Ellanor and the Curse on the Nine-Tailed Fox Read online

  It was on her third day in London that she stumbled upon a gem in the form of a quaint little Italian restaurant two blocks from the library, tucked between a clothing boutique selling garish cocktail dresses and a small pizza joint packed with noisy young people.

  Romano Italiana looked like something transported directly from old Sicily. The owners were Italians who spoke accented English. The tablecloths, cutlery, china, even the hand-painted sign had been shipped from the charming medieval town of Castelsardo in Sardinia, Italy, where Francis Romano had been one of the wealthiest before he immigrated to London. His only son took over his restaurant after he passed away five years ago. On his deathbed, he had grabbed his son’s arm and implored, “Keep up the legacy.”

  Goldie was so hungry that she felt light-headed as she loitered in front of the restaurant, drawn to the delicious aromas of food like a bee drawn to honey. As miserable as she was living with the Waldorfs, she was still fed three (albeit disgusting) meals a day. Here in London, alone and homeless, she would have to resort to drastic measures to survive …

  One late evening, Goldie slipped into the back alleyway of the restaurant, where the cleaning up was carried out every night after business closed. She was standing a few feet away from the scrumptious-looking lasagne, salivating, and she was just stretching her hand towards it when she heard the faintest sound of a shoe scraping against concrete behind her.

  With a gulp, she stopped in her tracks and wheeled around, facing a man staring at her from about ten feet away, half his face in shadow. He was slightly built, with a head of thick dark hair atop a lean face with a stubbled, cleft chin.

  Wracked with shame, utterly mortified, she went to turn and bolt.

  “Wait.”

  Goldie froze, paralysed with fear and dread. Was he going to call the police? Or worse … was he going to hurt her?

  The man stepped forward, and she braced herself. “Look, I’m sor—”

  “I will heat up some food for you.”

  She gawked at him foolishly. In the light, with his face emerged from shadow, she could see the sad droop to his large dark eyes. She was so taken aback that she almost forgot to be suitably embarrassed, having been caught close to stealing food in an alleyway.

  The man nodded towards the leftovers. “It’s not hygienic to eat food that’s been left out here like that. God knows what pests have already feasted on it. We wouldn’t want you to get food poisoning, would we?” Goldie was speechless as he proceeded to set up a little table and chair right in that dinky little alleyway.

  Ten minutes later, she was devouring the most delicious spaghetti with meatballs and garden salad she had ever tasted, followed by an impossibly melt-in-the-mouth slice of tiramisu. As she was scarfing down the meal, the man quietly retreated to the kitchen.

  Afterwards, Goldie sidled into the kitchen and silently watched as he wiped down the countertops. He didn’t look up as she shifted on her feet awkwardly. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said in a soft voice. “I won’t ever forget your kindness.”

  The man glanced up and gave a ghost of a smile. “Why don’t you get those for me?” he asked in his accented English, nodding towards a lopsided pile of dirty pots and pans on another counter. Wordlessly but happily, she complied, and that was the first time she assisted Roy Romano in his kitchen, the pride of his life.

  So from that day on, Goldie dropped by the restaurant twice a day to quietly eat her lunch and dinner that was always nicely laid out on that small table in the alleyway. Afterwards, she would help Roy clean up in the kitchen with such amazing efficiency that he decided this girl was a godsend. He only had one hired help, named Lorenzo, whom his mother insisted on employing since he was a distant cousin. Unfortunately, young Lorenzo was frequently unreliable, and Roy had been trying to find a good reason to give him the sack.

  Roy wasn’t one to ask many questions. He gleaned as much from her evasiveness that Goldie had run away from home. On the fourth day Roy gently took her aside and made an offer in hushed tones: she could work as his unofficial kitchen assistant for a modest daily wage, for as long as she needed. His mother, Marianna, wide-hipped and diminutive, was a loud, bossy woman with a full head of fake platinum-blond curls who always wore bright red lipstick. She overheard her son talking to that strange homeless girl and ran to him with a shriek.

