The Secret Country

  They did not really know the way from High Castle to the Well of the White Witch, but the horses did. It seemed a very long ride. Laura knew that four leagues was twelve miles, a distance one could travel in a car in about fifteen minutes. She did not know how fast horses could go.

  She tried to look around her. The land was flat and dark. The moonlight laid a skin of silver over it that revealed nothing except an occasional stream or pond. Laura tried the sky instead. The stars were huge. It was hard to be sure with the jouncing of the horse, but she could not find any of the familiar constellations, and the whole of the heavens looked wrong somehow.

  “Patrick,” she said, “are the stars right?”

  Patrick looked up, bumping her nose with the back of his head. “Heh,” he said. “I don’t think so. Those aren’t the northern constellations. I haven’t really learned the southern ones yet.”

  “Does the Secret Country have any constellations?”

  “I didn’t make any up,” said Patrick.

  Laura spent part of the rest of the trip trying to remember if anyone had, and another part trying not to fall asleep, and suddenly they were there. They slid off the horses and stood around uncertainly. The well glowed a faint pink, but no one seemed to have the strength to remark on this. Patrick pulled the two swords from their hiding place and gave one to Ted. Laura hoped it was the right one.

  “What do we do with the horses?” asked Ellen.

  “They know their way home,” said Ted.

  “How do we tell them that’s what we want them to do?”

  There was a brief argument which involved examples from most of the history of the Secret Country; finally Ruth agreed to say a spell over the horses which would make them go home. She whispered sorcerous words into their ears, and they plodded off in the direction of High Castle.

  “They don’t act very eager,” said Ellen.

  “We didn’t give them any water,” said Ted.

  “They’ll survive,” said Patrick. “When and where do we meet again?”

  “Here,” said Ted, “but how do we know when we’ll be able to get away?”

  “Well, why don’t we try to be here twice a day, at noon and midnight?” said Ruth. “If nobody’s here, wait half an hour and then go home.”

  “All right,” said Ted “and the first thing we do is have a conference.”

  “Good-bye,” said everyone.

  Ruth and Patrick and Ellen went toward the woods where their bottle trees must wait. Laura wondered how a bottle tree liked Pennsylvania weather. Feeling grateful that they did not have to go through the woods in the dark, she followed Ted up the hill to their stream.

  “Why don’t you put some water on your eye?” she suggested as they stepped into the stream. “It’s cold enough,” she added.

  “Nothing but an ice bag will do any good,” said Ted. “You really hit me, you little beast.”

  “Well,” said Laura, “I thought you were a big beast.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “What did yours?”

  “Never mind,” said Ted.

  They climbed the other bank of the stream and Ted held out the sword to Laura. They held on to it together and got themselves through the hedge. After some discussion involving whether magic swords rusted, whether anyone would take this magic sword away, and how they could hide it if they took it to the Barretts’, Ted left the sword, belt and all, under the hedge. They walked home slowly. They were so late that there was no use in hurrying.

  “What are we going to tell them?” asked Ted.

  Laura’s empty stomach felt full of snowballs. “Oh.”

  “I don’t suppose we can lie,” said Ted.

  “Who could think up a good enough story anyway?”

  “I could,” said Ted, stung.

  “You don’t know how to make up that kind of story.”

  “We’re late and wet,” said Ted. “And beat-up,” he added. “We could say we got lost and were knocked around by some high school kids and had to hitchhike home.” He considered this. “They took us to their clubhouse in the woods and we had to struggle through fields and streams before we found a road.”

  “Wouldn’t the people who gave us a ride come in with us and talk to Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jim?”

  “Well, maybe,” said Ted, discouraged. “They might call the police too, I guess.”

  “I’m not lying to any policeman!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  There was a terrible scene when they got home. Their aunt, even without tales of high school bullies, had been about to call the police, their three older cousins were combing the neighborhood for the third time, and their uncle was driving around town searching theaters and roller-skating rinks and swimming pools.

  All of them descended upon Ted and Laura with the fury of relief, and demanded explanations. Ted told his aunt that he and Laura could not tell her where they had been, and she would just have to take his word for it that it had not been perfidious mischief, and they could not help being late and battered. This line of argument had been known to work with his mother. It did not work with Aunt Kathy. Having been cleaned, dried, and bandaged where necessary, they were sent to bed without supper a second time, which made them even hungrier. They were also grounded for two days. Neither of them knew what that meant. Laura asked Jennifer, who had followed her upstairs to the room they shared and hung around, looking intrigued, while Laura changed into her nightgown.

  “It means you have to stay in the house.”

  “That’s barbaric!”

  “Mom says we’re barbaric.”

  “Heh,” said Laura.

  “Where were you?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Mom sure was mad,” said Jennifer.

  Laura shrugged.

  “If you do it again she’ll probably write your parents.”

  “Oh.”

  Jennifer glared at her. “We could try some different games.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Laura, relenting. “We had something we had to do, that’s all. And we hate games, truly.”

  Jennifer went away to brush her teeth, slamming the bathroom door, and Laura went to tell Ted what being grounded meant.

  “We can’t wait two days!” said Ted. “Benjamin’ll kill us!”

