THE SECRET OF THE INDIAN

                  by
        LYNNE REID BANKS






Text copyright 1989 by Lynne Reid
Banks

All Rights Reserved







       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  No one would have thought the old-fashioned
bathroom cupboard Omri received as a birthday
present would have turned out to be magic. After
all, Omri's brother had found it in the alley
behind their house. But the cupboard was magic. It
brought to life Little Bear, the miniature plastic
Indian chief, and "Boo-Hoo" Boone, the
plastic cowboy from the Old West, as well as
all the other little people Omri and his best friend,
Patrick, had become so fond of. Omri and
Patrick had even found a way to transport
themselves into the very real and very dangerous worlds of their little
friends--and not without consequence. Now Omri and
Patrick must share their secret with Emma, whose
plastic doctors are needed to save so many
lives. Will Emma and her little doctors be able
to save all of England from the turn-of-the-century
twister from Boone's hometown, or will the
grown-ups discover the secret first?
  By the author of the brilliant The Indian in
the Cupboard and its sequel The Return
of the Indian.

  Lynne Reid Banks was born in
London, England, the daughter of a Scots
doctor and an Irish actress. After spending the
years of World War II in the Canadian
prairies as a child evacuee, she returned
to train for the stage at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art. Five years in the theater as
actress and playwright led to her being the first woman
television news reporter in Britain. During
this period she wrote her first novel, The
L-Shaped Room, which was made into a film.
In 1962 she emigrated to Israel, where she
taught English in a kibbutz, married a
sculptor, and had three sons. She returned
with her family to England in 1971 and now lives
in Dorset and London, but likes to visit the
United States every year to tour schools.
  Ms. Banks has written more than twenty
books, for adults and young readers of all ages.
Her books for young people include Sarah and
After; The Writing on the Wall; My
Darling Villain; The Farthest-Away
Mountain; I, Houdini; and The Fairy
Rebel. The Secret of the Indian
is a sequel to The Indian in the
Cupboard and The Return of the Indian.



           For Ruth Danckert
             and the writers of the
           Springfield Letters


               CONTENTS

1. A Shocking Homecoming
2. Modest Heroes
3. How It All Started
4. Dead In The Night
5. Patrick Goes Back
6. A New Insider
7. Patrick In Boone-Land
8. A Heart Stops Beating
9. Tamsin Drives A Bargain
10. A Rough Ride
11. Ruby Lou
12. Caught Red-Handed
13. Mr. Johnson Smells A  Rat117
14. A Strange Yellow Sky
15. Interrogation
16. Panic
17. The Big Blow
18. Red Satin

Epilogue At A Wedding


     THE SECRET OF THE INDIAN

                 1.
         A Shocking Homecoming

  When Omri's parents drove home from their
party, his mother got out in front of the house while his
father drove around the side to put the car away. The
front-door key was on the same key ring with the
car key, so his mother came up the steps and rang the
bell. She expected the baby-sitter to answer.
  There was a lengthy pause, and then the door
opened, and there was Omri, with Patrick just behind
him. The light was behind him too, so she didn't
see him clearly at first.
  "Good heavens, are you boys still up? You should have
been in bed hours ag--"
  Then she stopped. Her mouth fell open and her
face drained of color.
  "Omri! What--what--what's happened to your
face?"
  She could hardly speak properly, and that was when
Omri realized that he wasn't going to get away
with it so easily this time. This time he was either going
to have to lie like mad or he was going to have to tell far
more than he had ever intended about the Indian, the
key, the cupboard, and all the rest of it.

  He and Patrick had talked about it,
frantically, before his parents returned.
  "How are you going to explain the burn on your
head?" Patrick asked.
  "I don't know. That's the one thing I can't
explain."
  "No, it's not. What about all the little bullet
holes and stuff in your parents' bedroom?"
  Omri's face was furrowed, even though every time
he frowned, it hurt his burn.
  "Maybe they won't notice. They both need
glasses. Do you think we should clear everything up
in there?"
  Patrick had said, "No, better leave it.
After all, they've got to know about the burglars.
Maybe in all the fuss about that, they won't
notice your face and a few other things."
  "How shall we explain how we got rid of them
--the burglars, I mean?"
  "We could just say we burst in through the bathroom
and scared them away."
  Omri had grinned lopsidedly. "That makes
us out to be heroes."
  "So what's so bad about that? Anyway it's
better than telling about them." Patrick, who
had once been quite keen to tell "about them," now
realized perfectly clearly that this was about the worst
thing that could happen.

  "But where is the wretched baby-sitter? Why
didn't she come? How dare she not turn up when
she promised?"
  Omri's father was stamping up and down the living
room in a fury. His mother, meanwhile, was holding
Omri around the shoulders. He could feel her hand
cold and shaking right through his shirt. After her first
shocked outburst when she'd come home and seen him,
she'd said very little. His father, on the other hand,
couldn't seem to stop talking.
  "You can't depend on anyone! Where the hell
are the police? I called them hours ago!"
(it was five minutes, in fact.) "One would
think we lived on some remote island instead of in
London, the biggest city in the world! You pay their
salaries and when you need the police, they're never
there, never!"
  He paused in his pacing and gazed around
wildly. The boys had put the television back
and there wasn't much disorder in this room.
Upstairs, they knew, chaos and endless
unanswerable questions waited.
  "Tell me again what happened."
  "There were burglars, Dad," Omri said
patiently. (this part was safe enough.) "Three of
them. They came in through that window--"
  "How many times have I said we ought to have locks
fitted? Idiot that I am!--for the sake of a few
lousy pounds--go on, go on--"
  "Well, I was asleep in here--"
  "In the living room? Why?"
  "I--er--I just was. And I woke up and
saw them, but they didn't see me. So I
nipped upstairs and--"
  His father, desperate to hear the story, was still too
agitated to listen to more than a sentence of it without
interrupting.
  "And where were you, Patrick?"
  Patrick glanced at Omri for guidance.
Omri shrugged very slightly with his eyebrows. He
didn't know himself how much to say and what to keep
quiet about.
  "I was--in Omri's room. Asleep."
  "All right, all right! Then what?"
  "Er--well, Omri came up, and woke me,
and said there were burglars in the house, and that we ought
to ... er--" He stopped.
  "Well?" barked Omri's father impatiently.
  "Well ... stop them."
  Omri's father turned back to Omri. "Stop
them? Three grown men? How could you stop them? You
should have locked your bedroom door and let them get
on with it!"
  "They were nicking our TV and stuff!"
  "So what? Don't you know the sort of people they
are? They could have hurt you seriously--"
  "They did hurt him seriously!" interrupted
Omri's mother in a shrill voice. "Look at
him! Never mind the interrogation now, Lionel.
I wish you'd go and phone Basia and find out why
she didn't come, and let me take Omri
upstairs and look after him."
  So Omri's father returned to the hall to phone
the baby-sitter while his mother led Omri
upstairs. But when she switched the bathroom
light on and looked at him properly, she let
out a gasp.
  "But that's a burn, Omri! How--how did
they do that to you?"
  And Omri had to say, "They didn't do it,
Mum. Not that. That was something else."
  She stared at him in horror, and then controlled
herself and said as calmly as she could, "All right,
never mind now. Just sit down on the edge of the bath
and let me deal with it."
  And while she was putting on the ointment with her
cold, shaky hands, his father came stamping up the
stairs to say there was no reply from their
baby-sitter's number.
  "How could she not come?" he stormed. "How could
she leave you boys alone here? Of all the
criminally irresponsible--wait till I get
hold of her--"
  "What about us?" asked Omri's mother very
quietly, winding a bandage around Omri's head.
  "Us?"
  "U. Going out to our party before she got here."
  "Well--well--but we trusted her! Thought she
was just a few minutes late--" But his voice
petered out, and he stopped stamping about and went
into their bedroom to take off his coat.
  Omri heard the light being switched on, and he
bit his lips in suspense.
  "Am I hurting, darling?"
  He had no time to shake his head before his father
burst back in.
  "What in God's sweet name has been going
on in our bedroom?"
  Patrick, who was hanging about in the doorway
to the bathroom, exchanged a grim look with
Omri.
  "Well, Dad--that's--that's where the battle--
I mean, that's where they were, when we--caught
them."
  "Battle! That's just what it looks like, is a
battlefield! Jane, come in here and look--"
  Omri's mother left him sitting on the bath and
went through into the bedroom. Omri and Patrick,
numb and speechless with suspense, could hear them
exchanging gasps and exclamations of amazement and
dismay.
  Then both his parents reappeared. Their faces
had changed.
  "Omri. Patrick ... I think we'd
better hear the whole story before the police
arrive. Come in here."
  With extreme reluctance, the boys went through the
dividing door between bathroom and bedroom for the
second time that evening.
  The place looked terrible. All the
dressing-table drawers, and those of the chest of
drawers, were pulled out, their contents strewn about.
The double bed had been knocked askew. A chair
had gone flying, the wardrobe door was swinging
open. Omri had set his mother's little jewel
cupboard back on its feet, but its door,
too, was open.
  But with the lights full on, the thing the boys were
most painfully aware of was the holes. Little
pinholes made by the tiny bullets, and not so little
ones made by the miniature mortars and hand
grenades that had missed their targets and hit the
wall and the head and foot of the bed. It seemed
ludicrous to Omri now, looking at them, that
he'd had even a faint hope his parents might not
notice them. They might be a bit nearsighted,
but after all, they weren't blind. The room looked
pockmarked.
  And indeed his father was already running his fingers over
the white wall above the bed head.
  "What's been going on here, boys?" he said
in a new tone of voice.
  Patrick and Omri glanced at each other,
opened their mouths, and closed them again.
  "Well?"
  It wasn't a bark this time, it was just a question, a
question filled with curiosity. After all, from a
grown-up's point of view, what could make those
tiny marks?
  At that moment there was a loud, policemanly
ring and double knock on the door.
  Omri's father gave the boys a look that said,
"This is only a short postponement," and left the
room. They heard him running downstairs, and they
all trailed after him. Halfway down, he
paused.
  "Good Lord, did you see this, Jane? I
didn't notice as we came up! One of the
banisters has been broken!"
  Eager to explain something that could be explained,
Omri volunteered the information that one of the
burglars had fallen downstairs in his hurry
to get out.
  His father looked up at him.
  "You boys must have thrown a real scare into them."
  "Lionel," said Omri's mother suddenly.
  "What?"
  "Shouldn't we--hear what the boys have to say,
before the police talk to them?"
  He hesitated. The bell rang again,
commandingly.
  "Too late now," he said, and hurried to open
the door to the police.

                 2.
            Modest Heroes

  As the two uniformed policemen were shown into the
living room and Omri's mother hurried down to them,
Omri and Patrick had a welcome moment
to themselves at the top of the stairs.
  "You look like a Sikh in that bandage," said
Patrick. "Well, half a Sikh."
  "Never mind what I look like. What are we
going to do?"
  Patrick said nothing for a moment. Then he said,
"Make something up, I suppose. What else
can we do?"
  "All right. But what? What, that anyone'd
believe for two seconds?"
  "We might try saying that the skinheads did the
damage to the wall. We could say they had--I
don't know--spiked tools, gimlets or
chisels or whatever, and just stuck them
into everything for a laugh."
  "Or we could say we don't know how they did
it. We burst in, they ran, that's it. Leave the
cops to figure it out."
  "If they really look, they'll find minute
bullets in the bottoms of the holes."
  "They won't. Why should they think to?"
  "Boys! Come down here, will you?"
  It was Omri's dad calling, peremptorily.
They started to walk as slowly as they dared down the
stairs.
  "And your burn?" whispered Patrick.
  "Maybe--we might say we'd had a
bonfire in the garden and that you cracked me over the
head with a lighted branch."
  "Oh, great! Try saying that and I really will
crack you!"
  So that was it. They didn't try to explain the
little holes, and the police, assuming that the
skinheads had been vandals as well as burglars,
didn't examine them too closely. They went
over everything else for fingerprints but said that although
there were quite a few, the chances were against them catching the
thieves who--technically speaking--weren't
thieves after all, because they hadn't actually
gotten away with anything.
  Omri told the bonfire story without bringing
Patrick into it. He just said--the inspiration of the
moment--that they'd used a whole can of lighter
fluid to get the fire going and that he, Omri,
had struck the match while his face was over the
wood. His parents, who had been positively
bursting with pride at the way the boys had rid the
house of intruders, abruptly changed their
views about Omri's brilliance.
  "How could you be so unutterably DAFT as
to light a fire like that, you little HALF-WIT!" his
father expostulated. "How many times have I told
you--"
  A cough from one of the policemen interrupted him.
  "Excuse me, sir. were these two lads
alone in the house?"
  "Er--"
  "Because as you no doubt know, sir, it is
severely frowned on to leave any young person under
the age of fourteen alone in a house at night."
  "Of course I know that, Sergeant, and we
never, never do it. We always have a baby-sitter.
Very punctual and reliable. She was due at
seven tonight, and when we went out we assumed
she was a couple of minutes late. ... She's
never let us down before."
  "And where is this person, sir?"
  "She never showed up, Sergeant," said
Omri's father shamefacedly. "Yes, I know
what you're going to say, and you're perfectly right,
we are to blame and I shall never forgive myself."
  "I daresay you will, sir," said the sergeant
levelly, "in time. But it would have been much harder
to forgive yourself if worse had befallen."
Both Omri's parents hung their heads
miserably, and Omri moved closer to his mother,
who looked as if she might burst into tears.
  "This is not exactly what you might call
a--salubrious neighborhood, especially after
dark," went on the policeman. "Only this
evening a lady was mugged at the end of your street
--pulled right off her bicycle, she was--"
  "Her bicycle!"
  This from Omri's mother, whose head had come up
sharply.
  "Yes, madam?"
  "Who was she--this--lady who was mugged?"
  The sergeant glanced at his companion. "Do you
remember the name, George?"
  George shrugged. "Some Polish-sounding
name--"
  Omri's mother and father exchanged horrified
looks. "Not--was it Mrs. Brankovski?"
  "Something like that--"
  "But that's her! Our baby-sitter!" cried
Omri's mother. "Oh, heavens--poor
Basia--"
  "Basha?" inquired the younger policeman.
"Is that her name, or what happened to her--?" And
he suppressed a snigger. But the sergeant gave
him a stern look and he subsided.
  "There's nothing humorous about it, George."
  "No, Sergeant. Sorry."
  "You'll be glad to hear she's not badly
hurt, madam. But she had to go to the hospital,
just for a checkup, like. The muggers got her bag,
though."
  "Oh, this is terrible! What kind of district
have we come to live in?"
  Ah, thought Omri. Now maybe you'll
realize what I've been going through, walking
along Hovel Road to the station every day! They'd
never accepted before that it was a horrible area and that
he'd been scared.
  The policemen took all the details and
descriptions of the skinheads.
  "Could you identify them if you saw them again?"
asked the sergeant.
  "No," said Patrick.
  Omri said nothing. He knew he would see them
again, like on Monday morning on the way to school.
Whether he would turn them in or not, he had yet
to decide.

  Adiel and Gillon came home from their film
just as the police were leaving.
  "And who are these young gentlemen?" asked the
sergeant.
  "They're Omri's older brothers."
  "What's going on?" asked Adiel.
  "We've had burglars," said Omri quickly.
  "WHA-AT!" yelled Gillon. "They
didn't get my stereo!--Did they?"
  "They didn't get a thing," said their father
proudly. "Omri and Patrick chased them off."
  The older boys gaped at each other.
  "Them and what army?" asked Gillon.
  Patrick stifled a sudden nervous giggle.
"Only a little one," he murmured. Omri
nearly felled him with a heavy nudge.
  There was a lot more talking to do--Adiel and
Gillon had to hear the whole story (except that,
of course, it was nothing like the whole story) all
over again. They were absolutely agog, and even
Gillon could find nothing sarcastic to say about the
way Omri and Patrick had dealt with the
situation.
  "You're a pair of nutters," was the worst he
could think of. "Those thugs could've flattened you.
How did you know they didn't have knives?" But
there was more than a hint of admiration in his reproof.
  Adiel, the eldest, said, "Right pair of
heroes if you ask me. We could've been cleaned
out." And he gazed lovingly, not at his little
brother, but at the television set.
  It was nearly one o'clock in the morning by the time
they'd drained the last of their hot chocolate and
been gently shooed off to bed by Omri's mother. She
gave Omri a special hug, being careful of his
head, and hugged Patrick too.
  "You're fantastic kids," she said.
  Omri and Patrick looked uncomfortable. It
simply didn't seem right to either of them that they were
getting all the credit for driving off the
intruders single- (or double-were handed, when in fact
they'd had a great deal of help.
  As soon as they got up to Omri's bedroom
in the attic, they locked the door and made for the
desk.
  They'd had to make a hasty decision, before the
return of the parents, to leave things as they were, not
to send anybody else back after they'd dispatched
Corporal Willy Fickits and his men. As
Patrick pointed out, "We don't know how the
wounded would stand the journey. Besides, we can't send
the Indians back to their time without Matron, we
can't send her back to hers, without them--and we
certainly can't send them all anywhere together!"
  And Omri had agreed. But they'd both been
on tenterhooks all the time the police had been
in the house for fear they'd demand to see Omri's
room. The boys had been very careful to say the
burglars hadn't got beyond the second floor of the
house.
  Now the boys bent over the desk. They'd
left Omri's bedside light on in case
Matron had had to tend to one of the wounded Indians
in the night. She herself now sat, upright but
clearly dozing, at a small circular table
(made of the screw top of a Timotei shampoo
bottle, a good shape because it had a rim she could
get her knees under). On it lay a tiny
clipboard which she had brought with her from St.
Thomas's Hospital. She'd been making up
her notes and temperature charts.
  On either side of her on the floor of the
longhouse stretched a double row of pallet beds.
Each bed was occupied by a wounded Indian.
Matron's ministrations had been so efficient that
all were resting peacefully. She had earned her little
nap, though she would probably deny hotly,
later, that she had nodded off while "on duty."
  Outside the longhouse, beside the burnt-out
candle, a blanket was spread on the soil in
Omri's father's seed tray. Curled up
asleep on the blanket were Little Bear and Bright
Stars, his wife. Between them, in the crook of Bright
Stars' arm, lay their newborn baby, Tall
Bear.
  All these people, when they were standing up, were no more
than three inches tall.


                                   
                 3.
          How It All Started

  It had all started more than a year before, with an
old tin medicine cabinet Gillon had found, a
key that fitted it, which had belonged to Omri's
great-grandmother, and the little plastic figure of an
American Indian that Patrick had given
Omri (secondhand) for his birthday.
  On that fateful night, Omri had put the
Indian into the small metal cupboard and locked
it with the fancy key. There was no particular point
to this, really. Thinking back later, Omri
didn't know why he'd done it. He'd had a thing
at the time about secret cupboards, drawers,
rooms; hiding places, kept safe from prying
eyes, where he could secrete his favorite things
and be sure they'd stay exactly as he'd left
them, undisturbed by rummaging brothers or
anyone else.
  But the Indian didn't stay as he'd left
it. Some combination of key and cupboard, plus the
stuff the Indian was made of--plastic--had worked
the wonder of bringing the little man to life.
  At first, when this happened, Omri--once past
the first shock of astonishment--had thought he was in for the
fun trip of all time. A little, live man of his
very own to play with! But it hadn't turned out like that.
  The Indian, Little Bear, was no mere toy.
Omri soon found out that he was a real person,
somehow magicked into present-day London,
England, from the America of nearly two hundred
years ago. The son of a chief of the Iroquois
tribe, a fighter, a hunter, with his own history
and his own culture. His own beliefs and morals.
His own brand of courage.
  Little Bear regarded Omri as a magic being,
a giant from the world of the spirits, and was at first
terrified of him. Omri could see he was
afraid, but the Indian was incredibly brave and
controlled, and Omri soon began to admire him.
He realized he couldn't treat him just as a toy
--he was a person to be respected, despite his
tiny size and relative helplessness.
  And it soon turned out that he was by no means the
easiest person in the world to get along with or
satisfy. He had demands, and he made them
freely, assuming Omri to be all-powerful.
  He demanded his own kind of food. A
longhouse, such as the Iroquois used
to sleep in. A horse, although previously he
had never ridden. Weapons, and animals to hunt,
and a fire to cook on and dance around. Eventually
he even demanded that Omri provide him with a
wife!
  In addition, Omri had to hide him and
protect him. It needed only a little imagination
to realize what would happen if any grown-up should
find out about the cupboard, the key, and their magic
properties. Because Omri soon found out that not just
Little Bear but any plastic figure or
object would become alive or real by being locked
in the cupboard.
  But he couldn't keep the secret entirely
to himself. His best friend, Patrick, eventually found
out about it and lost no time in putting his own little
plastic man into the cupboard. And so
"Boo-Hoo" Boone, the crying Texas
cowboy, had come into their lives, complicating things
still more. Forof course, cowboy and Indian were
enemies and had to be kept apart until a number
of adventures, and their common plight--being tiny in
a giants' world--brought them together and made them
friends and even blood brothers.
  Omri bought the plastic figure of an
Indian girl and brought her to life as a wife for
Little Bear. And shortly after that it was decided--with
deep reluctance by the boys--that having three little
people and their horses around amid all the dangers that
threatened them in the boys' time and world, was more than
they could cope with. It was just too much
responsibility. So they "sent them back," for the
cupboard and key worked also in reverse,
transforming real miniature people back into plastic
and returning them to their own time.

