The Secret Country (12 page)

The kitchen was dark except for a patch of moonlight that made the refrigerator look like a polar bear. Laura did not care to turn the flashlight on it.

“Ted?”

The light went on, and the polar bear became a refrigerator with Ted standing to one side of it. “Was that you making all that noise?” he demanded.

“Where’s the food?”

Ted looked unhappy. “We shouldn’t take it. It isn’t ours. We’re just houseguests.”

“It’s our dinner!”

“Yes, but we got sent to bed without it. And deserved it, you know.”

“Heh,” said Laura. She sat on the floor and put her shoes on.

“Good, you brought the flashlight.”

“Yes,” said Laura, slowly, “but I think we should use a candle.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ted, and Laura shut up. She decided that she should not have laughed at him in High Castle.

They went out the side door, being careful to let it latch behind them. They did not want anyone to burgle the house because they had left the door unlocked.

They had not had much experience with flashlights, since it would have been cheating to use them in the Secret. After a few blocks, Laura began to hate the way uncomfortable sorts of things seemed to scurry out of the path of the light. She made Ted, who had thought himself very kind to let her carry it, carry it himself.

“It’s just shadows,” said her brother impatiently.

“Well, good, it won’t bother you to hold the light, then.”

The house, when they got to it, was thoroughly alarming. It had no porch light and no yard light, and the streetlight closest to it was broken. It leaned over them, crooked and black. The night was still and cloudy, but in the yard a little wind rattled the maple seeds on the sidewalk, as if they were being swept with a broom. Laura stopped dead and wished she had never noticed the house in the first place. Even Ted stared for a moment before he stooped under the hedge. He swore when Laura bumped into him; she had moved forward smartly to show herself that she wasn’t really afraid.

Ted shone the flashlight about under the hedge for a moment, making all the sharp shadows of the leaves jump. Then he dragged the sword and scabbard out onto the sidewalk, and buckled the belt around himself. Laura saw him look up at the house, and then he turned the flashlight off. Laura put her hand on the piece of hilt he had left her, and they scrambled through. The hedge and the tall grass were sopping with dew, and both Ted and Laura acquired a layer of dirt and leaves on the way.

They stood up in the yard, and a great darkness engulfed them. On this side of the hedge, the night was clear and the huge stars steady. But the globes of the working street-lamps, the faint background glow of the city, all the lights of civilization were gone. They were in the deep country on a dark night.

“Let’s get out of this yard,” whispered Ted, and they slithered back through the hedge. A fine mist drifted along the surface of the stream.

“The flashlight will come in handy once we’re in the woods, where she can’t see it from the house,” breathed Ted. “Can you get that far?”

“You can’t use a flashlight here!” hissed Laura. “I told you we should have brought a candle.”

“Why?”

“It’s cheating.”

“Laura,” said Ted, “how can it be cheating if it’s real?”

“But there aren’t any flashlights in the Secret Country.”

“There would be if I brought one.”

Laura began to feel stubborn. “It won’t work.”

“Want to bet?”

“All right, I will. How much?”

“Five dollars.”

He knew that was her whole week’s allowance. She snorted at him.

“Well, you’ll win, won’t you?” said Ted.

“Oh, all right.”

They crept carefully along the bank of the stream, hearing no noise but their own feet, and the small lap of the water. Except for the awful presence of the house behind them, this night was far less frightening than its equivalent in Illinois. Laura had just begun to be able to see properly when they moved under the shadows of the trees. She bumped into Ted, and heard the click as he turned the flashlight on.

There was a great flash of blue light from which the crowding trees seemed to retreat hastily. Laura also retreated, into a bush, and was prickled. Ted swore and dropped the flashlight; it rolled down the bank and splashed into the stream, where it hissed and fizzled in a whole spectrum of sparks, and then went out.

“What was
that?
” said Laura, trying to get herself out of the bush.

Ted knelt and sloshed his hand around in the water, mumbling. “Here it is. No—what?”

Laura peered over his shoulder.

“It’s metal,” said Ted, “all curled and twisted, and something in the middle.” He stood up and knocked Laura over.

