The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard)

  “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, plasstic. 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 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’s 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 acce
nt.

  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 erstwhile 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.”