  Omri hadn't intended ever to play with this
dangerous magic again. It had been too frightening,
too full of problems--and too hurtful, at the
end, when he had to part with friends he had grown so
fond of. But as with so many resolutions, this one
got broken.
  About a year later, by which time Omri's and
Patrick's families had both moved, Omri
won a prize in an important competition for a
short story. The story he wrote was called
"The Plastic Indian" and was all about--well,
it was the truth, but of course no one thought of that;
they just thought Omri had made up the most
marvelous tale. And he was so excited
(the prize was three hundred pounds, he was to receive
it at a big party in a London hotel, and
even his brothers were impressed) that he decided
to bring Little Bear back to life, just long enough to share
this triumph with him since he had been such a
vital part of it.
  Unfortunately, things were not so simple.
  When Omri put Little Bear, Bright Stars, and
their pony--the plastic figures of them--back in
the cupboard, they emerged much changed.
  Little Bear lay across the back of his pony with
two musket balls in his back, very near death.
There had been a battle in his village, between his
tribe and their enemies, the Algonquins, together with
French soldiers (omri had already learned that the
French and English had been fighting in America
at the time, and Little Bear's tribe was on the
English side). Little Bear had been wounded.
Bright Stars, although on the point of having a
baby, had rushed out and heaved Little Bear onto his
pony, just as the magic worked, bringing them--tiny as
before, but as real as ever, and in desperate trouble--
to Omri's attic bedroom.
  And thus it was that Omri was launched into a whole
series of new and even more hair-raising and
challenging adventures.
  Luckily Patrick was nearby and was able
to help with some excellent ideas. Boone "came
back" too, and they also brought to life a
hospital Matron from a much more recent era
to help save Little Bear's life. Later, when
he demanded to go back to his village, a
British Royal Marine corporal, Willy
Fickits, and a contingent of Iroquois braves
were brought to life to help take revenge on the
Algonquins.
  At this point there was a most incredible turn of
events.
  Boone, the cowboy, suggested that the boys go
back to Little Bear's time and witness the battle.
Of course they thought it was impossible. How could
they fit into the little bathroom cupboard, only about
a foot high? But Boone pointed out that the
magic key might fit something larger--the old
seaman's chest that Omri had bought in the market,
for instance.
  It worked. Each boy climbed in in turn, the
other one turned the key, and each separately
went back in time to the Iroquois village.
  When Omri got back--terribly
shaken after witnessing a horrific battle--his
hair was singed and he had a burn blister on the
side of his head.
  The boys brought the Indian troop back through
the magic of the key, discovering to their horror that the
modern weapons that they had given Little Bear's
men--Little Bear called them now-guns--had
proved too much for fighters accustomed to bows and
arrows. Many of them had been accidentally shot by their
own side. Matron had to be brought back
to treat their wounds, but eight had been killed.
  Little Bear was distraught, but Bright Stars comforted
him by putting his new son, Tall Bear, in his
arms. And Omri and Patrick took the blame.
They shouldn't have sent modern weapons into the past.
... But these worked very well when, later, three
skinheads tried to burgle the house. The boys
brought some plastic Marines to life and mounted an
artillery assault on them just as they were rifling
Omri's parents' bedroom, and completely routed
them. It was exhilarating while it lasted, but now
they were faced with the aftermath: reality, the present, the
results of the night's doings.


                 4.
           Dead In The Night

  The two boys sat on the floor of Omri's
bedroom and conferred in low voices.
  "We've got to plan what to do," said
Patrick. "One of us must be up here in your
room, on guard, every minute of the rest of the
weekend. We'll have to keep your door locked from
inside. Whoever's not here will have to bring food and
stuff, so I'd better stay up here most of the
time. It'll look dead odd if I start
nicking stuff from your kitchen. I don't know what
we're going to do on Monday--"
  Omri said heavily, "I do. I'll have to go
to school, and you'll have to go home."
  "Oh, God, yes," said Patrick,
remembering.
  Patrick now lived in Kent with his mother. They
were in London only for a brief visit to his
aunt and girl cousins, Emma and the dreadful
Tamsin. They'd have been back in their country
home already if Tamsin had not fallen off her
bicycle and hurt herself, so that Patrick's mother
had decided to stay on for a day or two
to help his aunt.
  The boys sat in heavy silence. Omri could
hardly bear the thought of being left alone in this
increasingly difficult situation. Patrick could
hardly bear the thought of leaving it.
  "Maybe Tamsin'll die," Patrick said
darkly. "Then we'll have to stay on. For the
funeral."
  Omri hoped this was only a sick joke. He
detested Tamsin, but he didn't wish her dead
--not now that he'd seen death, not with those eight
small bloodstained bodies lying under torn-up
scraps of sheet, right here in his room.
  "What are we going to do about--the
casualties?" he asked.
  "You mean the dead ones? We'll have to bury
them."
  "Where?"
  "In your garden?"
  "But we can't just ... I mean, it's not like when
Boone's horse died. They're people, we can't
just--stick them in the earth. What about their
families?"
  "Their families are--are back there somewhere.
We don't know where they are or when they are."
  "Maybe we ought to--to send them back through the
cupboard, to their own time."
  "Send their dead bodies back? With modern
bullets in them?"
  "Their people would think they'd been shot by white men.
They wouldn't examine them. They'd go through--you know,
whatever special rituals they have, and bury them
properly--or--or whatever they do with dead people."
  Abruptly Omri felt his eyes begin
to prick, and a hard, hot lump came into his
throat. He put his head down on his knees.
Patrick must have been feeling the same, because he
squeezed Omri's arm sympathetically.
  "It's no good feeling it too much," he said
after clearing his throat twice. "I know it's
terrible and I know it's partly our fault. But they
lived in very dangerous times, fighting and risking
death every day. And they went into the battle quite
willingly."
  "They didn't know what they were up against with the
now-guns," said Omri in a muffled voice.
  "Yeah, I know. St. It doesn't help to
--to be a Boone."
  The weak joke about the crybaby cowboy made
Omri chuckle just a little.
  "Where is Boone, by the way?" he asked,
sniffing back his tears.
  "I told you. I sent him back--he asked
me to. Gave him a new horse, and off he
went. Look."
  He opened the cupboard. On the shelf was
Boone, standing beside his new horse, a tall,
alert-looking black one. On the floor of the
cupboard, Corporal Fickits and his men were
clustered together, with their various weapons.
Patrick gathered them all up, put the
soldiers back in the biscuit tin, but kept
Fickits and Boone separate. Boone went
into his pocket, horse and all. He always
kept him there, when he wasn't real, for luck.
He was actually as fond of Boone as Omri was
of Little Bear. Omri put Fickits in the
back pocket of his jeans.
  "The only thing we can do right now is to get some
sleep," Omri said.
  Patrick settled down on his floor
cushions while Omri clambered up onto his
bunk bed under the skylight. He looked up at
the stars through the branches of the old elm tree which his
father kept saying should be cut down because it was dead.
Skeletal as it was, to Omri it was a friend.
  "Let's bring Boone back tomorrow,"
Patrick whispered just before they dropped off. "I
don't seem to be able to face things without
Boone, whether he cries or not. Besides, I
want to know if he likes his new horse."

  At dawn Omri was awakened by a familiar
shout.
  "Omri, wake! Day come! Much need do!"
  Omri, feeling sticky-eyed and thick-headed with
tiredness, slid backwards down the ladder to the
floor. Patrick was still sound asleep. The
gray dawn light was just creeping through the
skylight.
  "It's dead early, Little Bear," he
muttered, rubbing his face and stifling a series of
yawns.
  Little Bear didn't hear him properly. He
caught only his name and the word "dead." He nodded
his hard-muscled face once and grunted.
  "One more dead in night."
  Omri's throat closed up with a sick
feeling.
  "Another? Oh, no ... I'm
sorry!" He meant sorry-ashamed, not just
sorry-regretful. He felt every dead Indian
brave was on his own conscience. He should never have
made the modern weapons real, never have sent Little
Bear and his braves back in time with them. The
trouble was, he seemed still not fully to have
accepted the fact, which he knew with one part of his
brain, that these little people were not just toys come to life.
They were flesh and blood, with their own characters, their own
lives and destinies. And against his own intentions
Omri had been drawn in. He'd found himself
acting out his own part in these destinies, which would never
have been possible but for the magic of the cupboard ...
and the key.
  The key turned any container into a kind of
body-shrinking time machine. His seaman's chest had
taken him and Patrick back to the eighteenth
century, to Little Bear's time and place. Omri
had not had time, so far, even to begin to think about the
possibilities of that.
  Now he scanned the seed tray and saw that two
of the Indians who had not been injured were carrying
another body out of the longhouse and into the little
paddock Patrick had made with miniature
fencing for the ponies, and which was now a makeshift
morgue. Matron followed the sad procession,
her face, rather grim at all times, now grimmer
than ever.
  "I did my best," she said shortly.
"Bullet lodged in the liver. Couldn't reach
it."
  She watched the two braves lay the dead
Indian down beside the others. Suddenly she turned
to face Omri.
  "I know I did that operation on your friend!" she
said. "And I operated last night--emergency
ops--three of them--but blow it all, I'm not a
surgeon! Stupid of me--conceited--to think I
could cope. Can't. Not trained for it. Anyway
... too much for any one person." Her voice
cracked.
  "Matron, it's not your fault--" began
Omri, terrified that this capable, efficient,
down-to-earth woman might be about to burst
into tears, which would have unmanned him completely.
  "Didn't say it was! My fault indeed!"
She glared at him, took her spectacles off,
polished them on a spotless handkerchief from her
apron pocket, and put them back on her
formidable nose.
  "Blessed if I know how I got here, what this
is all about. Now don't you go pulling the wool
over my eyes, I know when I'm dreaming and when
I'm not--this is real. The blood's real, the
pain's real, the deaths are real. My ops were
real, they were the best I could do, but what is also
real is my--my--my basic inadequacy."
  She suddenly snatched the handkerchief out of her
pocket again and blew her nose on it. She
wiped her nose back and forth several times and then
gave a great, convulsive sniff.
  "What we need here is a properly equipped
medical team!"
  Omri gaped at her.
  "If we don't get one--and quickly--more of these
poor men are going to die."
  After a moment, during which she glared at him
expectantly through her spectacles, Omri said
slowly, "I'll tell you the truth about your being
here and--all the rest of it. But you probably
won't believe me."
  "After what I've been through in the past
forty-eight hours, I'll believe anything!" she
said fervently.
  He explained things as well as he could. She
listened intently and asked a couple of questions.
  "You say any article or figure made of
plastic is affected?"
  "Yes."
  "And objects that might be concealed on the
person--my hypodermic syringe, for example,
and other things I brought in my pocket from St.
Thomas's--"
  "Yes, they're made real, provided the
person had them on him before he was--brought."
  "Well! Why can't you get hold of some
plastic doctors and put them in your allegedly
magic cupboard? Only you must make sure they
have some equipment--surgical instruments and so
forth."
  "But all the shops are shut! How can I--"
  Suddenly Omri remembered. Two nights
ago he had gone to see Patrick at his
aunt's house, and they had tried to borrow
Tamsin's new box of plastic figures,
only she'd caught them at it and grabbed it
back. Omri had just managed to hold onto the
figure that turned out to be Matron. But there had
been others in the set--including a surgeon at
an operating table.
  He stretched out his foot and nudged Patrick
awake.
  "Patrick! Listen. There's another Indian
dead. And Matron says, if we don't find
a proper doctor, more will die."
  Patrick scrambled to his feet, rubbing his
hair.
  "How can we get any new ones on
Sunday?"
  "What about the ones Tamsin has?"
  "What are you saying? That I should go back
to Auntie's and nick them when Tamsin isn't
looking?"
  "It's only borrowing."
  "Not when the owner doesn't know or agree! Not
when the owner's my little creep of a cousin! She'd
have my guts for garters."
  Omri said with a note of desperation, "Well,
what are we going to do, then? This is a real
emergency!" Suddenly he had an idea. "Why
don't you try buying them off her?"
  "It might work. Have you got any dosh?"
  "Not a penny, we spent it all on the
Indian braves. Maybe Dad'll lend me a
couple of quid."
  Omri's Dad did better than that. He
gave him five pounds, and not just till pay day.
"You've earned it. Here's one for Patrick,
too."
  So there was no problem about money.
  At breakfast, hastily eaten, the boys
sneaked some crispy bits of bacon and quite a few
Crunchy Nutflakes into their pockets, and
Omri astonished his mother by asking for a mug of tea
instead of milk. Matron couldn't cope without her
tea.
  "I thought you hated tea!"
  "I'm coming around to it."
  "You'll be hitting the scotch next," commented his
father from behind his Sunday paper.
  Patrick nudged Omri. When whisky was
mentioned, there was just one person who came to mind.
Halfway back up the stairs, Patrick
whispered, "Let's bring Boone back to life
right now, before I leave!"
  At that moment the doorbell rang.
  Omri went back down and opened the door.
Then he gasped. Outside stood Tamsin. Of
all people!
  How could it be? She'd broken her
leg!
  Omri looked again. It wasn't Tamsin, it
was Emma.
  Emma was Tamsin's twin sister. She was the
spitting image of Tamsin, and yet she was
wholly different. As far as Omri could
remember, she was quite a decent sort of girl.
  "Hallo, Omri," she said. "Can I see
Patrick?"
  Patrick dragged himself reluctantly down
into the hall. Omri stood aside, waiting. He
could feel himself tensing all over for fear there was a
car outside waiting to cart Patrick away.
  "Hi, Em. How's it going?" said Patrick
carelessly.
  "Okay. Tam's leg's in a cast and she's
better. They sent me here because Omri's phone's
busted and your mum couldn't ring you and you're to come
back with me."
  "Right now?"
  "Yes."
  "I--I can't come now!"
  "Why not?"
  Patrick dithered helplessly, trying to think of
some excuse.
  "How are we supposed to get back?"
  "On the train, of course," said Emma.
"Come on."
  Omri said, "Did you come here on the train?"
  "Yes, why?"
  "And you walked up the road to here, from the station?"
  "Yes."
  Omri thought of the skinheads. It was Sunday--
even the few who went to school or had jobs were
free and on the prowl on Sundays. He himself
never walked down Hovel Road on Sundays
if he could possibly help it.
  "Did you meet anyone?"
  She shrugged. "A few boys. Hanging around.
Real creeps, gross. I took no notice
of them."
  Omri shivered. But then he remembered. There
was a pretty good chance he didn't have to be scared
of that gang anymore. He put his hand in his
jeans pocket and fingered the little penlight the
smallest of the burglars had dropped the night
before.
  As he touched it, he felt something else. It
was the key. A sudden flash of inspiration came
to him, stiffening his whole body like a bolt
of electricity.
  "Emma," he said in a queer sort of
voice, "would you mind if I had a private
chat with Patrick before he--er--goes?"
  She looked from one of them to the other. "What's
the secret?"
  They both flushed.
  "Wait here, okay?" Omri gabbled, and he
pulled Patrick into the living room and closed the
door.
  "You've got to get out of going home,"
Omri said. "I can't cope without you."
  "What can I do? Break my leg?"
  "Well ... if you had the bottle for it, you
could throw yourself down the stairs ... probably do
yourself some serious enough injury--"
  "Thanks!"
  "But I wasn't thinking of that. Tell Emma
you've left something upstairs. We'll go up
to my room and you can get in the chest with Boone's
figure and I can send you back to his time."




                 5.
         Patrick Goes Back

  Patrick's face was blank for a moment, and
Omri thought, He's scared, and who can blame
him! But then he saw it wasn't that at all.
Patrick simply hadn't been able to grasp the
idea at first.
  When he did grasp it, not just his face but his
whole body seemed to light up with excitement.
  "Wow," he said simply.
  "You mean you'll do it?"
  "Are you kidding? Go back to real cowboy time,
cowboy country? See Boone full-size?
Lead me to it! Let's go!"
  He bounded out of the living room and was halfway
up the stairs before Omri had gathered his wits
to follow. As he came into the hall, he noticed
Emma standing much closer to the living room door
than she had been before. Patrick had nearly
bowled her over as he emerged.
  A suspicion struck Omri.
  "Were you listening?"
  "Yes," she said at once. "But I didn't
understand what you were talking about."
  "Ah," said Omri with relief. It crossed
his mind that she was a very straightforward girl, at
least--Tamsin wouldn't have admitted
eavesdropping like that. Not many people would.
  He gave Emma a closer look. She was a
year younger than he was--which was why he had hardly
noticed her at school; somehow you only noticed
your contemporaries or people ahead of you. But she'd
been more or less around for most of his life. Odd
that he'd never really looked at her before. Now he
saw that she was quite nice looking in a fair,
snubby-faced way. She had freckles and large
eyes, and was dressed in sensible jeans and a blue
parka. She had her hands deep in her pockets
and was gazing at him expectantly.
  "What were you talking about in there?"
  "Private," said Omri. He glanced up the
stairs. Patrick could already be heard thudding up
the last flight, to Omri's attic bedroom.
  "Where's Patrick gone?"
  "Er--up to get his pajamas and stuff."
  "But he didn't take any last night, he
just dashed out."
  "Oh. Well--anyway he's--gone up,"
said Omri feebly, making a move to follow
him.
  Emma followed at his heels. He paused
on the second step.
  "Can you wait down here?"
  "Why?"
  "We'll be--right down."
  "Can't I see your room? You saw mine,"
she said. "Last night when you came to our house.
Mum moved Tam and me out so Patrick could have
it."
  "Well ..."
  From above came Patrick's impatient
voice. "Come on, Omri! Don't hang
about!"
  "You wait in the living room," Omri said
decisively. He turned away from her and ran
upstairs.
  In his room he found Patrick already climbing
into the seaman's chest.
  "Go on, I'm ready! Send me!"
  But Omri, having come up with this amazing idea,
was already having second thoughts.
  "Listen, how'll I explain where you've
gone?"
  "Don't. Get rid of Emma
somehow, make her go home, and you can tell your
parents I went with her."
  "But what happens when Emma gets back
to her place without you?"
  "It'll be too late then! I'll just have
vanished!" He grinned all over his face with
glee.
  "No, you won't. You'll be in the chest--your
body will. What if they start looking for you?"
  "Listen, this was your idea, and a fantastic one!
Stop making problems. Pile all your junk on
top of the chest like before--they'll never think to look
there."
  "But your mum will be dead worried! She's
sure to ring up. Then Emma will say one thing and
I'll say another--"
  Patrick had been crouching in the chest, looking
up at him. Now, suddenly, he stood up. His
face had changed. He looked quite fierce.
  "I want to go back with Boone," he said.
"I've made up my mind. And I don't
want you bringing me back after ten minutes, either.
You had your adventure in the Indian village.
I know you had a rough time, but you saw it, you saw
the battle, you experienced it. Now it's my
turn, and I don't want to hear any of your
feeble objections. Just put the key in the lock and
turn it, will you? I'm the one who's taking the
risk. All you're asked to do is stall
everybody for a few days."
  Omri's mouth dropped open.
  "A few days?"
  "It's hardly worth going for less than that!"
Patrick retorted.
  That he would stay away for longer than a few
hours had not been any part of Omri's--as he
now saw it--idiotic idea.
  "But it could be dangerous! What if--"
  Patrick made a move as if to get out of the
chest. "Are you going to do it, or am I going to have
to bash you?" he growled.
  Omri was not afraid of him. They were evenly
matched. He stood his ground.
  "You don't have to use skinhead tactics," he
said.
  Patrick looked sheepish.
  "Sorry. You're always trying to hold me
back from doing what I want to. Listen.
We'd better decide beforehand when you're going
to bring me back. Time works the same at
both ends. So let's say--a week from today."
  "You're completely round the twist," said
Omri. "A week! Anyone'd think you were going
on holiday! All right, lie down. I'll send
you. But don't get too comfortable in Texas, because
you'll be back before you know it, if I get into any
trouble about you, which I'm bound to."
  Patrick stared at him for a moment, then slowly
took the small figure of Boone out of his
pocket. Omri reached out and touched it. He
wanted to touch Patrick--shake hands with him or
something--but he didn't know how to do it, quite. So he
touched Boone instead and said, "Say hello to him
for me and tell him--tell him to take good care of
you."
  Patrick curled up in the bottom of the chest.
Omri, feeling quite calm now that the decision was
made, closed the lid. He took the key out of
his pocket and stuck it in the lock on the chest.
For a moment it hung there, its red satin ribbon
hanging from its fancy top. Then Omri turned
it firmly.
  At that moment he heard a small, shrill
voice nearby.
  "What Pat-Rick do? Why move
longhouse? Very bad, move sick men, make
fear, make wound worse!"
  Omri spun around. In order to open the chest,
Patrick had lifted the seed tray with its
precious miniature complement of Indians,
healthy, injured, and dead, on to Omri's desk
underneath his raised bunk bed. Omri had, for the
moment, quite forgotten them. Now he saw Little Bear
standing at the edge of the tray, his arms folded, and his
face, lit by Omri's desk lamp, a mask of
reproach.
  "What Pat-Rick do in box?"
  Omri crouched till his face was level with
Little Bear's.
  "Little Bear, Patrick's gone. We agreed
he should go back to Boone's time. He's going
to stay there for a while. So if there's anything you
need, you'll have to ask me."
  "I ask, you not fear," said Little Bear
promptly.
  Omri suppressed a sigh. There wouldn't be
much of the "ask" about it, if he knew Little Bear.
  "Start with food. Wife must feed son. Need
good food, keep up strength."
  "Oh--of course! Sorry, I almost
forgot."
  Omri reached into his pocket and brought out his
collection of cornflakes, bits of bacon and
toast, which he'd thoughtfully wrapped in a paper
napkin. Of course he'd left the mug of tea
downstairs. He'd have to go and get it. Meanwhile
there was enough food to be getting on withfor all of them.
  Little Bear looked at the spread, sampled a
chunk of crispy bacon fat, and grunted with
grudging approval. But then he straightened up,
his face once more a mask of seriousness.
  "Not leave dead brave long time," Little Bear
said. "Send back. Own people find, know what do,
obey custom for dead."
  "Yes," said Omri. "That's what we thought.
When?"
  "Ry-taway," said Little Bear, who was beginning
to pick up some English expressions.
  "We'll put them in the cupboard," said
Omri. He felt the cupboard was the right time
vehicle for the little people, the chest for him and
Patrick.
  The logistics of the thing were solved by Omri's
putting his left hand palm upward on the soil in
the seed tray while Little Bear and three healthy
Indians carefully and reverently lifted the
corpses, still covered with bloodstained cloths,
onto it. Omri shuddered as he felt their body
weight, the coldness of death against his skin. Then the
"burial party" of four climbed onto Omri's
hand and he slowly moved to the cupboard, which stood
on the low table in the middle of his room.
  He opened the door. Two Indians climbed
off his hand and over the bottom edge of the cupboard,
and the other two lifted the bodies one by one and handed
them to the Indians, who then laid them on the
floor of the metal cupboard.
  Omri reached over and took the key from the lock
of the chest and inserted it into the keyhole of the
cupboard. The "burial party" climbed out and
stood in a line, looking at their dead comrades in
silence.
  "Little Bear," said Omri, "what about if you
all go back now? There's nothing to hang around here
for, and there's a lot to do, rebuilding your
village. I'm sure Bright Stars would like
to take the baby back and get on with her life."
  Little Bear turned to him, scowling with thought.
  "Good," he said. "Go back soon
ry-taway. First you send dead, then take
out plass-tick."
  Omri closed the door, turned the key, and
after a moment turned it back, opened the door, and
removed the nine plastic figures. He knew
they were no use anymore--the people belonging to them were
gone. He certainly wouldn't ever want to play with
them. After a second's thought, he took a
piece of white writing paper and, piling them
onto it, folded the edges carefully around them.
  "I'll bury them," he said to Little Bear.
"That's our custom with dead people."
  Little Bear nodded grimly. "Good. First we do
dance, ask Great Spirit bring safe to ancestors."
  Matron had come out of the longhouse, serving as a
sort of field hospital for the injured
Indians, and watched the removal of the dead. Now
she called Omri over.
  "I'm very much relieved that you've dealt with that
matter," she said in her brisk way. "Now.
Having disposed of the dead, do you think you could give
your urgent attention to the problem of those who are still
alive?"
  Omri felt a little jolt in his chest. Now that
Patrick had abandoned him, he must solve
by himself the pressing problem of getting the medical
team.
  "Matron, look," he said, thinking aloud more
than anything else, "it's Sunday. Can't go to the
shops. We ... that is, I thought I'd try
to get some help from a friend who has plastic
figures. Not exactly a friend. She's
Patrick's cousin--"
  "Who, me?"
  The jolt Omri had felt before was nothing to the
explosive leap his heart gave at the sound of that
voice.
  He spun around from his ill-balanced crouch,
falling over backwards, and sat gaping at the
figure of Emma in the open doorway.

