She went to the Houselands, looking through the sticks for Olaf. She didn't feel comfortable around some of the new neighbors. Some distant relatives, but mostly strangers were coming over from the Old Country more and more frequently. Most of them were average, really. To tell the truth it was just Mrs. Pithiviers. Everyone liked her but she made Alba feel like she was being cut up into little nasty bits every time Mrs. Pithiviers looked at her with that smile full of teeth.
“I don't like her,” the New Boy had agreed.
Alba suspected he was just saying it out of solidarity, but then he said, “Her house isn't really candy, no matter what she tells them, and she knows that. She is bad.”
So Alba had gone out... She'd invited the New Boy, even invited him to Mr Schonberg's store for ices, but he said he had something important to do that day. Lately that meant elaborate constructions of bed frame parts, tin cans and pillows attached together with colored yarn in the basement.
So Alba had gone out.
She wished she hadn't. She cried when she thought about it that night in the basement. But she had, and she couldn't change that, and there it was.
When she came back there was screaming.
You could see the smoke for miles... Frau Holda and Kacper were struggling with something, dragging it away from the barn on the far side and beating a fire out with blankets. Jacob was yelling orders to everyone, directing buckets of water to the barn. Irenka and the children were helping to carry water. The Cats were everywhere, jumping underfoot and looking scared, lost. One had lost some hair.
Alba ran up to the barn but the heat was too intense and she fell back... “Where is Muselon?” she yelled to Jacob, but he didn't know.
Someone was running across the yard with a full bucket of water and their foot kicked a wooden toy car. Alba froze...
“Where is Boy?” she said, mostly to herself. Alba turned around looking for him but couldn't see him and she screamed it again. Ethel, the nice lady from down the road was there with a sudden hand on her shoulder. She pointed and Alba followed her gesture to Kacper, as Alba realized with horror what he and Holda had been dragging from the barn.
She ran up to them and at first Boy seemed right... he was talking, but he was covered in soot and his skin looked dry as kindling.
“I saved Cadejo for you,” Boy said, talking about a bundle of rags he clutched against himself. As Alba knelt down, something wriggled out of the rags and barked. It was a dog, and it licked Alba's face.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
The Boy looked at her with something like relief ... maybe a little pride, “You can really see him?”
“Don't talk, just rest” Kacper told him, still propping him up as he lay in the grass and making sure he was getting enough sun.
“What happened?” She asked Holda.
“She did it,” Boy tried to point to the barn but the hand which had held Cadejo was burnt black. As he raised his hand it snapped off at the wrist and the arm split, groaning, cracking. Ethel screamed, Cadejo barked, Holda whispered to her dead mother and Alba stared in shock. Kacper pulled him up, wrapping a rag tightly around the arm. He said they needed to get inside the house. Alba saw him step on the hand, crushing it into cinder and ash in the grass. She screamed insensibly for him to stop. She tried to gather the parts together but as she touched each piece it burst into ashes, staining her fingers black with soot.
“No, dear...” said Holda, taking her shoulders, “It's all right.” her voice was uncertain, as if talking through her thoughts, “He's not a real boy yet. We have some of the cedar left... It could be fresh enough, we can make him another hand...”
“Yes,” Ethel nodded in appraisal, “His craft is old, but I should be able to help... I may have something back at the house.” She left to get supplies.
Mrs. Pithiviers was in the distance, talking through her grief in circles to Jacob, something about filling her lantern oil. No one was really listening. Alba locked gaze with her red, tear-stained eyes and saw the concern fall away like a mask, “...if only someone had been watching him... maybe then...” She was an image of piety and sorrow as she put a hand back to Jacob's shoulder and commanded his attention anew.
"She hates me because I know it's not candy,” Boy said as they carried him in a blanket.
“Shush” Holda told him, “no one hates you.” He said he was thirsty.
Holda and Ethel worked on him into the night. Jacob brought some tools from the shed after the barn was put out. They never did find Muselon or any part of her. “She went through the window, ” Boy had said, but he had been in and out of consciousness since the sun went down. Alba went down into the basement with Cadejo, and discovered Boy had taken the legs from her old brass baby bed, making it into a dog bed. Cans of food were attached by bits of colored yarn. A note read, “Blue is for Tuesdays.”
“Oh! I want a lobster claw!” she heard Boy holler upstairs. The others alternated between telling him he was being very brave and listing things that a five fingered hand could do better than a claw.
Alba had checked on him, but couldn't bring herself to stay up there right now. She sat down, fed Cadejo, and cried a little while brushing soot from her dress.
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