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the dining hall.
Then she looked up and saw Dulcie, and one glance at the child's expression
cut her shivering off. Dulcie needed her; there was no time for weakness.
"Hello, Dulcinea," she said gently. "How's my squire this evening?"
The child shrugged, a motion so like her brother that Ana wanted to reach out
and pull Dulcie to her, burying that sad, remote little face in her embrace.
Instead, she put her mug down on the table and stood up, casually holding out
her hand to the girl.
"Why don't you show me your room, Dulcie? Then I'll show you where mine is.
Sorry my hand's so rough and covered with Band-Aids I spent the afternoon
digging and I got a bunch of blisters. I shouldn't call them Band-Aids,
though, should I? Here they're sticking plasters. I wonder why they call them
plasters? Plaster is that white stuff they cover walls with, that turns really
hard and you can paint it. You remember that gray mud that Tom and Danny were
using back in Arizona, that would get big blobs in their hair and when they
came to meals they'd look really funny? Oh my little sweetheart, what's the
matter?"
Dulcie had drifted to a halt halfway up the stairs and was now just standing,
one hand limp in Ana's, her shoulders drooping and her head down. She was
crying. Ana sat down on the upper step and pulled Dulcie to her. The child was
pliable but unresponsive, weeping as if she were too tired and dispirited to
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do anything else. Ana crooned wordlessly and rocked her, oblivious to the
people coming and going on the stairway, aware only of the small, warm head of
hair tucked under her chin, and the slack hopelessness of this young body, and
eventually the shuddering intake of breath as the tears tapered off. When the
tears ended, some of Ana's own hopelessness seemed to have worked itself out
as well.
"Where is your room, Dulcie?" she asked. The child stood without speaking,
and they continued up the stairs and down the hallway, Ana's hand resting on
the back of Dulcie's neck. Dulcie chose a door and Ana followed her in. She
picked up the child and sat her down on the bed with the teddy bear from the
pillow, and then sat next to her. Dulcie leaned into Ana's arm.
"What's wrong?" she asked the child again.
"I want to go home."
"Home to Arizona? To where Steven is? Or home ?" Where was the child's home,
anyway?
"To Steven."
"Why are you unhappy here? Jason's here."
"No."
"He isn't?" Ana looked quickly around the room: shoes in the corner, a
familiar plaid shirt over a chair, books and papers on the desk all reassuring
signs that a teenager lived there.
"He's always doing things. Talking to Her, or That Man."
"Jonas, you mean? And who's 'Her'?"
" The girl." Dulcie's voice vibrated with disgust.
Ah. "Do you mean Dierdre?" Dulcie nodded. "Dulcie, listen to me. Jason loves
you. He's just excited to be in a new place, and it's hard for him to keep his
mind on things. I'll have a talk with him, okay? Ask him to settle down a
little?"
Dulcie nodded, then said, "But I still want to go home."
Ana thought for a minute and decided it was best not to bring That Man into
it at all, but, rather, to dwell on the positive side. "There are some nice
things here. Have you seen the barn with the horses? And there's lots of
kids."
"I can't understand them."
"Their accents, you mean?"
"They talk funny. Like on TV."
"You know, I'll bet they think you talk funny like TV, too. There's a lot of
American shows on English television." Not that the Change kids saw much TV,
come to think of it, but never mind. "Come on, let's go see the horses go to
bed."
Ana spent the next hour coaxing and amusing the child out of her feeling of
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abandonment. Dulcie found the horses beautiful, the lambs amusing, the cats
still at the kitchen door, and the voices around her not quite as
unintelligible as she had thought. At the end of their tour they went to see
Ana's room. Ana let her look around, bounce on her bed, and paw through her
meager belongings, and then told the child that she could come to visit
anytime she wanted.
They talked for a while about church mice and other important matters, and
then Ana took Dulcie down a set of stairs and along the long corridor and
around a corner to the room the child shared with her brother. Jason leapt out
of his chair at their entrance, looking worried and angry, but before he could
berate Dulcie for disappearing, Ana broke in.
"Oh, Jason, there you are. Sorry I didn't leave you a note to tell you I'd
taken Dulcie down to see the animals in the barn, I should have realized you'd
wonder where she was. Dulcie, maybe you should pop in and have a bath after
petting all those horses and playing with the cats. Need a hand?"
After the child was dispatched to the bathroom down the hall, Ana lingered to
talk with Jason about school and work and how he had spent his day. His dark
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