The Edge of Strange Hollow by Gabrielle Byrne (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

at her sides. “I never want to see you again! Don’t ever come back!”

She was a fair distance ahead when she realized Mack wasn’t with her. She spun around with his name on her lips, and froze. He was standing across the path from Nula, saying something. Nula was nodding.

“Mack!” she shouted. He scowled at her, patted Nula’s arm, then turned slowly and walked away from her.

When he caught up, Poppy folded her arms. “Good! I’m glad she’s gone. Why are you even talking to her? Dog’s gone because of her.”

Mack arched one eyebrow. “No. Not really.”

“What do you mean, not really. If it wasn’t for her…”

“I told you, Pop. The Faery Queen would have found a way. She just used Nula—because she was lonely and because she knew they had something Nula wanted.”

“Right.” She scoffed. “They had something she wanted … like what? Fancy parties and pretty outfits?”

Mack raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what she wanted, Poppy. She wanted to be a part of something—and she thought it would, I don’t know, make her better?”

“Well, too bad! She’s not better! And now she’s alone again!”

“She’s a lot like you, Pop.”

“What? How can you even say that right now?”

Mack didn’t answer but considered her for a moment. “Anger is like acid.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mack leaned against a tree. “That’s what Ma tells me when I get angry. She says, anger is like acid. It takes all the shine off things, and eats at what’s underneath. She says we should treat it like sour milk.”

Poppy turned around, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Sour … milk?”

“Yeah.”

Poppy waited for him to explain.

He didn’t.

“Okay, fine. How do you treat anger like sour milk?”

He grinned at her. “I knew you couldn’t stand not knowing.” He pushed himself away from the tree. “You treat anger like sour milk by pouring it out. Getting rid of it.”

“I’d like to pour sour milk on her.”

He pulled a face. “I think you just did.”

“Seriously, Mack. Don’t I have a right to be angry?”

“Of course! I’m angry too. Just … not at Nula. Nula didn’t take Dog. She knows that lying to us was wrong … you can see that she feels it.”

Poppy crossed her arms. “I think your mom’s wrong, Mack. Anger’s not like sour milk. Anger is a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?” he asked, catching up with her.

“A reminder of who to let close, and who to stay away from. A reminder that someone caused you pain.”

“But then … don’t you ever forgive someone?”

She frowned at him. “I don’t know if I can. I just know I want to yell at her more and that I’m not going to give up being angry until I’m good and done being angry.”

They fell silent for a while. A woodpecker knocked against a tree in the distance. Poppy listened to the sound of their breathing as they hurried toward her house.

Mack nose-sighed, next to her. “Well, it looks like there’s a storm rolling in, and at least there will be something in your pantry besides berries, tentaculars, and stale bread.”

She rubbed her hands together. “We’ll eat. And then we’ll make a plan to get my parents. For real this time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Poppy wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when they first opened the front door—using the spare key hidden in the toad hole under the edge of the house—but she had been expecting something. Leaving home and breaking her blood ward to wander the Grimwood should have made her different. Really different. The kind of different you could see all over the place.

Maybe she had expected to feel stronger. Or perhaps she had expected to be bigger than she used to be … though bigger in what way, she wasn’t sure. At least she had expected to be bigger than all the things that she had always needed but never had.

She was a lot more sad and angry, but Poppy didn’t feel any different—not really. She had pushed open the door to her house and stepped through into the hall—looked at the wall full of all her lonely portraits and … just felt like herself.

She knew more. That was certain. And she’d lost more too. But she was still just Poppy.

The quiet of the house was salt in a fresh wound. There was no Dog to greet her with great galumphing leaps. Jute had promised he would return, but she didn’t know when, and without him worrying over her, the homecoming didn’t feel real. And—though she should have been used to it by now—there were no parents puttering in the lab up on the third floor or slinking up the stairs from the kitchen with bed head and snacks.

It was home, but at the same time it wasn’t. And she was Poppy … but at the same time she wasn’t. She was something in between who she used to be, and who she was supposed to become—the Poppy she had expected. It made her head spin.

Everything was still and empty, except for the dust motes floating through sunbeams, and the creak of the floor. Those were familiar. Her portraits stared back at her, and they all looked younger than she remembered. That was different. She had only been gone a few days, but she felt older.

“Are you okay?” Mack asked.

She was about to answer him with a shrug and a nod, but she paused, the truth springing to her lips before her brain could hide the words. “I’m not sure,” she said.

They stood, looking at her portraits, until at last Poppy asked, “Do I … seem different to you?”

Mack scratched his head. “Different—how?”

“I don’t know … just … different.”

“You mean, from going into the Grimwood?”

“Yeah. I mean, shouldn’t I be like—” She grimaced. “I don’t know. Shouldn’t I be different, or—just—bigger or something?”

“Bigger? Humans don’t usually grow that fast … do they? I mean elves have big unexpected growth surges, and so do giants. Actually, lots of the wood folk—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, do you feel different?” Mack asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Mack shrugged. “Well, when I first