Magic by the Lake (12 page)

"What's the matter with them?" said Jane. "Why don't they cook us now and get it over with? This suspense is awful."

"They're tired," said Katharine. "No wonder, after all that fire, and dancing, and then working in this heat. I feel as if I were cooked already."

A savage hurried up to the chief and said something. He pointed at the sun directly above. The chief nodded and cried out a word of command. All the cannibals immediately stopped whatever they were doing, and dropped whatever they held at the moment, be it stick or caldron (several toes were quite badly crushed), and flung themselves down wherever they happened to be. Slumber descended on their perspiring faces.

As for the chief, he curled himself up in the shade of a sheltering palm and began to snore. Two of the natives who seemed to be slaves propped a canopy over him and fanned the flies away for a bit, before going to sleep themselves.

"What is it?" said Katharine in the sudden silence.

"It's siesta time," said Mark. "All tropic tribes do it. They take naps every noon."

"Naps!" cried Jane. "I never thought I'd be glad to hear that word! I wish I could take one right now, and wake up and it was all a dream!"

"As if we could sleep at a time like this!" said Katharine.

But it's surprising what the tropical sun can do, particularly when you are tied to a spear in the full glare of it. First Katharine and then Jane gave way to its soporific rays and began to nod. Mark stayed awake for a while trying to think of a way out and not finding any; then he, too, lapsed into utter dozing. Horrible nightmares disturbed his rest, but he only twitched and muttered and slumbered on.

Only Martha remained sleepless, a prey to woe and remorse, promising herself that if they managed to escape this time—only she couldn't think how—she would never wish on a lake, or anything else, again.

A time passed.

The other three awoke to the sound of voices.

"Where am I?" said Katharine.

"Who's there?" said Mark.

"Three guesses," said Jane bitterly. "It's those natives. They're discussing whether they want us stewed or parboiled."

But it wasn't the natives.

"Look!" said Katharine, pointing. "It's Martha. Who in the world is she talking to?"

Jane and Mark looked. Sure enough, the natives were still all stretched out, motionless. Several of them were snoring loudly. And there, at the foot of Martha's spear, where it was plunged in the sand, stood three children. Only Jane and Mark couldn't see them very clearly. It was as though they were sort of
half
there, the way Martha had been once on a half-magic time, long ago.

Martha and the three strange children were making conversation, for all the world as though they weren't in the least peril at all.

"I'm seven years old," Martha was saying. "I' m in the second grade next year. My teacher's name is Miss Van Buskirk." All trace of tears or care had vanished from her voice.

"Honestly!" said Jane. "At a time like this! Who are you?" she added rudely, staring down at the three strange children.

"This one's called Ann," said Martha happily, pointing at the smaller girl, "and the boy's Roger and the big girl is Eliza. They're in a magic adventure, too, and our magics kind of overlapped. Isn't that interesting?"

"Oh, they are, are they?" said Jane, who was in no mood for trifling.

"Yes, we are. Did you think
you
had all the magic in the world?" said the one called Eliza, proving that she could be just as rude as Jane.

"That's why we can't see you clearly, then," said Mark.

"Can't you?" said Martha. "
I
can."

"That's funny," said the one called Ann. "Roger and I can see
you
clearly, but Eliza can't."

"I can see
that
one," said the girl called Eliza, pointing at Katharine.

"I can see
you,
too," said Katharine, beaming at her. "Still, that's typical of that magic," she went on wisely. "You never can tell what it'll do." A new thought struck her. "Why, when you think of it, there're probably hundreds of children in the middle of hundreds of magics, wandering all over the world all the time! It's a wonder we don't meet more often. It's a wonder we don't have collisions! How did you happen to come
here?
"

The boy called Roger looked at the girl called Ann. "Why, we..."he started to say. But Katharine interrupted him, chattering on.

"I know. Of course. The turtle sent you."

"What turtle?" said the girl called Ann. So that couldn't be it.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" fumed Jane. "What is this, a social tea? What does it matter how they got here? The point is, can they get us down?"

