Magic by the Lake (3 page)

"So that's that," said Jane, "and we're left to cope with it."

"When'll it start, do you suppose?" said Katharine.

"Tonight?" faltered Martha. "We just touched the lake a while back, and I was probably wishing all sorts of things."

"I shouldn't think so," said Mark. "I shouldn't think till tomorrow, when it's fresh. It's getting pretty late now."

"Good," said Martha. "I'd rather it didn't start at night."

"Joy cometh in the morning," said Katharine.

"Dinner!" called their mother.

The four children went into the cottage.

Going to bed that night was interesting, for they had never slept on their own sleeping porch before, to say nothing of crickets, and water softly lapping, and the sound that night in the country makes, which really isn't a sound at all but the echo of silence.

"The end of a perfect day," said Mark, from his side of the porch.

"Peace, perfect peace," said Jane, from hers.

On the long front part, by the summerhouse and the silver birches, Martha got out of her bed and into Katharine's.

"What's the matter? Can't you sleep?" said Katharine.

"I keep thinking," said Martha. "I keep thinking about all that magic in the lake. And that part where they've never found bottom. And that big snake thing that came up out of it."

"Trust ye unto the magic's power," called Jane, who had overheard. "It never let us down before."

"In youth it sheltered us," said Katharine. "Chances are it'll protect us now."

At that moment a bloodcurdling laugh rent the air.

"Help! What was that?" said Jane.

"A loon," said Mark, who was a Boy Scout.

"What's a loon?" whispered Martha, trembling.

"A bird," Katharine told her.

"It couldn't be," said Martha. "It's that big snake thing."

"Hush," said Katharine. "Listen to the crickets."

"I don't like them," said Martha. "They could be ghosts twittering."

"They aren't," said Katharine. "Get back in your own bed."

"Hold my hand, then," said Martha.

"Oh, all right," said Katharine.

And Martha got back in her own bed, and Katharine reached out an arm from
hers,
and the sisters joined hands in the space between. And which limp hand fell first from the lifeless clasp of the other and sank into utter drowsiness will never be known. The next thing that
was
known was the sun shining in their eyes and turning the lake all blue and gold.

Breakfast followed as the day the night, and then Mr. Smith had to leave for the city in time to open the bookshop for the afternoon, which is what he had decided to do every day this summer except weekends, when he would be gloriously free, like the others. But first he drove the four children over the rolling pasture to a farm on the red clay road, and they saw milk being milked, and carried the nourishing cans of it back to the car; and today Mr. Smith delivered it and them to the cottage, but after this getting the milk would be the four children's morning task, on foot.

And then Mr. Smith departed, and the children's mother suggested a morning dip.

Farms have charms to soothe the most savage breast, and swimming is just about the highest good; so it was some time before thoughts of magic entered the children's heads. When they touched the lake for the first time, all they wished was that swimming would be as wonderful today as it was yesterday, and it was.

It wasn't till they lay spent on the sand that they began wondering about the magic, and when it would begin, and what would be its alluring form when it did.

"Do you suppose we get to sort of choose at all, or will it take us by surprise?" said Jane.

"Shush," said Katharine, nodding in the direction of their mother, who was sitting all too nearby.

But their mother didn't look up from the book she was reading and didn't appear to have heard a word; so that part of the magic seemed to be working already.

"What would everybody choose if we could?" said Jane.

"Pirates," said Mark at once, touching the edge of lake that rippled shallowly at his feet.

"Mermaids," said Katharine, touching
her
bit of lake-edge at the same moment.

"Neither one," said Martha quickly, but nobody heard her because everybody was talking at once.

"That's done it," Mark said. "Now I suppose we'll get a sort of blend."

"What would the blend of a mermaid and a pirate be?" said Jane.

"A mer-pirate," said Katharine "Long golden hair and black whiskers."

But that wasn't what the four children saw a few minutes later. What they saw, floating toward the beach, was a perfectly ordinary mermaid, such as you might meet any day in any perfectly ordinary sea. She was combing her long golden hair, and the scales of her supple tail glittered through the foam behind her. She saw the four children and beckoned with her golden comb.