  “Child labour is illegal!” she admonished in Italian, assuming that Goldie did not know their native language. But after a whispered conversation between mother and son, Marianna emerged from the room looking sympathetic. Goldie had overheard the muttered word runaway through the closed door. She supposed that was what she was – a runaway – but she was determined to show them that she was much, much more than that.

  It was only later that Goldie found out Roy was a divorced man who was once happily married before his 10-year-old daughter died from a drowning accident. “There’s something about you that reminds him of his Bethanie,” Marianna had whispered with tears in her eyes when Goldie asked who the pretty dark-haired girl was in a framed photograph hanging on the wall at the back of the restaurant. Roy and his former wife looked happy with their arms around their daughter. Looking at the photograph made Goldie feel sad.

  The Romanos quietly kept Goldie behind the scenes and made sure that she was fed two hearty meals every day. Lorenzo lived up to expectation by coming into work less and less, declaring that Roy now had “more help than he needed” with Goldie around.

  In the mornings and the afternoons when she wasn’t at the Romanos’, she would be camped out at the library, devouring books and doodling in her journal, which was fast running out of pages. She didn’t miss going to school at all, where Veronika’s son, Johann, also attended and never for a moment let her forget it. So many of the students had been snooty and horrible to her, mostly because they wanted to stay on Johann’s good side.

  It was into her third week in London that the poker-faced librarian finally approached Goldie, who had been tucking herself away in her usual spot at a desk next to the window, all the way in the far corner where she was partially obscured by a tall bookshelf. She had been avoiding eye contact with the librarian as much as possible. But it was only inevitable that sooner or later the lady would kick her out … or worse, try to contact the authorities and have her shipped back to Hemlock. The thought of it made her break out in a cold sweat.

  Goldie heard the footsteps before she saw the shadow looming up. She pursed her lips as she gripped the book in her hands: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

  “Hello, there.”

  Goldie stifled a groan and forced herself to look up. To her surprise, the librarian was smiling. Goldie could not help but reciprocate the smile.

  “I’ve noticed you coming in every day for the past two weeks,” said Winifred MacDougall. “Are you here on holiday with your parents?” She did not mention that she’d noticed Goldie wearing the same clothes almost every day, and they always looked crumpled and slept in.

  Goldie gaped foolishly, her mind suddenly drawing a blank. Then she glanced at the small tray the librarian was carrying; there were two steaming cups.

  The woman smiled encouragingly. The poor girl looked awfully nervous. “Would you care to join me for some Earl Grey and biscuits at the counter?” she asked cheerfully. Goldie blinked, then gave a tentative nod. The lady was a complete stranger, but she gave off a vibe that seemed to be the polar opposite of whatever Veronika emanated.

  So that was how their friendship started: with a smile and cup of warm tea.

  Over the next several days, Goldie volunteered bits and pieces about herself to the librarian: her age, which books she liked, and that she had indeed left home. But she did not disclose the reason or where she was from. Winifred noticed that though Goldie spoke perfect English, there was something outlandish about her. She guessed that Goldie must come from some other neigh
bouring European country. Even the ugly beanie and tattered hood over her head could not obscure her brilliant green eyes.

  She’s running from somebody she’s afraid of, Winifred thought. But regardless, Winifred concluded that the girl was in dire need of a bath and a clean change of clothes. Now that she was up close, it was easy to see that Goldie hadn’t washed for a while, and her clothes were giving off a smell …

  “Why don’t you come stay with me before you find some way to settle down?” she suggested during Goldie’s third week in London. Maybe the girl was a tantrum-throwing drama queen and would eventually relent and go home, wherever it was. But then there were runaways who had valid reasons to leave home. She suspected the latter probably applied to the girl.

  Goldie hesitated before nodding slowly, thinking that it might be time to bid farewell to the bitterly cold nights with Elmo. “Yes, yes. I would be so grateful. Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice. She needed to figure out her next step, and she would fare better under a warm roof than having her behind frozen off in the park every night.