  “They’ll kill us if we don’t wait two days,” said Laura.

  “Maybe we could sneak out at midnight,” said Ted. “Ruth and Ellen and Patrick are more likely to be there then; that’s daytime for them.”

  “If we get caught they’ll write Mother and Dad.”

  “Benjamin will tell the King if we stay away two days.”

  That was clearly worse. “Oh, all right,” said Laura.

  They sat glumly.

  “I don’t think I like this,” said Laura.

  “I know I don’t,” said Ted, with such emphasis that Laura looked at him.

  “You look like Randolph,” she observed.

  “How the hell would you know?” demanded Ted.

  “I only meant,” said Laura, taken aback, “that you look like you do when you’re playing him.”

  “Wonderful,” said Ted. “That’s just wonderful.”

  “What,” demanded Laura in her turn, “are you trying to decide? That’s Randolph’s problem, trying to decide what to do about the King? So what are you trying—”

  “Never you mind,” said Ted, firmly; that was one of Randolph’s lines to Princess Laura.

  Laura looked at him a little fearfully. She was used to living with Ted, and she could manage with Prince Edward, but she was not sure she wanted to live with Randolph.

  CHAPTER 5

  LAURA had no trouble staying awake; she was hungry, and she ached. When Ted padded into her room, she sat up so quickly that Ted made a frightened hiss, and Jennifer turned over. Ted backed into the hall, and Laura seized her clothes and followed him.

  “You get dressed,” whispered Ted, “and I’ll get some food.”
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  He creaked off down the stairs, leaving Laura cringing. High Castle was less nerve-wracking than this. She put her clothes on, started down the stairs with her shoes in her hand, then remembered the flashlight under Ted’s pillow. It was half hers, through one of their parents’ infrequent departures from good sense. But since she and Jennifer were obliged to share a room, while Ted had his own, it had been decided that the flashlight would be safer under Ted’s pillow. Laura left her shoes on the stairs, fetched the flashlight, started back down the stairs, and tripped over the shoes.

  The kitchen was dark except for a patch of moonlight that made the refrigerator look like a polar bear. Laura did not care to turn the flashlight on it.

  “Ted?”

  The light went on, and the polar bear became a refrigerator with Ted standing to one side of it. “Was that you making all that noise?” he demanded.

  “Where’s the food?”

  Ted looked unhappy. “We shouldn’t take it. It isn’t ours. We’re just houseguests.”

  “It’s our dinner!”

  “Yes, but we got sent to bed without it. And deserved it, you know.”

  “Heh,” said Laura. She sat on the floor and put her shoes on.

  “Good, you brought the flashlight.”

  “Yes,” said Laura, slowly, “but I think we should use a candle.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Ted, and Laura shut up. She decided that she should not have laughed at him in High Castle.

  They went out the side door, being careful to let it latch behind them. They did not want anyone to burgle the house because they had left the door unlocked.

  They had not had much experience with flashlights, since it would have been cheating to use them in the Secret. After a few blocks, Laura began to hate the way uncomfortable sorts of things seemed to scurry out of the path of the light. She made Ted, who had thought himself very kind to let her carry it, carry it himself.

  “It’s just shadows,” said her brother impatiently.

  “Well, good, it won’t bother you to hold the light, then.”

  The house, when they got to it, was thoroughly alarming. It had no porch light and no yard light, and the streetlight closest to it was broken. It leaned over them, crooked and black. The night was still and cloudy, but in the yard a little wind rattled the maple seeds on the sidewalk, as if they were being swept with a broom. Laura stopped dead and wished she had never noticed the house in the first place. Even Ted stared for a moment before he stooped under the hedge. He swore when Laura bumped into him; she had moved forward smartly to show herself that she wasn’t really afraid.

  Ted shone the flashlight about under the hedge for a moment, making all the sharp shadows of the leaves jump. Then he dragged the sword and scabbard out onto the sidewalk, and buckled the belt around himself. Laura saw him look up at the house, and then he turned the flashlight off. Laura put her hand on the piece of hilt he had left her, and they scrambled through. The hedge and the tall grass were sopping with dew, and both Ted and Laura acquired a layer of dirt and leaves on the way.

  They stood up in the yard, and a great darkness engulfed them. On this side of the hedge, the night was clear and the huge stars steady. But the globes of the working street-lamps, the faint background glow of the city, all the lights of civilization were gone. They were in the deep country on a dark night.

  “Let’s get out of this yard,” whispered Ted, and they slithered back through the hedge. A fine mist drifted along the surface of the stream.

  “The flashlight will come in handy once we’re in the woods, where she can’t see it from the house,” breathed Ted. “Can you get that far?”

  “You can’t use a flashlight here!” hissed Laura. “I told you we should have brought a candle.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s cheating.”

  “Laura,” said Ted, “how can it be cheating if it’s real?”

  “But there aren’t any flashlights in the Secret Country.”

  “There would be if I brought one.”

  Laura began to feel stubborn. “It won’t work.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “All right, I will. How much?”

  “Five dollars.”

  He knew that was her whole week’s allowance. She snorted at him.

