The Secret Country (3 page)

Laura looked at the rug.

“It won’t be so bad,” said Ted, as comfortingly as he could. “It didn’t sound like a really good Secret, you know.” Laura was not comforted. Ted hardly ever tried to comfort her, so he was no good at it; anyway, she could tell that he could not see anything to be comforting about.

She looked at him, trying to decide whether to hit him or to start crying.

“Look,” said Ted desperately. “Do you want to go to the library? We could find some more books you could read.”

“All summer?”

“We’ll think of something for all summer, okay? Right now we need something to do while we’re thinking, that’ll get us out of Dave and Jen’s way.”

“Oh, all right.”

They found Katie and told her what they wanted to do. She gave them a shrewd look. “Mom wanted to know if you wanted to go horseback riding this afternoon.”

Laura shuddered.

“Laurie’s afraid of horses,” said Ted, “and we would really rather read.”

Katie told them where they could find the library, and where in it they could find the sort of books they wanted. She gave them Jennifer’s card, Jennifer having lost Katie’s.

The library was an old building with many steps and many small rooms. Ted and Laura came in by a door nowhere near the checkout desk, to which they eventually had to ask directions. Then they were so excited about the books they had found that they went out the nearest door and walked several blocks, reading first paragraphs aloud to each other. Ted, as was his exasperating habit, became absorbed and began to mumble. Laura, knowing that to read while walking was a good way to fall down, put her books under her arm and surveyed the neighborhood.

“Look at that house!” she said, pulling her brother’s arm. “It’s a secret house!”

It was an enormous gray stone house, bigger than the library, and it had had pieces added onto it here and there, some of brick, some of wood, and some of a different gray stone than the original. It had mullioned windows. It had two towers with round windows and peaked red roofs. Around its yard was an overgrown viny hedge with a brick arch and an iron gate in it. Weeds, some as tall as Laura, and violets and dandelions grew in the yard. There were dark pines, and cedars, two hoary oaks and many maples. The sunlight falling through their leaves was dusty. The flagstone walk leading to the front door was covered with dry brown maple seeds. It was a very secret house. Laura looked at Ted, expecting him to be pleased, but he was alarmed.

“Where are we?” he said. “We didn’t go by here on the way to the library; we’d remember.”

A cardinal whistled somewhere in the trees. Laura felt a shock of delight. Here was a secret house, and there was the most secret of all the secret birds. All members of the Secret, even those in exile, must pay heed to cardinals, she decided.

“It’s the Call!” she yelled at her brother, and dived into the hedge. She caught her foot in a twist of root, came down on her knees, and felt a pain in one of them that made her shriek.

She struggled through the hedge into the tall grass on the other side, and stared at her knee. It was covered with blood. She was too impressed to shriek again.

“Watch out,” she said to the cracking and rustling that was Ted trying to get through the hedge. “I fell on something sharp.”

Ted wormed his way through. “Are you all right?”

“It’s awfully bloody,” said Laura.

“If I tie my handkerchief around it it’ll stick,” said Ted, with the certainty of experience.

“Give it to me,” said Laura. She wiped the blood off. “Ech!” she said. “That’s a cut! Look at that!”

“What did you fall on?”

“It was in the hedge,” said Laura, busy with the handkerchief.

Ted ducked back into the hedge. “I can see something shiny in here,” he said. “At least you won’t get tetanus.” He rustled about in the dead maple leaves. The cardinal sang suddenly overhead.

“What is it, a broken bottle?” asked Laura, obliterating the last clean spot on Ted’s handkerchief.

Ted did not answer her.

“Hey,” said Laura.

Ted backed out of the hedge, holding a small sword. There was no dirt on it. The hilt was black and set with blue stones. Neither Ted nor Laura knew anything about jewels, but they both agreed that the stones did not look like sapphires. Lines they could not quite make out ran down the blade. It caught a stray sunbeam and dazzled their eyes.

“It doesn’t have any blood on it,” said Laura.

