The Secret Country

  “The Great Plain,” said Ted, “and the road to Fence’s Country.” He sounded as if he were reciting a poem he liked very much but was not sure he remembered.

  “And the Well of the White Witch and the Sorcerer’s Tree,” said Laura. She felt strange. She did not recognize these things; she did not remember having seen them; it was more like looking at something you had read a lot about, but never seen a picture of. Parts were right and parts were not. She wasn’t sure which disturbed her more.

  She and Ted looked at one another. Ted observed that Laura’s hair was full of leaves from the hedge, and Laura that Ted was very red in the face; they both looked back at the dry plain and the sinister trees and felt that perhaps those things were truly there after all.

  “But the well ought to have brambles around it,” said Ted.

  “It should be white,” said Laura. “Like the witch.”

  “But we all know what it is,” said Patrick.

  “What else have you found?” asked Ted. He shifted his sweaty grip on the hilt of the sword. Laura wondered if it might be too heavy for him too.

  “This is all,” said Ruth. “Remember we all agreed that it was ten leagues to Fence’s Country? It really must be. A whole afternoon walking along that road got us nowhere.”

  “Oh, fine,” said Ted. “Wonderful. And four leagues to High Castle . . . which way?”

  “East from the well,” said Ruth, “but which way is that? Does the sun rise in the east?”

  “Yes,” said Patrick, “or we couldn’t tell stories of how the unicorns came out of it. Let me see—the house is south of the well, so High Castle is that way, to our right. Because we’re facing north. I told you people we shouldn’t make the distances so large.”

  “We didn’t make them,” said Ellen impatiently, “they were already here.”

  “And don’t sound so smug,” said Ruth to Patrick, “you didn’t know this would happen; you’re just picky.”

  “But that’s why I’m picky, because things might happen, and if you’re picky you have a better chance—”

  “Besides,” said Ellen, “it didn’t matter so much. We had horses. What happened to them? Were they spirited away from us in the night by the—”

  “Well, not really we didn’t have them,” said Patrick.

  “We said we had them,” said Ellen, scowling ferociously, “and—”

  “Let’s get a drink,” said Laura, hoping to stop a fight, or at least get away from it, and she lay down in the grass and rolled down the hill. It was a hard and prickly roll, as it had always been at the farm, and the grass smelled hot and brown, as it always had. But she was not used to having a real well at the bottom the hill, and before she realized how close it was it hit her in the back, which hurt. Complaining might make Patrick give her that look again, so she rubbed her back in silence and lay waiting for the others.

  Ellen came running down the hill, flung herself over the stone lid of the well, and shrieked, “I won!”

  Ted and Ruth panted up behind her. “You didn’t put your foot in a gopher hole,” said Ruth.

  “It’s a good thing Laurie didn’t try running down that hill; she’d have broken her neck,” said Ted.

  Patrick came placidly up beside Ruth, carrying both swords. “Get up, Laurie, and help us get the lid off the well. This was your idea; get to work.”

  Patrick laid the swords in the grass. “There are grooves to put your hands under,” he said. “If Ellen would remove herself from the lid, she could take the third groove.”

  With some scraping of both stone and hands they managed to lean the lid against the side of the well nearest the hill. The wooden bucket was in a niche in the inside wall of the well, and the rope tied to its handle was fastened at the other end of an iron ring in the niche. They leaned over the edge of the well, and a damp green air smote their hot faces.

  Ted reached for the bucket and stopped. “Milady Ruth,” he said, and bowed, and stood aside.

  “I’d almost forgotten,” said Laura to Ellen, “only a sorcerer of the Green Caves may draw water from this well.”

  “And remember what happens if anybody else tries it.”

  “Do you suppose it really would?”

  “I don’t want to find out.”

  “Shut up,” said Patrick.

  Ruth took a ring from her finger and dropped it into the well.

  “That’s not a good ring?” whispered Laura.

  “No, no, just the one we always used.”

  “Shut up,” said Patrick.

  “We are travelers in great need,” said Ruth. “I am a maiden of One We Do Not Name. We beg your aid.” She lowered the bucket. Ted had to help her raise it again, which was something they had not thought about at home. They had used a plastic bucket, not a wooden one, and Ruth had not had very far to lift it. But the well did not seem to object.

