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Authors: Andre Norton

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BOOK: Moon Mirror
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In—in! The thought was like a shout in her mind. Jill set down the torch, took the kettle in both hands, dumped its contents down the bank.

Then, fully released from the task the thing had laid upon her, she grabbed for the flash and ran for the house, the empty kettle banging against her legs. Nor did her heart stop its pounding until she was back in bed, Ulysses once more warm and heavy along her leg, purring a little when she reached down to smooth his fur.

Marcy had news in the morning.

“Those Williamses are going to try to blow up the lake, they're afraid something poisonous is out there. Beeny is clear out of his head and all the Williamses went into town to get a dynamite permit.”

“They—they can't do that!” Though Jill did not understand at first her reason for that swift denial.

Marcy was eyeing her. “What do you know about it?”

Jill told her of the night's adventure.

“Let's go see—right now!” was Marcy's answer.

Then Jill discovered curiosity overran the traces of last night's fear.

“Look at that, just look at that!” Marcy stared at the lake. The stretches of open water were well marked this morning. All that activity last night must have brought this about.

“If those invisible things are cutting out all the weeds,” Marcy observed, “then they sure are doing good. It was those old weeds which started a lot of the trouble. Dad says they got in so thick they took out the oxygen and then the fish and things died but the weeds kept right on. Towards the last, some of the men who had big houses on the other side of the lake tried all sorts of things. They even got new kinds of fish they thought would eat the weeds and dumped those in—brought them from Africa and South America and places like that. But it didn't do any good. Most of the fish couldn't live here and just died—and others—I guess there weren't enough of them.”

“Invisible fish?” If there was a rational explanation for last night, Jill was only too eager to have it.

Marcy shook her head. “Never heard of any like those. But they'd better make the most of their time. When the Williamses bomb the lake—”

“Bomb it?”

“Use the dynamite—like bombing.”

“But they can't!” Jill wanted to scream that loud enough so that the Williamses ‘way off in their mucky old house could hear every word. “I'm going to tell Uncle Shaw—right now!”

Marcy trailed behind her to the house. It was going to take almost as much courage to go into Uncle Shaw's forbidden quarters as it did to transport the kettle to the lake. But just as that had to be done, so did this.

She paused outside the kitchen. Aunt Abby was busy there, and if they went in, she would prevent Jill's reaching Uncle Shaw. They had better go around the house to the big window.

To think that was easier than to do so, the bushes were so thick. But Jill persisted with strength she did not know she had until she came to use it. Then she was looking into the long room. There were books, some crowded on shelves, but others in untidy piles on the floor, and a long table with all kinds of things on it.

But in a big chair Uncle Shaw was sitting, just sitting— staring straight at the window. There was no change in his expression, it was as if he did not see Jill.

She leaned forward and rapped on the pane, and his head jerked as if she had awakened him. Then he frowned and motioned her to go away. But Jill did as she would not have dared to do a day earlier, stood her ground, and pointed to the window, made motions to open it.

After a long moment Uncle Shaw got up, moving very slowly as if it were an effort. He came and opened the long window, which had once been a door onto the overgrown patio.

“Go away,” he said flatly.

Jill heard a rustle behind her as if Marcy were obeying. But she stood her ground, though her heart was beating fast again.

“You've got to stop them,” she said in a rush.

“Stop them—stop who—from doing what?” He talked slowly as he had moved.

“Stop them from bombing the lake. They'll kill all the invisibles—”

Now his eyes really saw her, not just looked at something which was annoying him.

“Jill—Marcy—” he said their names. “What are you talking about?”

“The Williamses, they're going to bomb the lake on account of what happened to Beeny,” Jill said as quickly as she could, determined to make him hear this while he seemed to be listening to her. “That'll kill all the invisibles. And they're eating off the weeds—or at least they break them off and pull them out and sink them or something. There's a lot more clear water this morning.”

“Clear water?” He came out, breaking a way through the bush before the window. “Show me—and then tell me just what you are talking about.”

It was when Uncle Shaw stood on the lake bank and they pointed out the clear water that Jill told of Ulysses’ hunting and its results in detail. He stopped her from time to time to make her repeat parts, but she finally came to the end.

“You see—if they bomb the lake—then the invisibles— they'll all be dead!” she ended.

“You say it talked to you—in your mind—” For the third time he returned to that part of her story. She was beginning to be impatient. The important thing was to stop the Williamses, not worry over what happened last night.

