by Edward Eager
"What are these?" said the Queen. "Trials of skill?"
"Sort of," admitted Jack.
The Queen relaxed, and smiled graciously. "In that case," she said, "you are forgiven. It is not your wish, but your duty that calls you from my side. It is fate that divides us. You have a rendezvous with destiny!"
Some words Jack had read in school popped into his mind. He said them. But not being a poetical boy, he didn't remember them quite right. "I could not love it here so much, loved I not honor more," he said.
"Neatly put," said Queen Elizabeth.
On a sudden inspiration Jack knelt and kissed the Queen's hand. Eliza chose this moment to giggle.
The Queen looked up, and the three children could tell from her expression that she saw them. And yet at the same time she seemed to be looking straight through them, as though they were transparent. Seemingly the magic was being obliging about people's not noticing, and yet not completely so.
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" cried the Queen. "What ghostly visitants are these?"
"They're not," said Jack. "They're my friends, come to take me away."
The Queen peered closer. "To be sure," she said, "and your sister is among them. They have freed her. What power these future beings must have, to dare to defy me! And how much they could teach me! It hardly seems worthwhile your coming at all, if you're just going to go away again. Oh, stay here with me, all of you, and help me to reign wisely and choose what is best for England! Sometimes it all seems so difficult I wonder why I try to go on!"
Roger looked at Ann and Ann looked at Roger, and each of them knew what their good deed was going to be.
"You just keep it up the way you've been," said Ann. "You're doing fine."
"Remember what we told you about the Elizabethan Age," said Eliza. "Keep on encouraging those poets and playwrights."
"Don't worry about politics," said Roger. "Who do you think brings England together all united and independent of the rest of Europe forever?" For that was what he had read about Queen Elizabeth in his history book.
"Do I do that?" said the Queen.
"Yes," said Roger, "you do."
The Queen looked pleased, but still reluctant for them to depart. "Have you nothing more to tell me?" she asked.
"Don't worry about that Spanish Armada," said Eliza. "It'll be duck soup."
"And don't cut off Lord Essex's head till you absolutely have to," said the tenderhearted Ann.
"I won't," promised the Queen.
And now Roger took the poor last shreds of the seedcake thyme from his pocket and rubbed them, and they whiffed and wished.
What happened after that was like the last parts of a dream, just before you wake up. The rest of the wish came true, but all in a rush and run together in quick flashes that blurred and became something else as soon as they were seen. Maybe it was because most of the thyme was worn away and the parts that were left had to work extra hard and fast to do it at all.
The Queen and the council chamber disappeared, and at first the four children (and the Natterjack) seemed to be rushing through dark empty space. Then it seemed as though the space were sky and they were flying across it. The earth below kept changing its aspect as centuries merged into other centuries. Still they flew. Or was it time that was flying and they who were standing still? Who could tell? Certainly not Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza.
At one moment something came hurtling toward them. As it drew nearer the four children could see that it was a magic carpet. Riding the carpet, which was stretched out stiffly on the air, were four children and a golden bird that could only be a Phoenix.
"It's the Nesbit children!" cried Ann. "The Phoenix and the Carpet ones! Which adventure do you suppose they're going on?"
But before she or any of the others could call "Hello," or even wave, the carpet had sailed past and disappeared. And after that things got even faster and more confused.
For a moment they seemed to be standing in a London street, in the present day, to judge from the kind of traffic that was passing. The building they were facing seemed to be a theater, and on it was a sign advertising Ann and Roger's father's play, with an opening date a month away. Two ladies were walking down the street toward the theater. Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza looked at the ladies. And a great cry of recognition rose from four throats.
But whether the ladies saw them or whether their cry fell on deaf ears will never be known.
For at that moment everything blacked out completely, and the next moment they and the Natterjack found; themselves standing on the edge of the cliff with the waves of the Atlantic beating on the beach below, and it was over.
"Foiled again!" said Eliza.
"And. for the last time!" mourned Ann.
"You saw your mothers, didn't you?" said the Natterjack.
"Yes, we saw them!" said Jack.
Roger didn't say anything. He started for the thyme garden. The others followed. Once there, Tie poked the haggard remains of the seedcake thyme back into the earth.
But nobody stayed to see whether they grew again or not. And nobody spoke as the four children trudged away from the blossomy bank and past the flower borders and across the lawn to the house. Only Ann turned and ran back for a last word with the Natterjack, which as usual had gone about its own business as soon as it reached its familiar garden.
"Good-bye," she said. "Don't think we blame you. It's not your fault. We know you did your best."
The Natterjack did not reply. It was occupied with a small spider. But Ann thought that it looked gratified.
She ran to join the others, where they sat silently on the front steps of the house.
After a while the silence got to be too much to bear.
"Our mothers looked happy," she said. "They were smiling."
"Yes," said the others.
"The poster on the theater was keen," said Roger.
"Yes," said the others.
There was a silence.
"The rest of this summer," said Eliza, "is going to be awful."
The others did not deny this.
"Of course," said Jack, after a bit, "there's the Yacht Club race...."
