast sound?” “Yummy!” Heidi replied. “Where do you live?” I asked nicely. Heidi hesitated a little. “We lived in an apartment until last year. My daddy lost his job, though, and we got kicked out. We live in an abandoned car, near 52nd Street, now. My mommy, and my daddy, and I all live there,” Heidi said sadly. “I’m sorry, Heidi. How old are you?” I asked. “Six years old. But my birthday is in two weeks.” I served Heidi her French toast and we ate breakfast together. Heidi ate a lot, and she ate it quickly. “This is soooooooooo good. We haven’t eaten in a while,” Heidi said solemnly. I didn’t know what to say again. “I’m terribly sorry.”And to change