                 6.
            A New Insider

  "Emma! What--what--what are you doing there?"
  But it was only too obvious what she was doing.
She was looking. And listening. The only question left
was, how much had she seen and heard?
  In a forlorn and desperate hope, Omri
swiveled his eyes sideways, trying to see what
was visible from her angle. Before, when he'd
been crouching in front of the desk, he had
blocked her view of the seed tray. Now that he was
on the floor, everything was in plain sight.
Matron's little figure, standing, arms akimbo,
on the edge of the seed tray. Little Bear's pony,
grazing in the miniature paddock Patrick had
made. Several tiny Indians, busy about the
area, rebuilding last night's fire from the
unburned ends of matchsticks and twigs. And the
longhouse, rising from the ground in all its minute,
handmade magnificence.
  But Emma was not looking as far as that. On the
low table that stood between her and Omri was the
cupboard, and the five Indians. They were chanting
and doing a slow dance around the white paper
packet. It was upon them, Omri saw, that
Emma's eyes were riveted.
  There was nothing to be done. Naught. Zilch.
Zipadee-doo-dah. Zero. And when that's the
case, thought Omri in a sudden mood of
fatalism, you might as well relax.
  "Well," he said, his voice coming out quite steady,
"what do you think?"
  She stared at them for a long time, her eyes
fixed and unblinking, her freckles standing out on a
suddenly very pale face.
  "They're alive," she said at last, in a
doubtful tone, as if he might roar with laughter
at her.
  "You don't say," said Omri, scrambling
to his feet. "And not only those. What about these,
here?" And he indicated the seed tray behind him.
  Emma moved cautiously forward, as if
afraid the very floor might waver and give way
beneath her feet. He noticed now that she had a
mug of tea in her hand, the one he'd saved from
breakfast--it must have been the excuse she'd given
herself for following him up. It tilted in her
nerveless fingers, and he removed it to safety.
  As he poured a few drops into a toothpaste
cap for Matron, Omri watched Emma as she
gazed and gazed. He knew that what his father called
a quantum leap had been taken in the situation,
the sort of change that means nothing will be quite the
same again, and that was scary. But there was no denying a
sort of enjoyment in watching someone else seeing,
trying to realize, coming to grips with it.
  Emma managed this last feat surprisingly
quickly.
  "I've always thought it could happen," she
said abruptly. "It often nearly has, when
I've been playing with my toy animals. Can
they talk? Oh, of course they can, that's who you were
talking to."
  Matron's voice, little but scratchy as chalk
on a blackboard, chirped up. "And pray who
might this young person be? I don't believe
we've been introduced."
  Emma turned a suddenly flushed and smiling
face on Omri. "Wow! Omri, what fun!
How fantastic! I mean, how brill can
anything get!"
  "Yeah," said Omri somewhat sourly.
"Brill. Except that in that little hut there are some
men who are wounded and who could die if we don't
do something. And they're real, and I'm responsible
for them, and Patrick's P.o.'d--"
  "P.o.'d, what's that?"
  "Er--gone. And--"
  "Gone? Where?"
  Omri took a deep breath. "There's no time
to explain everything now. Listen. You know that set of
plastic figures Tamsin got for her
birthday?"
  Emma was one jump ahead of him. Her face
lit up another few watts. "Yes! Yes!
I got one too! You mean we can make them all
come alive--be real, like these?"
  Omri grabbed her arm. "Wait, did you say
you got the same set of models as Tamsin?"
  She shook off his hand. "Don't pinch! No,
mine was different, mine was a sort of shop with people with
trolleys and checkouts and--"
  Omri's heart sank. "Not doctors?"
  She shook her head. "No. I wanted the
doctors and all that, but Tam wouldn't swap."
  Omri said, "Would she sell hers?"
  "Got the odd hundred quid, have you?" said
Emma cynically.
  "I've got the odd five quid."
  Emma frowned, considering. "She might not be
able to resist. She's saving for a skiing holiday."
  "Patrick's got another fiver," said
Omri. "I could--" He turned automatically
toward the chest. Then stopped.
  "Er ... listen, Em. I'm prepared to let
you in on most of this--well, you are in on it. But
there're a couple of wrinkles I think you might
not ... exactly feel comfortable about, not just at
first. So would you mind going downstairs for a
few minutes? Then I'm going back to your
place with you, and we'll negotiate for the models
with Tam."
  She hesitated. "And then come back here and--do
whatever it is you do to make them come alive?"
  Omri looked at her. Now she knew about the
little people. But she didn't yet know about the magic,
how to make it happen. She didn't really know
much, when you came right down to it. There wasn't a
lot she could give away. Not that anyone would
believe. And that was the nitty-gritty, not her
knowing, but her maybe telling. Could he trust her?
Could one trust anyone with a secret as exciting
as this?
  "We'll have to have a serious talk," he said.
"On the train. Just now I want you to go out.
Please, Em."
  They looked at each other. He actually saw
her decide to give way, whether to please him or
for reasons of her own he wasn't sure. It
didn't matter anyhow. Just so she went.
  The second she was outside he shot the bolt,
to make sure. Then he rushed to the cupboard,
took the key out, stuck it back in the chest, and
turned it.
  Patrick lay curled up as Omri had seen
him once before, and he remembered his thought that other
time: As far away as you can get without being
dead. It was tempting to stand there, losing himself in
speculation about where the real Patrick was.
  But there was no time for such thoughts. Reaching into the
chest, Omri fumbled in Patrick's pocket
for the five-pound note. And touched something that made
him snatch his hand away with a yelp as if he'd
burned it.
  There was something alive in Patrick's
pocket!
  Omri stood there with his heart in his gullet.
It wasn't a person; it was a tiny animal of
some kind. With his fingertips Omri had felt that
much. Patrick must have had something plastic in his
pocket when he was locked in the chest, and it had
come to life!
  Cautiously Omri stuck his fingers into the
pocket again. Yes, there it was, something small,
smooth-coated and bony.
  He took hold of it as gently as he could,
feeling it struggle and twist. He drew it out.
  It was a very distressed black horse, complete
with an old Western-style saddle and
bridle.
  Boone's horse! His new one, that
Patrick had taken from the English soldier.
Omri set it down very gently in the paddock on
the seed tray, where Little Bear's pony was tethered
with a double-ply nylon thread. It threw up its
head as the intruder descended from the heavens, and
whinnied anxiously, but as soon as the black
pony's feet were on the ground and it had given itself
a good shake, both their heads dropped to graze the
turf of real grass Patrick had dug up and
laid there.
  Omri smiled in relief. Evidently
Boone's pony was all right, though he wished he
could take off its bridle and saddle. Boone
must have put his old tack on it before Patrick
had sent him back--
  Suddenly Omri went rigid, his brain
fizzing with the shock of the realization that had come to him.
  But how could they have been so stupid!
  In all the haste and hassle of getting
Patrick "sent back," they'd forgotten!
Forgotten the way it worked! Patrick had had the
plastic figure of Boone in his hand, not the
real, live Boone! That meant--
  That meant that Boone, like the horse, would have
become real inside the chest!
  "Boone!" he called frantically into the
depths of the chest. "Boone! Where are you? Are you
okay?"
  Silence.
  Omri grabbed Patrick's right arm. His hand
was tucked under his body. Omri dragged it out from
under Patrick's dead weight. The fingers were
closed into a tight fist. Sticking out from the top of
it was a tuft of ginger hair.
  Grimly, desperately, Omri prised
Patrick's fingers open.
  In his hand lay Boone, the real Boone.
Limp. Motionless.
  Dead?
  Crushed?
  "Matron!"
  Before she knew it, that stalwart lady had been
snatched off the seed tray and set down, somewhat
short of breath and dignity, on the low table.
  "Not another patient! I've got more than I
can--" Then she saw. Her voice changed. "Oh
dear me," she said softly. "Oh, dearie,
dearie me."
  With a doomful look, she fell to her knees
beside the supine figure of Boone and applied her
ear to his heart. To his horror, Omri saw
her give her head half a shake.

                 7.
        Patrick In Boone-Land

  Patrick's journey through time and space was
swift and painless. There was a strange sort of
whooosh during which he seemed to feel, for a split
second, buffeted, as when two heavy trucks
pass close by each other traveling at high
speed in opposite directions. Then there was
heat, silence, and stillness.
  He opened his eyes to the glare of a harsh sun and
screwed them shut.
  He felt around with his hands. There seemed to be
nothing directly in front of him. But he felt
he was upright and leaning against something blanket-like, but
stiffer, rather like a wall covered with flannel.
  Then he found that there was something like a wide,
thick cord across his middle, holding him against the
soft wall. He opened his eyes cautiously.
At first he couldn't see anything but glaring
sunlight. But in a few moments he got
accustomed to that and found himself staring out across an endless
expanse of sand.
  "Well," he said aloud, "it's Texas, I
suppose, so this must be a bit of desert or
prairie or something."
  But where was he? Where--in all this sand--was
he?
  He looked downward. His hands were resting on a
thick rope-like thing as thick as his own leg,
stretched quite tightly across his waist. Under his feet
was something that curved away on either side of him and
curled up several yards ahead of him. It was like
standing on the brink of a huge, smooth,
pale-brown--and empty--riverbed. Behind him it
rose up like the bank of the river, but the bank
felt soft to his hand, and suddenly he realized
what it was.
  "It's--it's a gigantic hat!" he said
aloud. "I'm tied to the crown of it, and this thing must
be the hatband, only it's a huge leather cord!"
  He wriggled down until he was free of the
cord, into which he seemed to have been stuck quite
casually like a feather, or like the flies that fishermen
sometimes stick in their hatbands. Suddenly
Patrick remembered that Boone had had some
kind of a tiny favor--so small one could hardly
see it, except that it was blue, like his own jeans
and sweatshirt--in the cord around his much-loved
cowboy hat.
  Patrick crawled rapidly across the width
of the brim toward its curled-up edge.
  As he did so he noticed for the first time the
utter silence around him, and the fact that the hat was
perfectly still.
  I must be on Boone's head, he thought.
Why isn't the hat jiggling about as he
rides?
  He reached the edge of the brim, pulled himself up
to it, and peered over, preparing himself to see an
immense drop below.
  The sand lay no more than four or five times
Patrick's own height beneath him.
  He could easily make out the individual
grains, which looked to him like the shingle on an
English beach, except that some of them were like lumps
of yellow glass.
  Suddenly he stiffened and gasped. A huge
creature, about the size of a Gal@apagos
tortoise, moseyed by on six angled legs.
Patrick shrank back behind the rim of the hat;
then, realizing that it was merely some kind of beetle
and that it couldn't reach him, he raised himself
cautiously and followed its progress off across
the endless expanse of sand.
  He looked around, as far as he could for the
enormous bulk of the hat, which loomed against the sky
like a soft-cornered building. There was no sign of
anything else alive.
  The first thing is to get down from here, he
thought. Even if it's dangerous. There's no
point in staying here.
  He considered the problem of getting down to the
ground. If the sand below had been his size of sand,
he might have risked jumping into it (or then again,
he thought, peering down, he might not!). But it would
be suicide to jump down onto those big, hard
stones. He'd have to lower himself somehow.
  Patrick, unlike Omri, was athletic.
He really shone in PE, and loved climbing and
jumping and swinging. What he needed now was some kind
of rope, and of course the first thing he thought of was the
hatband.
  He followed it around the crown of the hat again
until he found the knot. Luckily, it
was old; the leather itself was soft, and the knot
loosely tied. By forcing one of the ends back upon
itself through the knot, twice, he managed to untie
it. Then, with great effort, he managed to drag one
end around the crown until he had about half of it
at his disposal, and he carefully lowered the free
end down over the brim.
  The immediate danger was that his weight, though
relatively slight, would pull the whole thong
to the ground when he tried to slide down it, but he
had to risk that. Taking a deep breath, he threw
his right leg over the stiff brim, embraced the
thong with arms and legs as if he were sliding down a
tree trunk, and away he went.
  He was down almost before he had time to think, and as
his feet touched the stones, he felt the rest of the
thong fall away from the hat. He just managed
to leap aside as it fell, like an immense and
heavy snake, onto the ground, missing him by a
hair's breadth.
  He took another deep breath and looked
around.
  The first thing he saw was a huge, impenetrable
mass of what looked like fine copper fuse
wires.
  He touched one. It was very flexible--it
certainly wasn't a wire. It was more like--
  Patrick gasped. He suddenly knew what
it was. And, knowing that, he knew in a flash that
something had gone very wrong.
  The mass of wires was Boone's ginger hair,
sticking out from underneath his hat.
  Patrick started to run. It was not easy,
running on the glassy shingle, but, trying not
to stumble too often, he made his way as fast as
he could right around to the other side of the huge thing like
a promontory--which was actually Boone's head
--jutting out of the desert landscape.
  When he got there, he stopped, stared, stepped
back, stared again. At last he realized that to get
the face in perspective he would have to move back
still farther. He turned and ran away from it for about
a hundred paces, then turned again.
  Yes. Now he could see it was Boone.
  He was lying on his side, the bulk of him
rising from the flat desert floor like a range of
hills. Though his face was turned to the side, the
hat was lying horizontally across one ear as if
someone had dropped it there, not as if Boone had
been wearing it when he toppled to the ground.
On his bristly face was an expression that made
Patrick very uneasy.
  In the distance, behind Boone, loomed a large
desert cactus, the top of which--like Jack's
beanstalk--was too high for Patrick to see.
It looked as if it were growing out of Boone's
shoulder. Patrick narrowed his eyes. He
focused on one wicked-looking cactus needle
that stuck out against the hard blue of the sky, just above
Boone's uppermost arm.
  If he was breathing, even shallowly, the shoulder
level would rise and the spike would disappear.
  It didn't.
  Patrick caught his own breath and held it
until he nearly burst. He had suddenly
realized his fatal mistake.
  He had taken a plastic Boone back with
him. The living Boone had gone back to England,
to Omri's and Patrick's present, in the same
instant that Patrick had come here. They must have
crossed. That was the meaning of the whooshing sensation of
something passing him as he traveled through time and
space.
  Patrick sat down abruptly, and as
abruptly jumped up again. The glassy stones were
very hot. Everything was very hot. He felt dizzy.
He tottered back a few yards until he was
in Boone's shadow, and sank down again to think.
  He must have done something to Boone, who'd been
clutched tightly in his hand when he climbed into the
chest.
  Maybe he'd killed him!
  No maybe about it. Boone, in the instant of
transfer, had fallen down here in the desert.
Breathless. Lifeless.
  A terrible guilt, backed up by an
overwhelming sorrow, threatened Patrick. But,
being a very practical boy, he shoved them both
roughly to the back of his mind and considered instead his
own situation.
  He was on his own. No Boone to take care
of him.
  Minute. Helpless. Miles from anywhere. And
at the mercy of the sun and the empty desert.
  It seemed a fairly safe bet that soon enough
he would follow Boone once again: this time into the
oblivion of death.


                                   
                 8.
         A Heart Stops Beating

  The suspense was awful--the worst of Omri's
life.
  He watched Matron bending over the still
figure in the plaid shirt and chaps. Boone--
so real, so very much of a person, and yet so
vulnerable that Patrick's hand closing on him in
the instant of being swung back through time and space
could have squeezed the life out of him.
  Omri thought what Patrick would feel, when
he came back, if he learned that he had
killed Boone. Killed him. Crushed him
to death. Suddenly Omri knew that it was for
Patrick's sake, more than Boone's in a
way, that Matron had to breathe life back into that
tiny body, as she was now trying to do.
  "Matron--"
  "Sh!"
  She had stopped giving Boone the kiss of
life and begun giving him artificial
resuscitation, hands on his ribs, throwing her
weight forward and back, panting from the effort she was
making.
  "Is he--alive?" whispered Omri.
  "Yes," she said shortly, between pushes. "Just
about."
  "What's wrong? Is he--crushed?"
  "Crushed? Of course not! He's been--half
suffocated--that's all!" She put her ear to his
chest again.
  "Where's his hat?" said Omri suddenly.
  Matron straightened herself with an exclamation.
  "His hat?" she said sharply. "What in the
world does that matter when his heart's stopped?"
  "His heart's stopped!" Omri's own heart
nearly did the same. "Then he is dead!"
  "Not if we can--Wait! You could do it! He
needs a good thump on the chest to get it going again!
I just haven't the strength. Come here, do exactly
as I show you! Now watch!"
  Peering at her, he saw her do something with her
tiny fingers.
  "What--"
  She gave an exclamation of exasperation.
"Are you blind? It's a flicking movement--flick
your finger out from behind your thumb--"
  "Oh--like this?"
  "Right! Now do it downward--against his
chest! No, not so gently--do it hard, thump him,
man, thump him!" she cried agitatedly.
  Omri flicked his middle finger hard so that his
nail struck against Boone's chest, rocking his
body.
  "Again!"
  Omri repeated the movement. Matron then
pushed his finger out of the way and once more laid her
ear against Boone's plaid shirtfront.
  "Ah!"
  "Is it--"
  "I do believe--I think--I'm almost certain
--YES!" She raised a beaming,
sweat-glossed face. "You've done the trick!
Well done, oh, well done indeed, you've
saved him! Now. Bring me something warm to wrap
him in while I go and fix him an injection of
heart stimulant. Look--look, he's beginning
to breathe normally! What a relief--I was really
afraid he was a goner!"
  Omri, feeling weak with relief, rushed
to hack out another square from his shattered sweater,
already jagged-hemmed due to all the miniature
blankets he'd cut out of it. Matron
hurried up the ramp onto the seed tray and into the
longhouse. She emerged at once with a
hypodermic syringe and an ampoule so small
Omri just had to guess it was there. She knelt beside
Boone, now warmly covered, and injected
straight into his chest.
  "Now listen, young man. We've saved this one
between us, but the emergency cases in there are still in
desperate need of expert attention. You will really
have to secure qualified medical aid."
  "Om-Ri!"
  He turned. Little Bear was standing nearby, arms
folded.
  "What happen Boone?"
  "He's had an accident."
  "Ax? Dent? Enemy dent head with
tomahawk?"
  "No, no. Something else. ... It's okay,
Matron'll take care of him."
  "Good." Little Bear bent down and touched
Boone's red hair. Omri felt quite choked up
at this tender gesture, until the Indian added,
"Sometime I sorry Boone my blood
brother."
  "Little Bear! Surely you're not still hankering
after his scalp?"
  The Indian fingered the hair regretfully and
grunted. "Fine color, like sugar-tree leaf
... very bad if other brave get ..." He
gave Boone's head a sharp, possessive
pat and straightened up. "Dance finish. You take
dead braves, plass-tic. Put in ground."
  "Little Bear, I can't now. I must go with
Emma. Did--did you see her? She--she saw
you. I have to make sure she--helps, and
doesn't tell."
  Little Bear looked troubled.
  "Woman tongue stay still like falling water, like
grass in wind. ... You go. Keep hand ready
stop mouth of Em-A. First put Little Bear
back in longhouse with wife, son."
  "You don't want to be sent back to the
village yet?"
  Little Bear, usually so phlegmatic, suddenly
twisted his face, threw up his arms, and turned his
body first one way, then another.
  "Very bad, need be two place same time!
Want be here, not leave hurt braves! Need be
there, with tribe! Very bad, one man heart cut in
two!"
  This was more than Omri could cope with. He
lifted the five Indians, including Little Bear,
off the table and deposited them hastily on the seed
tray. Bright Stars came running out of the
longhouse with her baby in her arms, and Little Bear
embraced her.
  "We'll decide what you should do when I get
back," said Omri. He turned to Matron.
"Can I leave you?"
  "In a good cause--yes."
  "Give me an hour."

