The Glass Castle (20 page)

All afternoon and into the frigid evening, Avery navigated steep declines and climbed hills that took her breath away. The air was bitter cold, and the stark sky was blanketed with winter-white stars. She wondered a hundred times how the old woman had managed to push the cart so far for so long when Avery could barely put one slippered foot in front of the other.

She would have quit but for the prospect of home and rescuing Henry.

“The road home is always longest,”
her mother had said on countless journeys from the shop or market.

Hours of travel once again felt like days.

By the time she reached the Salt Sea, Avery’s breath came in white puffs, and she felt as if she could sleep for days. Her bones burned from the cold and her feet ached. She regretted not having taken the time to look for her boots back in the bunk room. The cloak weighed a thousand pounds on her shoulders.

She almost regretted leaving the bunk room at all.

She called out to a young man who was about to push off on a bamboo raft. He stopped with a wary scowl.

“May I ride with you to the other side?” she asked.

Skepticism filled his eyes, and Avery wondered if she were wearing her age like a badge. Orphans, according to Kate, were worth handsome bounties from the king. Avery instinctively tucked behind her the wrist marked with the star.

She flashed the thick gold ring on her left hand.

“I’ll give you my wedding band. It’s worth a fortune.”

His eyes widened, and he reached to help her aboard.

As she sat, tucking the cape closer around her, he thrust out his hand as if expecting the ring. But Avery was tired of being swindled, of not knowing whom to trust. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“When we reach shore,” she said. “You have my word.”

And as the raft glided into the sea, Avery finally looked back at the castle for the first time. It looked again to her like a pyramid of gold perched on a pile of puffy clouds. Had she seen the castle from her home in the village, she never would have known what it was.

Its beauty was haunting, but she was glad to leave it and all its painful secrets behind.

When the raft finally reached the other side of the Salt Sea, Avery slipped the ring off her finger, as promised, and handed it to the man, who watched indifferently as she gathered her sack and continued into the night.

“Be careful,” Avery thought she heard the young man whisper as she stepped ashore.

It was too late for that, and home was just a few more miles away.

She couldn’t decide what she would tell her father first, but it was time to choose.

Chapter 30

Attacked

As the hour grew late, Avery wished she had kept at least a morsel of her food—even an apple. She came to a small village where the heavenly fragrance of wood smoke and roasting meat made her stomach ache with emptiness.

Don’t stop.

She pushed through her weakness, forcing herself through deep woods until she slowed at the sight of a horse tied to a tree. Soon she found a man sitting on the back of his wagon eating a loaf of bread. The wagon was overloaded with every imaginable household good.

Maybe he knows Father.

“Hello, dear!” he called, his smile broadening in the lamplight that made his face ghostly white. “Come closer so I can get a better look at you!” He saluted her with a bottle, and Avery could only imagine what he was drinking, certain she could already smell his breath from where she stood.

Maybe her attempt to look older had been more successful than she knew. Still, she didn’t like the way he eyed her.

Keep walking.

“Wait,” the peddler said, his voice kinder. “What do you need? I can help.”

Avery hesitated. She couldn’t deny she was weak from hunger, and despite his slurring speech and the promise of his bitter breath, his smile showed he was perhaps friendly.

She turned slowly. “I could use a bite.”

The man laughed. “I ain’t no cook, little lady, but I can sell you a host o’ pots.” He gestured grandly toward his merchandise.

Avery shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“How about a new dress?”

Avery turned and began walking faster.

She heard him clamber off the wagon and she tried to run, but she was sore and weighed down by the cloak.

He grabbed her and spun her around, bottle still in hand.

“Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you!” he spat, his smile gone. “No woman is allowed to disrespect me, especially one so young.”

The words struck fear to Avery’s heart. If he caught sight of the star on her wrist, he would surely take advantage of the bounty.

“I don’t want any pots,” Avery said evenly, “and I have no money. What good is a penniless girl to a peddler?”

His laugh sent chills up her spine. “You’re wearin’ a dress like that and you have no money? You think I’m a fool?”

He threw back a ragged drink, tossed his bottle aside, and yanked her cape from her neck. The strings bit into her skin before ripping away, and she was sure she was bleeding, though she wouldn’t dare lift her wrist to check.

