The Peculiar Lives of Boys & Girls At Plumfield

Chapter One - The Willow Tree

February, 1867

Through the misted window, the liquid pictures of Franz and Nat wavered and bled. Their forms wrapped in a dreamlike haze as they played their music. The sound was jumpy, like grasshoppers, and just as delightful. He hovered close, breath fogging the glass, and hurriedly polished the window with his sleeve.

Their backs were to the window he hid behind, but he could trace the shape of Nat's smile as his neck held stiff the violin, and his arm raced alongside Franz's fingers on his flute.

Nat often practicing so passionately that it looked like violence when he played. Yet his fingers grasped the neck of his instrument so gently, you'd realize the violence was what you were hearing, not seeing. Then you'd come to your senses and realize there was no violence but the savagery of your own heartbeat.

Dan didn't have to step on the lone brick hidden behind the bed of snapdragons to peer through the narrow screen as he'd done three years ago.

When he'd first arrived at Plumfield, nothing about it was right. For one, Mr. Laurence was a man of wealth and status. A local Brahmin. He liked tall hats and wore leather gloves. Emerged from polished coaches and glass doors. Beneath those gloves were polished fingernails. He was the kind of man you wanted to throw mud at just to see if he could look dirty. Or just because he wasn't dirty. Even his last name sounded expensive. Like perfume bottles. A fancy-pants hotel.

That's what Dan had figured when he'd gone on a mission to find the man that had stolen his Nat off the streets and away from him.

Mr. Laurence and his wife, Josephine March, were supposed to be richly dignified folk.

Yet, the first time Dan ever laid eyes on them for himself was when he'd caught them zipping down the banisters after each other. Jo'd taken Dan down with her once she'd flown free of the railing. Her husband had alighted behind them, laughing, especially at Dan's expense. His voice was light, not high, and he talked like a man who sometimes forgot he wasn't in Europe anymore. A little more merciful on the "r's" and "ows" than most common folk were.

Dan had never heard of such a thing as grownups and rich folk playing games, and it made his stomach gurgle. He'd told them he had happened upon them by accident and would be on his way out. They'd only laughed harder, helped him up, and introduced themselves between gasps for breath.

That wasn't all. There was something wrong with the young boys, too. Aside from the occasional prank from Tommy Bangs (who always said sorry and thank you after the ordeal—the politest prankster in all America), the boys acted gentle with each other, even when they played. Franz, the eldest and sixteen at the time, was the strangest of them all in this sense. He sat down at the table like he'd sunk into it and patted Dan's head like he was his favorite parakeet. Tip, tap, just like that. Franz had a smooth and airy voice, too, like the flute he played. All the words he spoke had a clear, melodic tone.

Dan got nauseous first time he heard Tommy Bangs, who had promise of being the most normal, address his chickens by name and couldn't fathom why the grownups made such a fuss over his teasing the cow, especially Friedrich Bhaer, the comely and subtly refined tutor. His face was as twisted as licorice when he'd found out Dan had tried to bull-ride the cow, and Dan had thought he was getting hexed when he started muttering German.

But perhaps the most bewildering thing Dan saw at Plumfield on his first day was Nat Blake, smiling, with a blush at his cheeks and life in his eyes. His voice didn't hold the roughness and thinness of sick lungs, and he'd grown. Taller, too. His hair, the color of pinecones, soft from wash and brushing.

The moment Nat had seen him walking up the street from the front porch, he'd torn down the stairway, leaped onto the ground, and bounded for the gate. He caught himself on the black metal bars and grinned so wide Dan couldn't help staring, awed by his transformation.