“God damn it!” said Laura, in a furious whisper. She was instantly surprised; she never swore at Ted. Perhaps she had done it because, although Laura Carroll was accustomed to being knocked over by larger people, nobody would ever dare do that to the Princess Laura—and they were on the Princess Laura’s side of the hedge.

Ted, to whom this had apparently not occurred, laughed, but he did pick her up and brush sand from her back. “You’d better watch your language.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Ted held the object up in the air, trying to catch enough moonlight to see it.

“It looks like a lantern,” said Laura, wishing she could feel better pleased. “That’s a candle in the middle.”

“It sure isn’t the flashlight. Hell. Mom’ll have a fit if I’ve lost it.”

“You didn’t lose it,” said Laura, who had scraped an elbow when he knocked her down, and was not feeling kind. “It blew up. I told you it wouldn’t work, and I want my money.”

“You’ll just get it wet.”

“I want it now.”

“And you haven’t won the bet until I’m satisfied that the flashlight didn’t just roll downstream, or something.”

“You’re never satisfied,” said Laura, who had heard her mother tell him as much, “and I want my money.”

“Will you give it back if you’re wrong?”

Laura was incensed. “I can challenge you to a duel if you question my honor, Edward Bartholomew Carroll!”

“Yeah? You can’t even throw a rock straight, what makes you think—”

“Ted?” came a voice from across the stream. Laura jumped.

“Patrick?”

“What are you guys trying to do? Shut up and come on.”

“Ted’s not being a gentleman!”

“Of course he isn’t. Hurry up, will you? Ruthie has a flute lesson at two, and she hasn’t practiced.”

“What do you mean, of course?” demanded Ted. “She’s being a brat, she doesn’t deserve—”

“I,” said Patrick, whom they could now see, faintly, against the strange stars of the Secret Country, “am going back to the fire before Ruth and Ellen eat all the marshmallows.”

He trudged off along the bank of the stream in the direction of the bridge, and Ted started to parallel his course on their side, saying, “Come on.”

“I want my money.”

Ted made a strangled sound, pulled something out of his pocket, flung it to the ground, and started away.

“Pick it up and give it to me,” said Laura, astounding herself. She did not like having been right. The transformation of the flashlight had made her feel that she was being laughed at—it had been like a fireworks display, or a stage magician’s trick. She felt mockery in the very air, as someone will who walks into his third-grade classroom wearing the shirt his grandmother’s friend gave him. Feeling all this, she was determined to get what little satisfaction she could out of her brother.

Ted hurled himself around, fists clenched. “What’s the matter with you!”

“I’m a princess, aren’t I?”

“And when I’m king I swear I’ll cut your head off,” said Ted, but he searched the ground for a moment, found the five-dollar bill, and handed it to her. Laura stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts and followed him at a safe distance, trying to giggle. What, after all, was the use of feeling like Princess Laura when, in far too many ways, she could not act like Princess Laura?

Princess Laura might not mind walking in the woods at night, but Princess Laura never fell down. It was dark in the woods, and rustly with small animals, and crossing the wooden bridge was not pleasant. Laura tripped where she had tripped the first time. The whole bridge shook and creaked, Ted tramped stolidly on, and a number of things leaped from the banks of the stream into the water with ominous ploppings. Laura ran to catch up with Ted, and was slapped in the face by all the branches he had pushed out of his way. She fingered the money in her pocket and kept her mouth shut.

It was better when they got out onto the grass where there was nothing in the way, and Laura could let Ted get ahead of her without fear of losing him. And when they had struggled up the hill and looked from its top over the vast dark plain, they saw a fire flickering beside the Well of the White Witch. The well itself cast no light this time.

Laura began by running down the hill and finished the journey sitting, and was picked up by Ruth and given a brief brushing and two marshmallows.

“Those were mine!” said Ellen. Laura sat down next to her, chewing.

“You’ve had twelve already,” said Ruth austerely.

Ted came up in a dignified silence and accepted a stick and two raw marshmallows from Patrick.

“We were going to bring food too,” he said, “but it’s not really ours.”

