Willa gazed at the ground that day, she noticed something odd. Poking up from the ash and blackened debris was a shiny white shape. A stone? Willa knelt down and ran her hand over it. It seemed to be made of wood and was rooted firmly in the ground. Looking around, she realized that there were a dozen others, just the same, all in a straight line.
“Miss Trang? What are these?” Miss Trang looked over.
“It’s the house coming up,” she said simply.
“The house? Coming up? Like a plant?”
“Yes, naturally. The house is rebuilding itself.”
Willa stared down at the white nubs, like a row of teeth.
“How long does it take?”
Miss Trang shrugged and gazed up at the sky. “Depends how much rain we get.”
Willa blinked. This was too much. She glanced at the house next door and saw a curtain drop in the dining room window. Their neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Hacker, were always on the watch for unusual behaviour to complain about.
“But Miss Trang, shouldn’t we hide it?” Miss Trang looked blankly at her for a moment, but Willa persisted, pointing at the Hackers’ house. “People will see. A house growing out of the ground isn’t exactly normal.”
Miss Trang seemed to snap back to the present. She nodded and looked around. “Yes, of course. We must provide some kind of cover.”
“A big fence so people can’t see in,” suggested Willa. “But if the house is going up, everyone’s going to expect there to be workers and equipment.”
Miss Trang nodded again. “I will see about bringing in builders. They can hurry things along here and provide a cover.”
“Could it be soon?” pressed Willa. “Belle and Baz … well … our house is reeeally small.” She looked pleadingly at Miss Trang, who suddenly smiled.
“I will call in the builders. Don’t worry so much, Willa. Everything will be fine.”
The bathroom door opened abruptly, and Willa fell into the bathroom. “Excuse me,” barked Belle, as she rolled her wheelchair to her room. Willa hauled herself to her feet and looked in the bathroom mirror. Tired eyes and frizzy hair, the frizz not helped by frequent applications of hair dye. Her mom, who waged eternal war on her own grey hairs with the stuff, was determined to obliterate the mysterious silver streak that had appeared in Willa’s hair after the business at the house. Willa squinted intently at her reflection. She had to admit the dye was doing its job; her hair looked totally normal again. Across the hall, Belle’s door slammed shut. Then her mom slammed the front door, and the house was silent. Totally normal.
Willa had to hurry to make it to school, but she still managed a detour, biking around by the manor. Still no sign of builders. She hoped Miss Trang hadn’t forgotten. In the park she spotted Tengu. He had found some new friends, a bunch of seniors who met every morning to do tai chi. Tengu saw her going past and broke out of the slow and graceful motions to wave frantically and hop up and down. Willa laughed. At least Tengu was enjoying himself and staying out of trouble.
She dashed in the front doors of the school just as the bell rang. As unreal as it seemed after the summer she’d had, Willa was again plodding up and down these dreary hallways, fighting to stay awake in class, and struggling to hold a simple conversation with her friends. Kate, Flora, and Nicole had been away all summer, and all they knew was that Willa had some awful job in an old folks’ home, there’d been a big fire, and now she was too serious and no fun at all. For her part, Willa thought her friends were too unserious, too giggly, too obsessed with TV shows and gossip. She didn’t know what to talk about with them anymore. When they were together she found herself staring into space, her mind elsewhere.
But that was another worry that Willa pushed to the back of her mind. So she didn’t have real friends any more. So what. She wasn’t all that certain she had time for them anyway.
In History class, Kate passed a note to her, something gossipy about another girl in their class. Willa was squinting at the scribble, trying to care, when she heard a tap-tap-tap on the window. She glanced over to see Tengu’s anxious face in the window. The third-storey window. He gestured urgently. Good grief, what now?
She asked to go to the washroom, where she slid open a window and stuck her head out. Tengu was in a tree, and when he spotted her he scrambled out on a limb and leaped and swung his way from tree to tree until he reached her window. It was quite impressive, actually. Willa was always surprised at what the little man could do. He landed in front of her, unleashing a torrent of words, including “They’ve come!” and “Ruckus” and “Robert!”
“Who’s come?”
“The builders!”
Uh-oh, thought Willa. A ruckus involving Robert was not good. Robert had a hot temper, and since he was a full-sized centaur it was hard enough keeping him out of sight without him going on a rampage. Willa did her best to calm Tengu down and promised to meet him at the house. He scampered down the tree, and she shut the window. Now I have to skip the rest of the afternoon. Terrific. Mom is going to love this.
When she arrived at the house, there was indeed a ruckus. She heard the bangs and shouts a block away. Tengu greeted her in the front yard, hopping from one foot to the other with anxious amusement. “Good, you’re here. Just in time. Hoo, boy! Robert’s gone crazy!”
Willa dropped her bike on the lawn. “Is Miss Trang here?”
Tengu shook his head. “Important meeting. Gone for a few days.”
Just then there was a mighty roar, and Robert appeared in the stable doorway, a slightly overweight, balding old man in a cardigan … with a horse’s body and legs. He ducked his head to come outside, but Willa and Tengu dashed up to stop him.
“Robert! You can’t come out here! Someone will see you!” Willa hissed. They tried to push him back, but he planted his hooves in the doorway and wouldn’t budge, his eyes blazing in outrage.
“I am NOT sharing my lodgings, as squalid as they are, with these nasty, smelly oafs!” he snarled.
“Robert! Calm down! We need them to rebuild the house!”
“I don’t care! They can stay somewhere else!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Willa saw Mrs. Hacker peering out her window. If Robert took one more step, she’d be able to see him.
“Get — a — grip, Robert! They CAN’T stay anywhere else!”
Willa and Tengu pushed again, and this time Robert stepped back into the darkness of the stable. Willa and Tengu followed, slamming the stable door behind them. There was a sudden fluttering around their heads. Willa instinctively raised her hands to swat, only to receive a couple of sharp nips.
“Ouch! Hey!”
A