  “Well, you’ll win, won’t you?” said Ted.

  “Oh, all right.”

  They crept carefully along the bank of the stream, hearing no noise but their own feet, and the small lap of the water. Except for the awful presence of the house behind them, this night was far less frightening than its equivalent in Illinois. Laura had just begun to be able to see properly when they moved under the shadows of the trees. She bumped into Ted, and heard the click as he turned the flashlight on.

  There was a great flash of blue light from which the crowding trees seemed to retreat hastily. Laura also retreated, into a bush, and was prickled. Ted swore and dropped the flashlight; it rolled down the bank and splashed into the stream, where it hissed and fizzled in a whole spectrum of sparks, and then went out.

  “What was that?” said Laura, trying to get herself out of the bush.

  Ted knelt and sloshed his hand around in the water, mumbling. “Here it is. No—what?”

  Laura peered over his shoulder.

  “It’s metal,” said Ted, “all curled and twisted, and something in the middle.” He stood up and knocked Laura over.

  “God damn it!” said Laura, in a furious whisper. She was instantly surprised; she never swore at Ted. Perhaps she had done it because, although Laura Carroll was accustomed to being knocked over by larger people, nobody would ever dare do that to the Princess Laura—and they were on the Princess Laura’s side of the hedge.

  Ted, to whom this had apparently not occurred, laughed, but he did pick her up and brush sand from her back. “You’d better watch your language.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Ted held the object up in the air, trying to catch enough moonlight to see it.

  “It looks like a lantern,” said Laura, wishing she could feel better pleased. “That’s a candle in the middle.”

  “It sure isn’t the flashlight. Hell. Mom’ll have a fit if I’ve lost it.”

  “You didn’t lose it,” said Laura, who had scraped an elbow when he knocked her down, and was not feeling kind. “It blew up. I told you it wouldn’t work, and I want my money.”

  “You’ll just get it wet.”

  “I want it now.”

  “And you haven’t won the bet until I’m satisfied that the flashlight didn’t just roll downstream, or something.”

  “You’re never satisfied,” said Laura, who had heard her mother tell him as much, “and I want my money.”

  “Will you give it back if you’re wrong?”

  Laura was incensed. “I can challenge you to a duel if you question my honor, Edward Bartholomew Carroll!”

  “Yeah? You can’t even throw a rock straight, what makes you think—”

  “Ted?” came a voice from across the stream. Laura jumped.

  “Patrick?”

  “What are you guys trying to do? Shut up and come on.”

  “Ted’s not being a gentleman!”

  “Of course he isn’t. Hurry up, will you? Ruthie has a flute lesson at two, and she hasn’t practiced.”

  “What do you mean, of course?” demanded Ted. “She’s being a brat, she doesn’t deserve—”

  “I,” said Patrick, whom they could now see, faintly, against the strange stars of the Secret Country, “am going back to the fire before Ruth and Ellen eat all the marshmallows.”

  He trudged off along the bank of the stream in the direction of the bridge, and Ted started to parallel his course on their side, saying, “Come on.”

  “I want my money.”

  Ted made a strangled sound, pulled something out of his pocket, flung it to the ground, and started away.

  “Pick it up and give it to me,” said Laura, astounding herself. She d
id not like having been right. The transformation of the flashlight had made her feel that she was being laughed at—it had been like a fireworks display, or a stage magician’s trick. She felt mockery in the very air, as someone will who walks into his third-grade classroom wearing the shirt his grandmother’s friend gave him. Feeling all this, she was determined to get what little satisfaction she could out of her brother.

  Ted hurled himself around, fists clenched. “What’s the matter with you!”

  “I’m a princess, aren’t I?”

  “And when I’m king I swear I’ll cut your head off,” said Ted, but he searched the ground for a moment, found the five-dollar bill, and handed it to her. Laura stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts and followed him at a safe distance, trying to giggle. What, after all, was the use of feeling like Princess Laura when, in far too many ways, she could not act like Princess Laura?

  Princess Laura might not mind walking in the woods at night, but Princess Laura never fell down. It was dark in the woods, and rustly with small animals, and crossing the wooden bridge was not pleasant. Laura tripped where she had tripped the first time. The whole bridge shook and creaked, Ted tramped stolidly on, and a number of things leaped from the banks of the stream into the water with ominous ploppings. Laura ran to catch up with Ted, and was slapped in the face by all the branches he had pushed out of his way. She fingered the money in her pocket and kept her mouth shut.

  It was better when they got out onto the grass where there was nothing in the way, and Laura could let Ted get ahead of her without fear of losing him. And when they had struggled up the hill and looked from its top over the vast dark plain, they saw a fire flickering beside the Well of the White Witch. The well itself cast no light this time.

  Laura began by running down the hill and finished the journey sitting, and was picked up by Ruth and given a brief brushing and two marshmallows.

  “Those were mine!” said Ellen. Laura sat down next to her, chewing.

  “You’ve had twelve already,” said Ruth austerely.

  Ted came up in a dignified silence and accepted a stick and two raw marshmallows from Patrick.

  “We were going to bring food too,” he said, “but it’s not really ours.”