“That’s right, you’re guests,” said Ruth. “We just told Mother we were having a picnic. And she wouldn’t mind feeding you guys, she’s done it for years.”

“It’s too bad you have to bring all the supplies,” said Ted.

“This summer of all summers you have to be stuck in a house where you can’t do anything,” said Ellen.

“If they weren’t stuck in that house we wouldn’t be having this kind of summer,” Patrick told her. “We’d be playing the Secret just as usual.”

“What makes you say that?” demanded Ted.

“Well, I figure the Secret is so important to us that when we were separated and couldn’t play it, our minds just managed things so we could play it anyway.”

“You think our minds did this?” said Ted.

“Sure, why not?”

“But it’s real,” said Ellen.

“But what is real?” said Patrick, not jesting.

Laura had a swift intimation that the Princess Laura, in response to that question, would, faster than thought, have leaned over Ellen and hit him solidly in the stomach, saying, “That.” She did not do it.

“Do you mean we’re magic ourselves?” asked Ted.

“No, no, no. There’s no such thing as magic. This is what’s called mass hallucination. That means lots of people—us—see things that aren’t there.”

“How do they do that?” asked Laura, so skeptical that she challenged Patrick.

“Drugs,” said Ted.

“What!”

“It doesn’t have to be drugs,” said Patrick. “It can be nervous tension.”

“I thought that gave you headaches,” said Laura.

“Patrick,” said Ruth, “you’re crazy.”

“I am not. We were nervous because we couldn’t play the Secret, you know we were.”

“I get nervous about my flute lessons too,” said Ruth, “but I don’t look out the front window and see Mrs. Jordan get hit by a truck, do I? I don’t see the dentist’s office burning down before I go in for them to put a filling in, do I? I don’t—”

“Be quiet. That’s not nervous enough.”

“I’m a lot more nervous about going to the dentist than I am about not having the Secret!”

“It’s not just nervous, it’s upset, or disappointed, or—or—unsettled. Like Macbeth, Ruthie, okay?”

“Oh.”

“Just a minute,” said Ted. “Who’s imagining who, then?”

“What?” said Patrick as Ruth began laughing and Ellen and Laura looked at each other and made puzzled faces.

“Who,” said Ted, “is imagining who? Is this your hallucination, so we’re not really here, or is it ours, so you’re not?”

Patrick was silent, Laura was sorry. Usually she would have liked Patrick to be wrong, but at the moment she preferred Ted to be wrong.

“Maybe it’s telepathy, then,” said Patrick at last.

“Besides,” said Ted, “you don’t go places when you have a hallucination. You stagger around like Macbeth and scare everybody half to death because you see things they don’t. We weren’t home last night, where were we if we weren’t here?”

“Listen,” said Laura, who had been thinking, “if it isn’t real, shouldn’t we still be able to change things?”

“We tried that,” said Ruth.

“We did not,” said Ellen. “We wanted to and Patrick told us it wouldn’t work.”

Patrick did not allow them so much as a triumphant pause. “I
said
it wouldn’t work,” he said, “but I thought it was too dangerous.”

“Why?” said Ruth.

“Because it wouldn’t come out exactly the way any of us expected it to, and then anything could have happened.”

“You mean the way nothing else has been exactly the way we expected it to be?” said Ted. “The well, and Benjamin, and—”

“Exactly,” said Patrick.

Laura snitched three marshmallows from the bag next to Ellen and ate them without bothering to toast them.

“But how does that fit in with our having a hallucination?” asked Ruth.

“Well . . . I’m not sure,” said Patrick, causing both of his sisters and Laura to stare at him, astonished. Patrick never said he wasn’t sure. “I mean, I never read anything about this, but I thought maybe everybody’s hallucinations are interfering with everybody else’s, you know, like radio stations or something. What Ted thinks is making my hallucination look wrong, and what you think is messing up Laura’s, and—I did say maybe it was telepathy too, you know.”

“Patrick,” said Ruth, “you’re crazy.”

“I am not. You explain it.”

“I don’t want to explain it, I want to know what to do about it.”