The Midnight Children: Chapters 7–17

In the daylight Ravani could see that it was shabby and worn, with frayed seams and one missing glass eye.

And then they lay there in the sunlight dappling down through green leaves and pine needles, and they talked.

"I think I like it here,” she said, wistful.

Annabel gave Ravani a fleeting smile and whispered "Goodbye” before walking away up toward the house.

Tristan was glaring at them, impatient and brooding.

Ravani would’ve recognized the brutish shape of the shadow anywhere.

He bucked like a pony and squealed, or did the best he could to squeal with a hand over his mouth.

The words were almost soundless, but they were also casual. Like Ravani and Virginia were just hanging out, talking, and not squished together in a hole in the forest, hiding from a villain.

Virginia and Ravani waited until Donnie disappeared through a dense thicket of trees and out of sight.

There was a moment of near quiet. No sound but the popping of the coals, and the rustle of the needles and leaves.

Her face, which always seemed so serious, went even more somber. Sad, almost.

Then she unscrewed the lid to the canteen and upended it over the fire. The fire sputtered and hissed and steamed and, splash by splash, went dark.

Two sturdy metal flashlights, both with fresh batteries. One had a red bulb, one a bright white one. Each could be useful.
Finally: a lock-picking set, scrupulously oiled and organized.
Everything had its place.

"Well, there’s a scoop! I didn’t hear that someone interesting moved into town!”
"Oh, I’m not interesting,” Virginia said in her deadpan voice. "Not even a little bit. Me and my family, we’re boring as mashed potatoes.”

“Yes! One by one the townspeople start dying horrible, unexplainable deaths, and then a local amateur detective—a new girl in town, perhaps, or a plucky newspaper editor—uncovers the sinister truth: Skinister seasoned the meatballs with cursed chile pepper looted from a lost jungle tomb, and the curse will only be lifted if Skinister is thrown into a volcano!”

Ravani guffawed. Hortense grinned. Even Virginia's brow unfurrowed.

He took the paper, squinted one aiming eye, and hurled it at the nearest front porch. The paper bounced off the gutter and landed in a rosebush.

"Until...tragedy struck?”
Virginia looked at Fred. He narrowed his eyes at Ravani, but they were sparkling, and he grinned ruefully.

His eyes were wide in soulful sorrow, the back of one hand held to his forehead, his voice suddenly melodic and raspy and dripping with a French accent and melancholy.

“It was a—how you say—zeppelin? Oui, a blimp! Full of ze gas of the hydrogen! Its sinister shadow fell across my petit café, and I looked up into ze sky and I cried out, ‘Sacre bleu!’”

Fred's gaze was heavenward, his face twisted in anguish.

He finished with a dramatic flourish, holding both arms out toward the closest umbrella.

Ravani had seen a bird, once, trapped in his garage. Fluttering in desperate circles, battering its fragile wings against the rafters, the walls.

“Don’t you ever cry?”
“No,” Donnie shot back through a churlish chortle.

Ravani, however, was still reeling from the near-death experience they’d just survived.

A sideways face appeared from behind the door. Brown eyes, peeking out from under brown bangs, with a smattering of freckles underneath.

Mom’s got a doozy of a headache.

“Annabel Deering. Winnie Deering. Benjamin Deering. Virginia Deering. Remember what Mom said. You will all be on your most sterling behavior. Pleases and thank-yous and excuse-mes. No weird or embarrassing behavior. Absolutely no cursing. Understand?”

“Damn it,” he said, and pulled his arms into the armholes and wiggled and writhed but only had the shirt halfway turned around when the front door opened behind Virginia.

Her eyes smoldered, but she forced a smile at Mrs. Foster and moved on.

But her voice dwindled to silence.

There was a trellis climbing up the back wall of the house, next to the chimney. The vines were overgrown and wild but the wood looked strong, and it rose right up beside the shadow-cloaked roof of the back porch.

Virginia went first, clambering quickly up the frame.

The trellis shook but it held, and when she stepped off it onto the porch roof, Ravani followed. Soon he was pulling himself onto the rough shingles.

His voice got steady and resolute again.

It had been eight years. Eight years since the Ragabonds had trusted somebody with their truth.
He realized, then, the magnitude of what Virginia had risked for him.

The sign on the grim building beside it read MADAME MURDOSAS HOME FOR WASTRELS FOUNDLINGS & ORPHANS.

If any of the wastrels, foundlings, or orphans inside Madame Murdosa's had looked out a window and seen the ice cream truck arrive, they might have gotten excited.

“I don’t understand it,” she trilled. Her voice was high and wavery, which was how it always sounded when she was nervous, which is how she always felt around the Hunter.

But the Hunter, bending down, saw that, here and there, the weeds in the road ruts were bent.