Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

“Wed!” Pink repeated.

“It’s not pretend! It’s real! We saw it!” Lon added on a desperately climbing note as he looked from one disbelieving adult face to another, “I saw it, too, before breakfast. It was a red magic horse. With antlers! And that time, it had a friend. A . . . woof! It had a kabillion tails!”

Joey’s entire body froze. They both had been seen?

“Now, children,” Elva said in a too-sprightly voice. “It’s never too early to learn the difference between pretend and telling the truth!”

Joey’s heart ached as Pink’s face began to pucker, her lower lip trembling.

But then his wonderful Doris knelt down in front of the kids. “That sounds really interesting. Why don’t you draw your animals friends on the chalkboard so that Auntie Doris can see them?”

“Daw!” Pink smiled.

“I like paper better,” Lon said tentatively. “Chalk is for little kids.”

Doris held out her hands. “Come on. Let’s go find the paper and the chalks. And you can show me your magic horse, all right?”

“I’ll come with you,” Joey offered, his heart pounding.

Doris flicked a smile his way. “The attic is this way. Show him where it is, kids!”

With the two small children clambering ahead, she led him back up the stairs they’d walked together the evening before. But instead of stopping on the landing, she opened a narrow door, disclosing a steep stairway.

The top opened into a long, narrow attic room under the steeply slanting roof. The pine plank walls were maybe four and a half feet high before the roof began its upward slant—perfect for the children. A kid-sized, battered table, once painted blue, sat in the middle of the floor, along with small benches and chairs. An equally battered bookcase was crammed with children’s books, worn and much read. Toys from three g

enerations lined the walls, neatly organized in cupboards. A very old rocking horse, a doll-sized miniature house with little carved figures in it, and a range of toy animals and dolls and vehicles from most of the decades of the 20th Century filled a cubby.

Lon ran to the table, where Doris set out a box of chalks and one of crayons, plus a stack of newsprint paper.

“Wed,” Pink announced. “Fah.”

“Fire isn’t red,” Lon said, drawing carefully on his own piece of paper. “But that horsey looked like fire.”

“A red horse?” Doris asked.

Lon studied her with a wary expression. Joey sensed one of those sensitive children easily annihilated by adults’ disbelief. But Doris didn’t speak in that smug tone of we-all-know-the-truth that children loathed. She sounded puzzled, as though trying to figure out what the kids thought they saw.

Joey smiled at Lon. “You said it had a friend?”

Lon turned to him. “In the morning. It was shiny.”

“Like a robot?” Doris asked, looking even more puzzled. “Like on TV?”

“No. This color.” He pointed to the silver in the crayon box.

“That’s silver,” Doris said.

“Silver. It was a big silver woof. He got a million big tails.” He waved his arms.

“Five,” Pink declared, holding up three dimpled fingers.

Lon turned to her. “Not five. More.” To the adults, he said, “She thinks everything is ‘five.’ She still doesn’t know how to count yet.”

“I count,” Pink stated. “One. Two. Five. Fivety-five.”

“You forgot three and four,” Lon corrected earnestly.

“Oh. Fee, foh, two, five.” Pink started scribbling on the paper.