“I’ll come as near as I dare,” Luke protested, as soon as they were driving straight up the main road. “But they know me, and David won’t get anywhere if I’m with him. They’re three old women, David, and they’re all blind, except for one eye that they share between them. Does that put any ideas into your head?” he asked, with a smile that showed he was nearly himself again. “You’ll have to force them to tell you what you want to know, you see.”
David smiled too. “Yes. I’ve read a story about that.”
“It’s not exactly a story,” said Luke. “It happened. Twice. You’ll be lucky to get away with it for a third time. But then I think you are lucky, if you can understand the ravens. Most people can’t.”
Astrid stamped on her brakes and said a word that would have turned Uncle Bernard very frail indeed. The traffic lights in front of them were red, but the raven, quite unaware of this, was flapping steadily off into the distance. “Get out and shout or we’ll lose it,” said Astrid.
David opened his door and scrambled out into the rain, but, before he could begin shouting, the raven came wheeling inquiringly back.
“Can’t you jump over?” it called.
“No,” David called upward. “We’ll have to wait.” A number of people crossing the road looked at him as if he were mad.
Rather grudgingly, the raven waited for them in some overhead wires. David could not get it to see the point of traffic lights. Each time they stopped, he was afraid they had lost it.
At the Wednesday Hill lights, Astrid became really puzzled. “Where does it think it’s going?” she said. “If there’s a tree on Wednesday Hill, I’ve yet to see it.”
“Ah, but it won’t be here exactly,” said Luke. “I think it’s going to the nearest way through.”
“If you said that again in Greek, I might understand you,” said Astrid.
The raven flapped steadily up crowded Wednesday Hill and then veered off into a side street which climbed to the very top of the hill. There were no trees there either. At the end of the street was a large shabby red-brick house with green railings in front. The raven perched on these railings. When Astrid drew up and David wound down his window, it said:
“It’s in this house. You have to go downstairs, and it’s the third door on the left. Can you find it now?”
“I think so,” said David, very much dismayed. “Thanks.”
“Good-bye then,” said the bird and flew away over the roof of the house.
David told the others what it had said. “And I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t just walk into the house and ask them for their tree, can I?”
“Don’t look so glum. We’ll think of something,” said Astrid cheerfully, collecting her bag and getting out. “Drat this rain on my hair! We’ll say we’ve come about the drains. Luke’ll think of something, won’t you, Luke?” Luke nodded, quite as cheerfully, and seemed to have no doubt that he would.
But Luke had no need to think of anything. The door was opened by Alan.
“Oh, hallo,” he said, recognizing David and Luke. “We weren’t going to play cricket today because of this rain. Want to come in?”
David, delighted with this piece of luck, led the way indoors into a shabby hall paved with green linoleum. A row of four tubby little girls came out of a room and stared at them.
Alan said, in a resigned way: “Those are my sisters.”
“How do you do?” Astrid said to them. They stared at her.
Then a woman who was plainly Alan’s mother came out of the room behind the little girls, shunting the whole row of them forward like railway trucks. “Oh, good morning,” she said to Astrid. “Have you come to look at the rooms?”
“That’s right,” said Astrid, with great presence of mind, long before David had gathered what Alan’s mother could be talking about. “Would it be a nuisance if I were to look round them now?”
“Not at all,” said Alan’s mother. “They’re upstairs. Would you like to come up and look?”
“I think my nephew would rather talk to your son,” said Astrid.
“Of course,” said Alan’s mother. “Alan, you take him downstairs and show him your things. What about you?” she asked Luke.
“I’ll look at the rooms,” said Luke. With a wink at David, he followed Astrid and Alan’s mother up the broad bare stairs. Alan’s mother was saying things like: “I hope you don’t mind the top of the house,” and “We’re in a bit of a mess just now.”
David, feeling extremely foolish, went with Alan down some steep stairs at the back of the hall and fell over Alan’s cricket bat at the bottom.
“Oh. Sorry,” said Alan. He was feeling shy of David and did not know what to say.
“That’s all right,” said David, quite as awkwardly. It was a lucky fall. As he picked himself up, David noticed a door on the left at the bottom of the stairs which he would certainly have missed otherwise. That made one door. He followed Alan into a long basement room opposite and behind him, to his embarrassment, he heard the row of little girls trooping down the stairs after them.
“Don’t mind them,” said Alan. “What shall we do?”
The end wall of the basement was on David’s left. In the middle of it was a fireplace and, on either side of the fireplace, was a cupboard built into the wall. That meant that the far cupboard was the third door on the left. Since there seemed nothing else to be done, David walked over to it. “Do you mind if I look in here?” he said, feeling an awful fool.
“It’s only a cupboard,” said Alan.
Feeling sillier than ever, David opened it. True enough, it was a cupboard, full of shelves. Halfheartedly David gave the nearest shelf a push. It moved backward under his hand and, with it, the other shelves and the back wall of the cupboard. He pushed again. The whole wall, shelves and all, swung backward like another door, letting in a shaft of clear, steady light, not quite like sunlight.
“I never knew it did that!” Alan said, looking over David’s shoulder. “Shall we go through?”
