Lavender-Green Magic

  Sandra giggled. “I don’t know, not yet. Usually I wear what Mary wore last year, and she gets a new one. She was a ballet dancer last year. But I got out her costume yesterday and tried it on. It doesn’t fit me at all. So I showed Mom and she said she’ll see—”

  What did Halloween costumes matter now, thought Holly impatiently. If they did have to go to that old party, and it looked as if they would, with Grandma being a part of it, she’d just get together something. Maybe go as a gypsy. That was easy enough: a skirt of one color, and a blouse of another, hoop earrings, and a scarf around her head. But there’d be plenty of time to think about that. What was important was what was going to happen this afternoon.

  Today luck was with them, because Grandma was going off to her sewing circle right after lunch. She made them promise not to go far from the house (the maze was not all that far, Holly assured herself) and to be careful. Grandpa was working in the fix-it shed, and Crock seemed more interested in what he was doing there than in the maze, until Holly reminded him that he had promised to go back with her and Judy.

  By the time Grandma at last drove off with Mrs. Wilson, Holly was fairly ready to dance up and down with impatience, which neither Judy nor Crock seemed to share. When she turned on them as the car went down the lane, they were looking, not at her, but doubtfully at each other. As for Tomkit, he had completely disappeared, as if this new expedition were no affair of his whatsoever.

  “We had better get going,” Holly said.

  “I promised Grandpa—” Crock began; then, encountering her fierce glare, he shrugged. “All right. Let’s go and get it over with.”

  “I can’t understand you two,” Holly burst out. “Before, you wanted to go—why don’t you now?”

  Judy actually shivered, though it was not too cold a day and she had her jacket well buttoned up, a scarf wrapped over her head and around her neck.

  “It isn’t the same,” she said in a flat tone.

  “Why isn’t it?” Holly was growing angry. “We went with you and it was all right. Now it isn’t right just because I had the dream, is that what you’re trying to say?” She would not allow herself to be shaken by the thought that this was indeed her own doing, that she had not played fair last night. Because she was right, they had to warn Tamar of what was going to happen.

  “Don’t you care about Tamar at all?” she continued in a rush of hot words. “We can tell her—”

  “But the bad men never hurt Tamar.” Judy made no move toward following Holly in the direction of the wasteland which was the maze. “She and her house—they were gone—”

  “Yes,” Crock said slowly. “And where did they go? Do you suppose Tamar did know something—something about time? You know, people are beginning to think more about using their minds—like the TV show on E.S.P.”

  “Don’t you see”—Holly seized upon Crock’s speculation, whether she believed it or not—“Tamar must have known, or she and the house wouldn’t be gone! So she was warned. And we’re going to warn her right now—today!”

  “But if it all happened ’way back like that”—Judy still stood her ground—“then how can it be that we warn her now?”

  “ ’Cause we go back in time—we must.” Holly had questioned this herself over and over, and it was the only explanation which made sense. “We go back from now to then. We tell her, and she is already waiting to do whatever she did to save herself and the house when that old Sexton Dimsdale came.”

  “It could be,” Crock conceded. “All right, let’s get going.”

  Holly needed no further urging, she was already speeding away from the barn-house toward that tangled mass of leafless brush. As she approached the maze it looked almost as thick and solid as the walls of the barn. And it looked dead, too, gray-brown, as if there had never been any leaves on those entwined branches. At least not for years and years.

  She had been watching for the tall cat guardians, but so far she had not sighted even a hint that such creatures had ever been fashioned of living growth. Her dismay began to turn to disappointment as she first trotted eagerly and then walked more slowly along the dead wall.

  “There’s no gate,” she heard Judy protest. “I don’t believe there’s any way in now.”

  They were, Holly was uncomfortably aware, past the place where Judy and Tomkit had guided them before. Yet there was something in her which kept saying that there was a way, and that she would find it. She did not try to answer Judy, only went on around a curve where the wall itself drew back a little.

