Wildcat Fireflies by Amber Kizer Read Free Book Online Page B

started blowing these. They gravitate to them. But you, you reflect the light, refract and radiate it; you glow. These balls luster in your presence.”
    “It’s warm,” Tens whispered to me.
    I reached out and cradled the ball in my palms. “Like a heartbeat.”
    Tens nodded.
    “Did you notice? It was like strings of Christmas lights being plugged in when you arrived outside the shop,” Rumi added.
    “Is that how you knew?” I asked.
    “Like an early warning system. That’s the first time. But I’ve been collecting anecdotes from other artists. There are multitudes of bits and pieces going back to Rome,China, and further, to the beginning of the art form itself. So are you?”
    “Are we what?”
    “A Window Light? An angel? Good Death? And a Guardsman?”

As she grows inside me, I wonder if I’ll see her grown to adulthood. Can we hide here indefinitely? Am I far enough away to be safe? Or will they come?
    —R .
CHAPTER 5
Juliet
    M y favorite bedroom at DG faced east, so it filled each dawn with early-morning sunlight. The walls, swathed in a pale green wallpaper, reminded me of a cross between photographs of the Caribbean Sea and mint chocolate chip ice cream. We called it the Green Room. All the rooms had names.
    When I first arrived, before I knew any better, I thought the Green Room would be my bedroom. Then I learned thetruth. Kids slept in the old servants’ quarters in the attic, under the eaves. It was all very Grimm.
    The bedroom furniture was slick glossy white, distressed shabby chic at first glance, simply shabby upon further inspection. Yellowing lace curtains hung on the floor-to-ceiling windows, and faded Degas ballerina prints, their edges curling, adorned the walls. The bed was a lovely double with four posts curved like balustrades. I slept in that bed for three nights years ago; Mr. Draper slept there for the moment. At least until he died.
    A little desk for schoolwork and an enormous antique dollhouse were both pushed into a back corner. I dusted them, but no one played or did homework there. It was all for show.
    My clothes were not stored in the armoire, nor folded in any of the bureau drawers. My stuff lived in the secondhand suitcase I arrived with.
    The Train Room was decorated for little boys, with a twelve-car train that used to run around the ceiling, but now languished, gathering dust. The Horse Room’s wall mural of hilly pastures and colts frolicking with their mothers seemed particularly cruel to all of us without parents. The Blue Room was decked out in enchanted undersea decor. And the Woods Room was done up like a rain forest of flora and fauna.
    All six of the “kid” bedrooms were technically assigned to an inmate, but we weren’t allowed to settle into any of them. The decoration was purely for the sake of appearances: a stranger might think we were very well cared for and DG met all the requirements of the law. At night, though, the kidspiled on top of each other, in sleeping bags in the attic. In the winters, we used smuggled-in electric blankets and space heaters that broke house rule number four. Mistress never came up here, and freezing to death was appealing only to some of us. We’d learned long ago, and often the hard way, that appearances deceived.
    When our social worker, Ms. Asura, came, we were not allowed to tell her about the rooms or much of anything. If we mentioned the sleeping situation, Mistress wove elaborate tales about an overflow of elderly patients, not lasting more than a day or so. Ms. Asura never asked to see the attic or the bedrooms. She might pull out an official-looking form and caution us to be certain we wanted to file a complaint. If anyone ever did, I didn’t know. Fear was stagnating, paralyzing, and we were trapped here.
    Sometimes, when I sat by the bedside of the elderly, I wondered if any of the guests thought they were back in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at trains and stuffed animals and trappings of innocence. Most