"Come, dear children, let us away, down and away below," were her thrilling words.

Martha chose this moment to be difficult, as only she knew how.

"I won't go," she said. "I know all about what she does. Mother read me a story. She lures poor sailors, and they drown. Something about a laurel eye.

Jane propelled her sister forward. "You can't back out now," she said, "now we're in the thick of it."

"It would be changing courses in the middle of the stream," said Katharine.

"Then that's what I'll do," said Martha.

But Jane took hold of one of her arms and Mark took hold of the other, and Katharine pushed from behind, and the mermaid seemed to take hold of all of them, though she had only two hands, and they shot forward into the lake.

"Mother!" called Martha, to the vanishing shore.

"I see you," her mother nodded smilingly. "Keep it up; you're swimming fine."

Martha's answering wail was cut short as the waters closed over her head.

At first she kept her eyes tight shut, but at last fear gave way to curiosity, and she opened them cautiously. To her surprise she could see perfectly well underwater, which had never been true before, but she couldn't see much, because they were going too fast. She got an impression of sandy bottom far below. Things moved squidgily in it, and Martha shut her eyes again firmly.

Katharine was holding her breath. After a while she began to wonder if this were absolutely necessary. At last, when utter bursting seemed likely, she decided to try.

"Can we breathe, do you suppose?" she said, "or will we drown?"

"Glug glug," were the words of Mark. Or at least that's what they sounded like. Katharine decided that breathing was possible but conversation wasn't.

Then, just as the rushing wateriness was beginning to pall on even the most venturesome heart (Jane's), there was a change in the atmosphere. It grew lighter, and brighter, and next thing the four children shot out of it entirely into open air.

"Land ahoy!" said Mark.

"Where are we?" said Martha, relieved to find herself anywhere.

Jane's eyes were shining. "Lagoons!" she said, pointing. "Desert islands. Coral reefs. Coves."

The others looked where she pointed. There was only one island and one coral reef and one lagoon (or cove), but that was exciting enough. They were floating rapidly past the reef and into the lagoon and toward the island, the mermaid (who seemed to be a mermaid of few words) still towing them.

Then they touched land, and barnacles scraped Katharine's knee.

"I didn't know the lake had all this in it," she said. "Which way is home?"

"Don't be silly," said Mark. "We left that old lake behind ages ago. We're halfway around the world by now. Feel the climate. It's tropical."

Jane was already scrambling up the rocks. Mark hoisted Martha up to her, and he and Katharine followed. The mermaid draped herself fishily against the base of the rock.

"So far, so good," she said. "Now sing."

"Sing what?" said Katharine.

"What for?" said Mark.

"To lure a ship in to shore, of course, stupid," said the mermaid.

"What did I tell you?" said Martha.

But now the mermaid was raising her voice in song, and Jane and Katharine, feeling that in a magic adventure it is best to do whatever seems to be expected of you, joined in. After a bit, Martha added her piping tones to theirs.

Who knows what song the sirens sang? I do not, and neither did Sir Thomas Browne, who once wrote some well-known lines on the subject. Few will ever know what song Jane and Katharine and Martha sang upon that coral coast, either.

But they listened to the mermaid's tune and did their best to follow it, and as to what words they sang, they let inspiration take its course. "Come unto these yellow sands," they sang. "Come all ye young fellows who follow the sea. Come, come, I love you only; my heart is true."

Katharine even tried to put in the alto, the way her Aunt Grace always did in church. As for Jane, she got carried away completely, and soon was nodding and becking and smiling wreathed smiles, and waving her freckled arms with alluring grace, and combing her longish ungolden hair with the mermaid's extra comb, which she borrowed for the purpose.

Mark, who had been holding his ears, turned away and made a gagging sound.

But the song seemed to do the trick, for a sail appeared on the horizon and turned into a ship that veered from its course and came rapidly toward them. And as it came nearer, a delighted gasp was heard from the four children, and they would have shivered happily in their shoes, except that they didn't have any on, being still dressed for swimming.