“Not talked exactly, it made me feel bad just like it was feeling, just as if I were caught where a breather broke down. It was horrible!”

“Needed water— Yet by your account it had been quite a long time out of it.”

She nodded. “Yes, it needed water awfully bad. It was flopping around in the pan I put down for Ulysses. Then I got the kettle for it, but that wasn't enough either—it needed the lake. When I brought it down—there was all that tearing at the weeds—big patches pulled loose and sunk. But if the Williamses—”

He had been looking over her head at the water. Then he turned abruptly. “Come on!” was the curt order he threw at them and they had to trot fast to keep at his heels.

It was Marcy's house they went to, Marcy's Dad she was told to retell her story to. When she had done, Uncle Shaw looked at Major Scholar.

“What do you think, Price?”

“There were those imports Jacques Brazan bought—”

“Something invisible in water, but something which can live out of it for fairly long stretches of time. Something that can ‘think’ a distress call. That sound like any of Brazan's pets?”

“Come to think of it, no. But what do you have then, Shaw? Nothing of the old native wildlife fits that description either.”

“A wild, very wild guess.” Uncle Shaw rubbed his hands together. “So wild you might well drag me in with Beeny, so I won't even say it yet. What did Brazan put in?”

“Ought to be in the records.” Major Scholar got a notebook
out of his desk. “Here it is—” He ran his finger down a list. “Nothing with any remote resemblance. But remember Arthur Pierce? He went berserk that day and dumped his collection in the lake.”

“He had some strange things in that! No listing though—”

“Dad,” Marcy spoke up. “I remember Dr. Pierce's big aquarium. There was a fish that walked on its fins out of water, it could jump, too. He showed me once when I was little, just after we came here.”

“Mudskipper!” Her father nodded. “Wait—” He went to a big bookcase and started running his finger along under the titles of the books. “Here—now—” He pulled out a book and slapped it open on the desk.

“Mudskipper—but—wait a minute! Listen here, Shaw!” He began to read, skipping a lot. “ ‘Pigmy goby—colorless except for eyes—practically transparent in water'—No, this is only three-eighths of an inch long—”

“It was a lot bigger,” protested Jill. “Too big for the pie pan I had for Ulysses. It flopped all over in that trying to get under the water.”

“Mutant—just maybe,” Uncle Shaw said. “Which would fit in with that idea of mine.” But he did not continue to explain, saying instead:

“Tonight, Price, we're going fishing!”

He was almost a different person, Jill decided. Just as if the Uncle Shaw she had known since she arrived had been asleep and was now fully awake.

“But the Williamses are going to bomb—” she reminded him.

“Not now—at least not yet. This is important enough to pull a few strings, Price. Do you think we can still pull them?”

Major Scholar laughed. “One can always try, Shaw. I'm laying the smart money all on you.”

After dark they gathered at the lake edge. Uncle Shaw and Major Scholar had not said Jill and Marcy could not go too, so they were very much there, and also Aunt Abby and Mrs. Scholar.

But along the beds of vegetation there was no whirling tonight. Had—had she dreamed it, Jill began to wonder apprehensively. And what would Uncle Shaw, Major Scholar, say when no invisibles came?

Then—just as it had shot into her mind last night from the despairing captive in the pan—she knew!

“They won't come,” she said with conviction. “Because they know that you have that—that you want to
catch
them!” She pointed to the net, the big kettle of water they had waiting. “They are afraid to come!”

“How do they know?” Uncle Shaw asked quietly. He did not say he didn't believe her, as she expected him to.

“They—somehow they know when there's danger.”

“All right.” He had been kneeling on the bank, now he stood up. But he stooped again and threw the net behind him, kicked out and sent the water cascading out of the kettle. “We're not going to try to take them.”

“But—” Major Scholar began to protest and then said in another tone, “I see—see what you mean—we reacted in the old way—making the same old mistake.”

They were all standing now and the moon was beginning to silver the lake. Suddenly there was movement along the edge of the beds, the water rippled, churned. The invisibles were back.

Uncle Shaw held out his hands. One of them caught Jill's in a warm grip, with the other he held Aunt Abby's.

“I think, Price, perhaps—just perhaps we have been given another chance. If we can step out of the old ways enough to take it—no more mistakes—”

“Perhaps so, Shaw.”

“You won't let the Williamses—” began Jill.