  A moment later all her doubts were lost in triumph. “See there!” She flung out her arm full length, pointing at what was truly a break in the massed growth.

  “Those—those aren’t the cats,” Judy said in a small, uncertain voice.

  Holly surveyed the two guardians on either side of the dark opening. Judy was right, though Holly was not going to admit it openly. The creatures sat up in the same position that the cats had held, but they had no resemblance to Tomkit’s species at all.

  They were more than a head taller even than Crock and they had four legs, the hind ones curled under them for sitting. But their heads were a very strange shape—with long, pointed muzzles—while their ears were very large and sharply pointed also. The gray-brown of the brush from which they were shaped gave them an unpleasant appearance, which was added to by some withered leaves clinging in patches, as if they were scaled.

  “Alligators,” Crock commented, and then added more doubtfully, “I think.”

  Judy stopped short. “I’m not going in there!” She shivered again. “This—this is not the right place at all.”

  “It is!” Holly stated determinedly. “I tell you—I know. Just as you knew.”

  But she herself was bothered by the look of those alligators, if Crock had named them rightly. The cats had been different. They had not seemed to be just waiting for someone to pass close enough so they could reach out and grab—that was silly! They were just some old dead bushes, the closer she went the better she could see that.

  “Come on!” she ordered the twins.

  Judy’s face was very troubled. “I don’t want to. Please, Holly, don’t make me go in there. It’s bad—”

  “It’s no more bad than your gate.” Holly was thoroughly aroused to defend her own actions. “Just a lot of silly old bushes.”

  Crock reached out and took Judy’s hand. His face was sober as he looked not at Holly at all, but at his twin. “We have to—now.”

  Judy sniffed, but she nodded unhappily. And Holly, to prove that she was entirely right, led the way. But she did not run eagerly ahead as Judy had done on that other exploration of the maze. She walked and tried not to feel how dark and closed in it was, and how the bushes seemed to bend down as if to catch and hold fast anyone who dared the very narrow trail between their dank, chill walls.

  “You’re going the wrong way. It is right—always to the right!” Judy said as Holly made her first turn.

  Confident she had not forgotten that one small part of her dreaming, Holly shook her head. “No—it’s left—I remember.”

  “Widdershins.” Crock spoke and his one word echoed in that dark tunnel as if several people, all safely hidden, but still there, had answered him.

  “What does that mean?” Judy asked. She held more tightly to Crock’s hand and he appeared content to have it so.

  “It’s something out of the old times,” he told her. “Widdershins means against the way the clock goes, against how the sun comes up and down. I don’t know why I remembered that right now, but I do. There was something else”—he was frowning a little—”no, I don’t recall that at all.”

  This tunnel did not take on any of the greenness of renewed leaves as they went, though Holly kept expecting it to. She hoped each time she made a fresh choice, and took another left-handed path, that they would see a change coming over the brush. However, though the walls remained starkly dead and leafless, there was a lower growth here also, and that thi
ckened as they went.

  There were toadstools, small at first, growing larger and more evil-looking all the time. Some were a dirty gray, and others were scarlet or spotted. There was a bright yellow one more like a thick finger. When Holly’s boot brushed one of these, it popped open and there was a very bad smell. Other things grew, too, such as Holly had never seen—queer grayish fat-leaved things which had long stems rising from their center. These stems supported cuplike heads, which swayed in the children’s direction as they passed, as if the plants could sense them.

  The stone pavement underfoot was slimed, and small nasty-looking fungi grew in the cracks between. To step on one of these did not bring a good smell, but instead a bad one. The children might as well have been in a pit filled with garbage.

  More and more Holly wanted to give up, go back. But she would never admit that to Crock and Judy. Something in her would not allow her to say that she was wrong, that they must stop right here. Even when she tried, it was as if her tongue could not shape those words.