  As he came running downstairs, he sensed
at once that Emma had gone.
  He felt bereft, though he didn't
entirely blame her. Waiting down here by herself,
no doubt she had suddenly been overcome with the
feeling that it was all too much for her, that she
wanted to run off home to her everyday life. But
he couldn't let her go. Of course he couldn't.
He grabbed his parka and dashed out of the house.
  As soon as he turned out of his gate
into Hovel Road, Omri smelled trouble.
  He saw them halfway down, outside the
amusement arcade, a whole crowd of them. He
couldn't see Emma, but something in the way
the skinheads were crowding around--something in their stance,
in the sounds that drifted to him along the street--
told him that she was there, in the midst of them,
trapped, that they were taunting her--the same mindless
bullying treatment he had had from them so often himself.
Without his conscious command, his feet drove into a
hard run.
  He didn't stop to think or give himself time
to get scared. He just rammed into them head-on.
  A piercing pain blew up like fireworks in his
head. He'd completely forgotten his burn! He
clutched the place and felt the bandage, and at the
same time the circle bent and broke, letting him
through, and he saw the faces, first astounded, then
twisting into sniggering laughter.
  "Cor! If it ain't the old Ayatollah!"
  Emma was standing erect and defiant, her lip
curled in contempt as she faced the tallest of the
gang. Omri recognized him instantly.
  "You are just an ugly bullying creep!" she
threw at him.
  "Slag," he sneered. "Nerd--" Then he
noticed Omri.
  His whole face altered. Unwholesomely pale
already, it turned the dead color of putty. His
jaw went slack, as if Omri's own fear had
erupted and were mirrored in this other face.
  "You--" he gasped.
  "Yeah, me," said Omri, panting,
dry-mouthed. There were so many of them! "You lot
leave her alone. Or else."
  A concerted jeer rose from the circle.
  "Look out, lads! Fall flat on your
faces and worship 'im, or 'e's liable to start
an 'oly war!"
  But their leader--the big youth who'd been going
on at Emma--glanced furiously around at his
mates, and the jeering laughter died.
  He reached up grimy fingers and
unconsciously caressed his face, across which, in a
diagonal line, were a dozen tiny raw dots.
  "'Ow you done that?" he muttered, his eyes
narrowed as he looked at Omri. "I'd give
a lot to know 'ow you done what you done to me."
  Omri contented himself with a tight little smile.
He took Emma by the arm.
  "Come on, Em, let's go."
  The tall boy gave a kind of twitch of his
shaved head. The circle wavered, then gave way
and let them through, though not without murmurings
of puzzlement and rebellion.
  Just as they came clear, Omri had a thought.
He paused and reached into his jeans pocket.
  He turned casually back. Could they see how
his heart was pounding?
  "Oh, by the way--" He held out his hand. "I
think one of you dropped this."
  He held up the penlight that he'd picked up
after the burglars' hasty departure.
  The tall skinhead reached for it automatically,
took hold of it, then suddenly let it go as if
it were red-hot. It fell to the pavement, where it
rolled into the gutter. Several of the others made a
dive for it.
  "Leave it!" the leader barked. "Don't touch
it! It might blow up in your face!"
  Omri stared at him for a moment. That great
thieving, bullying lout was really afraid of him.
It wasn't entirely a good feeling, but it was
better than the other way around, which was the way it
had always been before.
  Now all the faces looking at him were pallid
and nervous. Take away their gang courage, and
they really were a pathetic-looking crew. Omri
felt the beginnings of a sneer twisting his own mouth,
but it felt ugly even from inside so he was glad
when Emma tugged his arm.
  They walked quickly down to the station, leaving a
defeated silence behind them.

                 9.
       Tamsin Drives A Bargain

  By the time Omri and Emma arrived at
Emma's house, half of Omri's allotted
hour had passed and he was getting panicky.
  Emma didn't make things easier.
  "What are we going to say about Patrick not
coming back?"
  Omri liked the way she said "we," making him
feel less alone with his problems, but he didn't
want to confront this one. How indeed was he
to explain Patrick's absence? Perhaps he could
play both ends, so to speak, against the middle.
If each household--his and Emma's--thought
Patrick was in the other one, Patrick might not
be missed for some time. But for a really lousy liar like
Omri, it was bound to be tricky.
  Patrick's mother was practically on the
doorstep to meet them.
  "Well, where is he?" she asked without even
saying hello.
  Emma turned to look at Omri
expectantly.
  "Er--I came to explain," he said. "You
see--" He swallowed hard. Her eyes were
piercing him. He had to drop his. "We ...
we went into Richmond Park this morning to look for
chestnuts. On our bikes."
  "Patrick's bike is at home in the
country."
  "I mean--he used Gillon's. And ... we
were playing--and he got a bit lost, and I got
fed up waiting and came home without him. I
expect he'll be back soon," he added
hastily as Patrick's mother rolled her eyes,
gritted her teeth, and uttered a kind of snort.
  "How like him to do the disappearing act just when I
want him! Doesn't he realize we're going
home today? What am I supposed to do? I have
to leave!"
  "Couldn't Patrick stay with us for a few
days?"
  "Don't be so silly. What about school?
It's school tomorrow!" She was obviously
infuriated, and Omri couldn't exactly blame
her.
  However, there was nothing to be done for the moment.
Leaving her seething in the doorway, Emma
pulled Omri past and into the small living room.
  "Leave Tam to me," she whispered. "She
absolutely hates you for some reason."
  Omri felt rather hurt, even though it was
entirely mutual.
  Tamsin was slumped in front of a small
television set, watching some middle-of-the-day
rubbish. Her leg, encased from foot to knee in a
white plaster cast, was resting on a pouffe. She
didn't even look up as they came in. Emma
coughed.
  "Hey, Tam, want to add to your skiing
fund?"
  "Fat chance of skiing when I'm like this," she said
sourly.
  "You could go at Easter. Best snow's always in
April."
  Tamsin looked up sharply at that. Seeing
Omri, her eyes narrowed.
  "You look a right idiot in that bandage," she
remarked. "Did someone give you a
clout?"
  "Not since you," Omri retorted.
  Tamsin had the grace to blush. She turned
back to her sister.
  "What about my skiing fund?"
  "Well, you know your birthday models--"
  "I already said no," said Tamsin. "I won't
swap."
  Emma shrugged with wondrous carelessness. "I just
fancy one or two of them, that's all. I'd
buy them off you."
  Tamsin glanced at Omri again. "Is this
anything to do with him?"
  "Who? Oh! No, of course not. You know I
wanted them yesterday."
  Tamsin's eyes looked beady. "If you
wait till tomorrow, you can buy the same set at the
model shop."
  "I need them now," Emma had to say, though
she tried to sound careless.
  Tamsin uncurled herself slowly and frowningly.
Without a word she heaved her cast onto the floor
and stumped out of the room. Omri almost felt
sorry for her, but this charitable impulse was soon
to pass. Emma nudged him. They waited.
  After a few minutes Tamsin returned,
carrying the box Omri recognized from last
night.
  She opened it and displayed the contents. The
figures, held to a cardboard backing with
elastic, dangled tantalizingly before their eyes.
Omri's flew to the surgeon in green
operating-theater gear, complete with table and tiny
instruments, mere pinhead blobs. There were two
other doctors, one in a white coat with a
stethoscope, the other, also in green, who was
evidently part of the surgical team. It was as much
as Omri could do to restrain his hand from darting toward
them.
  Instead he thrust both hands into his pockets
and turned away to gaze blindly at the TV set
while negotiations between the twins proceeded.
  They seemed to take forever. Somehow Tamsin could
sense that Emma's casualness masked some urgent
desire for the medical models. In the end, though,
when the price had reached astronomical heights,
several times what they'd have cost in the shops, and
Omri was beginning to despair of Tamsin's greed
ever being satisfied, the bargain was struck.
  The little figures were detached, the
better part of Omri's fiver handed over, and
Emma and Omri found themselves out in the hall again,
tiptoeing toward the front door.
  "Where do you think you're going, Emma?"
  They stopped cold. Emma shut her eyes.
It was her mother this time, the sister of Patrick's
mother and just such another, it seemed.
  Omri thought, Good, she'll have to stop here, and
that means I won't have to be bothered about her.
She'd served her purpose, and surely the fewer
people who were involved, the better. But he glanced
sideways at Emma's face, and to his own
astonishment he heard himself saying, "Can Emma
come back to my place for lunch?"
  Emma's mother said, "How will she get home?"
  "My dad'll run her back," said Omri
glibly.
  "Before dark."
  "Of course."
  "Oh--all right then. I suppose ..."
  They gave her no time to think twice. They were
out and down the street as fast as they could run.

  "Now," said Emma as they sat on the train
going back to Omri's district, "I want to know
everything."
  Omri groaned inwardly. He'd managed
to fend off her questions on the way to her house, but there
was something in her voice that told him that no amount
of fending would work now.
  He turned in his seat to face her.
  "Listen, Em. You've got to swear yourself
to secrecy."
  "Okay," she agreed readily.
  "No, not like that. It's not just a game. You
don't know how hard it's going to be to keep this
to yourself."
  "With Tam for a sister, I've learned how
to keep secrets, don't worry."
  Omri slumped back against the train seat.
He'd have to trust her--it was too late not to.
  "Okay, then. You saw them. They're real,
they're no dream and no game. There's proper
magic in this world, to do with time, and--and souls of people that
can travel in time and from place to place, and enter
things like toys, and make them come to life. And we
can travel too. I mean our--our spirits can.
That's where Patrick is. He's time-traveling.
  Emma was staring at him.
  "Why's it a secret?"
  "Can't you see? If grown-ups knew ..."
  "Oh. Yes. Not just grown-ups. If Tam
knew ...!"
  "We wouldn't be allowed to keep it. It works--
I might as well tell you this--with a special
key. And a little bathroom cupboard, and my oak
chest. All that would all be taken away. There'd
be newspapers, TV--"
  Emma sat up straight, her eyes alight.
  "Would we be on TV?"
  Omri's heart plummeted.
  "Em, you mustn't. You must not think like that.
Yes, we'd be on TV, and everything would be
ruined."
  Emma sat back, frowning. He could see her
thinking. He had the feeling she wasn't
particularly used to thinking seriously, any more than
he'd been himself, before all this started.
  They hurried along the length of Hovel
Road unmolested. The skinhead gang had gone,
home for lunch presumably. As they
half-ran, Emma said, "Where exactly has
Patrick gone?"
  "Well," said Omri, "I'm pretty
worried about that." And he explained how the key
worked, as best he could. "You have to take someone or
something real, or alive, with you, if you want to go
to a specific place and time. Like, when I went
back to the Indian village last night, I
took a pair of Bright Stars' moccasins in my
pocket. Patrick took Boone, but he
forgot the rules, and as he went, Boone
came back."
  "So he could be anywhere, just--floating about in
time?"
  "I don't know. The only thing is--"
  "What?"
  "Well, it's only a slight hope, but
I'm sure Boone--I mean his plastic
figure--was wearing his hat when Patrick set
off. Maybe the hat got caught up in some--some
sort of time current and attached itself
to Patrick, in which case he went to Texas after
all, because that's where the hat belongs."
  "Complicated, in' it?" said Emma, doing a
London accent.
  Omri wasn't into accents, so he just said
feelingly, "You said it." But he glanced at her
appreciatively. She was taking it pretty
reasonably. And she was fun. And it
wasn't bad at all, having someone to help now
Patrick had PO'D.
  As they reached the house, it occurred to Omri as
ironic that the whole business with Patrick's
going back in time had come up in the first place so
Patrick wouldn't have to go home--so he could stay
and help Omri.
  Huh, thought Omri. Fine friend.
  But Patrick was his friend. And even at times
when Omri was fed up with him, like now, he still liked
him enough to care what was happening to him.
  Omri and Emma hurried up to Omri's
room. Omri's first act was to bend over the
longhouse and call softly.
  "Matron!"
  She came out. She didn't bustle quite so
briskly now. Her starched apron was soiled, and
her magnificent cap was limp and askew. She
looked very tired.
  "Well? What luck?"
  "How's Boone?" asked Omri. "How are
the others?"
  "Your cowboy friend is a bit better, though
he's still unconscious. He's breathing normally,
but he's badly bruised. The Indians ..."
Her shoulders slumped a little. "One is hanging
between life and death. Bullet in the trachea,
another in the leg. I need help
desperately."
  "We've brought you some." She straightened up
with relief; even the er/while magnificent cap
seemed to stiffen a little.
  "Well, what are we waiting for! Let's
get to it!"
  Emma meanwhile had lost no time in consigning
the medical team to the cupboard. But just before Omri
closed the door, Emma, peering at the seed
tray, suddenly said, "Whose are these sweet little
horses?"
  Sweet little horses! God! thought Omri,
gritting his teeth. But he kept his temper and
said, "The brown one's Little Bear's. The black
one belongs to the cowboy."
  "Can I put the cowboy's one back in the
cupboard?"
  "What for?"
  "Well, I want to see how it works in
reverse. And you said Patrick might be in
Boone's time. Maybe he needs a horse."
  "Don't be stupid, Patrick will be
small, like the little people are here! What use would a
socking great horse be to him? He couldn't
possibly ride it."
  "Still, let me."
  Omri couldn't be bothered making any more
objections. Emma tenderly lifted the little
black horse between finger and thumb and put it in the
cupboard.
  "Will it go back at the same time as the
doctors come forward?"
  "Yes! Oh, do let's get on with it!" said
Omri impatiently.
  The door was closed on the live horse and the
plastic men. The key was turned. Emma, her
ear to the mirrored door, grinned ecstatically at
Omri: She could hear tiny voices questioning each
other in the darkness. Her hand went to the key, but
Omri stopped her.
  "Listen," he said quietly. "One of the
tricky things is, when they see us, trying to get
them to believe it and not think they've lost their
minds. Our best bet with these modern people is to get
Matron to explain."
  Matron was ready and eager, impatient to get
the team out and to work on her patients.
  "Leave it to me," she said. "Just let me in that
cupboard."
  "But what will you say?"
  "I've thought it all out," she said. "Most
men, if you just tell them what to do in a
businesslike fashion, will follow directions
without thinking about it. One proceeds on the
assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they
do. However, they may be forced to think a bit if
they see you two, so I suggest you keep out of the
way." She nipped back into the longhouse,
presumably to make sure everything was in perfect
order, then hurried out, down the ramp and across to the
cupboard.
  "Right you are," she said. "Open sesame!"
  As she slid through the partly open door, Omri
put his hand stealthily in at the top and lifted out
the plastic figure of Boone's horse.
  "Here," he muttered to Emma. "This was your
daft idea--you'd better take care of it."
  She took the little figure from him and looked
into its plastic face.
  "He's happy to be home," she said
mysteriously. "Now Patrick isn't
completely on his own, anyway."

                 10.
            A Rough Ride

  Patrick brooded, his chin on his hands, his
elbows on his bent knees. He was sitting in the
massive shadow of Boone's corpse (not that
Patrick allowed himself to think this in so many words,
but he was quite sure in the back of his mind that that's
what it was), trying to think, and at the same time
trying not to think. The two conflicting efforts
canceled each other out. His mind was a blank. His
eyes were unfocused.
  Suddenly they did focus. They focused on
something he hadn't noticed before. Heaven knows why,
because it was absolutely enormous. A vast
black mountain range on the horizon. And it
was moving.
  It was heaving. It was threshing. One part of it,
at the far left-hand end of the range, was rearing itself
up. Up, up--into the sky!
  Patrick sprang to his feet and shaded his
eyes. The vast black mass was erupting in a
series of bounding curves and angular jolts. It
was awesome, like witnessing the primeval forces that
created the world, throwing up volcanic ranges from
the hot laval center of the earth.
  But abruptly Patrick lost his sense of
awe and terror. He threw back his head and
laughed.
  Because now the mountain range finished heaving and
stood upright on four titanic legs, revealed
for what it was.
  It was a horse!
  It must have been lying motionless in what
to Patrick was the distance--its spirit, or whatever,
somewhere far away in place and time. And now it had
come back to itself, and stood up and--"Cripes!"--
it was lumbering toward him!
  Patrick ran. He ran back toward the
sheltering bulk of Boone. He hid himself under a
vast flap that was the lapel of Boone's plaid
shirt collar, tucked under his bristly chin.
  As Patrick ducked behind this flannel
"curtain," he heard a strange, almost
musical sound, like a wheezing groan. A huge
fleshy knob just above the neck band moved--along
--then back, making the shirt collar shiver and
shift. At first Patrick had no notion what was
happening, but as the groaning sounds went on
and the motion of the lump in Boone's throat
continued, he suddenly realized.
  Frightened though he was--the thundering tread of those
colossal hooves was shaking the ground like a
series of earthquakes as they approached--
Patrick registered with an incredulous sense of
relief that the bristly skin above the shirt was
warm, and that the groaning sounds were rasping breaths,
and that the lump was Boone's Adam's apple.
  "Boone, you're alive!" Patrick
breathed, feeling a sudden intense happiness. He
almost kissed the Adam's apple as it slid past
him. But then he sensed the horse's tremendous
head coming down on him, and he crouched, trembling,
behind the collar.
  He felt a rush of hot, powerfully
horse-scented breath that came right through the thick
flannel. Then there was a loud sound like the rumble of
distant thunder as the horse blew through its lips.
The horse was smelling Boone. Next it
nudged the cowboy's shoulder with its nose, causing
another sort of earthquake that had Patrick
rolling over on the stones.
  He peered out from behind the flap.
  The first thing he saw, vast as it was, was
recognizable as a hoof. The sloping horny part
was about twice Patrick's height, with a fringe of
coarse black hairs hanging over the top of it.
  Patrick never knew afterward what possessed
him to take the action he now took almost
unthinkingly. He knew he had to get out of this
desert unless he wanted to die of heatstroke,
thirst, or the attentions of wild creatures.
He needed to escape. So, instinctively, he
acted.
  He took a run at the hoof, scrambled
halfway up the hard slope on hands and feet,
grabbed a handful of the coarse black hair, and
hauled himself up to a kind of ledge where the
gigantic leg bone started.
  There he almost panicked. The hoof he was on was
planted firmly in the sand, but at some stage it
would start to move, probably very fast. Patrick
looked at the tempting slope to the ground and
nearly slid straight back down again
to short-term safety.
  But then he thought, No. I must get out of
here and this is the only way.
  He hurriedly took several of the long black
hairs of the horse's fetlock, twisted
them together, and knotted them firmly around his waist.
Then he reached as high as he could and took a
strong grip with both hands on more of the hairs, at
the same time bracing his sneakers on the ridge at
the top of the hoof.
  He felt surprisingly secure, ready for
anything. So he thought. He had absolutely no
idea of the terrifying experience that was in store for
him when the horse, getting no response from its
prostrate master, abruptly threw up its
head, turned swiftly, and started to gallop across
the desert sand.
  Patrick had always loved terrifying rides
at fairs, the scarier the better--the
centrifugal drum was one of his favorites, and
that rocket that spins and plunges and twists and
whirls around all at the same time. But no fair
ride ever dreamed up by an ingenious showman could
compare with standing braced on the hoof of a giant
horse as it races over hot sand.
  Over and over again the great hoof would rise in the
air, leaving Patrick's stomach far below, and
sweep through a monstrous arc that had Patrick
dangling high above the sand. If he hadn't tied
himself on securely, nothing could have saved him. The
hoof would bend and turn in such a way that his body
would be twisted and flung almost upside down, before
the hoof plunged down again to strike the ground with a
sickening jar. The speed alone was enough to make most
people faint, but Patrick grimly hung on.
  Yet his handgrips became weaker and weaker as the
crazy, fantastic, nerve-and-bone-racking ride
went on and on. To make matters worse, dust
and stones, struck up from the ground by the flying
hooves, flew through the air and pelted Patrick
all over. He didn't feel these at the time.
Every bit of his mind, and every muscle and sinew, were
preoccupied with the single task of holding on. He
didn't know that his eyes were screwed shut, that his
breath was coming in jolts, that with every breath he uttered
a cry or a groan. For him, all was sickening
motion, whirling blackness, jarring blows, and
absolute terror.
  By the time it stopped, he was almost unconscious.
His handholds had given way, though one wrist was
still held by a tangle of hairs. He hung from
this, and the tie at his waist, like a rag doll. His
whole body was covered with bruises; his throat was
choked with dust so that he could scarcely draw
breath.
  Gradually he came back to his senses and
straightened up painfully. He opened his eyes with
difficulty--they were caked with wind tears and dust.
He peered dazedly around him.
  There seemed to be a lot going on. Noise,
movement. At his level, near the ground, he could
see a lot of other huge hooves, moving and
stamping. The ground itself was not sand, but packed earth.
There was a very strong horse smell, probably
dung. He raised his eyes and saw some vast
posts and rails, and the heads of a number of
horses besides his own. Straight before him was a
wooden cliff about six times Patrick's
height.
  The hoof he was still attached to lifted and made a
pawing movement that brought it level with the top of this
cliff. Patrick then saw what it was--the
edge of a wooden sidewalk. Now he could see
gigantic feet, some in cowboy boots with
villainous spurs attached, others in lighter
footwear all but covered by long skirts, striding
past with vast steps that thundered on the boards.
  Patrick took advantage of the horse's
hoof being, for the moment, planted on the sidewalk,
to free himself--just as well. No sooner had he
slid down the sloping hoof to the wooden floor
than his horse's head swept down and its giant
slabs of teeth, as big as tombstones, bit
scratchingly into its fetlock, exactly where
Patrick had been tied a moment before!
  It was dangerous to try to cross the sidewalk
--any one of those mighty thundering feet could crush
him on the way. From his viewpoint it was like trying
to make it across a ten-lane highway during rush
hour.
  But he couldn't stay here. Already the horse was
snuffling at him, nearly sucking him up into its
cavernous nostril. Patrick ran out of range
and found himself surrounded by the feet. He must get
out of here! He must find someone to help him!
  Just then he saw some boots coming to a standstill
right beside him. Curiously, they were not brown or
black, but bright red and shiny. One scarlet lace
had come untied and hung down to the ground.
  Patrick put his head back as far as it would
go and looked upward.
  He could see a whole sky of frothy white
petticoats and the hem of a red satin dress, a
long way above him. It was a lady.
  She had come up onto the sidewalk from
the dirt road and had paused for a moment. Again he
acted without thinking, grabbing the red bootlace and
heaving himself up--though he ached in every limb--onto
the arched instep where he could find comfortable and safe
refuge among the crossed red laces and
metal-ringed lace holes.
  I'm safe! he thought.
  That was his opinion.

