Jinxie’s Borrowed Clatter — Under the steep roof, Jinxie dusted the attic bottles every midnight and tapped a plain iron clapper against his palm: clink, clink, clink. Read the full story →
Under the steep roof, Jinxie dusted the attic bottles every midnight and tapped a plain iron clapper against his palm: clink, clink, clink. It looked like junk, but it had been the tongue of the old school bell, the only thing that could make the house’s shadows line up instead of wiggling into rude shapes.
One windy night, the clapper vanished from his shelf with a papery skitter. Because of that, the moonlight shadows began making mustaches on portraits and rabbit ears on sleeping cats; because of that, the attic spider tied himself into a knot laughing. Jinxie found the clapper inside the locked sea chest, where a shy mouse had hidden it to wake her twelve babies for supper.
“Borrow it,” Jinxie whispered, sliding it back through the keyhole after one grand clong set every shadow straight. No one thanked him; no one even woke up. But next midnight, under the steep roof, the attic went clink, clink, clink—can you spot the chest that kept Jinxie’s secret?