  So that evening after she locked up the library, Winifred MacDougall drove Goldie home in her old blue station wagon, the rain pattering down gently. The temperature had plummeted, and Goldie was mighty glad that she would get to sleep in a warm bed that night.

  Winifred had left her umbrella at her desk in the library. By the time they reached her two-story brick house on Wellington Street, the rain was pelting down like tiny bullets. As she fumbled for her keys, Goldie waited at the doorstep and hugged herself in the freezing rain, shivering and blue-lipped. The cold seeped through her cheap, paper-thin coat.

  Then the door swung wide open, startling her, and she found herself looking into the face of a very tall boy with a mop of brown hair whose face slowly broke into a lopsided smile.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Of Goldie and Sebastian

  One Year Later, London, December 29

  “For crying out loud, stop fiddling with that blasted thing and help me out!” Goldie howled as her small hands slathered washing detergent over the slippery plates. Her object of frustration was a tall, lanky boy named Sebastian Weathertop, whose mop of brown hair constantly fell over his mischievous chocolate-molten eyes. He had the look of someone who has grown a lot in a short space of time. His lopsided smile was reserved only for people he liked, and that only constituted two.

  “Oh, take it easy,” he drawled, leaning back in the worn leather armchair as he tossed the battered handheld video game onto the coffee table. “You work way too hard, G. Miss M doesn’t need the kitchen disinfected every single day, you know.” Christmas had just come and gone, and Goldie had helped Miss M prepare an elaborate Christmas feast that impressed the very (seemingly) unimpressionable Sebastian.

  Truth was, Goldie had felt indebted to Miss MacDougall ever since the kind woman took her under her wing a year ago. Goldie brushed a strand of curly hair away from her face as she scrubbed. Her hair had been growing out, and she desperately wanted to have it cut. But there was never enough time these days, what with her being so busy with studies and working at the restaurant. Though Miss MacDougall insisted she didn’t need her countertops sparkling every day, Goldie made sure they were anyway.

  “You have no idea what it was like back in Hemlock,” she muttered as Sebastian squinted at her like a scientist examining a rare specimen. “Keeping a clean house is a piece of cake compared to what I had to put up with.” She shook her head and fell silent as she continued scrubbing. The thought of Veronika Waldorf’s cold blue eyes never failed to send a shudder down her spine. To this day, Goldie couldn’t understand why Veronika had volunteered to foster her in the first place. She and her husband obviously hated children (even their son was not an exception, considering how little time they spent with him).

  Sebastian watched her intently. Goldie never liked to talk about her past. But he could only guess at what she might have had to put up with. His own foster parents, Tim and Shawna Weathertop, were famous rock musicians who fought all the time and often left Sebastian by himself, ever since taking him into their eight-bedroom Victorian house five years ago.

  In the beginning, they were attentive and doting, riding high on the novelty of quasi-parenthood. But as with all things, they eventually grew bored with the tedium of routine, and though they genuinely cared for Sebastian in the way they knew best, they became forgetful … until he got into trouble at school or they had to be called in by the headmaster. Instead of berating or punishing him, Tim and Shawna showered him with expensive things. “Your faults are our failures,” they would lament before whisking away on another tour.

  Sebastian was practically adopted by Miss Winifred MacDougall, the serious librarian who lived alone next door in the spacious brown-bricked house that she had inherited from her wealthy parents. She had never married and had no children. Turns out she was sharp as a whip with a wicked sense of humour that she dished out only to those she was very fond of. Sebastian became one of them.

  When his school declared him unfit for conventional schooling, Miss M advocated for him and pushed for homeschooling. Truth was, the curriculum at school bored Sebastian. Tim and Shawna, ever quick to delegate, promptly hired Miss M to educate their precocious foster son at a lucrative hourly rate, with minimal parental participation.

  “It’s scary to step away from the norm, I know. But this is the next best thing for Sebastian,” Miss M had said with authority when Tim and Shawna appealed to her for help. “Over 50,000 children are home educated in the UK, and the figure is rising by 80 per cent every year.”