                 11.
              Ruby Lou

  The feet moved on, across the sidewalk, not
along it. This ride was quite pleasantly unexciting
after the other. Patrick heard a thud as the lady
boldly pushed open some swinging doors. Then she
walked inside.
  The street sounds--the clopping of hooves, the
thudding of feet, the sound of wagons and voices and
barking dogs--changed to other sounds, familiar
to Patrick from Western films. He knew at
once he was in a saloon. There was a piano
playing a jangly tune, and lots of voices
shouting and singing cheerfully. The smell in the air was
of alcohol, cigarette smoke, cheap scent,
sweat, sawdust, and leather.
  The lady who was unwittingly carrying
Patrick made straight for the bar. She rested
on a rail the foot he was on. It was dark down
there, and the smell was pretty bad. Patrick
wondered how he could attract the lady's
attention, or whether it would be fatal to do so. He
could hear her voice among the other voices.
  "An' who's gonna buy me a drink,
boys? Ruby Lou don't take kindly
to drinkin' alone, and she never, never pays for her
own liquor!"
  There was no shortage of offers. Patrick
saw men's feet crowding around the red shiny boots
and heard the jovial cries of male voices
above, yelling, "Yea, Lou! I'll buy ya a
dozen!" "Good ol' Ruby Lou! Have one on
me, sweetheart!"
  "Okay, okay, don't crowd me now!"
Ruby Lou said sharply, and the boots shuffled
reluctantly a step backwards.
  Patrick could hear the noisy
glug-glug-glug of whisky being poured from a
bottle, and he could smell it, too. Whisky
made him think at once of Boone, and
so it seemed a quite incredible coincidence when Ruby
Lou's voice suddenly echoed his thoughts.
  "Hey, where's my favorite fella?" she
cried. "Where's Boone? Boone always makes
me laugh!"
  "Boo-Hoo Boone? Make ya cry, more
like!" jeered one man, and the rest all burst
into mock boo-hooing.
  Ruby Lou took offense on Boone's
behalf.
  "Ain't nothin' wrong with a soft heart," she
said. "Trouble with you boys is, you ain't got
hearts, or if ya have, they ain't got no more
feelin's in 'em than chunks o' rock! It
don't mean he ain't got guts, neither!
Gimme a man with feelin's, even if he do
git through two-three of my best lace-edged
hankies every time we hear a hard-luck story!"
  She shouldn't have said that. The notion of Boone
mopping up his tears with lace hankies was too
much, even for Patrick. As the crowd of men above
him burst their sides laughing, Patrick, below
on the red leather, laughed too until, weakened as
he was, he slipped.
  He felt himself sliding down the side of the
boot, and grabbed the red bootlace. This broke
his fall, but it gave Ruby Lou's foot a
tug.
  As he climbed back up to his perch, he
saw her huge hand coming down toward him. He
crouched low in the opening of her boot. He
didn't realize that he was digging his hands and feet
into her instep until he heard her say
peevishly, "I got me a itch on my
tootsy. This saloon is turnin' into a real
flea circus!"
  And her fingers, with their sharp nails, began
to prod around the lacings. Patrick tried
to dodge, but suddenly one finger fell on him,
squeezing him hard against a metal-rimmed lace
hole so that he thought his back would break and he
writhed frantically to free himself.
  "Hey! This is some flea that's bitin' me!"
she squealed. She picked Patrick up between
finger and thumb, and the next second he was being
swung through the air.
  Ruby Lou set Patrick down on the bar.
  All at once the noise in his immediate vicinity
stopped. The sudden startled silence spread
backwards until even the piano
player faltered and faded out. Patrick stood
ankle-deep in a puddle of whisky (the fumes
nearly knocked him out), looking upward
fearfully at the semicircle of enormous
faces around him, waiting helplessly for one or
another of them to raise a meaty hand and swat him
flat.
  No one did.
  Instead the bartender, who was standing on the other
side of the bar with a bottle of whisky in his hand,
dropped it. It fell on the bar with a
(to Patrick) ear-numbing clunk, making the
whole bar jump, and to his horror began rolling
slowly toward him, spilling whisky as it went.
  Seeing it approach, Patrick raced to get
out of its way. He ran as fast as his aching legs
would let him, hearing the huge bottle trundling
along the wooden bar behind him, nearer and nearer.
Surely, surely it must soon roll over him
like a steamroller!
  But luckily for him it didn't roll
straight. Abruptly he heard the noise stop
as it reached the edge. There was a brief pause before
it shattered on the barroom floor.
  He stopped running and turned, panting.
  The eyes of every person in the saloon were fixed
on him, and every bloodshot eye was popping. Vast
mouths hung loosely open; bristly faces were
paper-white or mottled purple.
  "Which-which-what IS that?" gibbered one man at
last, pointing at him with a trembling finger.
"Boys, am I seein' things, or--is--that--a
li'l--tiny--ackshul--fella?"
  Before anyone could reply, Patrick sensed a
quick movement behind him. He spun around
instinctively, to find himself staring straight up the
barrel of a six-shooter.
  "Whatever it is, I don't like it!" growled the
owner, and fired.
  The noise alone nearly killed Patrick,
though the gun wavered at the last second (did a
red shiny bulk lurch against the shooting arm?). The
bullet ploughed into the top of the bar right next
to him, splintering the wood.
  The next moment, complete chaos broke out.
  The barman, who had reeled back against the
enormous mirror which reflected the whole room,
suddenly and silently sank out of sight behind the
bar. This seemed to act as a signal. The
giants at the bar just went crazy,
bumping into each other, throwing punches, firing their
guns at random in a series of horrific
explosions. One of the light fixtures was hit and
came crashing down, causing total panic.
  There was a concerted mass movement backwards,
away from the bar, followed by a rising thunder of
boots stampeding on boards, causing massive
vibrations that had Patrick involuntarily
dancing up and down on the bar. Twenty or
thirty men cut a parting through the smoky air as they
forced their way out through the narrow doorway.
  One little fellow, the piano player, tripped,
fell, and was ruthlessly trampled underfoot by the
rest. When they'd all gone, he lay there for a
moment, winded, before picking himself up. He gave
one terrified backward look toward the bar, cast
his eyes upward as if in prayer, let out a
weird sound, and fled, clutching his hat.
  The swinging doors went whump-whump-whump,
backwards and forwards, on emptiness, before coming to a
stop.
  Patrick gingerly took his fingers out of his ears
and glanced around the saloon, expecting to find himself
alone. But he wasn't, not quite.
  Standing a few yards down the bar, the exact
distance that Patrick had run away from the
bottle, was a giantess with blond hair and a rather
low-cut red satin dress. It was hard for
Patrick to judge, but she looked quite pretty.
She wore a sparkling necklace of red stones and
dangly earrings and a very funny expression as she
looked at him.
  She reached out suddenly and picked up her
small glass, which she emptied down her throat
in one gulp. Then she plonked it back on the
bar and said, "Well, li'l fella, you sure would
make a good temperance preacher! I ain't never
seen a saloon empty so fast! Thanks for
lettin' 'em buy me a drink first. I needed
it!"
  She laughed a little crazily and drank someone
else's drink that had been abandoned. Then she
beckoned to him.
  "Come here, li'l Jack the Giant Killer,
come to Ruby Lou! C'mon, I won't hurt
ya, I just wanna make sure you ain't somethin'
I dreamt."
  Patrick walked back along the vast shiny
expanse of the bar toward her. His legs were shaking,
and his feet squelched in his whisky-sodden
sneakers. He had no idea whether he would be
safe with her or not, but he couldn't manage
alone, and who else was there? Anyway, she liked
Boone, so she couldn't be all bad.
  Ruby Lou's face, brightly painted, came
down until it was level with his. He could
smell her perfume. Well, it was better than
the whisky, anyhow.
  "Okay, kid, let's have it. What gives?
I ain't drunk, and I ain't that crazy, and you
look to me like the smallest human critter that ever
was in the length and breadth o' Texas!"
  "Actually I'm English," said Patrick,
feeling silly but not knowing what else to say.
  "English! Is that s'posed to be a
introduction, or a explanation? I heard it was
kind of a small island, but I never knew the men
from there was only three inches tall!"
  Patrick blushed. "I'm not exactly a
typical English person," he said. "You
see--"
  "Speak up, kid, that's a teeny tiny voice
box you got there, and I'll admit it to ya,
I'm a mite deef from all the shoutin' an'
shootin' that goes on around here!"
  Patrick cleared his throat. "Sorry!" he
bellowed. Then he shouted, "Listen, I need
help."
  "You coulda fooled me, buster!"
  "Not just for myself. For Boone."
  "Say!" Her face lit up. "You a friend o'
Billy Boone's?"
  "Yes. We're old friends. And he's in
trouble."
  "Yeah? Tell me somethin' new. When ain't
he!"
  "He's lying out in the desert unconscious.
I think someone should go out there and get him."
  "Can you show me where he is?"
  "No. But maybe his horse can--it's
outside, or it was."
  Ruby Lou straightened up and looked around.
The saloon was still empty, but peeping over the top
of the swinging doors was a pair of eyes under a
well-pulled-down hat.
  "Hey, Reverend! Come in here, it's okay!"
  The doors slowly parted, and the little piano
player who had been trampled on sidled
hesitantly in.
  "I want ya to meet more' new
sidekick--er--"
  "Pat," said Patrick, thinking that
"Patrick" sounded a bit of a feeble name for the
Wild West.
  "Pat--this is Tickle. His real name's the
Reverend Godfrey Tickson, and he has a
past you wouldn't believe to look at him now, but
we call him Tickle 'cause he tickles the
ivories. Plays the piano, get it?
Plays real good, too, especially hymns!
Only not now, eh, Tick? I got somethin'
important fer ya to do. Is your buggy handy?"
  "Yeah, Ruby," said the Reverend Tickle in
a squeaky voice. "It's right outside."
  "Me 'n' Pat, here, is goin' fer a little
ride on Boone's hoss, and you're gonna
drive right along behind us. What say?" She
patted his chubby cheek.
  "Sure, Ruby," squeaked Tickle,
nearly nodding his hat off. "If you say so!"
  Ruby Lou's white hand with its glittering rings
swept Patrick up. Gasping, he felt for the
first time how the "little people" had felt when he and
Omri had handled them. He hoped he'd always
picked up Boone as gently as Ruby Lou
did him, but he doubted it, remembering some times
when he'd stuffed him in his jeans pocket and not
been at all bothered if the cowboy was frightened or
uncomfortable.
  "Where'd ya favor ridin', pal? Not on my
shoe again, huh? My shoulder? Naw, bit
slippery. ... Hey, I know a nice safe
place!"
  And before Patrick knew what was happening, she
had thrust him into the front of her dress. Which,
once he got over his slight embarrassment, was
just like being in the front row of the dress circle in
a theater. Or maybe in the bow of a very large
ship.
  Ruby Lou slapped Tickle's hand away
when he reached for one of the abandoned drinks, and
swept out of the saloon with Patrick just ahead of
her like a miniature figurehead on an
old-fashioned galleon. She got him to point
out Boone's horse, and before you could say
"Howdy" she had stuck her high-heeled boot in
the heavy stirrup and in a flurry of
petticoats and red satin had swung herself into the
saddle.
  Patrick found himself at skyscraper
height, with a fantastic view of a street that was
somehow familiar. Then he remembered. Of
course! It was the street Boone had drawn for
them that time in the art lesson at school! There was
the jail, and across the way the livery stables, the
dirt road with the horses and wagons, and the
doctor's sign, and the general store. The only
thing there wasn't was people, though he thought he saw a
few curtains twitch in some windows, and the door
of the sheriff's office hastily closing.
  Tickle meanwhile had hurried to where his
horse and buggy were parked and climbed onto the
driver's seat, picking up the reins and giving them
a shake.
  "Praise the Lord, I'm ready that' go,
Ruby!" he called in his squeaky voice.
  "Okay, fellas!" She kicked the horse,
who reared a little, giving Patrick a fright, but
Ruby sat her mount as steady as a rock.
  "Git on there, hoss! Find Boone!"
cried the intrepid Ruby Lou. And the next
moment they were galloping down the empty street,
leaving Tickle to follow in a cloud of dust.


                 12.
           Caught Red-Handed

  Boone came to that afternoon.
  Matron had been exceedingly busy since the
surgical team came. She hustled and bustled
them across to the seed tray, chatting to them all the time
in an isn't-this-interesting-and-also-perfectly-
normal sort of voice, and before they knew it they
were doing their stuff in a makeshift operating theater
with the aid of a powerful torch and relays of tiny
containers.
  It was Emma's job to keep these coming, though she
gave them to Bright Stars to carry in to the team. One
lot contained boiling water with a few drops of
disinfectant in it. The other lot contained boiling
water with tea, sugar, and milk in it. (on one
occasion Matron apparently mistook the one for the
other, and a great deal of coughing and spluttering
ensued.)
  As Boone didn't need an operation, he had
been established in a bed, which Emma, under
Omri's guidance, made of a large Swan
Vestas matchbox filled with neatly folded
Kleenex and a small pincushion
pillow, set up in a far corner of the seed tray
out of sight of the longhouse and its occupants. He
was watched over by Bright Stars, and occasionally
visited by Little Bear, who would stray near the bed
as if by accident and peer at Boone's face
scowlingly before stamping off again with a grunt of
disfavor.
  But at last Bright Stars called to Omri and
Emma, who were just returning from the garden after
conducting a brief burial service over the
paper packet of plastic figures. (omri's
family were not churchgoers, but Emma managed a
prayer of sorts and even thought of putting some tiny
flowers on the grave.)
  "Boone wake!" Bright Stars said, shifting
her baby's slight weight from one arm to the other.
Her face was wreathed in smiles. She was very
fond of Boone, since he had stood by to help
her during the birth of her baby.
  Omri and Emma leaned close to the matchbox
bed and saw that, sure enough, Boone had opened his
eyes and was trying to sit up. When he saw
Omri looming over him, his ginger-bristly face
broke into a soppy grin.
  "Hi there, pardner," he said rather croakily.
"Whut happened that' me this time? Did that there
sneaky redskin varmint shoot another arrow into me,
or whut?"
  "I'm afraid it was Patrick," confessed
Omri. "He didn't mean it--he just squeezed
you too tight."
  "Yeah? That'd explain why more' ribs feels
like they're broke."
  "Well, they're not, just bruised, but you nearly
suffocated."
  Boone paled.
  "Suffocated! Ya mean, like when they string you
up? Geez, that's allus bin more' worst
nightmare, kickin' the bucket that-a-way! Never
woulda thought of ol' Pat bein' so dawgoned
careless! Whur is the kid, anyhow? An' who's
this?" he added, suddenly noticing Emma.
  "This is Emma, Boone. She's a friend of
ours. Emma, this is Boone. He's a cowboy
from Texas."
  Emma stretched out her hand, and Boone
solemnly took hold of the nail of one finger and
shook it.
  "A real privilege, ma'am," he said
courteously. He stared at her for a
moment. "You' know, with that fair hair o' yorn,
and them eyes blue as the midday sky, ya sure
remind me of a lady o' mah acquaintance. ...
A' course, you're a mite younger 'n she is.
..." He stared a while longer, and then shook
himself and said brightly, "Hey, Ah'm feelin'
better every minute. You' know, thur ain't nothing like
bein' close to a beautiful female fer bringing a
red-blooded dyin' man back that' this' land o' the
livin'! Unless it's ..." And he gave a
meaningful swallow.
  Omri sighed and glanced at Emma.
  "You want a drink," he said resignedly.
  "Jest a li'l shot," Boone wheedled,
indicating the minutest possible portion between finger and
thumb. "Best cure there is fer suffocation."
  "Oh, okay," said Omri, laughing. "I'll
fetch you some. Emma, you chat with him, tell him
where Patrick is--that ought to keep his mind off his
thirst."
  Omri went downstairs to the living room where the
drinks cupboard was. His father was no drinker, but
he always kept a bottle of scotch and some wine
and beer handy, together with glasses of the
appropriate sizes and shapes. Omri chose
a tiny liqueur glass and was just pouring a small
portion of scotch into it when his father walked into the
room and caught him red-handed.
  "Omri? What on earth are you up to?"
  The question was not angry, merely incredulous.
Omri stood there with the whisky bottle in one hand
and the tiny glass in the other, the very picture of
guilt.
  "I--I--I--I'm pouring a drink."
  "That's the wrong glass for scotch," said his
father, as if he couldn't think of anything else
to say. He walked across, took the bottle out of
Omri's hand, and replaced the top. There was a
silence, and then he said, "Well, you've poured
it, you might as well drink it."
  Omri stared at the brown liquid in the
glass. He wanted to say, "It's not for me,"
or, "I don't want it," but he knew that if
he did, more questions, unanswerable questions, would be
sure to follow. So he took a deep breath,
and, with a feeling like despair, he swallowed it in
one gulp.
  The stuff was horrible. It seemed to stick in
his throat, making him choke. His eyes sprouted
tears. When it finally went down, it
burned all the way and hit his unsuspecting
stomach like a small depth charge.
  He was aware that his father was watching him
curiously.
  "You're evidently not really into hard
liquor," he remarked, looking at Omri's
scarlet face and teary eyes.
  Omri said nothing.
  "Just an experiment, was it?" his father persisted in
a man-to-man tone.
  "Sort of," croaked Omri.
  "Well, try anything once, that's my motto
too. Just once, in this case, okay?" And he
put the bottle away firmly.
  Omri moved toward the door, trying to get
rid of the filthy taste in his mouth. Just as he got
there, his father said, "I think it's time I drove
them back."
  "Who? Oh! Emma, you mean."
  "And Patrick."
  "Patrick?" repeated Omri, startled.
  "He is up in your room, isn't he?"
  "Er--yes. But he's--asleep."
  "What do you mean?"
  "He was dead tired and he fell asleep
and--well, I thought he might stay the night,"
gabbled Omri.
  "Is that okay with his mother?"
  Omri mumbled something and then said, "I'll
tell Emma to come down."

