twenty-two

The next day, after Sylva and Poppy had told all their friends the story of the pirates (which got better every time they told it), they pulled out the dollhouse again.

“Poppy, let’s just say the whole dollhouse is both of ours,” said Sylva, smiling, “upstairs and downstairs. And Lucky is your kitten, who’ll live at your house—but I’ll visit all the time!”

“Are you sure that’s fair?”

“Fair and square to share,” said Sylva.

“We still haven’t decorated the whole house,” said Poppy. “Why don’t we move this rug out of the bedroom into the kitchen?”

“Wait a minute,” said Sylva. “What’s under here? Looks like there’s a crack in the floor.” She carefully lifted up the rug. “That’s not a crack,” she said. “That’s a secret door!”

Carefully, cautiously, Sylva opened the secret trapdoor. “This must be the dolls’ root cellar,” she said. “What’s down here?”

And then she saw it. A tiny bundle of ginger fur lying in a patch of sunlight. “Oh, Poppy! It’s another doll kitten.”

“Another kitten!”

“Do you think it will come to life, Poppy? Like Lucky did? Or is it just a doll kitten forever?” Didn’t Queen Mab say something about a ginger cat? Sylva thought.

“We took Lucky out into the sun,” said Poppy. “Let’s do that with—”

“—with Ginger,” said Sylva.

They took the tiny little furry kitten into the sun. “This is exactly what we did with Lucky,” said Sylva. “We were walking over toward the sparkly stone. And then there was a breeze—” Sylva’s hair blew gently across her face.

“A breeze like this one!” said Poppy.

“And then a ray of light, like a rainbow,” said Sylva. “And then . . .”

“Mew!”

Turns out Ginger was a real cat, too.