  It did not grow warmer as they went, either. On the contrary, it was chill and damp, and they huddled deeper into their coats instead of taking them off as they had on their first trip through the maze. Holly stopped as something moved ahead. It was as gray as the strange flowers (if flowers these were) and it moved without a sound. She gave a little catch of breath. Surely—that had been a snake! Then it was gone, and she could not be certain.

  She tried to turn around, no longer ashamed of admitting that she was in the wrong, that they must get out of here as quickly as they could. Then, to her horror, Holly found out that she could not do as she wished, as if something outside herself were pulling her on and on.

  They came to another forking, a wider one. The pavement was sunken here and a muddy pool of water filled the hollow. Looming above it was another of the brush creatures. This was different from the guardians of the gate, but its face was just as frightening, a face which seemed very clear even with no leaves to round out cheeks and chin.

  “I want to go home!” Judy cried out suddenly. “Crock, let’s go home!”

  Holly looked back over her shoulder. Though Judy was plainly upset, she had neither paused nor turned back. It was if that thing which was pulling Holly ahead held her sister also.

  Holly heard Crock say unhappily, “I don’t think we can, Judy.”

  “Why?” His twin’s question was shrill. “Don’t pull me like that, Crock! Let me go. I’m going back, right now.”

  “I’m not pulling!” Crock sounded alarmed. “Judy—I can’t let go—honest I can’t. You try—”

  She must have done so without result. Her voice was even louder then as she cried out, “Please—I can’t let go of Crock’s hand! Holly, you’ve got to get us out—you have to! I don’t believe this is the way to Tamar. She has good things, these are all bad ones. Holly—get us out!”

  Holly tried to stop, to turn. But she could not. “I—I can’t, Judy—something won’t let me. It’s making me go on—”

  “Mom—I want my mom!” Judy cried, and then her plea became a helpless sobbing.

  Holly had been afraid other times in her life, but she knew she had never been as afraid as she was now. This was a bad dream. Oh, please let it be just a bad dream! If she could only wake up—

  There was another fork in the path with one of those horrible animals looking right at her. She saw big shiny places in the brush where its eyes should be. These were like mirrors. As Holly stared up into them against her will, she could see reflected there the three of them—Judy crying, Crock looking very set of face, and herself—but small, very small. As if that big brush terror were so large it might reach out its upraised paw (for this one had one paw with long claws, too, represented by thick thorns, big as Holly’s own finger) and smash them right down into the mud and slime under their boots.

  Something very queer happened as Holly continued to look straight into those dull mirror eyes. First, she was not afraid anymore. What was there to be afraid of? Bushes and toadstools, one could see those anywhere at any time. And why was Judy crying? That was stupid, but then Judy often was stupid. Judy was a crybaby and she was jealous. She wanted to be the only one who could come into the maze and find Tamar. Now that Holly was proving how wrong she was, she pretended to be afraid, and wanted to go back. Sure, Crock was taking sides with her. He would—because they were twins and both of them always took sides against her, Holly.

  Just look at them now in the nearest mirror eye. Why, she was big and clear and they were both small and misty-looking. She was the one who right from the first had had the idea about warning Tamar and making sure the witch was not caught.

  She had been a little stupid herself about one thing. Of course a witch lived in the maze—a witch with the power to wish anything she wanted to happen. Just wait until Holly could have that power, too. And she could. Holly nodded to the big clear reflection in the mirror eye. She, Holly, could do anything—if she wanted to badly enough. Anyone could, if she worked hard enough and did not let anyone else talk her out of it. Like Judy and Crock had tried to talk her out of this.

  No, she was right and they were wrong!

  Without a backward glance at the twins, Holly turned away from the mirror eyes. Oh, they would follow, she smiled—they had to follow. The witch wish would see to that. And would they ever be surprised! Only she would not. She was Holly, and she was going to have some witch wishes of her own. There were lots of things she could think of wishing right now—things that would make Becky Eames and Martha Torrey sure wish they had never talked about her! Now Holly laughed as she thought of several very funny and unpleasant things a witch wish might do.

