McMummy by Betsy Byars Page B

broke into a run. He crossed the yard. At the edge of the forest, he paused. He listened.
    Overhead a plane droned in the pattern for runway 28, blocking out the sound.
    Mozie moved into the forest, slowly, stepping around the remnants of the storm. As he came to a fallen tree, he paused again.
    The plane had landed, its engine no longer interfering with the hum. Mozie listened. A bird called somewhere in the forest. A woodpecker worked on a limb. But the humming sound was gone.
    As Mozie turned to go back to the house, he glanced down and stopped. He saw something that did not quite fit. He had almost missed it. He would have if the sunlight hadn’t been shining on it. Slowly he dropped to his knees.
    There, against the protruding limb of the fallen tree, was a scrap of green. In the sunlight that filtered through the trees it seemed to shimmer with a light of its own.
    Mozie reached out and took the scrap of green in his hand. It lay on his palm, as delicate as a butterfly wing, thin as tissue paper. Drops of moisture, tiny beads, came from the torn end of the scrap.
    Mozie drew in his breath. He had the feeling that he was the first person in the world to see this. He got to his feet, tense with excitement, and began to run deeper into the woods, heading for the ruined greenhouse.
    His head turned from side to side as he ran, looking for another shimmering scrap of green that would lead him to …
    He didn’t know what it was leading him to, but he knew it was something he had to see.

Sewing Monsters
    “M OM, LOOK AT THIS!” Mozie rushed into the living room. The screen door banged behind him.
    “Mozie, I asked you not to slam—”
    “I know, Mom, but look!”
    His mother was at her sewing machine and he held out his hand:
    Already the scrap of green was losing its special luster.
    “What am I supposed to be looking at—lettuce?”
    “Mom!” he said, shocked.
    She pulled her glasses down from her head. She used these glasses for detail work. She peered at the scrap of green through the round lenses.
    “Mom, I think it’s—Mom, I found this in the woods and … I mean, I know it doesn’t look like much now, but when I found it, Mom, it was sort of, I don’t know, luminous and …”
    His words faded. Now she examined him through her thick lenses. “Mozie, is something wrong?”
    “No, no. I just—Oh, never mind. Never mind!”
    “Have you been back to that greenhouse?”
    “No! Not all the way.”
    He turned quickly and left the room. He thought perhaps she would follow him into the kitchen and “hash it out” as she liked to say, but she did not. The drone of the sewing machine began almost at once.
    His mother loved to sew and often lost herself in what she was doing, caught up in the shimmering fabric, the design, the dream. The only time she had been truly angry with Mozie was when she came home from shopping one October afternoon and found Batty at her sewing machine.
    Batty and Mozie were going to be matching monsters for Halloween, and Batty wanted to run up some hoods for them. Mozie had said, “Mom wouldn’t want us to use her machine.” They were seven at the time, but Mozie was sure of what he was saying.
    “She’ll never know. Anyway, I sew all the time at home.”
    “Then let’s go to your house.”
    “It’s locked,” Batty said quickly—too quickly it seemed to Mozie. He sat down. “I always have wanted to work one of these.”
    He turned on the light, and his face seemed to turn on at the same time. Mozie looked out the window to see if his mother was in sight.
    “How do you get this up? How do you get this up?” Batty asked.
    “I thought you said you could sew.”
    “I can, if I can get this up. All machines aren’t alike, you know.”
    Mozie had the suspicion that this was Batty’s first stint at any sewing machine, but he lifted the presser foot as he had seen his mother do. Then he went quickly back to the window to check for his mother.
    Batty began to sew. He