"Our magic only works for time," said the boy called Roger.

"Really?" said Jane, feeling superior. "Ours works for
everything]
" Then she remembered. "Only right now it isn't working at all," she admitted. "That is, it's working, but it's all gone wrong."

"That happens to us sometimes, too," said Roger.

"Pooh!" said the dashing one called Eliza. "We don't need any old magic to get them off those spears. We have our two hands, don't we? And our crude childish strength?" And digging in the sand suddenly, she uprooted Jane's spear, and Jane fell heavily to the ground, knocking all the wind out of her. She always maintained afterwards that Eliza had done it on purpose. But whether or not this was true, it was also true that once she had brought Jane to earth, Eliza worked just as hard as anyone else at undoing her bonds.

The boy called Roger let Mark down more gently and went to work on the ropes that held
him.
As soon as he and Jane were untied, they and Roger and Eliza attended to Katharine and Martha.

"Free at last," said Katharine, rubbing her chafed wrists.

"And with no help of turtle," said Jane. "Stuck-up thing. We'll show him."

Martha said nothing. So far, so good. Maybe they were going to get home unscathed, after all.

"How did you get here in the first place?" asked the little girl called Ann.

"We were after buried treasure, and the cannibals caught us," said Katharine.

"That's right, the cannibals," said Mark, looking round at the slumberous natives. "I was almost forgetting. We'd better talk softly."

"Do you get captured by cannibals
often
? I never have, so far," said the Eliza one in rather an envious voice. "What about the treasure? Can we help you find it? Where's it buried?"

An unworthy thought troubled the mind of Mark, and from looking at Jane he could see that she was thinking the same thing. If these nice strange children helped them find the treasure, maybe they would have to share it with them, and that would mean so much less for Mr. Smith and the bookshop. Still, seven heads (and fourteen hands) were better than four (or eight). And besides, it would be only fair.

"Shall we tell them?" Jane's eyes spoke to Mark.

"Yes," Mark signaled back. "Follow me," he said aloud. "Better be careful. Walk tiptoe."

Quite a lengthy procession crossed the sand. Mark heaved away the flat stone, and then paused on the brink of the hole Martha had dug.

"We'd better figure out first how we're going to get away afterwards," he said.

"And if we can," agreed Jane. "Those natives might wake up any minute." She turned to the three strange children. "How does your magic work? Do you say spells? Or do you have something with you? Some magic coin or something?"

"We have
something
," admitted the boy called Roger. And he took
something
carefully from his pocket. Mark and Jane and Katharine and Martha couldn't see clearly what it was, though Jane stood on her tiptoes and peered. She said afterwards that it looked just like some old pieces of grass to
her,
but of course it must have been more than that. Anyway, as they all afterwards agreed, it certainly was
something
!

"We have this," the boy Roger went on, "but it only works for time, the way I told you."

"It gets us back to our own time when we're finished," said Ann.

"Maybe it'd get
you
back to
yours,
at the same time," said Eliza. "Only it
wouldn't
be the same time, if you see what I mean."

"Clear as mud," said Jane.

"
I
get it," said Mark. "You mean maybe it'd take us back to
your
time with
you,
instead."

"That's what I'm worried about," said Roger.

"What if it does?" said Jane. "We could rest up, and then go on from there."

The boy Roger shook his head doubtfully. "You wouldn't like it," he said. "It wouldn't work out. You wouldn't fit in."

"Why?" said Katharine. "What time
is
it?"

"It's later than we think," said Mark, studying the sky anxiously. "It's getting to be afternoon. We'd better hurry. Those cannibals'll wake up any minute. If they do, we'll just have to take a chance."

Seven heads turned to the treasure hole, and fourteen hands set to work. All dug hard, but none dug harder than Jane and Eliza. In next to no time at all, the same corner of chest appeared at the bottom of the hole, just as it had for Martha.

