Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Ghosts of Stone Hollow (18 page)

BOOK: The Ghosts of Stone Hollow

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There was, for instance, the Stone. Some time between the moment when Amy had dropped it as she jumped up to run, and eight-thirty the next morning, the Stone had disappeared as completely as if it had dissolved into thin air. At times Amy thought perhaps it had. But at other times she thought that perhaps Aunt Abigail had found it and thrown it away. Knowing Aunt Abigail, it was hard to believe that she would have found a large rough rock on her storeroom floor and not even have mentioned it to the person most likely to be guilty of leaving it there. Knowing Aunt Abigail, it was almost easier to believe that a Stone could dissolve in thin air.

Wondering about the Stone was only a part of wondering about everything that had happened in the storeroom on Thursday night. Over and over again Amy wondered about what she had seen, picturing every detail as clearly and distinctly as she could.

It had all seemed so clear and close at the time, not vague and uncertain like the images in a dream. But looking back now, from the train—from Saturday morning, it was already beginning to fade. It was becoming hard to recall exactly how the faces had looked, and how terribly frightened she had felt when the man started toward her across the room.

Would it keep on fading? Amy wondered. Would a day come when she might not be sure anymore that the whole thing had not been just an ordinary dream?

But whatever it had been, it seemed to Amy that there was something about it that was very important, if she could just understand exactly what it meant. What did it mean about her grandfather and grandmother and the two little girls who had grown up, to be her mother and aunt?

Going back into her farthest memories, Amy began to try to remember everything she had ever heard her mother and aunt say about their parents. There had been so much—so many stories. And yet nothing that explained the things that Amy had seen in the storeroom.

In her mother’s stories, her grandfather had always been almost like God, strong and perfect—and Taylor Springs had been the most wonderful place in the world to grow up. But Aunt Abigail said different things. Aunt Abigail said that she had always hated Taylor Springs—and when she talked about their father, which was not very often, it was almost as if she were talking about a different person entirely.

It seemed strange to Amy now, thinking back, that she had not wondered about the differences before. It was as if she had heard all the differences, and accepted them, without ever noticing that they did not seem to fit together. She would have to ask about a lot of things again, she decided, and listen more carefully to the answers. Even if she didn’t hear anything new, she felt certain she could find out a lot by listening more carefully and noticing the way things were said.

She remembered, then, some things that had been said in just the last few days—things that she had not really listened to at the time because her mind had been so busy with other problems. She remembered how Aunt Abigail, who had always said she hated Taylor Springs, had said that she couldn’t leave
now—
she had said
now,
but it had somehow sounded like
not ever.

And Amy’s mother, who had always made Taylor Springs sound like a kind of fairyland, had seemed really happy to be leaving. Of course, she might have been pretending to be happy because of Amy’s father and the new job. But it hadn’t sounded like pretending. It had sounded as if she herself, Helen Fairchild Polonski, was really glad to be getting away from Taylor Springs.

What did it mean? What did people mean by the things they said, and why did it seem so different sometimes from what was really happening? It was not that they were lying—that much was certain. Neither Amy’s mother nor Aunt Abigail would ever tell a lie on purpose. It could only be that they saw things differently.

“Something that one person would say is true, someone else would say wasn’t.” It was Jason who had said that.

And Amy had said, “Then one of them is lying,” because she had always thought the
truth
was certain and final and for sure. But maybe Jason had been right about the truth. And after what had happened in the storeroom, it seemed as if he might have been right about time, too—about the way the past is a lot closer than most people think, and there can be times and places where it flows close enough to see and almost touch.

It seemed as if that part of what Jason had said might be true, but Amy still didn’t know about the rest of it. There were a lot of things she still had to decide about. But that was all right, because there were probably some kinds of things—like Stone Hollow—that everyone had to decide about for himself. It was beginning to seem as if the world was full of things to find out about and decide for yourself.