  Later Emma made a secret phone call
to Omri from her home, to say that she'd told
Patrick's mother that Patrick had returned
safely to Omri's after his "bicycle ride," so
tired he'd fallen asleep right away. And that,
though annoyed, Patrick's mother had resigned
herself to staying in town for another night.
  "I'll just give him tonight," said Omri.
"What he said about staying a week is
ridiculous. I'll bring him back in the
morning."
  Emma said nothing for a moment, and then said, "I
hated having to leave. I don't want to miss
anything. Will you please give my love to Boone
and Bright Stars and Little Bear. And the baby. And
Matron."
  "Matron wouldn't appreciate it," said
Omri. "She's above all that." But something in the
intensity of feeling in Emma's voice
pleased him. "I'll see you at school tomorrow,"
he went on. "And don't forget. Not a word
to anyone. No exceptions. Promise."
  And Emma replied, "I already did
promise," but just the same, Omri hardly
slept all night.

                 13.
    Mr. Johnson Smells A Rat

  Next day was Monday. School.
  Omri got up very early after a restless night.
Little Bear didn't have to wake him, for once.
  The first thing he did was open the chest.
Patrick was exactly as before--chill-fleshed, but
breathing shallowly. Omri crouched on his heels,
staring in at him. He knew what he should do.
What he must do, really. Anyway he was dying
to hear what had been happening in Texas--if
indeed that was where Patrick had wound up. It was just
that Omri didn't want to interrupt a great
adventure, if there was one going on.
  Nevertheless, he closed the lid and put his hand
on the key with its red satin ribbon.
  "Young man! I need some assistance."
  It was Matron in her most commanding mood.
  "Could it wait, Matron?"
  "No. Some of these men are so much better they can
go back where they belong. They're just taking up
beds, not to mention my time. Come along, I've
marshaled them outside that cupboard of yours--now
get them on their way."
  Omri stood up. The Indians, about nine of
them, many with bandaged limbs or heads, one on
crutches made of matchsticks, stood near the
door of the cupboard. Little Bear and Bright Stars
were with them.
  "Is it okay if they go back, Little Bear?"
  "Good go back. In village much need do.
Each brave have work, enough for many."
  "Do you want to go with them?" asked Omri with a
heavy heart.
  Little Bear looked up at him.
  "I think much of go back or stay. I wish this
and this. So I choose. You send Little Bear back
now. Then when sun go, you bring here again. I see
village. Then come back see hurt braves."
  "Great idea, you can almost be in two places
at once! Will you take Bright Stars with you?"
  "Yes take wife. Take son.
Omri bring Little Bear back when sun go."
  Omri felt a bit confused about the logistics
of all this, but he nodded, and he and Little Bear
touched hands.
  He opened the cupboard. With some help from
Matron and each other, the Indians scrambled
over the bottom rim. Little Bear helped Bright
Stars in. She cast a tender look back at
Omri and waved to him.
  Omri then "borrowed" the key from the chest and
dispatched them. Why did he feel sad about this
parting that was to be only for one day? He took the
plastic figures from the cupboard and put them
safely in his pocket.
  Matron gave a sigh of satisfaction.
  "We're not going to lose any more now," she
said. "The others are all on the mend."
  "What did the team think of it all?"
  Matron permitted herself a smirk.
  "Well, as the Bard says, "Conscience
does make cowards of us all"! I think each
of them thought he'd probably had too much
to drink, and none of them liked to admit it to the
others, so they just got on with the job as per my
orders. I mean suggestions."
  "I suppose you were up all night, after we
sent them back?"
  "Let's say I didn't get a lot of
sleep. Never mind. All in a night's work."
  "You're wonderful," said Omri sincerely.
  "Pish, tush, and likewise pooh," said
Matron, dismissing the compliment, but he had seen
a blush of pleasure spread over those craggy
features. "What about a cuppa? Can't start the
day without my tea."
  "An' Ah cain't start mine without mah
cawfee!" chimed in Boone's voice. Omri
had fixed him up with a little "house" made of
Lego and put it out of sight behind the cupboard, so
Boone could get a good night's sleep, away
from the seed tray with all the hospital-like hustle
and bustle.
  Now Omri lifted the roof off. Boone was
sitting bolt upright in bed, looking ready for
anything. "Ah'm more 'n a mite hungry, too,
so as Ah been de-prived of more' likker, don't
you go forgettin' some powerful vittles!" Omri
had had trouble with him the night before when he'd
returned without any whisky.
  He hurried down to the kitchen and
fetched as many "powerful vittles" as he could
readily lay hands on, while boiling the kettle
for tea and coffee. He wished Emma were here.
He felt beleaguered, having to do everything himself.
He wasn't sure he'd got his priorities
right, seeing that everyone was fed before he did anything
about Patrick. As he tiptoed back
upstairs, he thought he'd see to that as soon as
he was dressed.
  But hardly was he back in his room than he was
alarmed to hear footsteps rattling up the attic
stairs.
  "Hey, Omri! Wake up, you're on the
news!"
  It was Gillon, banging on his door. Omri
hastily heaped some junk onto the top of the chest
and opened the bedroom door a crack.
  "What are you going on about?"
  "It was on my clock radio. Radio
London. They just announced the winners of the story
competition!"
  Omri was speechless. He'd forgotten about
winning the prize.
  "I wish I'd heard it," he said at last.
  "Too bad, it's over now," said Gillon,
thumping down the stairs again in his pajamas.
  After that there just wasn't a minute's peace. His
parents had both heard the announcement and were
clamoring for Omri to come down for a special
bacon-and-eggs breakfast to celebrate. By the time
that was done with, it was too late to go back
upstairs because his train wouldn't wait for him.
Luckily he'd given the food to Matron
to distribute, reserving a special, large (so
to speak) portion for Boone in his little house.
  Omri just had to go off and leave Patrick where
(ever) he was.
  There were no skinheads to make trouble in Hovel
Road, and Omri got to school in good order,
though feeling highly uneasy. He was dead
worried about Patrick. What would Patrick's
mother say when he didn't show up? And what if
he was in some appalling danger, as Omri himself
had been in the Indian village, and was waiting
on tenterhooks to be brought back?
  Omri put his books and stuff in his locker and
then went in to assembly. Mr. Johnson, the
headmaster, was already on the stage, clearing his
throat for silence. More than the usual number of
teachers were there too. Several hundred
children were seated on the floor.
  Omri crept in and sat down near the main
doors. He craned his neck, looking for
Emma, but he couldn't see her. Hadn't she come
to school? He was still looking for her anxiously when
Mr. Johnson began to talk; Omri didn't
take in what he said, until suddenly, with a
shock, he heard his own name.
  Everywhere in the auditorium people turned their
heads to look at him. Omri sat up straight,
alarmed.
  "... very proud indeed," Mr. Johnson
concluded. "Omri, stand up and come forward."
  Utterly bewildered, Omri rose to his
feet.
  "Me?"
  "Yes, yes!" beamed Mr. Johnson.
All the teachers on the stage were smiling, and as
Omri moved forward, everyone started to applaud.
  Omri found himself being helped onto the stage,
and, turning, saw he was the focus of hundreds of
pairs of eyes. What was all this? If only
he'd been listening!
  "Now, it just so happens," said Mr.
Johnson, in unfamiliarly genial tones, "that
I have here a copy of Omri's story, which had
to be kept by the school when Omri entered it for the
competition. And what I thought would be really nice
is if Omri would agree to read us his winning
story as this morning's assembly feature."
  Omri's mouth fell open.
  Mr. Johnson was handing him a typed
manuscript which he well recognized--he'd
typed it himself, hunt-and-peck system, in three
copies. One he'd sent in to Telecom for the
writing competition, one he'd kept, and this one
he'd had to hand in to the school office. Across the
top was typed the title: "The Plastic
Indian."
  He clutched it till it creased, swallowed
hard, and looked up at Mr. Johnson
imploringly.
  "Now, now, Omri, no false modesty!
Telecom has notified the school that you have won
first prize in the intermediate age group--three
hundred pounds! What about that, you people?" There was an
impressed and envious gasp from the assembled crowd
below, and Omri heard murmurs of "Three
hundred quid! Wow! Get old Omri, then--
millionaire time! Blimey!" And they
burst into applause all over again.
  "Stand here in the middle of the stage," Mr.
Johnson said, maneuvering Omri by the shoulders.
"Now then! I haven't had a chance to read this myself
yet, so I'm just going to sit here and enjoy it.
Well done, Omri! Off you go!"
  Omri dithered for a moment or two and then thought,
Hey, this isn't half bad. I've dreamed
of this happening! So he began to read.
  The story was based on his first meeting with the
Indian, a year ago when he'd first discovered the
cupboard and the key's magic. It was a great
story, and he'd done his best to write it well.
At first when he began to read it, he was nervous and
stumbled over the words, but after a paragraph or
two he hit his stride and began to read with feeling
and expression. He did Little Bear's gruff
voice and had a stab at Boone's Texas
accent; when he said something funny, the whole
auditorium erupted with laughter. During the
exciting bits everyone sat poised to catch what
came next. It was very satisfying, and when he
finished the story and the applause broke out again, with
some cheering, Omri felt this was a great moment in his
life, one that he'd always remember.
  In fact he was feeling extremely pleased with
himself--not at all a sensation he was accustomed to at
school--when he suddenly became aware that Mr.
Johnson had stood up behind him and was looming
over him in a distinctly sinister manner.
  Before the applause had died away, Mr.
Johnson bent down and whispered something in
Omri's ear that made his blood chill in his
veins.
  "I want to see you in my office immediately."
  Omri turned to look at him. He was
appalled to see that all geniality had been wiped
from the headmaster's face, which had gone the color
of a wet sheet.
  "That story," pursued the grim voice in a
hissing undertone meant for Omri's ears alone,
"was supposed to be an invention. I have reason
to believe that most of it, incredible as it seems,
may be true."





                                  
                 14.
        A Strange Yellow Sky

  Doc Brant put his old-fashioned
stethoscope back in his bag in silence.
  Patrick, peeping through the frill of cotton
lace around the top of Ruby Lou's dress,
saw Boone lying on her bed on a
bright-colored patchwork quilt.
  At least he wasn't lying out on the hot
desert sand anymore, though it had not been so hot
by the time they had finally found him--it had been
getting dark, and Patrick had been scared they'd
never find him at all.
  The horse had been pretty useless--it
became clear quite early on that it hadn't a clue
where it had left Boone. But Ruby Lou had
been absolutely determined to find him.
Luckily Tickle's many and varied talents
included amateur tracking. With his help, they
had finally found the place where the horse's
tracks had rejoined the main trail into town. This
had been made possible by the fact that the horse was
wearing some very unusual horseshoes.
  "Like some'n from a bygone age," Tick had
remarked.
  After that it had just been a matter of following
them, and when they lost them on some hard ground,
Patrick had noticed--silhouetted against a
magnificent desert sunset--a tall cactus
sticking up on the horizon that he recognized.
Soon after that Ruby Lou and Tickle were heaving
Boone's unconscious body onto the back of
Tick's wagon.
  "Sure must have had a crack on the head or
some'n," squeaked Tick. "He's out colder 'n
last week's beans."
  Doc Brant said nothing about last week's
beans. He was a man of few words. He just
packed his stethoscope away and prepared to leave.
  "Well, Doc?" cried Ruby Lou
anxiously.
  The old man shook his head. "Cain't find
nothin' wrong with him. Head's okay. Ain't
got fever. Ain't bin shot. Nothin' but a bit
o' bruisin' on the ribs, mebbe from when he
fell off the horse. Seems like he plumb
don't favor wakin' up."
  "God pardon sin, Doc--mebbe he's
drunk?" asked Tickle piously.
  "Look who's talkin'," muttered Ruby.
  The doctor shook his head. "No liquor on
his breath. Cain't explain it. Just better leave
him lay."
  When he'd gone, Tickle said he'd mosey
over to the saloon to tickle the ivories for a
while to soothe his nerves.
  "You be okay here alone, Ruby?"
  "I ain't alone," she replied promptly,
and patted her bosom. "Pat and me'll keep
each other company and decide what that' do about
Billy, here."
  Tickle suddenly drew himself up to his full
height of five feet and intoned in an
unexpectedly deep, commanding voice, "Don't
you go believin' everythin' you see. There's a lot
of devil's work in this world! I know it, account of
I ain't free of sin myself!" And he cast his
eyes to heaven before closing the door.
  "Do' you hear that? There's a bit of the preacher
left in him, even though he ain't held a
service since the Dead-Eye Gang went through and
burned the church down in '81. That's how he
learnt trackin'--trying to chase 'em."
  As she spoke, Ruby lifted Patrick out
between finger and thumb and set him on a table.
  It was covered with a rich--and, from Patrick's
point of view, colossal--assortment of
feminine fancies: a tortoise-shell-backed
hairbrush, elaborate bottles of perfume,
a number of sepia-tinted photos in heavily
worked silver frames, an ivory comb. ...
Patrick could easily have sunk and suffocated in
the scented powder in a cut-glass bowl, and the
mirror in its bright enamel frame, above which he
could just see his head, was the size of a reflecting
skyscraper. The copper hairpins scattered about
were as tall as himself.
  "Okay, Pat, let's hear from you," said
Ruby Lou.
  "Who, me?" said Patrick, startled.
  "Don't string me no line now. You know
what's up with my pal Billy Boone, don't
ya." It was not a question. Her blue eyes were
narrowed as she looked at him, though her wide red
mouth was smiling knowingly.
  Patrick sat down cross-legged on a
white swansdown powder puff. "Yes, I do,
as a matter of fact. But you won't believe me
if I tell you."
  "Try me."
  Patrick told her. "Boone's left his
body behind and gone into the future."
  There was a pause while she took this in.
  "Supposin' I say I believe ya. An'
I jest might, 'cause he told me some such
tale himself once. Will he come back?"
  "Yes. But only if my friend Omri turns
the key at--at the other end."
  "Into the future, huh? Is that where you come from?"
  "Yes."
  "What year?" she asked, as if that would catch
him out.
  Patrick told her.
  She straightened up. "Holy snakes! That's
almost exactly a hundred years from now!"
  She walked about the room for a bit. Patrick
watched her. Of course she was rather gaudily
dressed, and he supposed she was a lady in name
only, so to speak, but when she was at the far side
of the room, so he could see all of her, it was
obvious that she was very pretty. She was clever,
too, cleverer than all those crazy men in the bar
who had started shooting and fighting at the sight of
him.
  And she was brave, and tough. The way she'd
ridden that horse, the way she'd stuck to the search,
the way she'd lifted Boone's big body
onto the tail of the wagon ... Patrick
admired her. And she liked Boone, she liked
him a lot. Patrick wondered if he liked
her.
  She stopped pacing. "What's it like--in the
future?"
  "It's okay. We've got a lot of
gadgets and stuff, for making life easier. You
get about in cars--that's like horseless carriages,
very fast--and we've got flying machines. We've
got moving photographs that you can have in your home
to entertain you. And doctors have found out how to cure
lots of diseases, so people live longer."
  "Gee. Sounds great! Any drawbacks?"
  She was clever.
  "Well, yes. There are too many people really.
They make a lot of mess, and plenty of them are
still poor and starving. There's still crime. And there are
lots of wars. Not just with guns, and bows and arrows
and stuff. There are weapons now--I mean--then,
I mean--well, anyway, they're much scarier,
they could blow up the whole world."
  Ruby Lou strolled back to him and sat down.
She put her elbow on the table near him (her arm
was like a great white marble pillar) and rested her chin
on her hand. She fixed her blue eyes on him.
  "That's quite a drawback all right. I guess
I'll stick around here till my time's up. ...
It gets rough at times, but at least we're too
civilized to kill more 'n one or two at once.
Say, they ain't gonna shoot any of them big
ones off while Billy's there, are they?"
  "I don't suppose so."
  "They better not blow up my Billy," she
said. And the way she said it showed Patrick that she
didn't just like Boone.

  Patrick spent the night cozily in the
pocket of a raccoon-skin jacket of Ruby
Lou's, which she laid out on a chair for him. She
spent the night sitting by the bed watching Boone.
  "Won't you be tired?" asked Patrick as
she bedded him down after giving him a supper of a
few fibers of underdone steak and a crumb of
potato washed down with milk from her sewing thimble.
  "Don't you fret about me, pal. I'm used
to goin' without sleep."
  She turned the oil lamp low so as not to disturb
him, and he saw her move to the window. She drew
back the frilly curtains.
  "Sky's a funny color," she said, peering
out into the night. "Don't like the feel of the air,
neither. Kinda tight-feeling. Hope we ain't in
for a big blow."

  Patrick slept peacefully. In the morning
he woke, with the fur tickling his nose, to all the
noises of the town: horses neighing, wheels
rattling, dogs barking, cocks crowing, people's
voices--but behind and around all this was something odd and
eerie. A sort of whining, gusting sound.
  Ruby was standing where he had last seen her, at
the window. Patrick sat up in the fur and
sneezed.
  "Ruby!" he called as loudly as he could.
  She turned from the window, stooped, and lifted
him. Her hand was soft, except for some callouses
as big as watermelons, which must have come from riding.
It smelled sweetly of soap--and was trembling.
  "How's Boone?"
  "Jest the same. Come here and look at the
sky."
  She carried him to the window. He rested his arms
along the top of her curled finger and looked up.
The sky, and indeed the air, was a strange
yellowish color. Below the window he could see
giant people hurrying about. The gusting sound was wind,
coming in irregular bursts. It caught at the
women's dresses and pushed them along. It blew
smoke from chimneys away in sudden puffs, like
warning smoke signals. It was disturbing the
horses, tearing at their manes, flattening their
tails to their haunches, making them shake their
heads uneasily.
  As Patrick watched, a man's big hat was
blown off his head and trundled up the dirt
street along with several balls of thistles. The
man ran after it. Somewhere a door banged and
banged, rhythmically, as the wind began to blow more
steadily.
  "What is it, Ruby?" asked Patrick in
a worried voice.
  "I'm not sure, pardner. I just hope it
ain't what it might be."
  "What?"
  "Blowin' up for a twister."
  Patrick turned to look at her, but all he
could see was the underside of her chin. His mouth had
gone suddenly dry.
  "You--don't mean a cyclone? One of those
black funnel things that--"
  Ruby Lou looked at Boone, lying on the
bed. She'd covered him with a rug the night before.
He looked peaceful and had a good color. His
hat, which Ruby had picked up on Patrick's
advice, lay beside him.
  "Say, that'd be one for the books!" she said with a
sudden strained laugh.
  "What would?"
  "We was worryin' about what might happen to him
there. What if your friend turned his magic key and
sent Boone back that' here--and the bit of him he
left behind 'd been just--blowed clean away?"

                 15.
              Interrogation

  Mr. Johnson kept his hand on Omri's
shoulder all the way to his office, as if he
thought Omri would twist free and run for it if he
didn't hold on to him.
  And he might have done it, too, if
he hadn't been half-paralyzed--at least
mentally--from apprehension.
  He knows! Those were the only words in
Omri's head. What was he to do when the interro-
gation began, as it would in a matter of moments?
Lie, deny everything--okay, but what if--
  Mr. Johnson thrust him through the door of his
office, followed him in, and closed and locked it
behind him.
  Then he walked behind his desk. But he didn't
sit down. He leaned forward and rested his
knuckles on the desk and glared hypnotically
into Omri's eyes.
  "Now, Omri," he said in a clear, deep
voice which he used on only the most solemn
occasions when someone had done something
expulsion-worthy, "you know what I have to say."
  Omri swallowed and stared at him the way a
rabbit stares into a car's headlights as they bear
down on him.
  "You haven't forgotten that day last year," he
said, "any more than I have. The day you and
Patrick were sent to my office for talking in
class. The day I went home early because I
supposed I was ill, having seen something I
believed I couldn't possibly have seen. You
remember all that, Omri, don't you?"
  Omri felt his head nod.
  "What I thought I saw," the headmaster
continued slowly, "was two tiny, living people in the
palm of a boy's hand. They moved. One of them was
dressed as a Red Indian."
  "It's not right to say "Red Indian,""
Omri heard himself say in a strangled voice.
  Mr. Johnson jerked his head back. "I
beg your pardon?"
  "They don't like it," Omri pursued
helplessly, hardly knowing what he was saying. "You
should say "American Indian" or "native
American.""
  "I have always said Red Indian and I shall continue
to say Red Indian!" Mr. Johnson was
suddenly shouting. "I say I saw a Red
Indian, a tiny little one, and another figure as
well, and they were alive, and I spent weeks
trying to convince myself that I hadn't seen them, that
I'd been overworking, and in the end I did convince
myself. Almost. Until this morning. When I heard
you read your story," he went on, leaning even
closer so that Omri backed a step, "it
all came back to me in a flash, and I knew
--I knew that I was not imagining things after
all! I ought to have had more faith in my strength of
mind, I ought to have known I am not a man
to imagine things!" His voice dropped and his
shoulders slumped. "I must confess it's a
relief in a way. That's what it is. It's a
relief." He took a deep breath and allowed
himself to sit down.
  Omri was left standing in front of the desk. His
knees had gone woolly, and his face felt
cold.
  "Now then, my boy," said Mr. Johnson more
calmly, "let us take a new starting point.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
...""
  "Who?" croaked Omri.
  "... As Shakespeare says. I saw what
I saw. They were real. They--are--real. That
is the truth. Is it not?"
  Omri stood dumb. He shut his mouth on
lies and truth alike, just stood there, silent.
  Mr. Johnson was thinking. A year ago, on
the day in question, he had browbeaten Patrick
into showing him the little people by means of a threat:
to telephone Patrick's father. It had worked then.
Perhaps it would work now.
  "Omri, if you will not tell me what I wish
to know, I shall have to get your parents' cooperation."
  Omri's eyes leaped to the telephone. His
mind, numb before, suddenly burst into activity.
He had not locked his bedroom door because he
couldn't--it only bolted from the inside. The
cupboard was there. Boone was there. Matron was
there, and so were a number of Indians.
Unprotected and alone ... not to mention
Patrick, in a deep coma inside the chest. If
Mr. Johnson phoned home, his mother or his father
would answer, and the first thing they would do was go up to his
room. If they believed it.
  But they wouldn't. How could they?
  Looking at Mr. Johnson, Omri saw the
same thought come into his mind. Mr. Johnson was
not a man who enjoyed looking a fool.
  "Go ahead and phone them," said Omri.
  The trap shifted. It was not Omri who was
caught in it now. Mr. Johnson drummed with his
fingers on the desk, looking at the phone,
inwardly rehearsing the conversation. ... No. He
must get the boy to admit the truth first.
But how?
  Just at that critical moment fate intervened.
The phone they were both staring at began to ring.
  They jumped. Mr. Johnson, recovering
himself, answered.
  "Hello? Yes, the headmaster here ..." He
listened, and his face changed. His eyes flashed
to Omri, and his eyebrows went up. "Yes.
Yes, he is. He's with me now, as it
happens. ..." He covered the phone with his hand and
said grimly, "It's your mother."
  "Which-what does she want?"
  He didn't answer, just handed the receiver
to Omri.
  "Mum?"
  "Omri? Where's Patrick?"
  Omri's heart plummeted to new depths in his
chest.
  "Patrick--?"
  "Yes, darling, where is he? I've got his
mother here, frantic. Emma's with her." His mother
lowered her voice. "She's crying. Apparently
she told Patrick's mother that he was spending the
night with us, whereas of course he didn't. Now
come on, out with it, where is he?"
  "I--I'm not sure," stammered Omri. Which
wasn't precisely a lie.
  There was a silence from the other end. Then:
  "Omri, let me speak to Mr. Johnson."
  Dumbly, Omri handed the phone back, and
listened as well as he could with the blood still pounding in
his ears.
  "Yes? Johnson here ... Yes ... I
see ... Yes, I remember Patrick very
well." His eyes were narrowed with suspicion as
he looked at Omri. "You want Omri to come
home? ... No, no problem about that," he said
smoothly. "In fact I'll bring him myself."
  "Oh, no!" cried Omri before he could
restrain himself.
  "Oh, but oh, yes," said Mr. Johnson.
He hung up the phone deliberately and rose
to his feet. "Come along, my boy, my--
ahem!--Porsche is outside. You can direct
me."