Now there was a difference of opinion. Mark, ever cautious, and Roger, who seemed to be of the same temperament, wanted to keep digging till the chest was all uncovered and get it out whole. Jane and Eliza wanted to scrape the sand away from the rest of the lid and open it and look inside first.

"How do we know? Maybe it's all a hoax," said Jane. "It'd be just like that Chauncey Cutlass."

"Who's he?" said Ann.

"Never mind. Let's be digging," said Eliza. She and Jane won by sheer dint of getting in the way of any who tried to dig in a different direction.

The four corners of the chest-lid appeared. Jane laid hold of them and pulled.

"Maybe it's locked," said Katharine.

But it wasn't. The lid flew back on its hinges. Everybody took one look and gasped.

Pieces of eight were inside, and jewels, just as Mark had predicted. Diamonds glittered in necklace-y coils, and emeralds and rubies and sapphires and other stones nobody knew the names of but that were just as pretty and probably just as precious. There was enough to divide and still have plenty to save more than one faltering bookshop.

"We'll go halves," said Jane nobly to Eliza. "There's probably somebody
you
could help, too."

"Let's start," said Eliza. "You take a diamond necklace and I'll take a diamond necklace; you take a ruby ring and I'll take a ruby ring...."

Two eager hands reached out and down.

And at that moment the cannibal chief woke up.

He took a look around, rubbed his eyes, and took another. He saw the seven children, and his eyes flashed fire. "Wah!" he cried. "Samoa! Goona goona!"

All the cannibals immediately woke up, reached for their weapons, and scrambled to their feet. Their teeth gleamed hungrily as they saw three extra children for dinner, and their faces lighted with avarice as they beheld the pirate's treasure, for gold is gold no matter where you find it. They rushed forward, spears in hand.

"Quick!" cried Mark to Roger. "Make the wish!
Any
time's better than this one!"

Roger clutched whatever it was he had in his hand tight, and muttered something. Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha were never sure afterwards what he said. But whatever it was, it did the trick.

The next thing they knew, the four children were standing on their own beach by their own lake. There was no sign of the cannibals and no sign of the treasure, and there was no sign of the strange children called Roger and Ann and Eliza, either.

But their mother was there, sitting in a deck chair, on the sand, and because all rules were broken, she saw them appear out of the everywhere into the here perfectly plainly, and the four children had a terrible time explaining to her how they had done it so that she wouldn't think her mind was giving way, the way she had one time before.

"We were in the maple tree on the bank, and we all jumped down," said Mark, crossing his fingers behind his back.

"You couldn't. It's too high," said their mother, looking at the tree.

"We did, though," said Jane, crossing
her
fingers.

"Then you shouldn't have," said their mother. "How many times do I have to tell you..."

The speech that began with these familiar words went on for quite some time. The four children listened patiently. At the end of it, their mother went into the cottage, still looking from the tree to the beach and shaking her head despairingly. The four children were alone and could discuss really serious matters.

"Why didn't you grab some of that treasure before he wished?" said Martha to Jane. "Even one necklace would have helped Uncle Huge."

"I couldn't," said Jane. "It happened too fast."

"At least we know it's there now," said Katharine, ever the peacemaker. "We can go back for it next time."

"If there
is
any next time, after what you did," said Jane to Martha accusingly. "You'll have a lot of explaining to do to that turtle. It probably won't ever speak to us again. You've probably just ruined the whole thing utterly and completely."

"Except if all rules are broken and the lake's full of magic," Mark reminded them, "we could probably wish for anything any old time."

"Only not right now," said Katharine hastily.

"And we'd better clear it with the turtle anyway, just in case," Mark decided.

"Still," said Martha after a pause, "I'm sort of glad I did it, in a way. If I hadn't, we probably wouldn't ever have met those other children. I liked them."

"I liked the Eliza one," said Katharine. "She was fun."

"I wonder where they are now," said Jane.

"I wonder if we'll ever see them again," said Martha.

"Children," said their mother from the porch. "Come help get supper."

So they did.