The Key to the Indian

“How can I manage to carry something so large and heavy? I have a long walk home from the Embankment.”

  “When you get back, you’ll be full-size, and the key will be very small. Do you think you can do it?”

  “I’ll try. How shall I – go back?”

  “The same way you came – through Frederick’s cupboard.”

  “Frederick’s cupboard? What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. It’s all in your future. When do you think the key will be ready?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “We’ll bring you back then.”

  Jessica Charlotte bent down again and grasped the key, holding it just below the bulging plastic top part. Just as she was lifting it, with some difficulty, she stopped and pointed at the glass at her feet.

  “These are photographs,” she said. “Who are they?”

  “People in our family.”

  “Who is that?”

  She was pointing to a black and white picture of a young woman holding a baby in her arms. Beside her was a tall, good-looking man in naval uniform.

  “That’s your Lottie,” said Omri’s father very quietly. “With her husband and Jane. My Jane, Omri’s mother. Jane Charlotte.”

  Omri’s Aunt Jessie stood with the heavy key, its end still resting on the glass, in her hands, staring and staring down at the faded photo. When she had looked her fill, she turned, lifted the key, which was nearly as big as herself, and turned her face to them. The tears in her eyes caught the light in starlike pinpoints.

  “I will never despair again,” she said. “Now please. Send me about my business.”

  6

  Little Bull’s Need

  Neither Omri nor his father slept much that night. In fact, in the middle of it, Omri heard his dad come creaking through the dividing door into his room in his pyjamas. He immediately shot up in bed.

  “Oh – you’re awake, too!”

  “Yes.”

  His father sat down on the edge of Omri’s bed. “D’you think she’s doing it right this minute?” he whispered.

  “Making the key? I expect she’s done it by now.”

  His father shivered a little. “This is so exciting! Listen, I was thinking. If we’re really going back to Little Bull’s time, we’ll need something of his to take us.”

  “Yeah… that’s right.”

  “Have you anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then won’t we have to – to bring him back, just for a few minutes, to give us something of his?”

  Omri was glad of the darkness. It hid the grin he couldn’t suppress at the boyish eagerness in his dad’s voice. It occurred to him that where this business was concerned, he was the grown-up, in a way, because he’d had more experience. His dad acted just the way he had, in the beginning. As if it were all a marvellous game. Omri knew better, but his dad would have to learn for himself.

  “You’re right, Dad.”

  “Could we – could we do it now?” He was obviously dying to work the magic again.

  “Okay!”

  There was no moon and they couldn’t see much by the starlight that come through the small window with its deep thatched eaves. They couldn’t turn a light on for fear Omri’s mum would see it reflected through her window. Omri got his pencil torch out from under his pillow and switched it on, got out of bed and went to the fireplace. He reached up into the sooty darkness and fished the plastic bag down.

  “Great hiding place!” whispered his father.

  Omri took Little Bull’s figure out by the light of the torch. He opened the cupboard. There on the shelf stood the plastic figure of ‘Aunt Jessie’. She was clutching the key. Omri picked it up. He was amazed to see that the whole key, not just the bit at the top, was made of plastic now.

  “Look, Dad! This means it’s definitely gone back. I wasn’t absolutely sure it would, being made of metal – the cupboard’s never worked except with plastic. P’raps the plastic part worked for the whole thing – it couldn’t just half go back.”

  His father took the figure from him. “How strange! It’s joined to her. It’s part of Jessica Charlotte’s figure, you can’t separate them.”

  “Come on – let’s bring Little Bull back!” Omri stood him carefully on the shelf and closed the door.

  “Can – may I turn the key?” asked his dad eagerly.

  “Sure, go ahead, Dad.”

  He turned it. There was a brief, breath-held pause. Then he turned it back, opened the door cautiously, and Omri shone the finger of light directly on to Little Bull. He was standing, arms slightly away from his sides, legs bent, as if he’d just landed from a jump.

