Chapter 11

It was Christmas Eve.

“Do you want to come with me to choose the Christmas tree?” Dad asked Tilly at breakfast time. “Soon as I get back from shopping?”

“Yes please,” Tilly said. Inside her, a little bubble of happiness was growing. There was no school because of the holidays, and they were going to have Christmas at home, and Mom was going to come downstairs and have a bed on the sofa, so she could be there too. Tilly had made a list of presents she wanted, because Dad was having to do all the shopping and getting-ready-for-Christmas things without Mom this year.

Once Dad had gone off to town, Tilly went upstairs.

Mom was awake, propped up against the pillows. She smiled at Tilly. “What are you going to do today, Til?”

“I’m making more things for the dollhouse. Pictures for the walls and some rugs and things for the bedroom, and a tiny Christmas stocking.”

“Why don’t you bring it all in here?” Mom said. “We can chat while you’re busy working.”

Tilly brought Mom’s sewing basket upstairs. She pulled out odds and ends of fabric. Mom helped her choose which pieces would be best for each thing. She showed Tilly how to sew tiny, neat stitches to hem the edges so they didn’t fray.

“How will you make the pictures for the walls?” Mom asked. “Maybe you could cut things out of a magazine, or print some tiny pictures off the computer.”

“I’m going to draw them,” Tilly said. “I want them to be like the old pictures that belonged to this house.”

“Miss Sheldon’s pictures?”

“Yes.”

Tilly had worked it all out. She had found some thin pieces of wood that she could cut to the right size and colored pencils to draw with. It was tricky, making it all tiny enough to fit the dollhouse.

“I’ve got some gold pens somewhere,” Mom said. “You could make the edges look like old-fashioned gold frames. Take a look in the bottom drawer in that chest under the window.”

Tilly pulled out the heavy drawer. It smelled musty and old and delicious. She found the pens and some thin brushes and paints which would be perfect, and more fabrics and thick paper in rolls. “It’s your artist’s drawer!” Tilly laughed.

“It’s my secret box of delights!” Mom said.

“You could do some drawing in bed,” Tilly said. “I’ll get everything for you, so you can just stay there.”

Mom looked sad. “My head hurts too much, Tilly. I need some sleep, really. But you can stay here quietly working if you like, until Dad gets back.”

Choosing a tree was one of the best things ever, Tilly thought. The courtyard at the back of the garden center was filled with trees, like a strange forest. It smelled of Christmas: pine and spice and something she couldn’t quite name.

“We can have a tall tree for the first time ever,” Dad said. “What with our high ceilings and all.”

But Tilly had already found the one she wanted: a small tree with perfectly balanced branches, dark green needles, and a straight tip at the top which would be just right for hanging the star. “This is the one,” she said.

It was already dark when they got home. Tilly went through the house, switching on the lights in all the rooms while Dad went out to the garden shed to search for a pot for the tree to stand in.

“I’ll go and find the decorations,” Dad said. “They’ll be in the attic in one of those boxes.”

Usually, it was Mom and Tilly who decorated the tree together, and Mom put on her CD of Christmas carols to make it feel special, and for Tilly it was the magical moment when Christmas really started.

After supper, while Dad did the washing up, Tilly went back to the living room. The tree was standing there, bare and mysterious. For just a second, Tilly thought how beautiful it was without any decorations at all. She opened the box and took out the first ornaments, and the star, and the birds made of feathers, which had been a present from Granny one year, and started to hang them on the branches. She hung up the glass bell; it tinkled when she touched it and swung softly, like a real bell. She unwrapped the tissue around the old glass ornaments, silver and pink and gold, which had been handed down, one generation to the next, from Nana and Granny to Mom and Dad. She hung them all up, so they spun and shone in the light. Last of all she fished the tree lights out of the bottom of the box and draped them around in a spiral, like Mom usually did.

Tilly turned off all the lights except the ones on the tree. Shadows moved across the wall, tracing the shape of the branches. Tilly sat on the sofa and breathed in the smell of pine forest. She shivered with excitement.

At bedtime, Tilly hung up her Christmas stocking at the bottom of her bed. She knelt down and opened up the dollhouse so she could put the tiny stocking she had made earlier on the end of the pink bed cover in the girl’s bedroom. She straightened one of the tiny gold-framed pictures she’d hung up earlier in the day, her favorite one, the portrait of the girl with long hair. She closed the dollhouse door and set the china dog/fox back in his place outside.

Tilly climbed into bed and snuggled under the blanket. Her feet were cold. Mom and Dad’s voices drifted along the landing, rising and falling as they talked to each other. She heard Dad go downstairs to the kitchen.

It was so hard to get to sleep. She got out of bed again and went to the window. It was too dark to see anything; the moon had not yet risen. She thought she heard the bark of the fox. It was as if it was calling her…come out…come and see the garden this magical Christmas night…

She climbed back into bed. She turned her pillow over to find a cool place for her hot head. She wished Little Fox were here, soft against her cheek. She thought about the fox and the garden and the mysterious girl…and as she drifted toward sleep at last, she was already dreaming…