Cassie Binegar by Patricia MacLachlan Page B

writing.”
    â€œWriting, dear Cass,” said the writer, “is only one part of living, you know. Would you deny me the pleasures of bird life, snacks, nature, the world, and the pleasure of your company?”
    â€œWere you ever a teacher?” asked Cassie abruptly.
    The writer laughed. “You can tell, eh?” He disappeared inside the cottage and Cassie stood by the door, looking at the litter. There were books and papers, one paper nearly falling off the table. Cassie stepped gingerly over a pile of books and walked, tiptoe, through a paper path. There was a soft crunching noise under her foot, and she looked down to see a splintered yellow pencil.
    The writer came in from the kitchen, then, managing to carry two cups and a kettle of hot water.
    â€œWe’ll have to share a tea bag,” he announced, speaking strangely because the tag end of the tea bag was in his mouth.
    Cassie hated tea. Not hated, actually. She found it dull and horrible and in need of something such as four teaspoons of sugar. Somehow, though, the idea of sharing a tea bag with the writer made it sound more interesting. Almost intimate. Or exotic. He put down the cups and the teapot on a pile of papers, and Cassie looked around. There was a small leftover fire smouldering in the fireplace. She got up and went to stand there, feeling the sudden warmth on her legs. She looked up to the mantel, where there was a cup filled with feathers. The feathers, Cassie observed, did not belong to chickadees or goldfinches or any other birds that Cassie knew of. She frowned and turned around.
    â€œShe must be shedding,” said Cassie curtly. “She’s losing all her feathers.”
    The writer smiled. “Molting, I think the word is,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Actually, I would prefer to call it emerging.”
    â€œEmerging?” asked Cassie.
    The writer poured the tea into two cups and nodded, leaning back in his writing chair, looking for all the world as if he knew everything. Cassie sat down and put her hands around the warm teacup.
    â€œWe all”—he peered at Cassie—“you, too, do a lot of emerging. Like butterflies. Like moths from cocoons. Sometimes we don’t even know we’re doing it.”
    â€œHow can we do that?” asked Cassie, spooning a fifth teaspoon of sugar into her tea that was too strong. “I mean without knowing it.”
    The writer drank some tea, making a loud slurping noise, and they laughed.
    â€œWell, you emerged from babyhood into childhood hardly even thinking about it, didn’t you?” he asked.
    Cassie thought a moment. “That’s true, I guess,” she said slowly. “I did run away once,” she added.
    He nodded. “Me, too. When I was a child, that is. It gets a bit harder to run away when you’re older. So sometimes we build cocoons around us and linger inside awhile.”
    Cassie leaned back in her chair and thought about her tablecloth and the door under the back stairs and being up in trees looking down. She remembered her mother’s words to Coralinda when Cassie had hidden. There was something here she didn’t understand but almost did. Like remembering only half of a joke or only the beginning of a story. And it all had to do with feathers and wearing hats and saying rhymes. And hiding, and inside and outside. And emerging.
    â€œWhy is it,” said Cassie, peering over her teacup, “that I like to hear what you say even though I don’t understand what you’re saying at all?”
    The writer laughed, and so did Cassie. And the two of them sat and sipped terrible tea in silence until the sun had slipped down past the dunes.

12
Catching Snow
    â€œH AVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE, Margaret Mary?” asked Cassie. She never took her eyes off the rowboat in the inlet and the two figures in the boat.
    â€œCertainly,” said Margaret Mary. She slurped a sour ball, moving it from one