The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard)

by Lynne Reid Banks

  Adiel, the eldest, said, “Right pair of heroes if you ask me. We could’ve been cleaned out.” And he gazed lovingly, not at his little brother, but at the television set.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time they’d drained the last of their hot chocolate and been gently shooed off to bed by Omri’s mother. She gave Omri a special hug, being careful of his head, and hugged Patrick too.

  “You’re fantastic kids,” she said.

  Omri and Patrick looked uncomfortable. It simply didn’t seem right to either of them that they were getting all the credit for driving off the intruders single- (or double-) handed, when in fact they’d had a great deal of help.

  As soon as they got up to Omri’s bedroom in the attic, they locked the door and made for the desk.

  They’d had to make a hasty decision, before the return of the parents, to leave things as they were, not to send anybody else back after they’d dispatched Corporal Willy Fickits and his men. As Patrick pointed out, “We don’t know how the wounded would stand the journey. Besides, we can’t send the Indians back to their time without Matron, we can’t send her back to hers, without them—and we certainly can’t send them all anywhere together!”

  And Omri had agreed. But they’d both been on tenterhooks all the time the police had been in the house for fear they’d demand to see Omri’s room. The boys had been very careful to say the burglars hadn’t got beyond the second floor of the house.

  Now the boys bent over the desk. They’d left Omri’s bedside light on in case Matron had had to tend to one of the wounded Indians in the night She herself now sat, upright but clearly dozing, at a small circular table (made of the screw top of a Timotei shampoo bottle, a good shape because it had a rim she could get her knees under). On it lay a tiny clipboard which she had brought with her from St. Thomas’s Hospital. She’d been making up her notes and temperature charts.

  On either side of her on the floor of the longhouse stretched a double row of pallet beds. Each bed was occupied by a wounded Indian. Matron’s ministrations had been so efficient that all were resting peacefully. She had earned her little nap, though she would probably deny hotly, later, that she had nodded off while “on duty.”

  Outside the longhouse, beside the burnt-out candle, a blanket was spread on the soil in Omri’s father’s seed tray. Curled up asleep on the blanket were Little Bear and Bright Stars, his wife. Between them, in the crook of Bright Stars’s arm, lay their newborn baby, Tall Bear.

  All these people, when they were standing up, were no more than three inches tall.

  3

  How It All Started

  IT HAD ALL STARTED more than a year before, with an old tin medicine cabinet Gillon had found, a key that fitted it, which had belonged to Omri’s great-grandmother, and the little plastic figure of an American Indian that Patrick had given Omri (secondhand) for his birthday.

  On that fateful night, Omri had put the Indian into the small metal cupboard and locked it with the fancy key. There was no particular point to this, really. Thinking back later, Omri didn’t know why he’d done it. He’d had a thing at the time about secret cupboards, drawers, rooms; hiding places, kept safe from prying eyes, where he could secrete his favorite things and be sure they’d stay exactly as he’d left them, undisturbed by rummaging brothers or anyone else.

  But the Indian didn’t stay as he’d left it. Some combination of key and cupboard, plus the stuff the Indian was made of—plastic—had worked the wonder of bringing the little man to life.

  At first, when this happened, Omri—once past the first shock of astonishment—had thought he was in for the fun trip of all time. A little, live man of his very own to play with! But it hadn’t turned out like that.

  The Indian, Little Bear, was no mere toy. Omri soon found out that he was a real person, somehow magicked into present-day London, England, from the America of nearly two hundred years ago. The son of a chief of the Iroquois tribe, a fighter, a hunter, with his own history and his own culture. His own beliefs and morals. His own brand of courage.

  Little Bear regarded Omri as a magic being, a giant from the world of the spirits, and was at first terrified of him. Omri could see he was afraid, but the Indian was incredibly brave and controlled, and Omri soon began to admire him. He realized he couldn’t treat him just as a toy—he was a person to be respected, despite his tiny size and relative helplessness.

  And it soon turned out that he was by no means the easiest person in the world to get along with or satisfy. He had demands, and he made them freely, assuming Omri to be all-powerful.

  He demanded his own kind of food. A longhouse, such as the Iroquois used to sleep in. A horse, although previously he had never ridden. Weapons, and animals to hunt, and a fire to cook on and dance around. Eventually he even demanded that Omri provide him with a wife!

  In addition, Omri had to hide him and protect him. It needed only a little imagination to realize what would happen if any grown-up should find out about the cupboard, the key, and their magic properties. Because Omri soon found out that not just Little Bear but any plastic figure or object would become alive or real by being locked in the cupboard.

  But he couldn’t keep the secret entirely to himself. His best friend, Patrick, eventually found out about it and lost no time in putting his own little plastic man into the cupboard. And so “Boo-Hoo” Boone, the crying Texas cowboy, had come into their lives, complicating things still more. For of course, cowboy and Indian were enemies and had to be kept apart until a number of adventures, and their common plight—being tiny in a giants’ world—brought them together and made them friends and even blood brothers.

  Omri bought the plastic figure of an Indian girl and brought her to life as a wife for Little Bear. And shortly after that it was decided—with deep reluctance by the boys—that having three little people and their horses around amid all the dangers that threatened them in the boys’ time and world, was more than they could cope with. It was just too much responsibility. So they “sent them back,” for the cupboard and key worked also in reverse, transforming real miniature people back into plastic and returning them to their own time.

  Omri hadn’t intended ever to play with this dangerous magic again. It had been too frightening, too full of problems—and too hurtful, at the end, when he had to part with friends he had grown so fond of. But as with so many resolutions, this one got broken.