“It’s the only thing under there.”

“It’s so little,” said Laura. “Secret size, for a sword.”

“Maybe it belongs to the people who live here. We should ask.”

“Nobody lives here,” said Laura, who was afraid of strangers and wanted the sword. She put her hand out for it.

“They could,” said Ted, pulling it out of her reach and standing up. He started for the door, which opened. A tall woman with a broom came out onto the path.

“How came you here?” she demanded, and her voice made the fine hairs stand up on the backs of their necks. Ted dropped the sword and hauled his sister to her feet, trying to push her through the hedge. Laura, surprising herself, shoved him, and he fell through it himself.

Laura grabbed the sword and scrambled through after him. Instead of ending up on the sidewalk, she fell into cold water, sword and all.

CHAPTER 2

LAURA stood up in the stream. Its gravelly bottom had taken some skin off an elbow, but at least she had not fallen on the sword. She wiped her wet hair out of her face and shook water from the sword. The sun struck the swinging blade, making a flash that brought tears to her eyes.

She put the sword behind her and looked at where she was. The house was still there, but there was no woman at the door. There were no Ted, no street, and no other houses. The stream went down a hill and vanished into a forest, and everywhere else were green fields. It was very hot and bright, but not stuffy. Laura looked at the pattern the oak and maple leaves made against the sharp sky, and felt something poke at the back of her mind—nothing so clear as an apprehension nor so definite as a memory, but something. The leaves looked right. So, in this desolate setting, did the house. She frowned at the house. She felt, somehow, that she ought to be afraid of it.

Laura floundered to the sandy edge of the stream and climbed up onto the grass below the hedge, dripping.

“Ted!” she yelled through the hedge.

No one answered.

Laura screamed at the top of her lungs. “Ted!”

No one answered. Laura drew in her breath to call again, and changed her mind. The hot still air made her feel as if she were shouting into a pillow. If Ted was not in the yard, he was probably not where he could hear her, and who knew what
was
where it could hear her?

Thinking about that made her remember the sword. She did not think being wet could be good for it. She lifted it out of the stream, holding it at arm’s length, and stared up at the house. There were lace curtains at the windows, and she was trying to remember if there had been curtains there before, when she heard voices.

She turned and looked across the stream. Three figures, one tall and two not, were just coming down a long slope. When they got to the bottom, there would be only a narrow flat space before they came to the stream. If they looked up from their conversation they would see her.

Laura was under the hedge in one bound, dragging the sword with her. The thought of the woman with the broom kept her sitting in the middle of the hedge instead of going all the way into the yard. But when it seemed clear from their gestures that the three people were interested in the house, and coming to the house, she panicked and rolled into the yard, still clutching the sword.

“Laurie!” It was Ted’s voice, from the other side of the hedge, back on the sidewalk. A shadow fell over Laura and the prickling voice of the woman said, “Stay!” Laura plunged through the hedge again, caught the sword in a tangle of branches, and wrenched at it. “Stay, in the name—” said the voice. Laura abandoned the sword and flung herself onto the sidewalk, skinning both knees. Ted picked her up and grabbed her by the hand, and they ran.

After three blocks and a corner they stopped.

“You idiot!” said Ted. “Is your leg all right?”

“Yes, listen—”

“It doesn’t look like it. What were you doing in there?”

“I found a secret country!” Excitement poured into her, although while she had been in the other place she had felt only a sort of exploratory wariness.

What she had said took much explanation before Ted so much as understood it, and before he believed it, Laura had to sit down on the curb and say passionately, “As I am a Bearer of the Secret, I am telling you the truth.”

It helped that she was very wet, although it had not rained for three weeks and the yard of the secret house had been as dry and dusty as everywhere else. But they were left with many problems. If she really had found a secret country, they should certainly go back and see if it was their Secret Country or if it belonged to someone else. It had looked, to Laura, immensely Secret but, though right, not familiar. It could have been anybody’s, even, they supposed reluctantly, Jennifer and David’s. But there was the problem of just how to get in, and there was the woman with the broom.

