The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom by Leah Cutter Read Free Book Online

after dinner, calling her bad luck. Her mom sat at the
computer, still working. Nora was on her own. She looked mournfully around her
room. Only a few stuffed animals sat on the shelf above her bed—a white
tiger, a fox, and the teddy bear Grandpa Lewis had made her. She’d left behind
most of her books, as well as her yarn. When Mom had told her to they had to
leave, Nora had grabbed needles instead.
    If Nora had been home, with her friends, she might have gone
to the coffee shop on the corner with them for a juice or for ice cream. Or
they would have talked on the phone about the last day of school, the cute boy
who sat next to Nora in homeroom, anything and everything. Tonight, she
wandered through her room, not sure what to do with herself.
    Nora picked up her beloved Franken-sweater off the floor. It
told a journey, to her. The chest, over the heart, was part of the first
sweater she’d ever knit, a reminder of where she’d started, complete with
uneven stitches and messed-up pattern. She wasn’t quite up to Grandmother Lily’s
level: Entrelac knitting intimidated her, as did
quite a few lace patterns. She called herself a solid intermediate knitter, but
someday she’d be advanced.
    Because summer break was so close, none of Nora’s teachers
had assigned serious homework. She decided to work on one of her projects
instead. She pulled all five of her knitting bags out of the closet and threw
them onto the bed, arranging them in a semi-circle in front of her, like a
magic circle of crafting. The bedspread she sat on, also made by Grandma Lily,
had a Mariner’s star quilted into it. Nora deliberately sat in the center of
the star. She opened the first bag and sniffed deeply: fine wool still coated
in lanolin. Then she put it away and pulled out the shawl she was making for
her mother’s birthday, out of a beautiful variegated Japanese wool. The pattern
itself was a series of swirling hexagons. Once Nora had figured out the pattern—that
the rows were grouped in threes, not twos—it had become much easier.
    Still, Nora now finished off only a single hexagon. She didn’t
want to risk her mom walking in and seeing it.
    Feeling buoyed up by the rich colors of the shawl, Nora attacked
her next project. She was making a sweater in the round for her teddy bear. The
small size meant not many stitches, so the project went quickly. However, the
raglan sleeves weren’t setting straight.
    Nora knit two more rounds, easing and adjusting, before she
finally decided it was never going to work. Grinning, she slid the circular
needles out and started to pull apart her work.
    “You’re demented, you know,” Dale told her from the doorway.
    In response, Nora began pulling out the yarn more
dramatically, her hand rising from her lap to over her head with each tug.
    Dale rolled his eyes and went back to his room.
    Nora laughed quietly. He didn’t get it. Neither did Mom.
None of her old friends from home had, either. She was still searching for
someone who did, who understood the greatest secret of all: The power to
destroy was almost as great as the ability to Make.
    ***
    Dale didn’t understand Nora’s fascination with the beach. It
was just a strip of sand, really, with the ocean on one side and a rocky cliff
on the other. You couldn’t go swimming—the water was too cold and rough.
No one else ever visited while they were there. Even the gulls disdained their
beach; not enough prey, Dale guessed.
    The wind pushed at Dale as he trudged down the rock trail,
blowing his carefully styled hair into his eyes. Nora just tied hers up in a
lopsided bun. Only one more day of school left, a half-day. They’d be out by
noon. Kind of weird that school ended on a Tuesday, but Dale wasn’t going to
complain.
    Nora had talked Dale into helping her collect rocks and
shiny debris thrown onto the shore by the waves. She took his pieces and placed
them in the sand, creating a picture. First came the outlining circle, then
three anchor