shooing her out.
She stomped away to her room, annoyed. That might have been the end of it, if not for this: Douglas had no nightmares that night or any night after, and he credited his recovery entirely to Lavinia.
Their father wasn’t so sure. A short time later, though, a patient of his complained of insomnia due to bad dreams, and when nothing the doctor prescribed seemed to help, he reluctantly asked Lavinia to take a look in the patient’s ear. Just eleven and small for her age, she had to stand on a chair to see in. Sure enough, it was clogged with a mass of thready black stuff, which her father had not been able to see. She stuck her pinkie inside, wiggled it around, then wound out a thread from the patient’s ear. It was so long and so thoroughly attached to the inside of his head that, to pull it loose, she had to climb down from her stool, dig her heels into the floor, and yank with both hands. When it finally snapped free of his head, she fell backward onto the floor and the patient tumbled off the examination table.
Her father snatched up the black thread and stuffed it into his drawer with the other batch.
“But it’s mine,” Lavinia protested.
“It’s his, actually,” said her father, helping the man up from the floor. “Now go and play with your brother.”
The man returned three days later. He hadn’t had a single nightmare since Lavinia had removed the thread from his ear.
“Your daughter is a miracle worker!” he declared, speaking to Lavinia’s father but beaming straight at her.
As word of Lavinia’s mysterious talent spread, their house began to receive a steady stream of visitors, all of whom wanted Lavinia to take away their nightmares. Lavinia was thrilled; perhaps this was how she was meant to help people. 17
But her father turned them all away, and when she demanded to know why, all he would say was,
“It’s unbecoming for a lady to stick her fingers into strangers’ ears.”
Lavinia suspected another reason for his disapproval, however: more people were coming to see Lavinia than her father. He was jealous.
Bitter and frustrated, Lavinia bided her time. As luck would have it, a few weeks later her father was called away on urgent business. It was an unexpected trip and he hadn’t had time to arrange for someone to watch the children.
“Promise me you won’t . . .” her father said, and pointed at his ear. (He didn’t know what to call the thing she did, and didn’t like talking about it in any case.)
“I promise,” Lavinia said, fingers crossed behind her back.
The doctor kissed his children, hefted his bags, and went. He’d only been gone a few hours when there was a knock at the door. Lavinia opened it to find a miserable young woman standing on the porch, pale as death, her haunted-looking eyes ringed by dark circles. “Are you the one who can take away nightmares?” she asked meekly.
Lavinia showed her in. Her father’s office was locked, so Lavinia brought the young woman into the sitting room, laid her down on the couch, and proceeded to pull a huge quantity of black thread from her ear. When she was finished the young woman wept with gratitude. Lavinia gave her a handkerchief, refused any payment, and showed her to the door.
After she’d gone, Lavinia turned to see Douglas watching from the hall. “Papa told you not to,” he said sternly.
“That’s my business, not yours,” Lavinia answered. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
“I might,” he said nastily. “I haven’t decided.”
“If you do, I’ll put these right back where I found them!” She held up the wad of nightmare thread and made as if to stick it in Douglas’s ear, and he fled from the room.
As she stood there, feeling slightly bad for having scared him, the thread in her hand rose up like a charmed snake and pointed down the hall.
“What is it?” she said. “Are we going somewhere?”
She followed its lead. When she came to the end of the hall, it turned and nodded left—toward her father’s office. Arriving at the locked door, the little thread strained toward the lock. Lavinia lifted it up and let it worm inside the keyhole, and a few moments later the door came open with a click.
“My goodness,” she said. “You’re a clever little nightmare, aren’t you?”
She slipped inside and closed the door. The thread slid out of the lock, dropped into