  “Remember the gift of the ring!” said Ruth, and cupped up some water in her hands and drank.

  “She always picked the bucket up before,” said Laura.

  “Too heavy,” said Ellen. “Real water. She’d dump it all down her front.”

  “Will you two shut up!” said Ted. They glared at him, but they shut up. Here, he was the Prince.

  Ruth stood staring at her dripping hands. A look of surprise stole over her face, and she cupped up a little more water and drank that. “That,” she said, passing the bucket to Patrick, “is very good water.”

  “I should hope so,” said Patrick austerely, but after he drank he looked back at her and said, “Yes, it certainly is.” He held the bucket for Laura while she scooped up water.

  “It’s weird,” said Laura, who was a fussy eater, “but it’s better than faucet water.” She caught with her tongue a drop running down her chin and suddenly scooped up another handful. It was much better than faucet water. She took one more handful, and almost choked on it. As the smell of summer savory always brought back to her all her memories of Thanksgiving, the taste of the water suddenly filled her mind with bits and pieces that seemed right but were not familiar to her.

  “Don’t kill yourself,” said Ted, and took the bucket away from her.

  Ellen was the last to drink. “You guys didn’t leave much,” she said, tipping the bucket. “Hey, there’s something in there.”

  “Drink first!” said Ruth sharply. “Refuse at your peril.”

  “You’ll be sorry if I choke to death,” snapped Ellen, but she drank. Ruth was after all a sorcerer of the Green Caves. “Well,” said Ellen, “no wonder you didn’t leave much.” She scrabbled with her hand in the bottom of the bucket and found what she had seen. It was silver, with a blue stone. It was not Ruth’s ring, but it looked like the kind of ring Ruth had always said Lady Ruth had.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Patrick.

  Ellen held it out to Ruth, who put it on her finger.

  “It was never a real gift, was it?” said Patrick.

  “Yes, it was,” said Ruth. “But I never used this ring. I mean, we used the same ring for everything we did, but we always said that the rings we gave to the well were just ordinary rings. But this is my Ring of Sorcery.”

  “It’s no more that than it is any other if we said—” began Patrick.

  “It is now,” said Ruth. “This is a real silver ring, not the thing from the dime store I put in there; it’s my Ring of Sorcery. It feels like the sword did when we picked it up.”

  “Oh,” said Laura, “does yours do that too?”

  “Here,” said Ted, holding out their sword with its winking blue stones. “These are the same kind of stones as the one in the ring.”

  “That’s reasonable,” said Ruth. “The swords are certainly magic. But will someone kindly explain how I put in a fake ring made of plastic and got back a real one made of silver with a magic stone in it?”

  “It’s a magic well,” said Ted, hopefully.

  “It never did things like that before.”

  “How do you know
?” said Ted. “You put rings in all the time and they never came back, so how do you know?”

  “Listen,” said Patrick, “she has never put a ring in that well before, and—”

  “This is my well,” said Ruth to Ted, “and I know what it’s supposed to do, and it’s not supposed to do this.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Laura, who saw another fight trying to start.

  “Well, we can’t go anywhere,” said Ellen.

  “What about the house?” asked Ted.

  “It’s locked,” said Patrick, “everywhere. And curtains over all the windows. You can’t see a thing.”

  “Ellen!” said Laura. “That must be the house you and I were born in!”

  Ellen and Laura were sisters, in the Secret Country. Ted and Patrick were brothers, and they were cousins to Ellen and Laura. Ruth had been born their sister, but now she was no one’s sister and no one’s child. She was a sorcerer of the Green Caves.

  “Then why won’t it let us in?” said Ellen.

  “Patrick,” said Ruth, “what did you mean, I never put—”

  “I hear something,” said Ellen.

  “I don’t,” said Ted, “and what did you mean, Patrick?”

  “You’re right,” said Patrick to Ellen. “It’s horses.”

  “Where?” said Ted.

  “From the east,” said Ellen.

  Laura laughed. “It’s Benjamin from High Castle out looking for us!”

  “We never did that,” said Ted.