“Yes,” said David. “I’ve got to go anyway.”
He stepped through the cupboard, and Alan followed him. Neither of them said anything when they were through. They looked round, looked up, and then looked at one another’s awestruck faces.
It was the biggest tree imaginable, or more than that. Its giant roots rose above their heads, far above, like the rafters of a monstrous barn. Beyond them, they could see the huge twisted trunk of the tree, going up and up and up, higher than any mountain David could think of; and beyond that, so high that drifting clouds and distance made it hard to see, if they lifted their heads right back, they could just pick out the great shadowy spread of the leaves and branches—or perhaps guess at them more than see them. A tiny black speck was floating up there. David thought it could be the raven, but it was too far off for him to be sure.
After a moment to take it all in, he went forward under the roots and Alan kept close beside him. Still neither of them said a word. But it occurred to both of them at once to look round to see how they were going to get back to the basement. They saw a vast plain of grass, vanishing into blue distance. But, about twenty yards from them, the open door stood on its own in the middle of nothing, like a piece of stage scenery. They could see the gray light from the basement between the shelves. As they looked, first one of the little girls, then another, came wonderingly through the door, until they were all four standing in a row, staring.
Alan’s face bunched up in annoyance. Then he shrugged. He and David turned and went cautiously round the nearest massive root.
Round the other side was like a rough and ready workshop. Near the root, almost in front of the boys, there was a well, very full of dark water, so that it almost brimmed over. They could see that it was very deep, because they could just pick out dim lines of stonework, going down and down and down. An old woman was rinsing wool at the well, wringing it out with strong, knotty hands. Alan stopped, with a gasp, and then relaxed as he realiz
ed she was blind. Her eyes were wrinkled slits. A second old woman sat on a root-stump behind her with a tall thing David thought might be a spindle. Wondering, they watched her set it going round, pulling, twiddling, waiting until there was sufficient tension, and then take wool from the head of it and feel it out into a growing thread. She was blind, too. The third old woman was moving about behind them. She was taking threads of spun wool and hanging them over a root which stretched across the space like a gnarled beam. Every so often, one thread slipped off the beam, and she caught it, wound it neatly on a wooden bobbin, and stacked it in a recess under another root. Sometimes she pulled at a thread and, if it did not come down at once, she took a pair of scissors from her pocket and cut it. Then she wound it up. Some of the threads were bright colors, but most of them were the yellowish white of undyed wool.
The old woman at the well remarked: “There are strangers near.”
“Well, it was today we were expecting them, wasn’t it?” the spinning-woman answered in a matter of fact way. “Don’t tell them anything.”
“Of course not, dear,” said the washing-woman.
“They’re only children,” the old woman at the beam said. “Six of them.” As she had not turned round to look, David could not think how she knew. But he realized she must be the one with the eye. He felt rather helpless. If she knew so much without looking, he could not see himself ever taking her by surprise.
Alan’s four sisters had come quietly up by now. They stood in a row, staring at the three old women.
“What are you doing?” said one of them at last.
“Leos for medlars to make little girls wonder,” the spinning-woman answered.
“Run away, dears,” said the washing one.
“Are you witches?” asked another sister, with interest.
“What do you think?” said the old woman at the beam, and she put her scissors in her pocket and her hands on her hips and limped forward until she was almost beside David and Alan. “Run away, dears,” she said, looking round at the six of them.
The little girls stared at her. “You’ve only got one eye,” one of them said.
“You’re luckier than me. You’ve got two,” the old woman said.
“Why haven’t the other ladies got eyes?” persisted the little girl.
“Oh bother!” said the spinning-woman. “I wasn’t thinking what I was doing, with their chatter. I’ve a great tangle come in my yarn.”
“Do you want the eye, dear?” asked the one who had it.
“Yes, please, dear,” said the spinning-woman.
David could not help smiling. These four dim little girls had done what he could never have done by himself and convinced the Knowing Ones that the strange children were all harmless. He thought he would never again despise them, or anyone else, for being stupid.
The old woman took the eye out. It came out rather more easily than Astrid’s contact lenses and in much the same way. Alan, who had never seen Astrid take a lens out, looked sick. The little girls were astonished.
“I can’t take my eyes out like that,” said the eldest.
“What are you going to do with it now?” asked the youngest.
“Give it to my sister,” said the old woman. “Where’s your hand, dear?”
“Here,” said the spinning-woman, holding out her strong bent hand.
David moved quicker—and ten times more quietly—than he had ever moved in the slips. He flung himself forward, picked the eye out of the old woman’s fingers, and retreated beyond the well before the spinning-woman realized it had gone.
When she did, she raised a shriek which made David’s ears quiver. “Where’s the eye? Who’s got it? Children, who’s got the eye?”
“He took it,” said one of the little girls, pointing at David. Of course the old women could not see her point. They wrung their hands and stumbled about, searching frantically.
“Keep it warm, whoever you are!” shrieked the spinning-woman.
“It’s our only eye,” whimpered the washing-woman. “Give it to my hand here.” She held her hand out in Alan’s direction. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you put it in my hand again.”
