Margaret and the Moth Tree by Brit Trogen, Kari Trogen Page B

tiniest hints of sound.
    At first it was only by closing her eyes and holding very still that she was able to do it perfectly. But late at night when everyone else was asleep, she practiced, and soon even with her eyes open or her hands busy at chores, she could focus her ears as easily as anything.
    And the more she focused, the more she heard.
    One evening, just as dusk was falling, Margaret was kneeling in the vegetable patch in the yard behind the orphanage. But rather than feeling lonesome and sad as she yanked spiky weeds from the rows of tomato plants, she was focusing her attention on her ears.
    A hummingbird hovered nearby, and she heard each whir of its tiny wings.
    A mole crawled by under the ground, and she heard its breath puff in and out.
    A breeze blew across a clump of dandelions, and she heard each fluffy seed break off and float away on the wind.
    â€œWake up!” cried a very small voice.
    Margaret looked up in surprise, wondering who had spoken, but no one was there.
    â€œCome on, Pip, or we’ll start without you!” cried the voice.
    Margaret got to her feet and whirled around.
    At the back of the vegetable patch was a trellis fence grown over with snap peas, and it was from this direction that the voice had come.
    There was nothing behind the trellis, Margaret knew. Only a stretch of overgrown grass and the row of bushes that marked the end of the orphanage grounds. Unlike the front of the property, which was kept neatly trimmed and pruned to impress visitors, this part of the yard wasn’t tended at all, since no one ever bothered to go there.
    Margaret peered through a gap in the trellis, and sure enough, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
    â€œI’m coming!” called a new tiny voice.
    â€œHello?” cried Margaret. The voice sounded as though it must be right in front of her. “Who’s there?”
    But in that moment, Margaret had lost her focus, and her ears had closed up again as though someone had snapped a pair of earmuffs over them. Listen as she might, she didn’t hear the mysterious voices again.
    CHAPTER 14 The Thorny Brush
    Later that night, after Margaret had finished her chores and collapsed in her chilly bed in the hallway, she could think of nothing but the two strange voices.
    The only people who could hear voices from nowhere, she had been brought up to believe, were people who’d gone a bit dotty in the head. But Margaret didn’t feel any more dotty than usual. And as she lay there, tossing and turning in the cold, she realized something.
    Quite accidentally, Miss Switch had given her an opportunity.
    Now that her bed was separate from the others, there was no one around to see her come and go. There was no creaking bedroom door to alert the Pets. And there was no reason she could think of not to return to the yard to seek out the voices once again.
    As everyone else lay sleeping, Margaret threw off her covers and laced up her shoes. She tiptoed from her bed and crept down the hallway, past the Pets’ door and down the stairs. She crept through the kitchen and, very quietly, let herself out through the back door. Then she waited, wondering if anyone would come chasing after her to snatch her back inside. When no one did, she ran out into the moonlit yard.
    Margaret ran through the garden, passing patches of carrots and turnips, all the way to the trellis fence with its trailing pea vines. But this time, she went around it. When she came to the other side, she felt her heart beat a little faster.
    She was standing on the overgrown lawn on the other side of the trellis. Before her, a cool wind was blowing through the tall grass, and at the far end of the lawn, a tangle of bushes rose up in shadow.
    â€œHello?” she called, walking slowly forward.
    All she could hear was the wind in the grass.
    The bushes were gray in the moonlight, twisted and thorny and rather frightening. They had been left to grow wild for so long that they had