With his eyes trained on hers, he dug into the pockets and, finding nothing, circled Avery, still clinging to the cloak.

“Now you’ve made me angry,” he whispered.

“Sell the cloak. You’ll make good money on it.”

He grabbed her pillowcase and rummaged through it, making Avery glad for the first time that she did not have her mother’s necklace.

He shoved her toward his wagon and demanded she climb in. Her legs felt like jelly, but she obeyed. What choice did she have?

He followed, made her sit down, and sat across from her. “What’s your name?” he asked.

When she didn’t respond, he grabbed her loosened braid and jerked her head back. Bringing his face to within inches of hers and sending a spray of spittle across her face, he said, “Answer me when I ask you a question, understand?”

Avery nodded her throbbing head, and he let go.

“I know how to make you talk,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He turned and began rummaging through a wooden box, and Avery could only imagine what he was after.
A knife? A rope? Worse?

She wasn’t about to sit there and find out. It was now or never. She leapt over the side of the wagon, landing hard on her hands and knees.

As she scrambled to her feet, she saw the man’s discarded bottle gleaming in the moonlight and she grabbed it.

“You’re a dead girl!” he raged as he staggered to the side of the wagon, the shining blade of a jeweled dagger proof of his promise. He slung one leg over and then the other. Just as his boot reached the ground and he began to pivot, Avery leaned forward and smashed the bottle against the back of his head with all of her might, and he slumped against the wagon and onto the ground in a heap.

For a second Avery stood paralyzed.

She waited for him to stand and come after her, but the man didn’t make a sound.

She couldn’t risk his coming to, so she gathered up her cape and pillowcase and turned to leave. Then she had another idea. Quickly and carefully she moved to stand over the man’s body. His eyes were wide and staring.

Her breath came fast and shallow.

She reached down and slid the jeweled dagger out of his hand.

This might be useful.

Dropping the dagger in her pillowcase, she untied the man’s horse—now dancing on the spot—pulled herself onto its back, dug her heels into its flanks, and never looked back.

Cold, tired, hungry, none of that mattered anymore. Reuniting with her father—and hopefully Henry—and spending the night in her own bed drove her on.

No punishment would be worse than this night.

She stopped twice for directions—once in a tiny cluster of peasants’ huts and once at a camp of tents—before she recognized her surroundings and knew she was finally close to home.

Nothing had ever felt so good.

She slowed the horse to a trot as she emerged from the woods and reached the edge of the field that separated her from her house—small and plain and glowing against the dark sky.

Stopping, Avery threw her legs over the side and slid to the ground. She tied the horse to a tree and started across the field alone, eager to enjoy every step. She wanted to move faster than her aching body allowed her to go.

Wind whipped through the tall grass and blew her hair around her face. She glanced up at the smoke puffing from the chimney until she stood only a few feet from her front door.

A light drew her to her bedroom window, so she went and peered inside, having dreamed of this moment since she had been snatched from the woods.

Her room was nearly the same as she had left it. It was messier than she remembered, but her brown everyday dress still lay crumpled on the floor, her copy of
Jane Eyre
splayed on the tiny desk beside her bed.

But then she saw the most curious thing.

Someone lay sleeping in her bed. And it wasn’t her father or brother.

Chapter 31

Flight

All Avery wanted was to fall into her father’s arms and to know that Henry was safe, then sleep till noon in the warmth of her own bed.

And now this.

A dirty man is drooling on my pillow!

She tiptoed back to the front of the cottage, frantic to stay in the shadows, and peered in the window. Six strange men sat at the kitchen table in her family’s chairs and ate from her mother’s best dishes.

Her father would’ve called them “dodgy,” these men with dirty hands and faces, beards long and unkempt. They ate fast and chewed with their mouths open—food spilling onto their clothes—and one, as soon as he was finished, flung his bowl against the wall. It shattered, prompting the others to burst into raucous belly laughs.

Instinctively, she reached into her pillowcase and retrieved the dagger.

With her back against the house and the dagger at her side, she inched along the home’s exterior slowly. Step by nerve-racking step, she prayed that what she found behind the house would confirm her greatest hope and not verify her worst fear.

But when she reached the back of the house, her heart sank and her breath caught in her throat.