Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze (14 page)

“I feel as if I were Louisa M. Alcott,” Randy said happily.

“I feel as if I were the Countess Natasha Rostova,” said Mona. “In
War and Peace.
Russian. By Leo Tolstoy. A classic.”

The sleigh bells chimed and jingled sweetly. Jess and Damon jogged comfortably along the fluffy roads, and there were so many stars in the sky that Oliver said, “Aren't there more of them than usual tonight? Maybe they add some extra ones on Christmas Eve. To celebrate.”

“It's just because there's no lights around to interfere,” said Mark. “You can really get a good look at them for once.”

Carthage when they came to it, though, was a blaze of lights. There was a huge dazzling Christmas tree on Main Street, and a lot of red and green bulbs hung up above it spelling “Merry Xmas Folks.”

Willy drew up in front of the Wheelwright house and the children got out. Father and Willy stayed where they were, for though Willy loved music he was tone-deaf, and Father, as Mona had said, “is the most marvelous man in the world, but when he sings, it's more like buzzing.”

“I feel awfully silly, don't you?” she said now. “I mean, standing right here on Main Street and singing all in a bunch with people going by.”

“No, you don't, you like it,” Rush said. “You always love giving a performance!”

“And it's Christmas we're singing about,” Randy reminded her. “It's not something silly or show-offy.”

After a short whispered argument they began with: “Oh, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.” They had to sing it good and loud because there was nothing still about the little town of Carthage that Christmas Eve. But the music wove its usual Christmas spell, the passers-by stopped, and some of them joined in, and so did Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright in the doorway; Mr. Wheelwright (one of Carthage's two traffic cops), just off duty and still splendid in his uniform. Even Father and Willy caught the spirit and got down from the sleigh and humbly added their share.

After more carols they were all shepherded into the little furniture-crowded cozy house with its dogs, cats, and birds, and were fed with Mrs. Wheelwright's famous jelly doughnuts, cheesecake, and strong coffee. (Even Oliver.)

Then, properly hugged and kissed, they went on to the Cottons', and then to Mr. Coughing's and the Vogeltrees' and the others. At each place they were welcomed warmly and fed. It was a wonderful night.

“If we don't hurry, he'll have gone to bed,” said Oliver, at last, worrying about Mr. Titus.

So they all piled back into the sleigh again and covered themselves with the cold crisp straw, and jingled off along the lonely starlit road.

Mr. Titus's house was dark in front, but when they got out of the sleigh and tiptoed around the corner they saw the kitchen windows, warm and yellow, and in one of them, above the sash curtain, the old man's head, snowy as that of Santa Claus. He was working at something, wearing his spectacles.

“Sh-h,” they told each other. Oliver started to giggle, he couldn't help it, but he stopped when they began to sing:

“God rest ye merry, gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay.…”

Up came Mr. Titus's head, startled. He left his chair and now the kitchen door flew open. He stood there in the lighted rectangle, with Battledore rubbing herself against his ankles and Hambone wagging his old tail in the background. In his hand Mr. Titus held a sock; he had been mending.

“Thank you. God bless you. Merry Christmas,” he said when they had finished. “And now come in, and we will have a party!”

There were delicious things to eat in Mr. Titus's kitchen: he always baked a great many pies, cakes, and cookies at Christmastime to give away as presents and just to have on hand.

The Melendys, though, were unable to do more than toy with these delicacies. All but Oliver, that is. Oliver went to town on everything.

“They all ate at all the places,” he explained, with his mouth full. “But I didn't. I knew the best was coming last, and I saved up for it.”

As they drove home, shortly before midnight, they were soon half-asleep in the cozy straw. All but Oliver, that is. Oliver had drunk a cup of coffee at each place (without drawing attention to it, naturally) and was as brightly wide-awake as any owl. He asked Father so many questions about the stars that Father finally begged for mercy. “I never knew I didn't know so much,” he said ungrammatically, for he was very sleepy.

“Never mind,” said Oliver. “I've just about decided that astronomy is going to be my next phase, anyway.”

Randy, nodding between Mark and Mona, thought dreamily: No matter how good Christmas is, it can never be as nice as this has been.

And yet it was. All their presents were just what they had hoped for, no one quarreled or got a stomachache; from beginning to end it was a perfect day. And after it there was another perfect week.

On New Year's Eve, Randy and Rush leaned out of the window and listened to the midnight whistles and bells from all the towns around: Carthage, Braxton, Eldred. Over and under these sounds they could hear the night wind in the trees: a year blowing away, a year blowing in.

“Happy New Year, Ran.”

“Happy New Year, Rush.”

Leaning there beside him she longed to tell him about the mysterious search that she and Oliver were engaged in. She hated to have secrets from Rush; but nothing could be done, her lips were sealed. She sighed.

“What's the matter? Thinking up resolutions?”

“I wish it wasn't almost over. I wish you didn't have to go back.”

“I know. It's not so awfully long till spring vacation though; and after that till summer. And then we'll all be home again for months.”

And the mystery will be solved, she thought, and we can talk about it. Anyway the clues are fun, and they'll begin again now.

“Come on,” she said. “Let's go wish the others Happy New Year.”

“Check,” said Rush.

CHAPTER VIII

Prisoned in Ice

The search continues; luck attend the way.

    
I am the seventh clue and I am near.

Prisoned in ice, denied the light of day,

    
Rescue me quickly or I disappear!

P.S. And this means quickly; before Monday morning!