  He straightened up, and shielded his eyes against the bright light. “Om-Ri?” came his gruff voice. He said Omri’s name as if it were two words.

  “Yes. Are you okay, Little Bull?”

  “I am O-Kay. You are O-Kay? Why is sun so strong my eyes see it only?”

  “It’s night. We have this special kind of light.”

  “Take from eyes. It makes me like night-mouse.”

  Omri swiftly redirected the pencil downward.

  “Better! You and father come now to my longhouse?”

  “We can’t come yet, Little Bull. We have to make arrangements. We can’t leave just like that.”

  Little Bull became thunderous. “You have small understanding! Trouble swallows the days. All press chiefs for wise words, to conquer fear. What can Little Bull tell them? Our land drinks our blood season by season in English wars, now King George says he has no more need of the Six Nations. English change their faces, break their word, let rebels take our land. Now we fight tribe against tribe instead of together as white enemies grow greater.”

  “The French?”

  “No! When Little Bull was young warrior, he fought the French. Now French lay down guns, go back to France. But now white enemy does not fight and then go back across the sea. Now they stay, move against Indians like wolf-packs, more and more. Much trouble. We must travel together. Now. We must sit in council.”

  “Little Bull,” said Omri’s father, “how will it be, in your place? What will people think when they see us?”

  “They will not see. Do your people here see me, see wife, see Boone? Not see because we are small here. Easy to hide. When you come to me, you small, too.” He looked up at them triumphantly. “O-Kay? Little Bull understands magic right?”

  “Yes,” said Omri. “But Little Bull, listen. When you come here, you – you bring a sort of toy to life. Last time I went, I was part of a picture on a tepee. I couldn’t move or speak or anything. You’ll have to have something ready for us to – to bring to life. We won’t be much use to you if we can’t talk or move.”

  Little Bull looked thoughtful. “Toy,” he said slowly. “What is ‘toy’?”

  “Something kids play with.”

  “‘Kids’?”

  “Children.”

  “Ah! We have toys. Small Indians and animals made from corn, animal skins, parts of tree. Wife makes good, makes for son and others. I will ask her, make toy like you. You come, bring alive.”

  “We need something of yours, to help us come to you,” Omri said. “Can you give us something? Anything.”

  Little Bull, after a hesitation, slowly took off his belt. “Wampum,” he said. “Worth much. You take care, give back.” He laid it across Omri’s outstretched hand. Omri shone the pencil torch on it. It was white with tiny purple marks. Omri knew about wampum – what he was looking at was shells strung together. But wampum was more valuable to the Indians than mere money.

  “I’ll take great care of it, Little Bull, don’t worry!”

  “Now send me back. Twin Stars will make toys. You come soon. Little Bull will wait. Wait hard.” He put out his hand and Omri touched it with his finger. “Brother. My heart has trust, you will come to our help,” he said gruffly.

  When he’d gone, Omri and his father examined the belt under a magnifying glass. Omri explained about wampum, how it was t
he Indians’ money, and how the patterns also recorded their history and events like treaties, in a symbolic language. “And look! See those few purple shells among the white, made into a pattern? Those are the most valuable ones! I bet only Little Bull has a belt with those in, because he’s a chief.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” said his father. He found a scrap of paper and wrapped the belt in it carefully, putting it away in his pyjama pocket. After a moment of stillness, he suddenly said in strange voice, “Omri.”

  “What?”

  “Did you – did you exactly realise we were going to be small when we got there?”

  “Of course, Dad! Didn’t you?”

  “No. And I didn’t realise I was going to inhabit a corn dolly, either.” Omri gave a snort of laughter, but his father wasn’t laughing. After a moment Omri felt his hand grasped in the darkness.

  “You’re not scared, are you, Dad?”

  “Bloody scared,” his father replied. “Suddenly.”

  Things got tricky next day.

  First of all, of course, there was school, and no getting out of it, and Omri’s dad had things to do.

