The Monster at Mazywood

Chapter One

One

GRACETOWN, FLORIDA

MAZELLE WASHINGTON WORSHIPPED THE WOODS.

She didn’t mind bug bites, or mysterious rustling in the brush, or twigs scratching her face and snagging her hair because the woods were so magical compared to the sameness of the cities her family had toured during her seven years of life.

Rustling revealed deer, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, possums, and animals she didn’t yet know; quick flashes of brown, gray, and black.

An entire world was hidden beneath the surface of the everyday one.

Mother had read her stories about enchanted forests in fairy tales, but in Gracetown the enchantments felt real.

Today, she had set out to find the Wishing Pool, wearing overalls in case she needed to crawl or climb.

It wasn’t noon yet, so she had avoided the worst of the sun’s afternoon glare.

She waded into the high brush nestling the stand of pines, following the rough map she had drawn from the descriptions she’d heard, past the large wooden sign boasting FRESH PECANS!

and the famed oak trees bending toward each other like twins.

She’d crossed the road from her house to these woods, and knew she was headed the right way when she heard the gentle creek.

She’d followed that creek many times to the more shaded parts of the forest, but never as far as the Wishing Pool.

She wanted to believe that if she found the Wishing Pool and threw in a penny—as long as she didn’t touch the water in any way, even with her pinkie toe—her wish would come true the same day, or at least before morning.

All the younger children at Jonathan C. Gibbs Primary School swore to the story, although the older children warned it was lies.

Coincidences. Bad luck, some of the older children said.

Others claimed that the Wishing Pool dried up and was impossible to find, except in the summer.

But it was summer now.

Priscilla Stephens had sat with her on the bench at lunchtime on the last day of school and told her how to make her wish, which she’d heard from her sister.

Wishes always try to trick you, she warned her.

So you have to say what you want without leaving nothin’ out. Down to every little itty-bitty thing.

Mazelle had tried twice to find the Wishing Pool and given up, once because she was due for her chores and once because it was getting too dark—the woods changed its face at night, and her parents would be sick with worry if she didn’t come home in time for supper.

But today she had plenty of time. Mazelle ran past oak trees that had fooled her on her previous attempts, racing to follow the creek deeper into the wild woods.

She came upon it with a gasp as it appeared in the sun’s rays splitting the treetops.

Grass shimmered like emeralds in the clearing ahead, so striking that she barely noticed the bending trunks of the mighty twin oaks, their leaves blending at their crowns.

No grass grew in the deepest pond at the center, but it spread outward into the soggy grasses, more like a swamp.

She looked down and saw she had almost stumbled into it—and if she had squatted lower to get a better look, she would have seen that the tippy-toe of her scuffed leather shoe had dipped beyond the spot where the water met the mud.

Hand shaking, Mazelle reached into her pocket and clutched her shiny copper penny in her clammy fingertips.

She was about to toss it as hard as she could toward the Wishing Pool when she remembered to glance at the details of the wish she had written on back of her map.

It would be foolish to come so far and fail at proper wishing. She took a breath and threw.

The penny arced, flying higher than she’d expected, but it still landed almost exactly where she’d aimed, rippling from the center of the pool after a tiny splash.

Mazelle closed her eyes because that was how she prayed.

“I wish I had a best friend forever,” she said.

“Someone to play with whenever I want. Who’ll love me better than anyone else.

Who’ll keep me safe from anything bad.” She didn’t want to say in her wish that she wanted protection from her terrible older sisters, especially Doris, although it was true.

She peeked at her wrinkled page again. She’d almost forgotten the most important part!

“And I wish for my best friend to do shows with me, and we’ll have the best act in the whole world. ”

Mazelle hoped she hadn’t ruined her wish when she opened her eyes, but Priscilla had never told her to close them. Not knowing what else to say, Mazelle whispered, “Amen.”

The sudden silence was an explosion in reverse.

No whirring bugs. No birdcalls or whispering leaves.

Mazelle hadn’t realized how noisy the woods were until the blanket of silence draped over her, as if the world had gone to sleep.

Clouds she had not seen earlier muted the sunlight and turned the day gray.