“No!” That word was as sharp and clear as a shout. It even seemed to echo over the moon-drenched water, where there was that abundant rippling life. “Not now, not ever—I promise you that!” But Jill thought he was not answering her but what was in the water.

“The moon is very bright tonight—” Aunt Abby spoke a little hesitatingly.

“Perhaps it calls to its own. Pierce's creatures may have provided the seed, but remember,” Uncle Shaw said slowly, “there was something else down there—”

“Those moon rocks!” Marcy cried.

“Shaw, surely you don't think—!” Major Scholar sounded incredulous.

“Price, I'm not going to think right now, the time has come to accept. If Wilson's suspicions were the truth and those bits
of rock from the last pickup had some germ of life locked into them—a germ which reacted on this—then think, man, what the rest of the lunar harvest might mean to this world now!”

“And we know just where—”

Uncle Shaw laughed. “Yes, Price. Since they are now dusty and largely forgotten why shouldn't we make a little intelligent use of them right here. Then watch what happens in a world we befouled! It could be our answer is right up there and we were too blind to see it!”

On the lake the moonlight was shivered into a thousand fragments where the invisibles were at work.

THE LONG NIGHT OF WAITING

W
hat—what are we going to do?” Lesley squeezed her hands so tightly together they hurt. She really wanted to run as far and as fast as she could.

Rick was not running. He stood there, still holding Alex's belt, just as he had grabbed his brother to keep him from following Matt. Following him where?

“We won't do anything,” Rick answered slowly.

“But people’ll ask—all kinds of questions. You only have to look at that—” Lesley pointed with her chin to what was now before them.

Alex still struggled for freedom. “Want Matt!” he yelled at the top of his voice. He wriggled around to beat at Rick with his fists.

“Let me go! Let me go—with Matt!”

Rick shook him. “Now listen here, shrimp, Man's gone. You can't get to him now. Use some sense—look there. Do you see Matt? Well, do you?”

Lesley wondered how Rick could be so calm—accepting all of this just as if it happened every day—like going to school, or watching a tel-cast, or the regular, safe things. How could he just stand there and talk to Alex as if he were grown up and Alex was just being pesty as he was sometimes? She watched Rick wonderingly, and tried not to think of what had just happened.

“Matt?” Alex had stopped fighting. His voice sounded as if he were going to start bawling in a minute or two. And when Alex cried—! He would keep on and on, and they would have questions to answer. If they told the real truth—Lesley drew a deep breath and shivered.

No one, no one in the whole world would ever believe them! Not even if they saw what was right out here in this field now. No one would believe—they would say that she, Lesley, and Rick, and Alex were all mixed up in their minds. And they might even be sent away to a hospital or something! No, they could never tell the truth! But Alex, he would blurt out the whole thing if anyone asked a question about Matt. What could they do about Alex?

Her eyes questioned Rick over Alex's head. He was still
holding their young brother, but Alex had turned, was gripping Rick's waist, looking up at him demandingly, waiting, Lesley knew, for Rick to explain as he had successfully most times in Alex's life. And if Rick couldn't explain this time?

Rick hunkered down on the ground, his hands now on Alex's shoulders.

“Listen, shrimp, Matt's gone. Lesley goes, I go to school—”

Alex sniffed. “But the bus comes then, and you get on while I watch—then you come home again—” His small face cleared. “Then Matt—he'll come back? He's gone to school? But this is Saturday! You an’ Lesley don't go on Saturday. How come Matt does? An’ where's the bus? There's nothin’ but that mean old dozer that's chewin’ up things. An’ now all these vines and stuff—and the dozer tipped right over an'—” He screwed around a little in Rick's grip to stare over his brother's hunched shoulder at the disaster area beyond.

“No,” Rick was firm. “Matt's not gone to school. He's gone home—to his own place. You remember back at Christmas time, Alex, when Peter came with Aunt Fran and Uncle Porter? He came for a visit. Matt came with Lizzy for a visit—now he's gone back home—just like Peter did.”

“But Matt said—he said
this
was his home!” countered Alex. “He didn't live in Cleveland like Peter.”

“It was his home once,” Rick continued still in that grown-up way. “Just like Jimmy Rice used to live down the street in the red house. When Jimmy's Dad got moved by his company, Jimmy went clear out to St. Louis to live.”

“But Matt was sure! He said
this
was his home!” Alex
frowned. “He said it over and over, that he had come home again.”

“At first he did,” Rick agreed. “But later, you know that, Matt was not so sure, was he now? You think about that, shrimp.”