  A man arrived early to pump out their septic tank. They had one because the cottage wasn’t on mains drainage. It was a large tank buried in the garden, with a flowerbed on top of it, into which all the wastewater from the house flowed. His dad had explained to them solemnly that there were little bugs – bacteria – living in there that devoured any ‘nasty solids’, reducing them to sludge, while liquids soaked away into the surrounding earth. The boys all thought this was hillarious, in a disgusting sort of way.

  Anyway, the sludge had to be pumped out every so often, and today the man came to do it, with a vast tanker lorry that stood in the lane while something like a giant hosepipe was poked through the hedge, across the lawn and down into the tank through a manhole. The tanker was pumping away with a loud roaring noise while their father and mother stood watching, when Gillon and Omri set off for school on their bikes.

  Omri felt a renewed sense of guilt for making Gillon feel left out the day before, so he decided to chat as they rode along. It took an effort, because he would rather have stayed silent, dreaming and planning and trying to imagine ahead.

  “Did you do anything about the camping trip?” he asked.

  “Sure,” shouted back Gillon, who was slightly ahead, flying along between the high Dorset hedges. “I got the mag after school yesterday and I’ve been making a list of…” His voice faded as he sailed round a corner, in the middle of the lane.

  The next second there was the screech of brakes and that unmistakable metallic clashing sound of a bicycle coming to grief.

  Omri automatically swerved in tighter to the edge of the narrow lane, partly lost control and bumped up on to the grass verge just as a red Post Office van appeared, almost up on the opposite verge as if it had just narrowly missed someone coming to meet it. Which it had.

  The van halted, nearly standing on its bonnet, and the postman jumped out and ran back round the bend. Omri meanwhile had fallen off his own bike straight into the ditch that ran alongside the hedge.

  He lay stunned for a second, feeling ditchwater soaking his side. His leg had hit something sharp. Then he heaved himself out the only way he could, by clutching a handful of stinging nettles in preference to a handful of hawthorne. He was covered with mud and scratches but he didn’t notice. He stumbled along the rough verge round the bend, terrified of what he might see.

  What he saw was the postman, hauling Gillon, likewise muddy and scratched, none too gently out of the same ditch ten metres further along. The bike was lying at a strange angle with its front wheel in the air.

  Seeing he was all right, the postman began giving him what-for in his strong Dorset accent.

  “Ye girt young fooil, what ye be thinkin’ yer doin’? Near made me ticker conk out, sno! Lucky me brakes be sharp, ye’d have bin a gonner! All right, are ye? Nothin’ broke?” He looked as if he might start feeling Gillon’s arms and legs. He was fairly dithering with shock.

  Gillon looked shaken, too.

  Omri struggled up to him on wobbly legs. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Sorry,” he said to the postman.

  “Girt young fooil!” he said again, and took himself off, muttering.

  Omri and Gillon looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing.

  “You should see yourself!”

  “What d’you think you look like?”

  “Someone who just fell into a ditch?”

  They collapsed on the grass, helpless.

  After a while Gillon sat up. “You realise we’re late.”

  “We can’t go to school like this anyway. We’d better go home and get cleaned up.”

  “Mum’ll have kittens.”

  They rose slowly and went to their bikes. When straightened out, these proved to be more resilient than their owners. They rode back to the cottage, unfortunately meeting the postal van coming back the other way. The postman scowled out of the window at them, put on speed and, accidentally or otherwise, sent a shower from a convenient puddle to add a little something to their appearance.

  Their mother was waiting at the gate. The postman must have told her what had happened. She grabbed Gillon.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “There are occasions,” she said between her teeth, “when I could wish the days of serious clips round the ear were not past. You have been told ten thousand times to keep in to the side. No, not a word. Get indoors and clean yourself up. Don’t imagine for one moment you’re getting off school.”

  “Mum, if we go in now we’ll get detention!”

  “Just see if I care. And why aren’t you wearing your helmet?”

  Gillon fled.

  She turned her attention on to Omri. “What happened to you? Did you jump into the ditch to show solidarity?”