The others gave him a withering look.
"And the Midsummer Cotillion," he went on, nothing daunted. He got up and smoothed down his hair. "I'm going inside," he said. "I'm going to phone Susie Eberly."
And he did.
8. The Time Is Ripe
Of course the rest of the summer wasn't really so awful as Eliza expected, and yet in a way it was. Considered as a time of magic adventure it was an empty mockery, yet for those who could open their hearts to swimming, sailing, picnics and mere idling, it had its jim-dandy side, and the four children found that they could open their hearts quite wide to these most of the time.
But ever and anon the Australian crawl would flag, or an oar would trail listlessly in the water or a hot dog remain uneaten on a paper plate, and Ann and Roger and Eliza would look at each other, and each would know what the other two were thinking.
Jack had less time for repining than the rest of them. To begin with, there was the Yacht Club race, and then there was the terrible decision of whether to take Julie or Janina or Jerry Lou to the Midsummer Cotillion. In the end he took Adrienne.
And so the days of August passed, and white phlox and blue globe thistles stood in the flower borders, and wild asters started blooming along the roadsides and swallows held political meetings on the telephone wires, and the nights began to have a touch of chill in the air.
The four children seldom went near the thyme garden now, but one evening just at sunset Ann found herself there.
Ann was the one who missed the Natterjack most. As she said to the others, even if there weren't going to be any more wishes, it would be nice to see it and say hello once in a while, just for old times' sake.
So this evening she went to look for it, and it wasn't on the sundial; so she went through the opening in the box hedge, and it wa
sn't there, either, and yet once there she stayed, looking down on the cushiony billows that cascaded to the sea, and breathing the spicy air that was now, alas, but the fragrance of memory.
There weren't so many of the starry blossoms twinkling purple and white and pink and red as there had been in happy days gone by; in fact there were hardly any. Where the flowers had been, each plant wore a fluffy, grayish look. And bending closer, Ann saw that each stem bore a tiny coronet of seed. And some words she had heard in the past echoed in her ears like the sound of a last good-bye. Sadly she turned to go, and met Roger and Eliza, coming through the boxwood hedge.
"What are you doing out here?" said Eliza.
"I don't know. I just came," said Ann.
"So did we," said Roger.
"The thyme is ripe," Ann told them. "It's stopped blossoming. It's got seed."
"Then it would have been over today, anyway," said Roger.
"It makes it all seem more final, somehow," said Eliza. "I kept kind of hoping against hope."
"So did I," said Ann.
Somebody came through the opening in the hedge. It was Jack. He had had small time for the other three in the days that had followed the adventure with Queen Elizabeth. Now he seemed unusually friendly.
"I just thought," he said. "Today's the day the play opens."
"I've been thinking about it all day," said Roger.
"I forgot," said Ann.
"If we could only be there!" said Eliza.
"If we'd managed better, we would be," said Roger.
"It's all my fault!" said Eliza.
"Mine, too," said Jack. "Worse than you, 'cause I'm oldest."
"It's everybody's fault," said Roger. "We should have husbanded our harvest."
"It's like those awful fables," said Ann. "We were grasshoppers and we should have been ants."
There was a silence. In the silence a small figure hopped through the growing dusk and landed at their side.
"You!" said Ann. "I thought you were never coming back."
"I meant you to think so," said the Natterjack.
"How've you been?" said Jack, politely.
"Busy," said the Natterjack.
Everybody tried not to think envious thoughts about what it had been busy doing, or hopeful ones about what it might do next. The Natterjack waited a long time before it spoke again. It seemed to be enjoying keeping them in suspense.
"Well?" it said at last. "This is the great day, I believe?"
"Yes," said Roger.
"It would be nice to be there, wouldn't it?" said the Natterjack.
"Yes," said Ann.
"Well?" said the Natterjack again. "Why not?"
"But you said last time was the last time!" said Ann.
"I said maybe it would be," said the Natterjack. "Never underestimate the power of a magic to change its mind. What would be the good of its being magic in the first place if it couldn't do a simple trick like that? Besides, you did a good turn, didn't you?"
"We tried," said Ann. "But I guess Queen Elizabeth would have done all right without us."
"Modest as well as sensible," said the Natterjack. "You're the best of this lot, I always said so."
"I know who the worst is," said Eliza, with a sheepish grin.
"So," said the Natterjack, fixing her with a look, "do H'I Well? Is h'everybody ready?"
Everybody was.
"Then take your thyme," said the Natterjack.
"Which kind should we pick?" said Roger.
"H'it makes no difference," said the Natterjack. "At a time like this all thyme is the same."
Four hands reached out eagerly and broke off four leafy bits, scattering the tiny seeds to replenish the coming year. Four hands rubbed, four noses sniffed, and four hearts wished. Ann remembered to pick up the Natterjack.
The next instant they were standing in a crowded London street outside the theater they had seen before, and the instant after that they were swept into the lobby in the midst of the eager crowd. As they were propelled past the box office, Roger noticed a sign on it that said, "House Sold Out," and felt gratified.
