The Feral Child by Che Golden Page B

turned a blind eye for years,” she said. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

Chapter Seven
    Maddy sulked and stomped about the house all day, refusing to speak to either of her grandparents. Come bedtime, George was banished into his kennel, despite the rain, while Maddy sneaked a flashlight into her bedroom so she could scour her books for information on faeries. But all her books described were sweet tiny things that granted wishes, not ones taller than she was that went bump in the night. When she finally fell into an exhausted sleep, the sound of the rain drumming on the roof was the last thing she heard.
    It was also the sound that greeted her the next morning. The wind sighed and wept in a soft way that was beginning to get on Maddy’s nerves. It was as if the weather was going out of its way to be atmospheric andmystical. If the faeries were behind this, then they had really tacky taste.
    “You’re overdoing things, folks,” she said aloud in her bedroom.
    It was Sunday, Halloween, and it was her job to get the papers from the local shop. She got dressed quickly and grabbed the change that had been left for her on the TV table. On the way she stopped by the village payphone and called her cousin Roisin. Her Aunt Fionnula sounded frosty when she answered the phone, but Maddy didn’t have time to figure out what she had done to upset her this time.
    “Hello?” said Roisin, her mouth full as usual. Granny said Roisin was “sensitive.” It meant she ate a lot for comfort.
    “Hey. Roisin, it’s Maddy. How’s it going? I need you to go online, Google ‘faeries’—‘f-a-e-r-i-e-s’—and find out everything you can about fighting them and getting into a faerie mound.”
    “Good morning to you too, Maddy. Why should I be doing this for you?” asked Roisin.
    “It’s for a project we’re doing at school. I’m going to get in deep trouble if I don’t get it done. I should have done it over the holidays, but there’s nothing in the library, and we haven’t got the Internet,” said Maddy. Her grandparents hadn’t gotten a mobile phone yet, never mind a computer.
    “I can’t keep doing your homework, Maddy. I’ll get in big trouble if Mam catches me,” said Roisin.
    Maddy gritted her teeth. “I don’t want you to write the essay. I just want you to get me the information so I can write the essay,” said Maddy. “I just want you to print off a few pages for me and bring them round when you come.” She knew her relatives would be paying their regular Sunday duty visit.
    “I don’t know, Maddy. Dad doesn’t really like us printing stuff off. He says the ink costs a fortune, he’ll go mad—”
    “Please, Roisin, please !” interrupted Maddy. “I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t really desperate. Honestly, Roisin, I never ask for anything. Can you not do me a favor this once?”
    Roisin hesitated. “You do ask for favors you know . . . oh, fine, OK, but I’m not printing anything off for you ever again. You have to persuade Granny and Granda to get a computer. Hey, are you dressing up for Halloween?”
    Maddy hung up on her. She glanced at the sky as she hurried to the local supermarket. The clouds were right overhead now, looking as if they were about to reach down and grab her in their sooty fingers.
    Later, after Mass, Maddy played the good girl by offering to run errands for her grandparents so they could sit by the fire and keep out of the wet. Luckily for her, one of the errands involved bringing the local paper round to an elderly neighbor. The old lady asked her in for a biscuit, and while she rummaged in the kitchen, Maddy managed to steal her poker. She was back homejust before lunch, putting it in her backpack to join the one she had already stolen from her grandparents and hiding the bag behind the coal shed, when Roisin came hurrying down the path.
    “Quick, take these off me before Dad sees them,” she said, as she pulled sheets of paper out of her jacket. Maddy rolled