  “Well, we talked about it.”

  “It is Benjamin, I bet,” said Ellen, squinting across the plain. In the Secret Country she had excellent eyesight. In fact she had been told she needed glasses, but she would not wear them. “He has a black horse,” she added. “Isn’t that Ebony?”

  “He has a red cape; Benjamin always wears a red cape,” said Ted, who really did have good eyes, although Prince Edward did not because he read too much. “And a beard, I think. Criminy,” said Ted. He looked at the sword, and Laura saw him shiver. “We’re here,” he said.

  “Who’s on the other horses?” asked Ellen.

  “Nobody,” said Ted.

  “Ellen,” said Laura, who had stopped laughing, “he’s bringing five empty horses—”

  “Horses aren’t empty,” said Ted, snorting. “Empty saddles.”

  “And there are two white,” said Laura, “and two bay and—”

  “One black pony,” said Ellen. She and Laura looked at each other.

  “But we didn’t really have horses,” said Laura.

  Patrick laughed.

  “We do now,” said Ted.

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Ride them,” said Ted.

  “You can talk,” said Laura. “You can ride.”

  “I was afraid of this,” said Patrick.

  “You already knew it,” said Laura.

  “Don’t you remember,” Patrick said to her, stooping for his sword, “that Princess Laura of High Castle can ride better than any of the others even though she’s the youngest? And she’s remarkably light of foot, don’t you remember?”

  “I want to go home,” said Laura.

  “Give me that sword,” said Patrick to Ted. “I don’t think we’re supposed to have swords.”

  “Sure we—”

  “Anyway, we aren’t supposed to be carrying them around naked.”

  “There’s nowhere to hide them.”

  “The well would protect them,” said Ellen.

  “Maybe behind the cover,” said Patrick.

  Laura watched him and Ted slide the swords between the wall of the well and the cover that still leaned against it. Patrick busily brushed the long grasses back up against the cover. Laura marveled at his calm. She herself was fighting an urge to run up the hill and hide in the hedge. She wanted nothing to do with this.

  “He’s getting closer,” said Ellen, so Laura looked at her. She wore the face of pleased expectation that Laura was accustomed to seeing on her face on the morning of her birthday, which fell in August. Wasn’t anybody else afraid at all?

  “He’s seen us,” said Ruth, and waved.

  “Oh, don’t,” said Laura. That seemed to show how Ruth felt.

  “How else can we get to High Castle before suppertime?” said Ted. And that seemed to show how Ted felt.

  “We won’t be able to get back here by then and here’s where we have to be to get home!” wailed Laura, before she could stop herself. All of them were true adventurers, and she was the coward.

  “Be quiet,” said Ruth, “it’s unseemly to argue before him. Besides, if he heard what we were saying he’d think we were crazy.” She was playing. That was Lady Ruth’s voice.

  “Aren’t we?” said Patrick. He wasn’t playing, but he wasn’t scared, either.

  Laura saw Ted look at him sharply, but there was no time to ask what he meant. The man under discussion had drawn up his horse and dismounted so neatly that Laura hoped he had done it by magic, which he could teach her. He was very angry, and strode toward them scolding vigorously. They could not quite tell what he was saying, but the tone of his voice made them gather themselves into a bunch against the well. That everybody else seemed alarmed now did not comfort Laura.

  The man stopped before them and looked them over one by one, grimly. When they talked about it later, Ruth thought that his hands should have been bigger, and Ted that he should not wear brown beneath his red cape, and Patrick that his mouth was wrong somehow, and Ellen that his hair had too much gray in it. Laura was astounded at how big he was. But no one doubted that he was Benjamin, Royal Groom, whose father was a cobbler in Fence’s Country, and under whose care, for some reason they had never decided, the children of High Castle came when they had grown too old to have a nurse. No one doubted, either, that Benjamin’s temper was just as they had imagined it.

  “Not only truant,” said Benjamin, “not only negligent, not only disobedient, late, shoddily attired, and cowering, but treacherous.”

  He addressed this last epithet, with a particularly grim emphasis, to Ted and Ruth, who seemed at a loss, when Laura looked at them, to account for being singled out.

