The Hollow under the Tree Read online

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Sadie knew she had gone too far.

  Fergus’s wide mouth turned up into a grin.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” he said.

  “I was just making a joke.” Sadie took a step back.

  Fergus nodded at the twins. They dashed forward and grabbed Sadie by the arms. She kicked at the twins and struggled to get free, but they held her tight. Fergus came forward and because he was so much bigger, it was easy for him to lift the paint can high. Slowly he tipped it forward, the thick paint dripping onto Sadie’s head and down her face and neck. She closed her eyes and held her breath even as she pulled this way and that.

  “Hey, you’re splashing us!” Wylie said.

  The twins let go. She wiped the paint from her nose and mouth and gasped for air. She hardly noticed the sound of the Parkside Gang as they ran away, whooping and hollering.

  She stood there as the paint continued to slide down, all the way to her shoes.

  There was nothing for Sadie to do but walk the rest of the way home. She found some old newspaper and wiped off as much of the paint as she could. She wrapped some paper around the bicycle handles and pulled it along, leaving blue footprints behind her.

  At her own back door, she made sure nobody was around before pulling off her shoes and dress and stockings. Then she ran into the house, hurrying up the stairs.

  “Is that you, Sadie?” her father called from the kitchen.

  “I’m going to take a bath!”

  “Really? That will be the first time I don’t have to remind you.”

  It took her a long time to get all the blue off, using a stiff brush and a cake of pumice soap. Her skin felt raw from the scrubbing, but she was clean.

  Before that day, blue had been Sadie’s favorite color.

  But it never was again.

  4

  The News

  Miss Marjorie Clemons was a boarder living in the Menken house. She was an older woman with orange hair who wore an impressive array of necklaces and bracelets that jangled when she moved. Miss Clemons had worked for almost forty years in a library in Lambeth in “dear old England,” as she called it. Upon retiring, she was convinced by her best friend, a widow named Abigail Foster, to immigrate to Canada so that the two would be company for each other.

  Miss Clemons had a series of oak filing cabinets lining her bedroom, the largest in the house. She spent a considerable portion of each day reading newspapers and clipping articles that interested her. She would then file them according to her own categories, such as People Rescued out of Holes, Remarkable Explosions and Unusual Animals Found in Hat Boxes.

  And so for the past three years, Miss Clemons had eaten her suppers at the Menken table and read her newspapers, scissors on her capacious lap, in the Menken sitting room.

  At first Sadie had resented this intruder in the house, replying to her questions with rude grunts, staring resentfully whenever she took a second helping of roasted potatoes.

  But like all good librarians, Miss Clemons was a patient woman. One evening when Sadie was having trouble with a school project on the Panama Canal, Miss Clemons retrieved several useful articles from her archives. On another occasion, when Sadie tangled up the scarf she was trying to knit for home economics, Miss Clemons gently took the needles from her hands and sorted it out.

  It was at the supper table, several days after Sadie’s encounter with the Parkside Gang, that Miss Clemons said, “I have clipped out a very interesting article from the newspaper today.”

  “What would we do if you didn’t keep us up to date?” Sadie’s father said.

  “No doubt you would remain sadly ignorant of current affairs,” Miss Clemons answered. She cleared her throat and began to read.

  A Canine Conundrum

  Residents of the High Park neighborhood have reported the disappearance of several dogs in the past two weeks.

  Local shoe-store owner Herman Spudnik said,“Our Patches always liked to ramble after dark. He’s a cocker spaniel, you see. But the other night he went out and didn’t come back. We’ve looked everywhere but he seems to have vanished.”

  Besides the missing dogs, several people strolling in the park have come across squirrel tails. “We hope that children aren’t up to mischief,” said Mrs. Louise Frost, who lives north of the park. “Offering peanuts to the squirrels and then snipping off their tails!”

  So far the police are showing little interest in these strange events. “We’ve got actual crimes to worry about,” said Sergeant Jaworski. “Just the other day somebody painted blue footprints along the sidewalk. That’s defacement of public property.”

  Miss Clemons put down the article. “In my opinion there are far too many dogs in the city. Still, people do get attached to their pets. My friend Abigail’s lapdog, Lucretia, is very dear to her.”

  Mr. Menken nodded, although Sadie saw that he was only half-listening. No doubt he was mentally counting the number of pies he needed to make for the next day’s orders. But Sadie had listened to every word.

  Of course, the reference to blue footprints made her blush.

  But she found something else far more interesting.

  She remembered another newspaper article that Miss Clemons had read to them not long ago. It was about a circus train that had been traveling on the railway tracks below High Park when some cars had broken away and crashed. At first it was feared that a man had been killed, but he had been found wandering about with a large bump on his head. The newspaper said that only a young lion had been lost.

  Miss Clemons had assumed that “lost” meant dead. So did every other reader. But Sadie had learned to say that she had lost her mother even though her mother was living in New York City.

  What if the lion wasn’t dead, either?

  What if “lost” just meant that it had never been found?

  5

  The Hollow Tree

  On Saturday, Sadie had an idea.

  Her father quit baking early on Saturdays. He was taking his last batch out of the oven while she folded boxes at the table.