Mazelle remembered she was holding her breath when she saw red spots and swayed, dizzy.

Two birds squabbling overhead broke the quiet. Mazelle hadn’t really expected to find her new best friend waiting on the other side of the Wishing Pool, but maybe she had a little. When she looked around and saw no one, she felt more alone than before her wish.

“I’m here!” she called out. “Come be my friend!”

The birds stopped fighting and fluttered away. No one answered. Of course.

The Wishing Pool, she decided, was just another lie.

On her way home, a dog was blocking her path in the middle of McCormack Road.

The dog wasn’t big, but at Mazelle’s petite size, it wasn’t small either.

Mazelle was in a bad mood after her gutting disappointment, and she didn’t care a nickel for dogs.

Her family had never kept pets because they spent so much time on the road.

The only dogs she met were ragged strays, so she viewed children and dogs as natural enemies like gators and bobcats—except she didn’t have sharp claws or teeth to fight back.

And this dog was sitting ahead of her, fur matted as if it had crawled out of the rust-colored mud that dirtied her shoes from the woods.

It was filthier than any city dog, caked in sludge with only two gray-white rings around its eyes to show its true color.

The dog didn’t look natural from the start.

When she stopped walking, the dog stood up, ears high at attention, tail wagging like it was trying to take flight. The dog might look like it was smiling, but all she saw were teeth that could bite through her clothes and crunch her bones.

“Git!” she said. “Get away!”

The dog only wagged a tail so short that it seemed chopped in half.

Mazelle didn’t know enough about the ways of dogs to understand that a wagging tail was a happy occasion, so the frantic motion from the stumpy tail looked like defiance.

When his paws pitched forward, he looked like he was ready to launch at her.

She picked up a stick nearly as wide as her palm, waving it like a sword.

Her heartbeat was throbbing in her hand, but she was ready to break this dog’s skull if she had to.

That’s how easy killing to defend herself would come to Mazelle Washington from the time she wasn’t as tall as the McCormacks’ cattle fence.

But the dog did something she’d never seen any dog do: This dog lowered its head, let out a whimper…

and collapsed its front legs, rear haunches still raised up high.

The effect sounded crazy as she thought the word, but her eyes saw it plainly: This dog was bowing to her like one of King Arthur’s knights in the stories Mother taught her at the schoolhouse.

If this had been a grown man in shining armor instead of a muddy dog, he was bowing exactly as she’d imagined a knight should revere his queen.

“Good dog!” she said. His stumpy little tail wagged harder.

Maybe this dog had escaped from a circus that came through Tallahassee, Marianna, or Quincy, the closest bigger towns.

Mazelle’s thoughts ignited with fantasies of showing up her older brother and sisters, who had traveled with their parents as the Washington All-American Family Troupe—before Mother decided she was tired of living in dirty train cars and boardinghouses on the road.

Dorothy and Doris teased Mazelle that she never could have fit into the act because she didn’t have any talents.

No talents! She could tap-dance pretty good and do backflips three or four times without stopping, which was more than anyone else in the family could do except maybe Daddy, before his back got stiff (which was probably the real reason he quit to take a job clerking for her uncle Harold, the Negro undertaker, when he got the offer).

Since she had grown up watching her family in show business and seen every circus trick and stunt imaginable, Mazelle already knew the potential in a talented dog.

In Tuscaloosa, she’d seen a tiny dog fixed with a fake lion’s mane become the circus’s biggest attraction, with audiences laughing themselves silly as a clown pretended to be a “lion tamer” who shrieked with fear whenever the dog chased him.

Bowing was a good start, but maybe she could train him to…

“Dance!” she blurted to the dog. (Or was she only thinking the word?)

Whether the command had been spoken or unspoken, the muddy dog stood up on two legs and whirled around as dainty as you please, like the ballerina on Mama’s jewelry case that tinkled when she opened it.

All he was missing was a frilly tutu. She was so excited that she forgot she’d ever been afraid.

She ignored his doggy smell and took hold of his mud-slickened front paws to join him in his dance.

They were very nearly eye to eye when the dog stood on his back legs, the perfect size for dance partners.