David was appalled at the distress he had caused them. He had half a mind to give the eye straight back. It felt so nasty—rather like a warm, firm oyster, and much bigger than he would have expected. He looked down at it. It looked back, blue and difficult and deep. David jumped. He could have sworn it was Mr. Wedding’s other eye and that it could see him. He put it behind his back.
“I’ve got it,” he called out. “I’ll give it back if—”
Without a pause to think where his voice came from, they all turned round and came straight toward him.
David backed away. “Careful. You’ll fall in the well.”
But they avoided the well easily and hurried toward him with their muscular arms stretched out to take hold of him. David dashed away sideways and round among the little girls. Alan suddenly backed him up by rushing noisily away in the other direction. The Knowing Ones stopped, confused.
“What are you doing?” a little girl asked David.
That brought the old women after him again.
“Stay where you are!” he shouted. “Or I’ll wave the eye about till it’s cold. Then I’ll throw it down the well.”
They stopped just beyond the well, holding one another’s bent hands for support, and he could see he had defeated them.
“What did you want to know?” asked the one who had had the eye.
“How to find the thing that Luke hid,” said David. “But you mustn’t tell me what it is or who hid it.”
“Luke hid many things in his time,” said the spinning-woman. “How do we know which you’re asking about?”
“That’s just putting me off,” said David. “You know. The thing Mr. Wedding wants to find. It belongs to the ginger-haired man who caught Luke on Thursday.”
“That’s a difficult question,” said the washing-woman. “It’s hidden out of time, you know.”
“Luke told me that,” said David. “But I have to find it.”
“Very well,” said the third old woman. “Go to Wallsey again. Cross the bridge and go into the hall on the island. You must ask the one with the dragon about him where to look. He knows who hid it. That’s the truth. Now can I have the eye back, please?”
“Here you are,” said David. “Thanks.” A little nervously, he went up to the three old women and put the eye into the nearest of their three outstretched hands. The one who got it was the one with the scissors. As her crooked fingers closed on it, David retreated smartly in case of trouble.
But all the old woman did was to put the eye in—again rather as Astrid put in a lens—and to stare intently first at David, then at the four little girls, then at Alan, who was coming slowly back from the distant spaces under the root.
“There’s a goat, or something, there, eating a root,” he said.
The old woman turned to David again, and very piercing that eye was, worse than Mr. Wedding’s. “So it’s you,” she said. “You fooled us properly. Well, go in peace, but don’t think the rest of your life’s going to be easy. You’ll see a face tomorrow you won’t forget in a hurry.”
“Thanks,” David said doubtfully. “Come on, Alan. Get your sisters. We’ve got to go.” Quietly and thoughtfully, almost sadly for some reason, he turned and went back to the cupboard door in the middle of the grass, followed by Alan and his string of sisters. The cupboard door closed with a final kind of snap behind the last of them.
In the basement, David said good-bye to Alan and promised to meet him later. He found Astrid and Luke waiting for him when he came up the stairs, and they both seemed very jolly, particularly Astrid.
“I’ve got a surprise for you that Luke thinks you might like,” she said when they were in the car. “Did you get what you want?”
David told them everything except what the old woman said at the end. He felt that was private.
br /> Luke was delighted, but he also seemed very surprised about the man at Wallsey. “He knows!” he said. “I’d no idea—oh, now I begin to see!” He started to laugh.
“Can we go to Wallsey this afternoon?” David asked Astrid.
“No go,” she said. “Tomorrow morning. I have to go out.”
David was rather disappointed, but he felt he could not complain. Luke did not seem worried by the delay, and Astrid had been so kind already that he did not like to grumble.
“Now for it,” said Astrid, as the Wednesday Hill lights turned green. “David, I’ve been thinking—ever since last Sunday really. You started me off when you suddenly rounded on me and asked me how I’d like to be packed off to Mr. Scrum. And I saw your point. Then this morning, when they were all on to Luke, I saw it clearer than ever. I have a bad enough time of it, but you get it even worse, don’t you? How would you like it if we both got out—you and me—and lived somewhere else?”
When somebody throws a totally new idea at you, it is hard to know what to say. David’s first idea was to swing round and look at Luke. It seemed to him that this might be Luke’s way of paying him back for offering to undo the charm.
“Astrid thought of it,” Luke said sweetly, and David knew perfectly well then that Luke had prompted Astrid.
“Those rooms I saw,” said Astrid. “They’re really nice—almost a top-floor flat and cheap as things go nowadays. So I took a chance and told her we’d take them. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping you’d agree, because I can’t see myself managing alone and I don’t want to leave you to your fate with Bernard and Dot. What do you say?”
David did not say anything, although he did not notice he had not spoken. What a marvelous thing, to live in the same house as Alan! And what a pity he had sworn not to despise Alan’s sisters!
His complete silence made Astrid nervous. “I shan’t be offended if you say no,” she said hastily. “You may think it’s Hobson’s choice after all, because you know what I’m like when one of my heads comes on, and I don’t suppose we shall have any money and you’d have to leave that school. But I used to earn quite well as a typist, and I daresay I can do it again.”