  Tim and Shawna were not convinced at first. “But what about his social life, his friends?”

  Miss M frowned. “Children make friends at school because they happen to be at school. But when they’re out and about in other communities, they make their friends there.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “In America, a large family sent their ten home-schooled children off to college, and now they have a doctor, an architect, a concert pianist graduated from Julliard, a spacecraft designer, and a PhD student in the mix.”

  At the mention of the prestigious Julliard, their faces lit up, and that sealed the deal for Tim and Shawna Weathertop.

  Miss M, not one to salivate over money, was happy to take Sebastian under her wing for the pure enjoyment of teaching such a gifted boy. So most days, he spent time over at her house and did various odd jobs for her when he wasn’t supposed to be studying, which included walking her dog, a chubby nine-year-old Pembroke-Walsh corgi named Saffy.

  Perhaps it was because he was an orphan and had grown so accustomed to the family dysfunction of the Weathertops that he felt drawn to Goldie, for she too seemed not to have family she could count on. Though he was two years older and she only came up to his chin, somehow she never seemed small to him. He had never had a real friend before Goldie stepped into his life a year ago, when she had stood shivering on Miss M’s doorstep in the pelting rain …

  Sebastian leapt up from the couch and stretched. He had grown so tall that most of his clothes from last year were now a tad too short. As he scooped up some books from the kitchen counter with one large hand, he gestured upstairs to the rooftop. “Let’s go up and take a break. What do you say? I could do with some iced tea. I’m parched after all this studying!”

  Goldie rolled her eyes. He had spent the past two hours playing that stupid video game and had barely touched his books.

  For the past year, Goldie had been homeschooled with Sebastian by Miss M, but on an unofficial basis, since her name was not in the UK educational system. Miss M was figuring out a way to put Goldie on the system without drawing unwanted attention. “Give me some time. I’ll make it happen,” she had promised Goldie, who was proving to be an exceptional student in languages and the sciences. It would be a sacrilege to waste this girl’s potential.

  Goldie frowned as she stacked the last o
f the clean plates on the metal dish rack. “Don’t be silly. It’s freezing! We should have something hot to drink.”

  Reverse psychology sometimes worked on Goldie, Sebastian had discovered. Grinning, he reached up towards the topmost shelf and retrieved the tin of Earl Grey before she’d finished her sentence.

  She made them two steaming mugs of tea with honey. “Ah, only you make it just the way I like it,” Sebastian murmured as he breathed in the soothing aroma.

  Up on the rooftop, they leaned back on faded green canvas chairs and gazed up at the darkening sky still threaded with ribbons of pink and gold. Goldie cupped her steaming mug with both hands to warm them. The tips of her fingers had shrivelled up like prunes from all that washing and cleaning, both at home and at Romano Italiana earlier that afternoon. She glanced over at Sebastian, who was whistling an indistinguishable tune, and she nestled back in her chair with a contented sigh.

  For the first time in her life, Goldie felt happy and safe. She had been sleeping well, much better than she had ever slept back in Hemlock. And for some reason, she had long stopped having those dreams of that strange girl with the wild, black hair and green eyes …

  Suddenly, she was startled by a blood-curdling Caw! Caw! Caw! that made the hair on her neck stand up on end. Looking up, she saw that a crow had landed on the clothes line a few feet away. Goldie had seen many crows, as Hemlock was infested with them, but this one looked particularly morbid, sporting a strange jagged scar where one eye should be. For a moment, Goldie thought that the dreadful creature was eyeing her and shrieking, “There you are! There you are!” But surely, it couldn’t be; birds don’t talk. Right?

  Cringing, she covered her ears with her hands and glared at the screeching bird. Sebastian leapt up and shooed it away. “Sod off!” he shouted, brandishing a textbook. The crow cawed in protest before it fluttered its wings and flew off, its raucous cries fading in the distance.