  “Looks like I’ve got a broken one. It’s honey rhubarb. Want a piece?”

  A broken pie had a crust that had cracked or caved in during baking. It tasted just as good, but customers wanted pies that looked perfect. There was usually one every day or two, and Sadie got more than her share. She may have been the only person in Toronto who wasn’t eager for a piece of Menken’s homemade pie.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “But I do know somebody who’d like it.”

  “Take it.”

  Sadie slipped the pie into a box.

  “I’ll be home in time for dinner,” she said. She picked up the pie, went out the front door, walked up to Bloor Street, turned right and went into Hathway’s Butcher Shop.

  Sadie never liked the smell of blood, but she did like the tinkle of the bell as she walked in, and she liked to slide on the sawdust sprinkled on the wooden floor. Behind the counter, Mr. Hathway was packaging up a string of sausages.

  “Hi, Sadie, how’s by you?”

  “Everything’s good, Mr. Hathway. I want to make a trade with you.”

  “One minute while I put away this knife. I wouldn’t want to get so distracted that I cut off my own finger.”

  Butchers sure had a weird sense of humor, thought Sadie.

  “I want to trade you one of my dad’s pies.”

  “A Menken pie? You bet. What do you want for it? I’m a pretty tough negotiator, you know.”

  “It’s honey rhubarb.”

  “Honey rhubarb? Sweet and tart. You can have the whole store!”

  “I don’t want the whole store. I just need a bunch of — what’s the word? Scraps, I guess. You see, I’ve been feeding some cats.”

  “Cats, you say. How many?”

 
Sadie tried to imagine how many ordinary cats might fit into one very large one.

  “Twenty?”

  “That’s a lot of cats! But you’re in luck. I’ve got a pile of stuff in the refrigerator. I’ll make you up a nice package.”

  * * *

  A red streetcar rattled by as Sadie came out of the shop. A shout made her look up.

  Fergus Gumpy and the Tarpinsky twins were hanging onto the back of the streetcar as it moved along. They had jumped on without paying.

  Fergus waved his cap. “What’s wrong, Sadie? Feeling kind of blue?”

  Sadie wasn’t scared of much, yet the sight of those grinning boys made her breath come quick. But by the time she yelled out, “Don’t fall off, you’ll hurt the road!” the streetcar was already grinding its way around the corner. It was a lame comeback anyway, she thought.

  Sadie went through the east gate of High Park, not far from her own house. She turned away from the popular picnic tables and playgrounds and onto a side path, following it down to Grenadier Pond. When she was little, her father used to take her to feed the ducks, and then to the small zoo to see the mountain goats in their pens and the peacocks that wandered freely through the park.

  She moved off the path and made her way between trees and bushes, around small hills and across tinkling streams. She shifted the parcel to her other arm.

  Where would I hide from people? Sadie asked herself. She stared hard at piles of leaves, mounds of rock. She even looked up into the tree branches.

  After a while she came to a small grassy circle. The parcel felt heavy. She sat down, feeling tired and discouraged. Her eyes began to close.

  She heard a noise.

  Sadie’s eyes opened. In front of her was a dark hollow topped by an enormous tangle of roots. The roots belonged to a giant old maple tree that had toppled over. She looked at its blackened branches and realized that the tree had been struck by lightning. It had died and the roots must have pulled up out of the earth when it fell, leaving a space beneath.

  A space almost like a cave.

  Sadie stood up. She took a step closer and peered into the dark of the hollow.

  At first she couldn’t see anything.

  Then two yellow eyes appeared in the dark. They stared at her.

  Sadie didn’t move. Her legs wanted to run, but her shoes felt glued to the ground.

  The yellow eyes blinked. And then came a flash of light — teeth! — and a low moan.

  Her heart beat fast. The parcel! She lowered it to the ground and fumbled to untie the string. She folded back the paper, showing the glistening scraps inside. The smell of raw meat rose up.

  A snarl made her jump with a cry. She took three cautious steps back.

  The eyes didn’t move.

  “Hey, there,” Sadie said, keeping her voice soft. “Are you hungry? I bet you are. Look, I brought you a nice snack. Why don’t you come out and have a taste? Of Mr. Hathway’s meat, I mean.”

  The eyes came towards her, and the lion — for it really was a lion — emerged from the hollow.

  He wasn’t just big the way Sadie had imagined. He was huge. Sadie took two more steps back, even though she knew that if the lion pounced, there was no chance she could get away.

  He had a beautiful face with a soft-looking triangular nose and long whiskers and a big mane. As he stepped forward, she could see the muscles moving beneath his fur. His paws were almost the size of dinner plates. Yet he also looked thin — she could see his ribs.

  Poor thing, she thought. He’s half starved. Maybe it isn’t enough to catch the occasional beagle or squirrel.

  The lion stood on the grass, his tail swishing back and forth. He looked at her with an expression that seemed tremendously sad.

  Sadie took another step back.

  “Go on,” she said. The lion looked at her another moment and then stepped forward, lowering his head. He began to gulp down the scraps. He was a messy eater. A noisy one, too. He ate every last morsel.