  Omri was beginning to feel the stings on his hand, and various other aches and pains apart from the scratches, rather painfully.

  “I think I’ve hurt my leg, Mum,” he said pitifully.

  She looked at it. Through the crust of mud it was bleeding in three places. “All right. Come on, I’ll look at it. Put your bike away.”

  “Does that mean I don’t have to go to school?”

  “Maybe after lunch.”

  When Gillon found out that he had to go straight to school and Omri didn’t, he naturally set up a howl of protest. “At least I was knocked off my bike, practically! Omri just fell off! It’s not fair!”

  But their mother was not to be moved. As soon as Gillon was ready, she clapped his helmet on his head and banished him. Meanwhile she had washed and bandaged Omri’s cuts and told him to go and rest in his room while she phoned the school.

  Omri only noticed then that the tanker was gone. It hadn’t passed them so it must have gone farther up the lane to pump the neighbours’ sludge. Omri wondered where his dad had gone when it left. In the same moment that he wondered, the obvious answer came to him.

  He remembered in a flash an occasion in the old house, when he’d left Patrick alone with the cupboard. Despite his bad leg, Omri took the stairs two at a time.

  He knew exactly where his dad was.

  7

  A Bitter Disappointment

  Omri burst into his bedroom. Sure enough, there was his dad. He had his back to him, blocking the cupboard, and he appeared to be concentrating on something in his hand.

  When he heard Omri come in, he turned. His face was pale and a look almost of anguish was on it.

  “Dad! What on earth’s wrong?”

  Without a word, his father held out his hand to Omri, palm up. As Omri walked towards him, he noticed the cupboard door was open. Jessica Charlotte’s figure was standing on the shelf. But it was different. The key was no longer in her arms.

  “Dad! You brought her! Where’s the new key?”

  “Here it is,” said his dad in an odd, flat voice.

>   Omri looked into his hand. It was completely empty.

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s there. Jessie assured me, it’s there. She put it into my hand. She could see it, apparently, but I can’t. It’s too small.”

  Omri stared at him, open-mouthed. “Too small to see?”

  “I don’t think we thought it out properly, Om. When she got back, the key was miniaturised. Right? It would have been very small compared to her, because everything that goes through the cupboard gets small. She said she had a terrible time trying to copy it. When she poured the lead into the tiny mould she’d made she couldn’t be sure it would take such a small impression. She was absolutely bent on doing her best for us, and she worked ‘like a jeweller’, she said, using a magnifying glass and tiny watchmaker’s tweezers and file that she bought specially.

  “But of course, what none of us stopped to realise was that the copy came from her time. So when it came forward to us, when she brought it just now, it got smaller still. Now it’s a miniature of a miniature. Does that make sense?”

  Omri was totally confounded. Of course it made sense. It was obvious. But what a shock – what a disappointment! The key they’d been counting on! Invisible to the naked eye, and completely useless.

  His father was showing him his other hand. In that lay the original car key that they’d sent back, full size, part metal, part plastic.

  “The original key became big again when I brought her, so big it tore free of her pocket and fell on to the floor of the cupboard.” He put it into his pocket.

  Omri sat down sharply at his desk. There was a long silence. “I am so stupid!” he suddenly shouted.

  “Shhh! No, you’re not—”

  “Why didn’t I think? Of course the copy would be small. Smaller than small. She made it. It had to get smaller still when she brought it back through the cupboard.”

  “That’s it, then,” said his dad dully. “That’s it. That was our last hope.”

  Omri looked at Jessica Charlotte’s figure. He picked it up. “Did she say anything else?”

  “She just said she was glad to have met me. She tried to save face, telling me how hard she’d tried, but I think she sort of realised she’d failed us. She said, ‘I fear it won’t be any use. I did my utmost, but my gift can’t overcome the problem of proportion.’ I think I thanked her… I know she thanked me.” After a moment he added, “She sent you her love. She said she wished she’d had a son like you.”