No one spoke to the four children or seemed to see them, and they soon realized that they must be invisible, which, of all ways of going on a magic adventure, is perhaps the most satisfactory.
And it is a particularly convenient way to attend a theatrical performance, also, for one needs no tickets, and may stand wherever one likes without anyone's asking one to take off one's hat, or shouting, "Down in front!"
Furthermore Ann found (when a determined lady bumped into her and then went right on through) that not only were they invisible, but they had no weight or substance, either.
When she told her discovery to the others, it was but the work of a moment for the four children to pick out their favorite seats in the house (in the middle of the front row, of course) and sit in them, or rather, upon the laps of those who were there before them.
If you have ever been without weight or substance, you will know that even the boniest knees or the plumpest and most slippery laps are perfectly comfortable. Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza sat back at their ease, and the people beneath seemed to notice nothing unusual.
But of course the four children could still see each other perfectly clearly, and Eliza had to giggle as she looked at Jack, balanced on the knee of a portly and bejeweled dowager.
And it seemed that, although those below saw nothing and felt nothing, yet in a way the moods of those who were sitting on them got through to them. For when Eliza giggled, the mild little man under her began to giggle, too, and couldn't say why, and was glared at and spoken to severely by his large wife for playing the fool.
And then the lights dimmed, and there was that
enchanted moment there always is before the curtain goes up, and then the curtain did go up, and all was utter rapt attention in the hearts of the four children. Ann put the Natterjack on her shoulder where it could see.
The first scene in the play was a short one, a sort of prologue, and it was a little slow in getting under way. Also, it was a hot night and the theater was stuffy. Some of the audience began to stir restlessly, and several people coughed. One of the nicest lines was said, and hardly anybody laughed. Ann and Roger and Jack began to feel worried.
Eliza felt worried, too, but then she began to think. Among the few people who had laughed at the funny line were she and Ann and Roger and Jack. That was only to be expected. That was only loyal. Besides, it was a funny line.
But the only other people who had laughed had been the four people sitting under them. And Eliza, always one for putting two and two together, remembered how the little man beneath her had giggled, before, when she had giggled. And she had an idea.
As soon as the first short scene was over, she told her idea to the other three.
"It's us!" she told them. "We're contagious! It's like spirit mediums. We little know the power we wield!" And the others saw the logic in her words.
In the brief pause before the curtain rose again they held council, and decided what to do. Then they separated. Ann took the front rows and Eliza took the back ones. Jack took the dress circle and Roger the gallery.
When the second scene began, they proceeded according to plan. Each one sat down upon the first person in the first row of his particular section, stayed there for a minute or two, thinking happy, enthusiastic, appreciative thoughts all the while, and then moved onto the lap of the person in the next seat, and so on, all across the row. When one of them finished a row, he started on the one behind. As Eliza said afterwards, it was like the collection plate in church.
And as the four emissaries of delight moved through the audience, the spirit of happy, enthusiastic appreciation moved through it, too, till the air rang with laughter and applause.
"A hit, a very palpable hit!" said a critic in the sixth row, as Ann abandoned her perch on his knee.
"Too, too delicious!" cried a lady in the dress circle, hitting the gentleman with her wit
h her fan.
"Ow, 'Enry, 'ow lovely!" cried an old, old lady in a feather boa, in the gallery. "Ow, I am enjoying this!" And Roger wondered fleetingly if they had met before, years and years ago, in the Tower of London.
In the interval after the first act the four children haunted the lobby and eavesdropped, hearing none but the most ecstatic comments. Eliza kept looking for Ann and Roger's father, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"He'll be roaming the streets," said Roger, "and Mother'll be in her hotel room. They couldn't endure the suspense."
When the bell rang for act two, the children decided the audience needed no further warming up. Anyway, the play was so good that people couldn't help enjoying it, now they were in a mood to. So Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza reassembled in the front row, and sat enthralled until the end. And at the end there were seventeen curtain calls and cheers for all the actors and cries of "Author! Author!" None shouted louder than Eliza.
At last the father of Roger and Ann appeared on the stage, looking rumpled and confused as if he'd just been dragged in from roaming the streets, which was probably true.
And he made a slightly mumbling but quite nice speech, and in the middle of it he looked down at the front row and sort of started and rubbed his eyes and lost the thread of his remarks but recovered it in time and finished his speech, and there were more cheers and the curtain kept going up and down until at last it stayed down and the applause died reluctantly away and people began fishing for their hats and coats.
And then, just as Roger was wondering how to find the stage door and go behind the scenes and look for his father and mother, everything sort of faded and merged and went up like fireworks, and the world turned black. And the next moment he and Ann and Jack and Eliza were sitting in the familiar time garden breathing the scent of the familiar thyme.
"Darn!" said Eliza. "I wanted to congratulate your father!"
"So did I," said Ann, in a small voice.
"So did I," said Roger. "But I guess," he added reflectively, "that would be eating our cake and having it, too."
"We never seem to be able to do that, somehow," said Ann. "Even with magic."