  He even ate the paper.

  “I hope you don’t get a stomachache,” Sadie said.

  The lion looked up at her and licked his whiskers with a big pink tongue.

  He belched.

  Sadie giggled.

  He roared.

  Sadie ran.

  6

  A Good Listener

  Sadie ran all the way home and then halted on the front porch to compose herself before going inside. She spent the rest of that day, and all night, and the next day (which was Sunday) holding the secret inside her. It felt like a flame warming her insides.

  On Monday she went to school, came home again to deliver pies (not even taking the time to tease Theodore Junior), and took a broken one to Mr. Hathway in the butcher shop. When she got to the park, she went straight to the clearing, checking to make sure that nobody saw where she was going.

  She put the package down and untied it. Then she stepped back, only not quite so far.

  The yellow eyes appeared and the lion stepped out of the hollow, looking even bigger and more beautiful. He ate all the meat, this time leaving the paper. Then he turned and walked back into the dark.

  Sadie grabbed up the paper and sprinted home again.

  And so began her afternoon routine. She couldn’t go every day because once in a while there were no broken pies to trade, or her father fell behind in his orders and asked her to come straight back from her deliveries to help him in the kitchen. But she went as often as she could, and it wasn’t long before the lion began to expect her.

  One late afternoon Sadie was kneeling on the grass, struggling to undo a stubborn knot in the string that held together the package of meat. She had just got it undone when a large impatient nose nudged her shoulder. She fell back with a shriek, scaring the lion, who bounded back into his hollow.

  She caught her breath and called softly to the lion. But it took several minutes to coax him out again. After he had finished eating, he surprised her by flopping down on the ground and cleaning himself with his tongue like a big house cat. Sadie got to look at him closely.

  Was his fur soft or rough? It looked soft. Perhaps he lay down because he wanted her company. She took one step forward, then another and sat cross-legged on the ground. She told the lion about her house, and her father, and Miss Clemons and the Parkside Gang. She even told him about her mother and the memory she had of her practicing the one line she had in an upcoming play. I see nothing funny about it, I see nothing funny about it, her mother had said over and over until Sadie couldn’t stop laughing. She hadn’t told that to anyone before, not even her father.

  The lion was a good listener, gazing off into the distance when he wasn’t licking his fur or biting at some itchy spot on his flank. After a while he closed his eyes. And when Sadie ran out of things to say, she found herself getting sleepy, too.

  Her own eyes closed. She slept.

  When she woke, she found herself leaning against the lion’s warm side, feeling his slow breathing.

  A sound woke the lion. He rose to his feet, almost knocking Sadie over, and bounded back into the hollow.

  “One kiss wouldn’t hurt!”

  “You’re going to have to catch me!”

  A woman giggled and began to run through the woods, followed by a man. They made an awful lot of noise, but Sadie could hear them moving away until the clearing was silent again. Looking into the hollow, she saw the animal’s yellow eyes blink at her.

  “You’re right to keep away from people,” Sadie said. “They can be awfully stupid.”

  The lion belched.

  “Good one,” Sadie said, turning to go home.

  7

  Feathers

  Sadie dropped a pie box onto the butcher-shop counter.

  “Hey, Mr. Hathway. I’ve got one of your favorites today. Apple crumble.”

>   Mr. Hathway smacked down a cleaver, cutting a rack of ribs in half.

  “I’m sorry, Sadie, but Mrs. Hathway has nixed any more pies for a while. She thinks I don’t like her baking anymore. Just between you and me, your father’s is better. Besides, there’s a man who wants to buy all my scraps. He’s making canned food for dogs, if you can believe it. I hope you’ll find another way to feed your cats.”

  “Okay, Mr. Hathway. Thanks, anyway.”

  Sadie’s heart sank as she left the shop. The lion hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday. She decided to visit him anyway, and just in case she put down the pie box with the lid open. But it turned out that lions didn’t like pie, not even apple crumble.

  The lion sniffed it and looked at Sadie as if to say, Is that all you’ve got? He gave a mournful whine, but he still must have been glad to see her, for he lay on the grass. Sadie was close enough to hear a low, continuous rumble.

  “Hey, you’re purring,” Sadie said. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you something to eat.”

  * * *

  The next day Miss Clemons brought another newspaper clipping to the supper table.

  “This is quite shocking,” she said as she began to read.

  Peacock Meets Violent End

  Yesterday morning a mother pushing her carriage in High Park came upon a strange sight. In the middle of the path was a heap of brilliant feathers — feathers that could only have belonged to one of the park’s beloved peacocks. Remembering the previous disappearance of several neighborhood dogs, the woman returned to the street to fetch a constable.

  “This is a criminal act,” said Sergeant Jaworski after he personally viewed the remains of the exotic bird. “That peacock was city property.”

  “I know how you like to wander in the park, young Sadie,” said Miss Clemons. “But it isn’t safe, not while there is a murderer of peacocks out there.”

  Mr. Menken picked up a knife to carve the roast chicken. Sadie wished that she could get some of it for the lion, but she knew that her father needed to stretch their budget and would use the remains to make soup or a chicken pot pie.