Randy looked at Oliver. He looked blankly back at her. They were standing beside the mailbox. Father's New York paper and the January bills were held forgotten in one of Randy's mittened hands; in the other fluttered a page of the now-familiar blue letter paper.

The dogs waited beside them, breathing steam in the cold air.

“Prisoned in
ice,
” said Oliver. “Gosh, when you think of all the ice around here.
Gosh.
”

“I know. Gosh,” agreed Randy; for it was still very cold, the brook was frozen solid and so was every pond. Worse still, two days before—the day the others had gone back to school—there had been a mild spell, with rain, and when the cold set in again that night a great glaring crust of ice had formed on top of the snow.

“I mean it could be anywhere, right here or anywhere,” objected Randy, kicking at the crust with the heel of her galosh. “Why, we could search forever! And it's Saturday already.”

“Well, at least it's Saturday. We have some time to work on it,” said Oliver.

Gingerly they began making their way down the icy road. It was really as much as your life was worth; even the dogs kept skidding and now and then fell flat, spread-eagled, with all their paws splayed out; it embarrassed them when this happened and they pretended not to notice it. Randy and Oliver found it easier to walk on the banked snow beside the road and bash their feet down hard with every step to break the crust. It kept them from slipping and made a very nice noise. The sun was out, the snow was dazzling bright, and all the trees, encrusted with ice to the last twig, were like trees made out of diamonds. When the breeze stirred their branches they creaked and squeaked with a nervous brittle sound. Randy picked up a dead beech leaf coated with ice; when she pulled the old fragment off she had a perfect leaf made out of crystal, with every vein intact. It melted slowly on her palm.

“Ice everywhere,” she said. “
I
don't know where to start.”

“What did it say about the light of day?”

“Let's see. ‘Denied the light of day' it says. So the thing's all frozen up in the dark somewhere.”

“Maybe under the waterfall?”

“I suppose it could be! That's frozen solid, and in under those rocks it's probably very dark. Let's go see.”

They stamped their way down the hill and across the blinding lawn to the brook. It was frozen and covered with snow, so that it looked like a path or road that nobody had walked on; the only way you could tell it was a brook was by the little dark air holes here and there, and a locked-in tinkle of water that sounded from within it. The waterfall, as Randy had said, was frozen solid; it was a thick festoon of icicles like mammoth candle drippings, and it was strong. The children tried to break off pieces of it in their mittened hands but it was too hard and thick and slippery. Oliver went and got a hoe and Randy got a hammer, and they chipped and hammered and got red in the face and sweated, and bits of ice flew through the air, bright as prisms.

At last the main body of the frozen fall was cracked across; then there was a tearing, rending sound as the great fragment broke loose from the rocky ledge where it was fastened. It came off in their hands, and with it, most unexpectedly, came the water that had been dammed up behind it! Randy and Oliver were suddenly and forcibly struck with a mighty burst of ice water, exactly as if someone had trained a fire hose on them. Oliver fell over backward, and Randy stood screaming so piercingly that the dogs began to bark and Cuffy came rushing out of the house with the eggbeater still in her hand and no coat on. As she floundered and skidded across the crusted lawn the children floundered and skidded to meet her, soaked to the skin.

“What in time have you been up to now?” wailed Cuffy. “How could you contrive to fall in the brook when the brook's froze solid? No one else could.”

“We were just chopping off the waterfall,” said Oliver.

“It turned ugly on us,” Randy said.

“Chopping off—but
why?
” lamented Cuffy. “Why in the
world?
What will you think of next? No, don't talk, just hurry, now, into the house and change your clothes!”

As they slopped, dripping and shivering, up the stairs, Oliver said to Randy, “I guess it wasn't there.”

“At this minute I couldn't care less,” replied Randy, through a lively chattering of teeth.

While Oliver was changing his clothes he thoughtfully hung his wet socks out of the window. It was in the nature of an experiment; he wanted to see if they would freeze, and he was rewarded. That night when he examined them they were frozen hard as boomerangs. They were shaped like boomerangs, too, though when he threw one it did not return to him. Willy, somewhat puzzled, found it three days later, still frozen, in the middle of the lawn.

Long before that, however, the Melendys had changed their clothes, drunk the hot cocoa Cuffy forced on them, put on dry snow togs and continued their desperate search. They kept at it doggedly, looking in all the dark places they could think of where ice might be: deep in the pocket of each rotten stump, each hollow tree; under every overhanging boulder, into every crevice of rock, but they found nothing except a rusted scout knife that Rush had lost the year before. By nightfall they were cold, tired, and discouraged.

“I don't think this clue is explicit enough,” Randy complained. “When the whole world is turned to ice all of a sudden, how do we know
which
ice? And when they say near, how near do they mean? As near as you are to me, or as near as Carthage is to home?”

“Heck, I bet we never find it,” said Oliver gloomily.

But the next day, of course, they felt differently and tore through their Sunday waffles, mad to take up the chase.

“By the way, kids,” said Father. “What happened to yesterday's mail? I never saw it, and there must have been some. There's always some, and usually too much, at the first of the month.”

“Jeepers,” said Randy. Horrified, she stared across the table at Oliver, and Oliver staring back forgot to chew; his cheek bulged with waffle like a chipmunk's.

“We had it down at the brook when we were taking the waterfall off,” said Randy. “I remember I put the mail down beside me on the snow.…”

“When you were
what?
” said Father, setting down his coffee cup. “I wonder if everyone's children act like this? I always thought children just lived normal lives: eating, playing baseball, reading books …
not
taking waterfalls apart and mislaying their parent's mail.”