“She didn’t just want to sweep the sidewalk,” said Laura, shivering as much from the voice as from her wet clothes.

“No,” said Ted. “While you were off falling in streams she beat the hedge with the broom and yelled.”

“What did she say?”

“ ‘The devil damn thee black,’ ” said Ted, not without relish, “and things like that. Never mind her. Why did you push me?”

“You wanted to leave the sword there, and I wanted to take it.”

“Dishonest child.”

Laura was furious. “I bet it wasn’t hers at all!”

“Then why was she after us with the broom?”

“Well, it is her yard,” said Laura. She was possessed of a vague feeling that nobody could defend something so vehemently unless he had no right to it, but she could not explain this to Ted. “Anyway, if the sword is hers why does she keep it under the hedge? Why doesn’t she lock it up?”

“Well, where is it now?”

“I dropped it under the hedge,” said Laura.

“You would,” said Ted. Then he opened his eyes so wide that Laura forgot she wanted to hit him. “Exactly when did you have the sword and when didn’t you?”

Laura considered this. “I had it when I went through the hedge the first time and then when I saw people I brought it back into the yard.”

“You had it with you,” said Ted, “and you crawled under the hedge and fell in the stream.”

“Yes,” said Laura, “and you and that lady weren’t there. And—”

“And you crawled back under the hedge with it and then the lady and I were here?”

“Yes,” said Laura. “And I came back this way without it and you and the lady were still here.”

“It’s the sword,” said Ted. “I thought there was something about it. That’s how we get to the other country. You dummy, why did you leave it under the hedge?”

“You wouldn’t have tried to take it at all!”

“Well, I didn’t know what it did!”

“It got stuck,” said Laura, “and she was coming.”

“Laura.”

“What’s the matter with you now?”

“We left the library books back there.”

“And Jen’s card.”

“And you’re wet.”

“And we don’t know where we are.”

They did some sneaking about, which under other circumstances would have been fun, and recovered their books. The house was shuttered and silent. Laura wondered about the curtains behind those shutters. Ted peered and squinted and managed to read the house’s address. Complex letters over the porch said, ONE TRUMPET STREET. They had just begun to think about trying for the sword again when the front door opened, and they took off. They got safely out of sight by becoming even more lost than they had been, and stood looking at one another.

“Why don’t you just run up to that door there,” said Ted to Laura, “and ask how to get to Mercer Street?”

“Why don’t you shut your fat mouth?” said Laura bitterly.

“Come on, it’s good for you. Mom says so.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, then, we’ll just stand here all day.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Laura.

“What’s the matter with you? They don’t bite.”

“Will you shut up!” shouted Laura, and punched him in the stomach. He was not supposed to hit her, but nobody had told her not to hit him.

“You are a coward,” said Ted, doubled over and glaring at her. “How can you deserve a secret country?”

Laura burst into tears.

Ted asked the woman who came to the door of the brick house on the corner how to get to Mercer Street, and she told him, and they went home. Laura squelched and sniffled.

“Aunt Kathy’ll wonder what happened to you,” Ted told her.

“I’m not going to tell her.”

“She has to take care of your knee.”

“You do it.”

“No.”

“I’ll tell her you hit me.”

Ted smuggled her into the downstairs bathroom. They investigated the medicine cabinet, and derived some comfort from the fascinating behavior of hydrogen peroxide.

“Can we go back this afternoon?” said Laura, regarding her foaming knee with satisfaction.

“I think,” said Ted, trying to stick a bandage onto her knee, “that we should give that lady a chance to calm down. She was madder than Aunt Kathy was when you broke the window.”

“Well,” said Laura.

“We’ve got books to read. They’ll think it’s funny if we go back to the library so soon. We can go back tomorrow. Hold still. I think this bandage’ll work.”

“But if she was mad because I took the sword—” began Laura.

“She didn’t say what she was mad at. Hold still.”