Alex was still frowning. At least he was not screaming as Lesley feared he would be. Rick, she was suddenly very proud and a little in awe of Rick. How had he known how to keep Alex from going into one of his tantrums?

“Matt—he did say funny things. An’ he was afraid of cars. Why was he afraid of cars, Rick?”

“Because where he lives they don't have cars.”

Alex's surprise was open. “Then how do they go to the store? An’ to Sunday School, an’ school, an’ every place?”

“They have other ways, Alex. Yes, Matt was afraid of a lot of things, he knew that this was not his home, that he had to go back.”

“But—I want him—he—” Alex began to cry, not with the loud screaming Lesley had feared, but in a way now which made her hurt a little inside as she watched him butt his head against Rick's shoulder, making no effort to smear away the tears as they wet his dirty cheeks.

“Sure you want him,” Rick answered. “But Matt—he was afraid, he was not very happy here, now was he, shrimp?”

“With me, he was. We had a lot of fun, we did!”

“But Matt wouldn't go in the house, remember? Remember what happened when the lights went on?”

“Matt ran an’ hid. An’ Lizzy, she kept telling him an’ telling
him they had to go back. Maybe if Lizzy hadn't all the time told him that—”

Lesley thought about Lizzy. Matt was little—he was not more than Alex's age—not really, in spite of what the stone said. But Lizzy had been older and quicker to understand. It had been Lizzy who had asked most of the questions and then been sick (truly sick to her stomach) when Lesley and Rick answered them. Lizzy had been sure of what had happened then—just like she was sure about the other—that the stone must never be moved, nor that place covered over to trap anybody else. So that nobody would fall through—

Fall through into what? Lesley tried to remember all the bits and pieces Lizzy and Matt had told about where they had been for a hundred and ten years—a
hundred
and
ten
just like the stone said.

She and Rick had found the stone when Alex had run away. They had often had to hunt Alex like that. Ever since he learned to open the Safe-tee gate he would go off about once a week or so. It was about two months after they moved here, before all the new houses had been built and the big apartments at the end of the street. This was all more like real country then. Now it was different, spoiled—just this one open place left and that (unless Lizzy was right in thinking she'd stopped it all) would not be open long. The men had started to clear it off with the bulldozer the day before yesterday. All the ground on that side was raw and cut up, the trees and bushes had been smashed and dug out.

There had been part of an old orchard there, and a big old
lilac bush. Last spring it had been so pretty. Of course, the apples were all little and hard, and had worms in them. But it had been pretty and a swell place to play. Rick and Jim Bowers had a house up in the biggest tree. Their sign said “No girls allowed,” but Lesley had sneaked up once when they were playing Little League ball and had seen it all.

Then there was the stone. That was kind of scary. Yet they had kept going to look at it every once in a while, just to wonder.

Alex had found it first that day he ran away. There were a lot of bushes hiding it and tall grass. Lesley felt her eyes drawn in that direction now. It
was
still there. Though you have to mostly guess about that, only one teeny bit of it showed through all those leaves and things.

And when they had found Alex he had been working with a piece of stick, scratching at the words carved there which were all filled up with moss and dirt. He had been so busy and excited he had not tried to dodge them as he usually did, instead he wanted to know if those were real words, and then demanded that Rick read them to him.

Now Lesley's lips silently shaped what was carved there.

A long night of waiting.

To the Memory of our dear children,

Lizzy and Matthew Mendal,

Who disappeared on this spot

June 23, 1861.

May the Good Lord return them

to their loving parents and this

world in His Own reckoned time.

Erected to mark our years of watching,

June 23, 1900.

It had sounded so queer. At first Lesley had thought it was a grave and had been a little frightened. But Rick had pointed out that the words did not read like those on the stones in the cemetery where they went on Memorial Day with flowers for Grandma and Grandpa Targ. It was different because it never said “dead” but “disappeared.”

Rick had been excited, said it sounded like a mystery. He had begun to ask around, but none of the neighbors knew anything—except this had all once been a farm. Almost all the houses on the street were built on that land. They had the oldest house of all. Dad said it had once been the farm house, only people had changed it and added parts like bathrooms.

Lizzy and Matt—

Rick had gone to the library and asked questions, too. Miss Adams, she got interested when Rick kept on wanting to know what this was like a hundred years ago (though of course he did not mention the stone, that was their own secret, somehow from the first they knew they must keep quiet about that). Miss Adams had shown Rick how they kept the old newspapers on film tapes. And when he did his big project for social studies, he had chosen the farm's
history, which gave him a good chance to use those films to look things up.

