The Velvet Room Read Online Free

You the last one, or are there five or six more around somewhere?” Robin was glad the depressor was holding her tongue down so she didn’t have to answer.
    But Theda did. “There’s Dad,” she said. “He’s working.”
    “Already saw your dad. Mr. Criley told me where to find him, so I just stopped off at the mule barn on my way down here.” He began putting things back in the bag. “Well, you folks have a clean bill of health for the time being, Mrs. Williams. But you ought to try to get a little meat on those kids’ bones. Particularly that little one. Lots of milk would help.”
    As soon as the doctor’s car bounced away through the gap in the eucalyptus trees, Robin drifted out the door and down the steps. She went slowly, because if she hurried, someone might guess she was doing what the family called “wandering off” and try to stop her. And she just had to get away.

Bridget

    L AS PALMERAS VILLAGE WAS a row of twelve two-room cabins. At one time they had been covered with a coat of yellow paint, but that had obviously been long ago. They sat up off the ground on foundations of narrow poles, so that to Robin they looked like boxcars with wooden legs instead of wheels. They had a movable, unattached look. It wasn’t a bit hard to imagine the whole string of them stumping off stiffly through the orchard. But of course they didn’t. Instead they just crouched there on their wooden legs, each one only a few feet from its nearest neighbors. A few pale weeds had found an unhealthy refuge under the houses, but everywhere else the soil of the Village had been scoured smooth by many feet. Its barren, dusty surface was varied only by occasional piles of trash, broken boxes, and rusty tin cans. Halfway down the row of cabins, Robin passed the rickety wooden building that held the toilets, the showers, and the laundry tubs for the whole Village.
    A Mexican girl of about Robin’s age was coming out of the laundry room carrying a bucket of wet clothing. She had big dark eyes and long black braids. She smiled shyly and said, “Allo.”
    Robin smiled back, but she didn’t stop. Just now she was in a hurry. Before she reached the end of the row of cabins, she began to run. When she came to the orchard, she went on running, but more slowly because the furrowed ground was rough and uneven. Every once in a while she stopped and looked around. By finding the hills over the tops of the orange trees, she could judge her direction. She was sure that if she kept going south, and then turned toward the hills, she would sooner or later come to the stone house.
    It wasn’t as far as she thought it would be. Before she was even completely out of breath from running, she saw ahead of her the tops of the tall shade trees that surrounded the house. She cut toward the hills past two more aisles of orange trees, turned south again, and in just a moment she had come to a stone wall. Climbing over it, she dodged around some tangled shrubbery, and there it was.
    Before her the stone walls of the house rose high with timeless strength. Once you got used to the idea, it didn’t seem to matter very much that the downstairs windows were boarded up and the lawn was a ruined tangle. It wasn’t frightening like other deserted houses. Robin had seen many frightening ones in the last three years — ruined rinds of houses, their doors gaping and windows staring blankly. But this house only waited, as peaceful as the hills that lay behind it.
    After a while, Robin wanted to see more and began to walk slowly around the house. It was three stories high, counting what seemed to be some attic rooms with gabled windows and a round room in the top part of the tower. Apparently, there were three round tower rooms, one on each floor. It was hard to guess just how many rooms there were, but Robin thought there must be at least twenty — maybe even more.
    Behind the main part of the house Robin came upon a wing that looked very different. It was