The Hills had become a faint cloudy haze in the far distance when Amy sighed deeply and rubbed her nose where it felt flat and cold from the window glass. She got up, stretching, and crossed to the other side of the car. Through the windows on that side she could see the valley reaching on and on to the horizon. And beyond the horizon was the coast range, and San Francisco, and the ocean, and on and on and on. Amy sighed again.

The train seemed to be moving so slowly—hardly as fast as a good runner could run. Amy began to imagine herself running, skimming over the ground beside the tracks. Watching the boulders and bushes drift by, she pictured herself bounding over them—flying over the earth with streaming hair and flashing feet.

For a long time she imagined herself running—up a steep incline and across a trestle bridge, leaping lightly from tie to tie, and then down a long slope to the valley floor.

“Amy,” her father’s voice said, and she turned to find him watching her. “What are you doing? You’ve been hunching your shoulders and twitching your arms back and forth.”

Amy smiled sheepishly. “I was running,” she said. “I was pretending I was running along by the tracks.”

“Still running,” her father grinned. He lowered his voice with exaggerated caution. “Don’t let your mother hear about that.”

To Amy’s surprise her mother went along with the teasing. “What’s this?” she said pretending dismay. “You haven’t skinned another knee?”

“No, Mama,” Amy laughed. “This time it was different.”

The train clattered on. Amy rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes, still feeling the running in the muscles of her arms and legs, and seeing the land flying back—back into the distance.

Still running, she thought. Maybe she always would be. But it
had
been different this time, and not just that she had been imagining. That wasn’t important. The important difference was that before she had never known why she was running. And this time she knew. This time she had just been hurrying to get to San Francisco—and whatever came after that.

A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Zilpha Keatley Snyder (b. 1927) is the three-time Newbery Honor–winning author of classic children’s novels such as
The Egypt Game
,
The Headless Cupid
, and
The Witches of Worm
. Her adventure and fantasy stories are beloved by many generations.

Snyder was born in Lemoore, California, in 1927. Her father, William Keatley, worked for Shell Oil, but as a would-be rancher he and his family always lived on a small farm. Snyder’s parents were both storytellers, and their tales often kept their children entertained during quiet evenings at home.

Snyder began reading and telling stories of her own at an early age. By the time she was four years old she was able to read novels and newspapers intended for adults. When she wasn’t reading, she was making up and embellishing stories. When she was eight, Snyder decided that she would be a writer—a profession in which embellishment and imagination were accepted and rewarded.

Snyder’s adolescent years were made more difficult by her studious country upbringing and by the fact that she had been advanced a grade when she started school. As other girls were going to dances and discovering boys, Snyder retreated into books. The stories transported her from her small room to a larger, remarkable universe.

At Whittier College, Zilpha Keatley Snyder met her future husband, Larry Snyder. After graduation, she began teaching upper-level elementary classes. Snyder taught for nine years, including three years as a master teacher for the University of California, Berkeley. The classroom experience gave Snyder a fresh appreciation of the interests and capabilities of preteens.

As she continued her teaching career, Snyder gained more free time. She began writing at night, after teaching during the day; her husband helped by typing out her manuscripts. After finishing her first novel, she sent it to a publisher. It was accepted on her first try. That book,
Season of Ponies
, was published in 1964.

In 1967, her fourth novel,
The Egypt Game
, won the Newbery Honor for excellence in children’s literature. Snyder went on to win that honor two more times, for her novels
The Headless Cupid
and
The Witches of Worm. The Headless Cupid
introduced the Stanley family, a clan she revisited three more times over her career.

Snyder’s
The Changeling
(1970), in which two young girls invent a fantasy world dominated by trees, became the inspiration for her 1974 fantasy series, the Green Sky Trilogy. Snyder completed that series by writing a computer game sequel called Below the Root. The game went on to earn cult classic status.

Over the almost fifty years of her career, Snyder has written about topics as diverse as time-traveling ghosts, serenading gargoyles, and adoption at the turn of the twentieth century. Today, she lives with her husband in Mill Valley, California. When not writing, Snyder enjoys reading and traveling.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

978-1-4532-7200-8

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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