  Omri directed him to his house. What
else could he do? His mind was racing ahead.
Patrick's mother--his own mother--probably his
father--and now Mr. Johnson. They would
all be there, all going at him, going at Emma,
breaking down their resistance. All he could think of
by way of consolation was, Thank goodness I sent
Little Bear, Bright Stars, and the baby safely
back! The figures were still in his pocket.
  Mr. Johnson parked his nice new
Porsche (part of an inheritance, it was rumored)
outside the house under the big old elm that had
died in the Dutch elm disease epidemic some
years before but hadn't yet been cut down. It was
a good climbing tree, and Omri, in his
imagination, shinnied straight up to the top of it in
a trice. If only he could be there, on that
branch just above his attic bedroom skylight, he
might manage to climb in, bolt the door,
get all the little people safely in the cupboard,
restore Patrick, all before anyone could get
there by the usual route. ...
  If only! If only! But Mr.
Johnson's hand was back like a steel vise on
his shoulder, the front door was opening even before they
reached it, and there they all were, waiting. Waiting
for Omri to explain!


                 16.
                Panic

  "Okay, Omri, where have you hidden
Patrick?"
  "Where is he, darling?"
  "Where's my son? Just wait till I lay
my hands on him!"
  Emma's face was actually the one Omri's
eyes fastened on. She looked really pathetic.
When she saw him looking at her, she gave her
head a little shake, which he instantly understood
to mean, "I haven't told them anything." But
they'd obviously been giving her a rough time, and
Omri felt terrible about that.
  The mothers both looked as if they were about to pounce
on him; his father simply looked baffled. So
naturally it was his father he made for.
  "Dad, can I speak to you alone?"
  "In my opinion, that would be most unwise,"
said Mr. Johnson.
  They all turned to look at him, and Omri
saw his father's face tighten. He turned back
to Omri.
  "Let's go into the kitchen."
  "Can I come?" asked Emma in a small
voice, as if she thought they would all start up with
her again the moment Omri was out of sight.
  "Yes," said Omri. "Come on, Em." He
really felt sorry for her. She actually seemed
to be trembling, and as they entered the kitchen, she
dropped something that clattered on the tiled floor.
  They both bent simultaneously, but Omri
got there first. What she'd dropped was a plastic
figure of a girl in red. He thought for a moment it
was Bright Stars' figure, but it was just an ordinary
girl. Before he could return it to her, his father got
between him and Emma, so Omri slipped it into his
pocket.
  "Now, Omri, you'd better tell me at
once where Patrick is."
  When the brain is pushed to its limits, something
always emerges. Even if it's the worst possible
thing, in this case the truth.
  "He's in my room, Dad."
  "No, he's not," said his father promptly.
"We looked."
  Omri closed his eyes and waited, but there was
no more. Presumably they simply hadn't
noticed, or the little people had frozen into stillness.
He opened his eyes again. His father was gazing at him
expectantly.
  "He's--hiding."
  "Hiding? What for? Where?"
  Omri glanced at Emma.
  "In--in the chest."
  His father looked incredulous. "Are you having me
on, Omri? He can't have been there all this time!"
  "I--I don't know. He was there when I
left for school."
  "But why? What was the idea?"
  "He--he didn't want to go home. Yet."
  And then his father said the most wonderful thing.
  "Well! You'd better run up and fetch
him."
  Omri's heart bounded with incredulous relief.
Galvanized, he rushed to the door, and Emma
followed close.
  "And I think I'll come too," remarked his
father.
  Omri and Emma stopped dead.
  "No, Dad."
  "No?"
  "No. I--we'll go by ourselves." Omri
turned and fastened his eyes on his father's.
"Please."
  His father hesitated.
  "This is all very mysterious," he said, not at
all lightly. "I hope there's nothing going on
that you ought to be ashamed of, Omri."
  "No, Dad!"
  "Okay. Go on. But remember, we're down
here, waiting, all of us, and if you're not back--
with Patrick--P.d.q., I'll be up there
after you."
  They raced, past the little knot of adults in the
hall, up the stairs two at a time, all the
way up to the attic.
  Omri's chief fear now was that, after more than
twenty-four hours, Patrick would have come to some
harm, wherever he was. What if, when they brought
him back, he was hurt, or even-- But it was
useless to speculate. The vital thing was to get
him back, but first Omri had to hide every bit of
evidence of the magic.
  The second they got into the room, he bolted
the door and made for the seed tray.
  "Give her back."
  He turned. Emma was standing by the cupboard.
  "What--"
  "I'll put her in myself."
  "Put who in? What are you talking about?"
panted Omri.
  "It's the end, isn't it? You're sending them
all back now, and you won't do any of it again because
the grown-ups are near to finding out, and it's got
too dangerous."
  Omri looked at her. Her face froze
him. She was Patrick's cousin, and now he saw
a likeness--she had the same look Omri had
seen on Patrick's face so many times, when he
had made up his mind to do something outrageous.
  "What are you on about?" he asked sharply.
  "I picked out that girl. From my model set.
I'm going to make her real, and I'm going
to keep her forever."
  Omri almost pushed her out of his way. "You're
mad," he said shortly. He was still breathless from his
run, and from stifled panic--his brain wasn't
working well, and he couldn't cope with this new
threat.
  He bent to the entrance of the longhouse.
"Matron!"
  She emerged. Her headdress was all bent, which
happened only when she was thoroughly
flustered.
  "My dear!" she cried, her hand on her thin
bosom as if to restrain her heart from leaping out of
it. "I thought you and Patrick were giants, but some
people came into the room who were even bigger than you!
I think they were looking for something. I ducked
back into the longhouse the second I saw them, and
ordered all my patients to keep absolutely
silent. Luckily the giants only glanced
around once and then went out again, but oh, dear me,
it was a bad moment!"
  "You did the right thing, Matron. Now I have
to send you back."
  "Not a moment too soon! And I think I can
fairly say I'm leaving all my patients
well on the road to recovery. How will you send
them back--the nonambulatory cases?"
  "Don't worry, I've thought about that." When
the chest was empty, he would just put the whole seed
tray, complete with longhouse and occupants,
into it; that way he wouldn't have to move the injured
Indians individually. But he thought he had
better send Matron back through the cupboard in
case she wound up in the wrong place.
  Matron stepped gingerly onto Omri's hand
and knelt down to keep her balance as he
airlifted her to the cupboard. She was looking at
him closely.
  "My boy?"
  "Yes?"
  "You look worried. Am I wrong in thinking
that something has happened to--change the situation
radically?"
  "You're not wrong, Matron. You--I'm
afraid I won't be bringing you back again."
  She stepped off his hand into the cupboard. She
cleared her throat loudly.
  "I can see there is no time for prolonged
farewells." She straightened her uniform skirt
and checked her pockets to make sure she had
all her bits and pieces. Her hand strayed
once to her cap, and Omri thought he saw her
furtively wipe her eyes with the tail end of one
of the floating ribbons attached to it. He knew
he would have felt tearful himself if it were not for his
desperate preoccupations.
  "You've been absolutely wonderful. I'll
miss you," he said sincerely.
  "Oh, pish, tush, and likewise--" But she
choked on the last word and simply put out
her hand to touch the tip of his finger, which he extended
to her.
  "You'd better hurry!" said Emma. "Here,
let me do it!" And before Omri knew what was
happening, she had shut the door with a thump and
turned the key. Omri stood silent, his heart
beating, feeling the pressure of time, of all the
grown-ups waiting downstairs, and realized he was
putting off the moment when he would open the chest.
  Then he was aware that Emma was standing there with the
key clutched in her hand.
  "Now I want my red girl," she said.
  "You're not going to bring anything to life now,"
Omri retorted. "I can't let you. If you
can't see why not, then--then I just wish I'd never
let you in on it."
  Emma's hard, almost Tamsin-like look
softened. "Please, Omri. Just give her to me.
All right, I won't do anything. Just let me have
her."
  Omri reached into his pocket. "Right. Give
me the key."
  There was a moment--a bad moment--when he thought
she was going to refuse. God, this was scary! The very
people you trusted most could become like strangers in their
longing for a little person of their own! It was worse
than the way people behaved over gold. If Emma
could frighten him like this, what would happen if the
grown-ups ever--
  Suddenly an awful thought struck him, and he
stiffened with horror.
  Mr. Johnson! Mr. Johnson knew.
He was downstairs now, and there was absolutely
nothing to stop him from blowing the whole secret wide
open! That was what he had come for, and that was what he
would do!
  No sooner had this thought surfaced than he
heard something.
  Emma heard it too. Both their heads
snapped around to face the door.
  "They're coming up here! All of them!" she
breathed.
  "Oh, God," whispered Omri, closing his
eyes in despair. "He's told them!"





                                  
                 17.
             The Big Blow

  "Quick! Give me the key!"
  She didn't hesitate now, but thrust the key
at him, snatching the red girl at the same time from
his other hand. Omri stumbled across to the chest.
  "Bring the seed tray--hurry--" he gasped
as the thudding of feet on the lower stairway got
louder. He could hear their voices, querulous,
anxious, Mr. Johnson's the loudest,
dominating their questions.
  "--ationo room for further doubt--biological
phenomenon--saw with my own eyes--"
  Wait, wait! No time for two operations--
do it all at once--Omri opened the chest,
grabbed the seed tray out of Emma's hands, and
put it in the bottom next to Patrick's feet
--he was aware of Emma, leaning closely over
him--and slammed down the lid. His hand was so
unsteady--they were nearly at the door--that it took
two or three stabs before he could thrust the key
into the lock. Then he turned it.
  What happened next was something he could never
afterward remember clearly, and yet would never, ever
forget.
  The main memory, later, was of a stupendous
noise, a deafening roar that filled the room
to bursting. But the pressure of the sound was not what
threw him and Emma right across the room and slammed
them backwards against the wall.
  The chest ... He was to remember seeing the end
of his chest. It simply lifted into the air as the
lid blasted open, and then it disintegrated. It
simply blew outward into fragments. One bit of
it hit him in the stomach and knocked the breath out of
him. At the same time something large and heavy was
hurled and tumbled across the floor and struck
Emma's legs.
  Then Omri witnessed, in a few traumatic,
incredible seconds, the total destruction of his
room.
  The skylight above his bed vanished first, though
he was too stunned to see it go--the glass
erupting in a puff of sparkling dust as the
violent charge that had come out of the chest roared
upward through the hole in the roof. But the hole
wasn't large enough, nothing like large enough to channel
that black tower of pure force that detonated from
bottom to top of the little room.
  The edges of the square hole bent outward like
rubber for a split second, and then with a tearing,
wrenching, screeching sound that could be heard distinctly
through the original roaring, the whole slope of the roof
disappeared.
  At that, everything in the room that could possibly
move--all the bedding, the Japanese table, the
floor cushions, books, Omri's
collections, the clock radio, and half a
hundred other objects--whirled, in a blinding,
terrifying tenth of a second, out into the sky as if
sucked by an inhalation from the heavens.
  That was it. That was all, inside the room. But the
noise had not stopped; it had simply gone out of the
house. They could still hear it outside. A wind
to end winds, the most ferocious, destructive
blast to hit England for two hundred years, was
beginning a career which would make news all over the
world.
  The first of several million trees it was
destined to uproot was the old elm outside
Omri's house that should have come down years ago, and
now did so, with a demolishing crash, right on top
of Mr. Johnson's new Porsche.
  The wind then proceeded at high speed down
Hovel Road, blowing off roofs, knocking down
trees, and wrecking the happy haunts of
skinheads--a maverick Texas cyclone, which the
weathermen had not predicted and could never explain,
on its way to cause unprecedented havoc
to south-east England.

  Omri and Emma found themselves lying on the
floor on the very edge of consciousness. Omri was
clutching the thing that had hit him, something sharp that
dug into his hands. Emma was clutching something,
too. What she was clutching was Patrick.
  He alone did not seem to be much fazed or
hurt. As the deafening noise began to fade into the
distance, he sat up, rubbed his hands over his face
and head, and said, "Blimey! Just in time!"
  The other two stared at him glassily. He
stood up, shook himself, turned--and stopped.
  "Crumbs," he breathed, gazing around the shell
of Omri's room.
  He looked upward into open sky, an angry
sky still full of whirling leaves and odd
fragments. The broken-off joists of the roof stuck
out in silhouette. It was like looking out through the
wide-open mouth of a gigantic shark.
  "You know what," he said slowly, "I think I
must've brought the twister back with me."
  "Twister ...?" Omri's voice came out
thickly, and he found his throat was choked with dust.
The air was full of it.
  "Yeah. A cyclone. ... We saw it coming
up the street, whirling like a black funnel,
throwing huge things into the air. It was just about onto
us when--"
  His hand flew to his mouth. He turned slowly
back to where Omri and Emma were lying.
  "Where's Boone?" he asked hollowly.
"Where's Ruby Lou?"
  Boone!
  Omri had, in the panic of sending Matron
and the injured Indians back, totally forgotten about
Boone.
  His brain was working thickly. Boone! Boone
had been here. Where? Where had he put him? Had
he been on the seed tray? No. He had been
in the Lego house, in his matchbox bed.
Omri'd put him somewhere, at his own request--
somewhere ... out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind.
  Omri tried to get up. It was a struggle.
Every part of him ached and protested when he moved.
He put his hand to the ground and dropped the sharp thing
that had hit him, the last remains of his seaman's
chest--an angle of the lid with an oblong brass
plate bearing the inscription, "L. Bear."
  As it struck the floor, he thought he heard a
small extra sound, but before he could register it,
it was drowned by a banging on the door, and
terrified voices.
  "Omri! Emma! Patrick! Are you all
right? What was it, what happened?"
  The three of them froze, gazing at each other.
It was Emma who acted first. She scrambled
stiffly to her feet and went to the door.
  "We're all right! Patrick's here, we're
all here, the roof's blown off, but we're okay,
and--"
  "All right?!" yelled Omri's mother. "You
can't be! Open the door!"
  "I can't," said Emma. "The bolt's bent."
  Omri's eyes raced to the bolt. There was
nothing wrong with it. Brilliant, he thought
admiringly. She's brilliant. That gives
us a few minutes, anyhow.
  "Omri!" called his father in a shocked voice.
"What was it? What was that terrible
noise? The house shook--like an earthquake--"
  "I--I think it's some kind of a freak wind,
Dad!" Omri managed to croak. "Did you
hear the tree come down? It's gone, I can't
see the top branches anymore!"
  Mr. Johnson could be heard to give a cry
of anguish.
  "Tree? Down? My God! My Porsche
...!" And they heard him rush down the stairs.
  "Patrick! Speak to me, speak to me!"
cried Patrick's mother hysterically.
  "I'm here, Mum, calm down," said
Patrick shortly. He was white in the face.
  "Listen, Dad," said Omri quickly.
"We're okay, I'll take the bolt off the
door. You go and see how much damage there is.
We'll be down as soon as we get the door
open."
  "Right," said his father. "He's right. Come on,
let's go down. Bloody roof's off--my
conservatory must be wrecked--" And he shepherded
the women down the stairs, Patrick's mother still
fussing shrilly.
  A silence fell. It was almost too much of a
relief to bear, after all the terrifying uproar of the
last few interminable minutes. The three of them
stood still, trying to get to grips with things. And in that
abrupt and welcome lull, they finally heard
something that must have been going on for some time.
  "Help! HELP! HE-EVERY-EVERY-LP!"
  The voice--a very tiny one--seemed to come from
above their heads.
  They craned their necks. "I don't believe
it! Look up there!" shouted Omri, pointing.
  Impaled on one of the broken roof beams was a
familiar object. Its mirror was no more, its
door hung from one hinge, and most of its remaining
white paint had been battered off. But there it
was, still there, what was left of it.
  The cupboard!
  And that wasn't all. Clinging precariously to the
bottom rim by both hands, his spurred boots
kicking over an infinity of empty air, was
Boone.





                                  
                 18.
              Red Satin

  "Help! Git me down! Save me! Ah'm
gonna fall! HE-EVERY-EVERY-LP!"
  "How did he--Never mind! Quick, we must do
something!"
  "Boone! Hang on, we're coming!"
  "How?" he squawked. "You' ain't got
wings! An' Ah cain't hold on much longer!
It's no use!" His voice swooped into a
despairing dirge. "Don't bother none,
fellas. It's too late that' save me ...
Ah'm doomed. Ah accept more' fate. Ah
jest wish Ah hadn't lived such a rotten
no-good hard-drinkin' poker-playin' life
...!"
  Once again Emma was the first to react sensibly
--the boys were running around in circles under the
dangling cupboard, bumping into each other in their
hopeless search for something to climb on. Emma
tore off her parka and thrust one sleeve
into Omri's hand and one into Patrick's. Then,
grasping the bottom edge herself and pulling it taut
like a fireman's blanket, she shouted up,
"Let go! We'll catch you!"
  Boone let go and dropped what must have seemed
to him a thousand feet, screaming all the way.
  "Aaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeoooooow!"
  He hit the quilting with a tiny plop and lay
there, momentarily stunned. Emma and the boys laid
the parka gently on the floor.
  "Boone? Are you okay?" asked Patrick
anxiously.
  After a moment Boone slowly sat up.
  "That's all Ah needed," he remarked
bitterly, wincing as he felt himself all over.
"As if it wasn't enough that' lose mah hat,
an' git crushed half to death by more' best buddy"
--he gave Patrick a dirty look--"I
git blown almost up to the pearly gates, and instead
o' findin' more'self on a nice soft pink
cloud, I'm hangin' out there in space yellin'
my haid off with not a livin' soul takin' a
danged bit o' notice till it's nearly
Too Late!" And he wiped away a tear.
He scowled around darkly and then changed his tone.
"Say, whut hit this place, anyhow? Musta
bin some dynamitin' that went wrong."
  "It was a cyclone from your town, from your
time, Boone. It came back with me through the
magic," Patrick explained.
  Boone looked appalled. "Say ... Ah
hope it didn't wreck the saloon!"
  "If the cyclone came here, it couldn't be there
at the same time, so I guess your town's
safe. And by the way--so is your hat."
  Boone's whole manner changed. He jumped
to his feet excitedly. "Ya found more' hat?
I sure miss it!"
  "It's okay, Boone. It's back there,
waiting for you. Ruby Lou made sure to pick it
up safely. She knows you love it."
  Boone stared at him. "You--you run
into Ruby?"
  Patrick nodded. Boone's eyes began
to glow.
  "Ya don't say! Now ain't she a great
gal?"
  "Yes, she is."
  "She ain't one o' your prissy, stuck-up
kind, neither--she's a real pal, and purty as
paint too!" He heaved a wistful sigh. "Ah
wisht she was here now! You' know," he confided,
"when Ah'm with Ruby, Ah never feels sad
nor nuthin', an' Ah only cry 'cause she
kinda likes me to tell her sad stories. And
I kin do without drinkin'. That li'l Ruby gal
is as good as likker to a man any day.
Better."
  "That's the nicest thing a man ever said to me,
Billy Boone!"
  The sound of this other tiny voice was so totally
unexpected they all goggled at each other before
turning toward it.
  They stared unbelievingly. Standing up on the
edge of the bit of the chest lid that Omri had
dropped was a tiny figure in a red satin
dress and high-polished red boots, with blond
hair piled on her head and her hands on her
hips.
  Patrick let out a yell of delight.
"RUBY! What are you doing here?"
  "Search me! But the tables are turned now,
eh, Pat? Now you're the big 'un, but I
don't care so long as Billy's my size.
Who's gonna bring me over to him so he can give
me a hug?"
  The boys dived, but Emma got there first. She
took the tiny figure of Ruby Lou in
her hand wonderingly and gazed at her. Then she
lifted a shining face to Omri.
  "She's mine! It's my red girl! I
sneaked her onto the seed tray just before you put it
into the chest! Isn't she--just--beautiful!"
  "Ain't she, though!" echoed Boone adoringly
as Emma gently set her down on the parka at
his side and they fell into each other's arms.