For the ship was dark and looming, and its sails were black and sinister. A skull and crossbones was its suitable flag. And among the toiling figures on the deck walked a tall man in high boots and the kind of hat that made it all too plain what his dreadful trade was, and from the way he strutted up and down you could tell even at a distance that he thought it was a glorious thing to be a pirate king.

"Shiver my timbers!" said Jane.

"Shush," said Mark.

The ship was so near now that the four children could hear the pirate's voice plainly as he gave orders to drop anchor and man the longboat. A few seconds later the longboat began to descend.

"This is where I leave you," said the mermaid, in a businesslike way. And without a backward glance she turned tail and sank beneath the waves.

"Wait!" cried Katharine, for there was much she wanted to ask the mermaid about life in undersea circles.

But the mermaid was gone, and the four children were left a prey to feelings of doubt and conspicuousness as the pirate chief and his men drew ever nearer to shore in the longboat.

"Let's hide," said Martha suddenly, and all agreed that the suggestion was excellent.

The island afforded little shelter except palm trees, but the four children were soon stationed behind four of these, all too aware of the fact that their plumper parts were still sticking out plainly to either side of the meager trunks.

The bow of the longboat ground against sand, and the pirate chief leaped nimbly ashore, for all his high, heavy boots. The children could see that he was a handsome devil, with beautifully curling black whiskers.

"Up with the treasure and after me," he said to his men. "Bring spades, picks, and shovels."

Some of the men heaved a great chest up out of the boat. Others followed with the tools of digging. The black-whiskered one strode to a sandy spot just in front of the four palm trees. He pointed with his fine, white, gentlemanly hand that had rings on all the fingers, diamonds and emeralds.

"Dig," he said.

And the men dug long and deep in the sand, while their chief paced up and down, muttering to himself and biting his nails. He did not seem to see the four children, though they were sure that any minute he would.

"This treasure," he muttered, "will rest safely here till I am ready to retire and take my place in the world as a gentleman, or my name's not Chauncey Cutlass!"

One of the digging men had overheard, and whispered to his fellows. They put down their spades. The first man stepped forward, with the others behind him. "What about our part in it?" he said. "We pirated it the same as you."

Chauncey Cutlass looked at him, and smiled a dangerous smile. "I have heard," he said, "of a captain who buried a man alive with his treasure to guard it. Are you so fond of this chest, Simon Sparhatch, that you would care to stay with it? Or are any of you other gallows-fodder anxious to take his place?" And he drew a pistol from his belt.

Simon Sparhatch retreated, a scowl on his ugly face. The men growled in their throats but made no reply.

"Well, all right, then," said Chauncey Cutlass. "Dig."

The men dug again.

Katharine, like many a more classic heroine before her, chose this moment to sneeze.

The pirates jumped. So did the four children.

"Hark!" said Chauncey Cutlass. "What was that?"

There was a pause. Then Mark proved what a hero he could be, if necessary. He stepped out from behind his palm tree.

"It was me," he started to say. But he suppressed the words in time. For Chauncey Cutlass and his men were looking straight at him, and yet they seemed to be looking straight through him at the horizon beyond.

" 'Twas nothing," said Cutlass, after a moment. "Mayhap a sea gull flying over."

"A black-tailed godwit, I'd say," said a learned pirate, "or a booby."

"Or a seal barking," said another.

"Can't they see us?" hissed Jane, from behind her tree.

"I guess not," Mark hissed back. "Kathie wished grown-ups wouldn't notice, and I guess they're grown-ups, the same as any."

"But they're magic," Katharine joined in the whispering. "They ought to notice
everything.
You'd think."

"I guess they
kind
of notice, but not much," whispered Mark.

"How the wind whispers in the trees," said Chauncey Cutlass, just to prove it.

"This is dandy," said Jane. "Now we can plague them and prey on them and bamboozle them to our heart's content, and they'll never know who. What could be sweeter?"