  “Holly, please—don’t sound like that!” Judy’s voice was faint, as if it came from a long distance away. There was no use paying any attention to her. Judy did not know anything, she was a silly little girl, no bigger really than she had looked in the mirror eyes. A silly little girl of no importance at all. Holly made no answer.

  She was walking faster now. Now there was a change in the walls, they were turning green after all. Why had she thought those toadstools and ghost flowers so horrible? Really, they were not. They had much more character (Holly chose a word she had heard Mrs. Finch use in that fashion) than just flowers one could see anywhere. Those toadstools were so big they must be the largest ones in the whole world.

  The path made one more turn and here there was no brush animal to mark it, rather a tall stone pillar, and on the top of that a skull of some animal with great branching horns. The skull was half-covered with a greenish moss, but Holly had the feeling that it knew her, had guessed she would be coming, and was saying hello in an odd way inside her head, not so she could hear it with her ears.

  Then she was out in the open. There was Tamar’s house—just as she knew it would be. Of course, it was not summer, but you could see it even clearer with all the flowers and vines gone. And there was a steady coil of smoke from the wide chimney. But this time the door did not stand open—it was firmly closed.

  Well, that was all right. Who was going to leave the door wide open on a cold fall day? Holly nodded to herself. You see, if you just thought about anything properly, you had the answer right before you.

  The garden was just where it had been before. But now it was all dead, withered stalks of things standing here and there, blackened clumps of plants on the ground. It smelled dead, too, a nasty smell. But how else could it smell when it was dead? She must remember to think clearly, not keep comparing it in her mind with the other time she had seen it. That had been summer, this was fall. Grandma said things died quickly when they got a touch of freezing frost.

  In the center of the garden was still the pool, and this had dull greenish-looking water. There was a dead bird lying on the rim, another floating in the water. What did that matter—they were only birds. People mattered. Animals and birds, they were only in this world for people to use as they pleased.

  As Holly came along
the walk, heading confidently for the closed door of the house beyond, something she had thought a big lump of frozen mud came to life and writhed away to the pool edge to splash down into the turgid water. A snake? No, she was not quite sure what it had been, and for an instant her step faltered. Then she remembered she was that big confident Holly she had seen in the mirror.

  Nothing would happen to her. She was coming on a witch wish, and she was expected. What did she care for dead birds or a crawling thing in a dead garden?

  In her mind there came a thought which was not hers.

  “Well done, my brave poppet!”

  How could someone “talk” into your mind that way? Still, the big Holly she had become somehow did not find this alarming.

  “Better and better, my poppet!” approved the one she could not see or hear but who was talking to her. “Of use to my shaping, well chosen indeed!”

  She was almost to the door when someone dragged her backward a step or two with a demanding pull at her arm. Hot with anger, Holly looked around.

  Crock had her, and on the other side Judy closed in, both trying to keep her here from the door. What was the matter with them? They were mean, jealous! They did not want her to get the witch wishes. Well, she would—and when she did, just let the two of them look out!

  A toad—she’d wish a toad to follow Judy around. To get into her bed—

  “Splendid, poppet!” agreed the mind-voice. “And for this venturesome lad who would keep thee from thy pleasure?”

  She—she would think of something.

  “Let me go!” Holly cried out in a wild, angry voice. “You can’t keep me from my wishes, you can’t!”

  “But Holly, look!” Judy was crying again, tears running down her round cheeks. “This can’t be Tamar’s house. Look up there on the roof! Tamar would never have those on her house. Look up there.”

  Holly’s gaze reluctantly followed Judy’s pointing finger. On the very edge of the roof above the door a row of small gray-white skulls had been fastened. Some were birds’ skulls, she thought; others must be those of little animals. But what did a lot of old bones matter? They were only the signs of power—