  The freak storm was an absolute disaster for
nearly everyone it touched. But for Omri,
Patrick, and Emma, and for the little people, it was a
godsend. In one way.
  The destruction it wreaked on Omri's home
and the neighborhood was so extensive that what had
gone just before was simply dislodged from the minds of the
grown-ups.
  To begin with, Mr. Johnson's precious car
was a total write-off. To make matters
worse--or better--just as he was jumping up and
down beside it, ranting and raving at its destruction,
a sizable branch from the dead elm broke off and
descended on his head. After that, of course, though
he recovered later, nobody was about to believe
any tales he had to tell about little live men.
(incidentally, the insurance company refused to pay
up for the Porsche because cyclones were excluded in the
small print. He would have to come to school on a
bicycle, a sadder and a humbler man.)
  As for Omri's and Patrick's parents,
they'd never exactly believed what Mr.
Johnson tried to tell them just before they came
rushing up the stairs. And afterward they simply never
remembered it. The conservatory had been blown
to pieces, the tree was blocking the road, their
chimney had fallen through the roof next door: The
whole place looked as if--well, as if a
cyclone had struck it. There was no time even
to think about anything else, once they had made
sure their children were really all right.
  The storm had severely damaged the school, which
was closed for several weeks. This naturally
caused all those who should have been learning there
profound unhappiness. But they managed to make the
best of things.
  Patrick's cottage in Kent was okay, but
his mother's orchard (she had taken to cider-making for a
living since her divorce) had been devastated.
The problems this caused meant she was only too
glad to leave Patrick up in
London for a time, while she dealt with them. She
never did get around to asking him where he had been
during that fateful twenty-four hours when he was
missing.
  So all that was on the plus side, at least from
the point of view of the secret.
  On the minus side were the condition of Omri's
house, his parents' distress, and one other thing that
loomed larger for him and the other two--not to mention
Boone and Ruby--than anything else.

  As soon as possible, Omri got a ladder and
unhooked the cupboard impaled through its back on
the broken roof joist. He took a hammer and
carefully flattened the bent bits of metal
back into place until the hole was almost concealed.
He measured the space for the mirror and went out and
bought another to match and fitted it in. He fixed
the hinges and gave the whole thing a rubdown with
sandpaper and repainted it, after which it looked a good
deal better than it ever had before.
  But all the time he was working on it, his heart was
leaden, and Patrick and Emma--when they could be
there--said very little. Each knew all too well
what was in the minds of the others.
  What Omri was so diligently, so devotedly
working on was merely a memorial, a museum
piece. The cupboard was of no practical use
without the key.
  And the key was gone.
  Emma had taken over Ruby Lou, and--since
Ruby refused to be parted from him--Boone stayed
with Patrick, who was living in Emma's house with
his aunt. Omri was utterly opposed to this, but he
couldn't say much--the little people had hardly been
proved safe in .his place. But he lived in
abject terror of Tamsin, or someone else,
finding out.
  Omri was having to share Gillon's room. So
in a way he was glad not to have the responsibility
of the little people. But there was cold terror in his heart
nearly every waking moment--even though Emma and
Patrick assured him they were taking every
precaution.
  It was evident to Omri that, despite the
dangers, or perhaps because of them, the other two were
having the greatest fun of their lives. Ruby and
Boone were living in an old dolls' house of
Emma's, which, if not quite small enough for them (they had
to really climb up the stairs and come
down backwards) contained plenty of things they could
use--tables, chairs, beds, and kitchen gadgets
galore.
  What the dolls' house didn't provide,
Patrick and Emma did. Patrick had fixed
them up with a little wood stove werecomplete with
stovepipe) made of a tea tin that had a hole
on top of the right size for a real, tiny frying
pan, and with this Ruby Lou could do some cooking. They
used a special little loo, like a camping one, which
Emma had arranged, and every day she brought them hot
water for baths, and tiny towels (boone got
almost to like washing). Every day there were new things to make
and add. They even rigged up real electric
lights that were a wondrous novelty for Boone and
Ruby, though the switch was too stiff for them to work
alone and they really preferred a miniature, but
real, oil lamp twice as tall as themselves.
  All this was fine, for everyone but Omri. He
felt very much alone and left out. Visiting
occasionally and seeing for himself only made him
sadder. He longed for Little Bear and Bright Stars
to keep him company. Or even Matron ... But
there was no way. There would never be any way again.
It made his heart very heavy. And very frightened when
he thought of Boone and Ruby, with them forever,
unable to get home, and in constant danger of
discovery.

  One day, two weeks after the storm,
Patrick and Emma went over to Omri's
house.
  "Boone and Ruby Lou asked us to bring them
here," Emma explained. "They want to talk about
the future."
  The conference was held in Gillon's room, which,
even though he was not around, was nerve-racking. He
might walk in at any moment--there was no bolt
on this door. Besides, the roofers had at last
arrived and were banging and crashing about, throwing down
tiles into the front garden where they smashed on the
stump of the tree, and beginning to remove the broken
beams preparatory to putting on a whole new
roof. Every few seconds something hurtled past the
window and landed with a crash below. This meant they might
not hear Gillon if he approached.
  Omri closed the window and the curtains, though it
was broad daylight, to help keep out the noise.
Then he switched Gillon's desk lamp on,
and they all sat around Ruby Lou and
Boone, who were seated on a pouffe made of a
large eraser.
  "Listen, folks," Ruby began, as they all
leaned forward to hear her. "I wouldn't want
to hurt your feelin's none--I mean you kids've
made us feel real welcome, givin' us that
special house and all--but we jest can't
settle here. It ain't safe. Every time a door
opens, I git me a heart attack, and besides,
I keep havin' nightmares about them big
blowin'-up-the-world things Pat told me about.
Now, we wanna git back home, but Billy,
here, explained me the whole thing, about the key
gittin' blowed away, and it's real bad news.
What're we gonna do?"
  Nobody knew what to answer. The silence
stretched.
  As always when things were really desperate,
Boone was dry-eyed and steady as a rock.
"Couldn't we try some other key?"
  Omri said, "I have."
  The others looked at him.
  "With the cupboard. I've tried every key in the
house, just on the off chance, but none of them even
fit."
  "Sure is a pity, with the cupboard lookin' so
new and fine--makes me wanna jump right in,"
said Boone sadly. Ruby put her arm around his
shoulders.
  "Doncha start now, Billy, or you'll have me
bawlin' too!"
  "I ain't bawlin'," said Boone. "But Ah
sure am gittin' mighty homesick. It could
make a man cry to think o' never ridin' the
prairies or the deserts agin ... or even
settlin' his favorite hat back on his ears.
..." This did cause him to give a deep
sniff. "And another thing. How's me an'
Ruby gonna git hitched if'n we cain't
git us a preacher? T'ain't right, us livin' in that
house together, even in separate rooms, when the
knot ain't tied!"
  Ruby gave him a look that suggested she
might not have worried too much about that, but she
glanced at Emma and said nothing.
  "It looks to me," said Emma, "as if what
we'll have to do is just keep trying keys. Old
keys. Just keep trying and trying until we find
one that works."
  Again they were silent. None of them
believed that would ever happen. This business was a one
off, and they all knew it.
  "And meanwhile--what?" said Boone.
  "Just keep on as you are--I'm afraid," said
Omri with a deep, miserable sigh.
  They had something to eat, and Omri--who had a
special tea prepared--tried to turn it into a
bit of a party, but it was no use. They were all just
too upset and scared about the future to enjoy it.
At last Emma put Ruby into her pocket, and
Boone, with some assistance, clambered to his
favorite perch with a leg each side of
Patrick's ear, facing out and well-masked
by hair. He said it was the nearest thing to riding.
  Omri went out with them to the gate.
  The roofers had gone home for the day, leaving the
front garden in chaos. There were tiles and broken
bits of wood everywhere. The front lawn and the
hedge dividing the garden from Hovel Road were
all chopped up and smothered with debris.
  "Dad'll go ape when he sees this," said
Omri--and then he stopped.
  He'd seen something. Something that in the first
second he didn't comprehend, because it didn't
belong. Not that bright color. He paused to look
closer. The others were ahead of him, starting down the
road toward the station. Omri reached up his hand to the
top of the hedge.
  And then he saw what it was.
  He didn't shout and jump and cheer. It was
too important for that. He simply stood there
with his hand raised, touching it, not pulling yet, just
feeling, deep inside him, what it meant.
  That narrow bit of red satin ribbon, sticking out
between the twigs.














                                  
              Epilogue
             At A Wedding

  It was a marvelous, unforgettable occasion. They
all came.
  Matron--they had to send her back briefly,
when they'd explained why they'd brought her,
to change out of her uniform. ("Not remotely
suitable!") She reappeared in a smart
navy-blue suit, a snow-white blouse with
lots of unexpected frills down the front,
and a funny little hat like a crooked flowerpot, with a
dotted veil. She was even wearing a trace of
lipstick!
  Fickits emerged with his sergeant's stripes,
which his newly confident manner, after the Battle
of the Skinheads, had earned him almost as soon as
he returned to his company. When he understood
the occasion, he wanted to go back to recruit a
Royal Marine guard of honor, but he was
dissuaded by Boone, who modestly said he wanted
things quiet with "jest more' best friends present."
  And of course, his best friends had to include his
blood brother, Little Bear, and his family.
  Little Bear arrived in full regalia--his
headdress, his cloak, and all his finery. He
had had them on for a celebration of a victory--not
a final one, no doubt, but still a victory.
  In the two weeks since he had been back in
his village, a great deal had happened, which he
related to them during the wedding-eve feast. The
Algonquins, having regrouped after the previous
battle (which Omri had witnessed) had mounted
another attack and been repulsed.
  "How did you do it, Little Bear? You lost so
many men last time."
  "Wise chief learn not only from victory.
Defeat also teach," said Little Bear, virtuously
but vaguely.
  "It's strange that when you had the now-guns you
couldn't beat them, but without them you could."
  "Best use Indian weapons as Omri
say." Little Bear's tone was now definitely
evasive. Omri was not inclined to press him, but
Boone, unexpectedly, was.
  "Usin' only bows and arrows, ya beat 'em
hollow, eh, Redskin?" he asked.
  Little Bear inclined his head.
  "Oh, yeah? So ya never even used more'
six-shooter that ya stole off me,
huh?"
  Little Bear's head snapped up. His eyes
narrowed to menacing slits.
  "Little Bear not steal white brother weapon!"
  "Well, ya did, 'cause Ah had more'
eyes open a mite and Ah seen ya do it. One
o' them times ya come to look me over when Ah
wuz laid thur, helpless," he went on, while
Little Bear became more and more uncomfortable.
  "Little Bear!" exclaimed Omri, shocked.
"You didn't!"
  "Not steal!" shouted Little Bear. "Take, but not
steal! Here, I give weapon back!" He
pulled the revolver out from under his cloak and thrust
it into Boone's hand.
  "Real good of ya, seein' you' ain't got no
more use fer it, now it's plumb empty. Where's
all the bullets, Injun brother?"
  Little Bear's earlier discomfiture had
evaporated. Now he drew himself up proudly.
"One bullet, one enemy!" he boasted.
  "Whut? Ya downed six of 'em?" Boone
held up one hand and a thumb. "That's right good
shootin' fer a beginner." He tucked his gun
away in its holster. "Well, guess Ah'll
have to reckon Ah lent it in a good cause. And
you'll have to reckon on goin' back that' this' old
ways next time."
  Little Bear scowled.
  "Hard go back old ways after new ways,"
he muttered.
  Bright Stars, with Tall Bear strapped to her
back, was also wearing a beautiful dress, covered
with elaborate decoration. She rivaled the
bride, until Ruby Lou thought of a way
to dress up even more.
  She persuaded Emma to go and buy a model
wedding set that included a plastic bride.
Emma was not too happy about this.
  "But what are you going to do when I bring her
to life? Just rip the dress off her and leave her
there in her undies?"
  "Nope. Course not! I'm gonna buy it
off her."
  "Buy it? What with?"
  "This!" And she pulled out a minute leather pouch
with a drawstring and chinked it against her palm.
  Emma's eyes popped. "It's not--gold,
is it?"
  "Sure is." She tipped the bag a
little and something winked in her tiny hand. "I reckon
a few gold dollars ought to pay fer a weddin'
dress. Jest hope I like it when I see it
made real!"
  So it was done. Ruby went into the cupboard after
the bride had been brought to life, and emerged
triumphant with the dress--a gorgeous thing of
white silk and a thousand tiny lace ruffles--over
her arm.
  "Don't tell me she was at the altar when we
brought her!" said Emma.
  "Naw! She was jest tryin' on. She told
me she didn't like the darn thing much anyhow, made
her look fat."
  "Cain't all have a figure like yours,
Ruby!" said Boone proudly.
  The preacher was none other than Tickle.
Bringing him was no easy task. There were several
false tries. They first brought to life the parson
from Emma's wedding models, but of course he
wasn't Tickle, he was just a parson, a
pallid youth who took one look out through the
cupboard door, offered up an anguished
prayer, and fainted dead away.
  So in the end they went to the model shop with
Ruby and looked at every plastic figure in the
place till they found a Western saloon scene
with a little man at a piano, and Ruby said,
"That's him!" And it was. So they got the
piano, too.
  Tickle was terrified at first. He insisted the
whole thing was devil's work and refused to believe
it could be happening. But Ruby and Boone took
him aside and persuaded him that it was all part of the
Great Design, and what really would be sinful was
if he left Ruby and Boone unhitched. After
a few pulls from a hip-pocket flask he
happened to have on him, he allowed himself to be
drawn to his piano, and after practicing a few
hymns (which he hadn't played since the
Dead-Eye Gang had burned down his church),
he gradually worked himself into a devout mood and
agreed to play his part.
  "He ain't much of a preacher man," confided
Boone to Patrick, tapping his forehead. "He
went downhill fast after they burned his church--this'
likker, you' know. Ain't everyone's got a haid
fer it like me. But he still got it in him that' do
whut's right."
  "You ought to help rebuild the church,
Boone," prompted Emma.
  "Who, me?" exclaimed Boone, but Ruby
gave him a nudge, and he said, "Uh--yup.
Good idee. Mebbe."
  The wedding was held in Omri's room. It was
rather dark because the hole in the roof was still covered with a
big roofers' canvas. There wasn't any
furniture except the built-in bunk. But
they spread a sheet over the floor and lit a
circle of candles and set everything up the way they
wanted it. There was a tiny altar made of a
piece of decorative stone, with a single daisy
on it, a stained-glass window made of scraps
of colored tissue paper with a candle shining through it,
and of course a feast of food, including a
miniature wedding cake that Emma had found in a
rather posh baker's. It was still as big as a table to the
bride and groom, but Little Bear would help cut
it with his knife. They had lots of crisps
crushed fine, and hundreds-and-thousands in dishes
made of tiny shells from a necklace of
Emma's. There was 7-Up for champagne.
  The cupboard was nearby, a little to one side.
Its door was symbolically ajar and the recovered
key was in the lock. Emma, who had a feeling for
these things, had made a little triumphal arch of
flowers and a Lego step leading up to the bottom
rim. No one mentioned it, but they all knew the
little people were going home through it as soon as the wedding
party ended.
  Patrick, Emma, and Omri had had a
long, fraught discussion about the whole business.
  "This has got to be the end of it." It was
Omri who said it. Patrick knew it too, but
he couldn't come right out with it. It was Emma who
didn't accept it, who put up a fight.
  "It's all right for you two!" she raged. She
was nearly in tears. "You've had it for ages.
Last year ... And you've time-traveled. It's
not fair, it's just not fair!"
  "We've got to, Em. It's too
dangerous for them."
  "We could keep them secret. ... We have."
  "For how long?" asked Patrick quietly.
"Before Tamsin finds out? It's been a pretty
near thing once or twice already. Or someone
else."
  Emma was silent. She was struggling with her
tears. The boys were uncomfortable. They understood
too clearly how she felt, because they
felt it too. More than she did.
  "But I love Ruby!" Emma burst out.
"I can't give her up, never see her again!
It's like--telling me I have to say yes to her
dying!"
  The boys didn't look at each other.
  "I've been thinking about the wind," said Omri
slowly.
  "What do you mean, the wind?"
  "The cyclone. It--it's done an awful lot
of damage. It ripped down millions of
trees. It practically destroyed Kew
Gardens and lots of other places."
  "So what? What's that got to do with anything? It
wasn't our fault."
  "Well, I think it was."
  The other two looked at him.
  "Look. We--we interfered. We felt bad
about the Indians dying, and now we've done this.
Don't you understand? Everything that happened--Boone
being hurt, the cyclone--even Mr. Johnson's
car--it's us. It all happened because we found out a
magic trick and messed around with time."
  "Good things happened too," said Patrick
defensively.
  "Like what?"
  "We helped Little Bear defeat his enemies."
  "Yeah, well, he'd probably have done that
anyway, and now we've shown him modern weapons
and you see what it led to--him borrowing
Boone's revolver because it made killing so much
easier!"
  "That's going to happen anyway," said
Patrick slowly. He, too, had been doing
some reading. "White men coming along, interfering if
you like to call it that, changing the Indians' way of
life. It'd already well begun in Little Bear's
time. He knew all about guns ... We only
gave a little push to what was bound to happen."
  Omri thought about what he'd read about the way
American Indians live now. In reservations,
their hunting grounds taken from them, their songs and their
gods discredited and lost, many of them
alcoholics, beginning only recently to struggle
back to their own old ways and traditions and
beliefs. After centuries of bad times ...
horrible times.
  "I don't want to give that kind of push,"
he said. "It's got to end."
  The other two were silent. Emma
gave a deep sniff. Then she said, "But as
long as we've got the key, we'll always be
tempted."
  Omri reviewed the many, many thoughts he had had
about that. He had envisioned himself burying the key, but
he knew that wouldn't do. Better to throw it away.
Into the Thames, into the sea. He'd tried
to imagine himself doing what he knew to be the right
thing. But every time, something stopped him. In his
imagination he would draw back his hand, the key would
be about to fly from it--to sink, to drown, to be lost
forever. And he would stop. He could never do it.
  The solution he had arrived at was not perfect,
but it was the best he could do. It had been born of the
deep, long, strong fear he had suffered, and the
pain of knowing that they had meddled where they shouldn't and
had done a lot of harm.
  "I'm going to ask my dad to take it from me and
put it in the bank. I'll make a secret
package of it, with the cupboard. He won't
know what it is. He'll tell them to keep it in
a vault and not give it back till I'm
dead."
  Emma and Patrick stared at him,
awestruck.
  "Dead!"
  Omri nodded solemnly.
  "But who will they give it back to then?"
  "My children."
  Emma spoiled the moment by giggling. The idea
of Omri having children--to But then his solemn face
took her laughter away. She said, "And will they
know? Will you tell them--what it is? What it
does?"
  "I'll tell them as a story. I won't
tell them it's true. I'll leave it up to them.
That way it--it won't be quite lost. Only to us.
We've done enough."
  The Reverend Tickle played the Wedding March
as the bride came up the aisle. Matron was
at her side, to give her away. Little Bear and
Fickits were best men. It needed two,
to support Boone. At this last moment he was
seized by an attack of nerves.
  "Ah cain't go through with it! Ah ain't good enough for
her!" he muttered, his face flushed crimson
through his bristles. "'Sides, a man cain't
git hitched without a hat--t'ain't legal!
Ah'm gittin' outa here!"
  And he turned to flee. But Little
Bear and Fickits laid strong hands on him and
held him firmly until his bride reached him.
  Ruby Lou in a wedding gown, with her blond
hair down and a lace veil floating around her like
mist, was very different from Ruby Lou in scarlet
satin. Boone was so smitten at the sight of her
that he was struck dumb and his knees buckled.
Luckily Tickle had anticipated this, and as
he quickly moved from the piano stool to the altar
to begin the service, he discreetly passed his
flask to Fickits, who gave Boone a
restoring swig.
  "More' very last!" Boone vowed, but even
Ruby, tenderly taking his arm, didn't look as
if she quite believed him.
  Just near the end, Bright Stars' baby began
to cry. Matron tutted and said, "Sh!" But
Little Bear and Bright Stars looked at each other
and beamed.
  "Good omen!" cried Little Bear, interrupting the
"I do's." "Baby's voice sign of health,
long life! Many hope! Much children!"
  And he let out a marvelous baying cry of
pleasure that sent a shiver of excitement and
happiness through them all.