  “We are not,” said Ellen.

  “It’s a ceremony of the Green Caves,” said Ruth, surreptitiously patting Ellen’s shoulder. “We could not choose our garb or our companions; we were sent for.”

  Benjamin was dumbstruck. He was usually what Ellen, when writing down descriptions of the main characters, had been pleased to call “of a ruddy complexion,” but he looked quite white when he had heard what Ruth had to say. He stood perfectly still and stared at her for so long that she could think of what to say next.

  “It was a hasty summons,” she told him happily, “in the dead of night. I was reading in my chamber, and a white bird fluttered through the window and flew three times around my candle and made great shadows on the wall.” Laura began to feel a little better. “And it spoke with a voice like the Green Witch’s, and it said to me—”

  “Ruth,” said Patrick, “don’t.”

  “ ‘There is great peril from across the sea,’ ” said Ted with alacrity, “‘and by the oaths ye swore when Shan the first wizard delivered you from—’ ”

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” shouted Benjamin. He was once more of a ruddy complexion. Laura’s stomach clenched itself tight. Ruth looked appalled.

  “Why are thy tongues not black in thy conniving heads!”

  “I knew it!” said Patrick, not appalled at all, but extremely angry at Ruth.

  “And where,” Benjamin demanded of him, “were thy wits that thou still dangled after, if thou knewest so much?”

  Patrick had nothing to say. Laura did not think this as funny as she might have expected.

  Benjamin flung his hands out in a gesture that rejected all of them. “I’ve no words for you,” he said. “I must take you all home and you shall go to bed without supper; when I myself have supped and can, perhaps, bear the sight of yo
u again, we shall see what’s to be said and done.” He turned away from them, and Ted and Ruth followed him to the horses, which had been munching grass all the while.

  “What’d we do?” whispered Laura to Ellen.

  “Ted and Ruth,” said Patrick quietly on her other side, “are Romeo and Juliet. We are all the old nurse.”

  “I went to bed early when they read us that one,” said Ellen. “I hate love stories. When did we act this out, anyway?”

  “You and Laurie had the mumps,” said Patrick. “Summer before last. The King had Ruth betrothed to Lord Randolph when she was just a baby, but Ted and Ruth want to marry each other.”

  “How boring,” said Ellen.

  “Benjamin doesn’t think so,” said Patrick. “He thinks we are all scheming, and he thinks Ruth lied to him about the ceremony of the Green Caves so she could—”

  “Come your ways!” called Benjamin, and they hurried over to the horses.

  Laura stood and watched Ellen and Patrick struggle onto their horses. Their difficulties did nothing for Benjamin’s temper. He scowled at them and then looked down at Laura.

  “Well?” he said.

  Laura, who did not like the way the horses smelled, the way they moved sideways as if they wanted to go somewhere very fast, or the way they eyed her, looked straight up at Benjamin and was speechless.

  “I’ll have none of your big blue eyes,” said Benjamin sharply, and he picked her up as if she were a much smaller child than she was, and put her on the black pony.

  After she had fallen off it for the fifth time, he hauled her up by an elbow with considerably less care than he had exhibited the first four times, and boosted her up in front of Ruth, who was almost unseated herself by this sudden maneuver. Benjamin looked at her for a moment as if this were more than he was prepared to manage, then turned and busied himself with Laura’s pony.

  “You okay?” whispered Ruth.

  “Sure,” said Laura; it was, after all, no worse than mistiming a jump from a swing in the school playground. Of course, she had never misjumped four times in a row. But the first grateful moment of stillness, when you were lying on a piece of ground that wasn’t going anywhere, was almost worth the pain of the bruises.

  Laura settled herself as securely as she could in Ruth’s trembling grip and took her first good look at where they were heading. She was too outraged to speak, which was no doubt just as well. High Castle—if it was High Castle—looked like a piece of peppermint candy, concentric rings of pink and white. It was supposed to be a square white—or maybe gray—fortress with towers at its corners and a moat around it. Laura drew in a breath to protest to Ruth, and let it out again suddenly as the horses began to move. Benjamin set a much slower pace than he had tried earlier, but it was still far from comfortable.