That was how he learned all there was to know about Lizzy and Matt. There had been a lot in the old paper about them. Lizzy Mendal, Matthew Mendal, aged eleven and five—Lesley could almost repeat it word for word she had read Rick's copied notes so often. They had been walking across this field, carrying lunch to their father who was ploughing. He had been standing by a fence talking to Doctor Levi Morris who was driving by. They had both looked up to see Lizzy and Matthew coming and had waved to them. Lizzy waved back and then—she and Matthew—they were just gone! Right out of the middle of an open field they were gone!

Mr. Mendal and the Doctor, they had been so surprised they couldn't believe their eyes, but they had hunted and hunted. And the men from other farms had come to hunt too. But no one ever saw the children again.

Only about a year later, Mrs. Mendal (she had kept coming to stand here in the field, always hoping, Lesley guessed, they might come back as they had gone) came running home all excited to say she heard Mart's voice, and he had been calling “Ma! Ma!”.

She got Mr. Mendal to go back with her. And he heard it too, when he listened, but it was very faint. Just like someone a long way off calling “Ma!”. Then it was gone and they never heard it again.

It was all in the papers Rick found, the story of how they hunted for the children and later on about Mrs. Mendal hearing Matt. But nobody ever was able to explain what had happened.

So all that was left was the stone and a big mystery. Rick started hunting around in the library, even after he finished his report, and found a book with other stories about people who disappeared. It was written by a man named Charles Fort. Some of it had been hard reading, but Rick and Lesley had both found the parts which were like what happened to Lizzy and Matt. And in all those other disappearances there had been no answers to what had happened, and nobody came back.

Until Lizzy and Matt. But suppose she and Rick and Alex told people now, would any believe them? And what good would it do, anyway? Unless Lizzy was right and people should know so they would not be caught. Suppose someone built a house right over where the stone stood, and suppose some day a little boy like Alex, or a girl like Lesley, or even a mom or dad, disappeared? She and Rick, maybe they ought to talk and keep on talking until someone believed them, believed them enough to make sure such a house was never going to be built, and this place was made safe.

“Matt—he kept sayin’ he wanted his mom,” Alex's voice cut through her thoughts. “Rick, where was his mom that she lost him that way?”

Rick, for the first time, looked helpless. How could you make Alex understand?

Lesley stood up. She still felt quite shaky and a little sick from the left-over part of her fright. But the worst was past now, she had to be as tough as Rick or he'd say that was just like a girl.

“Alex,” she was able to say that quite naturally, and her voice did not sound too queer, “Matt, maybe he'll find his mom now, he was just looking in the wrong place. She's not here any more. You remember last Christmas when you went with Mom to see Santy Claus at the store and you got lost? You were hunting mom and she was hunting you, and at first you were looking in the wrong places. But you did find each other. Well, Matt's mom will find him all right.”

She thought that Alex wanted to believe her. He had not pushed away from Rick entirely, but he looked as if he was listening carefully to every word she said.

“You're sure?” he asked doubtfully. “Matt—he was scared he'd never find his mom. He said he kept calling an’ calling an’ she never came.”

“She'll come, moms always do.” Lesley tried to make that sound true. “And Lizzy will help. Lizzy,” Lesley hesitated, trying to choose the right words, “Lizzy's very good at getting things done.”

She looked beyond to the evidence of Lizzy's getting things done and her wonder grew. At first, just after it had happened, she had been so shocked and afraid, she had not
really understood what Lizzy had done before she and Matt had gone again. What—what
had
Lizzy
learned during that time when she had been in the other place? And how had she learned it? She had never answered all their questions as if she was not able to tell them what lay on the other side of that door, or whatever it was which was between
here
and
there.

Lizzy's work was hard to believe, even when you saw it right before your eyes.

The bulldozer and the other machines which had been parted there to begin work again Monday morning—Well, the bulldozer was lying over on its side, just as if it were a toy Alex had picked up and thrown as he did sometimes when he got over-tired and cross. And the other machines—they were all pushed over, some even broken! Then there were the growing things. Lizzy had rammed her hands into the pockets of her dress-like apron and brought them out with seeds trickling between her fingers. And she had just thrown those seeds here and there, all over the place.

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