  About a year later, by which time Omri’s and Patrick’s families had both moved, Omri won a prize in an important competition for a short story. The story he wrote was called “The Plastic Indian” and was all about—well, it was the truth, but of course no one thought of that; they just thought Omri had made up the most marvelous tale. And he was so excited (the prize was three hundred pounds, he was to receive it at a big party in a London hotel, and even his brothers were impressed) that he decided to bring Little Bear back to life, just long enough to share this triumph with him since he had been such a vital part of it.

  Unfortunately, things were not so simple.

  When Omri put Little Bear, Bright Stars, and their pony—the plastic figures of them—back in the cupboard, they emerged much changed.

  Little Bear lay across the back of his pony with two musket balls in his back, very near death. There had been a battle in his village, between his tribe and their enemies, the Algonquins, together with French soldiers (Omri had already learned that the French and English had been fighting in America at the time, and Little Bear’s tribe was on the English side). Little Bear had been wounded. Bright Stars, although on the point of having a baby, had rushed out and heaved Little Bear onto his pony, just as the magic worked, bringing them—tiny as before, but as real as ever, and in desperate trouble—to Omri’s attic bedroom.

  And thus it was that Omri was launched into a whole series of new and even more hair-raising and challenging adventures.

  Luckily Patrick was nearby and was able to help with some excellent ideas. Boone “came bac
k” too, and they also brought to life a hospital Matron from a much more recent era to help save Little Bear’s life. Later, when he demanded to go back to his village, a British Royal Marine corporal, Willy Fickits, and a contingent of Iroquois braves were brought to life to help take revenge on the Algonquins.

  At this point there was a most incredible turn of events.

  Boone, the cowboy, suggested that the boys go back to Little Bear’s time and witness the battle. Of course they thought it was impossible. How could they fit into the little bathroom cupboard, only about a foot high? But Boone pointed out that the magic key might fit something larger—the old seaman’s chest that Omri had bought in the market, for instance.

  It worked. Each boy climbed in in turn, the other one turned the key, and each separately went back in time to the Iroquois village.

  When Omri got back—terribly shaken after witnessing a horrific battle—his hair was singed and he had a burn blister on the side of his head.

  The boys brought the Indian troop back through the magic of the key, discovering to their horror that the modern weapons that they had given Little Bear’s men—Little Bear called them now-guns—had proved too much for fighters accustomed to bows and arrows. Many of them had been accidentally shot by their own side. Matron had to be brought back to treat their wounds, but eight had been killed.

  Little Bear was distraught, but Bright Stars comforted him by putting his new son, Tall Bear, in his arms. And Omri and Patrick took the blame. They shouldn’t have sent modern weapons into the past…. But these worked very well when, later, three skinheads tried to burgle the house. The boys brought some plastic Marines to life and mounted an artillery assault on them just as they were rifling Omri’s parents’ bedroom, and completely routed them. It was exhilarating while it lasted, but now they were faced with the aftermath: reality, the present, the results of the night’s doings.

  4

  Dead in the Night

  THE TWO BOYS SAT on the floor of Omri’s bedroom and conferred in low voices.

  “We’ve got to plan what to do,” said Patrick. “One of us must be up here in your room, on guard, every minute of the rest of the weekend. We’ll have to keep your door locked from inside. Whoever’s not here will have to bring food and stuff, so I’d better stay up here most of the time. It’ll look dead odd if I start nicking stuff from your kitchen. I don’t know what we’re going to do on Monday—”

  Omri said heavily, “I do. I’ll have to go to school, and you’ll have to go home.”

  “Oh, God, yes,” said Patrick, remembering.

  Patrick now lived in Kent with his mother. They were in London only for a brief visit to his aunt and girl cousins, Emma and the dreadful Tamsin. They’d have been back in their country home already if Tamsin had not fallen off her bicycle and hurt herself, so that Patrick’s mother had decided to stay on for a day or two to help his aunt.

  The boys sat in heavy silence. Omri could hardly bear the thought of being left alone in this increasingly difficult situation. Patrick could hardly bear the thought of leaving it.

  “Maybe Tamsin’ll die,” Patrick said darkly. “Then we’ll have to stay on. For the funeral.”

  Omri hoped this was only a sick joke. He detested Tamsin, but he didn’t wish her dead—not now that he’d seen death, not with those eight small bloodstained bodies lying under torn-up scraps of sheet, right here in his room.

  “What are we going to do about—the casualties?” he asked.

  “You mean the dead ones? We’ll have to bury them.”

  “Where?”

  “In your garden?”

  “But we can’t just … I mean, it’s not like when Boone’s horse died. They’re people, we can’t just—stick them in the earth. What about their families?”

  “Their families are—are back there somewhere. We don’t know where they are or when they are.”

  “Maybe we ought to—to send them back through the cupboard, to their own time.”

  “Send their dead bodies back? With modern bullets in them?”

  “Their people would think they’d been shot by white men. They wouldn’t examine them. They’d go through—you know, whatever special rituals they have, and bury them properly—or—or whatever they do with dead people.”

  Abruptly Omri felt his eyes begin to prick, and a hard, hot lump came into his throat. He put his head down on his knees. Patrick must have been feeling the same, because he squeezed Omri’s arm sympathetically.

  “It’s no good feeling it too much,” he said after clearing his throat twice. “I know it’s terrible and I know it’s partly our fault. But they lived in very dangerous times, fighting and risking death every day. And they went into the battle quite willingly.”

  “They didn’t know what they were up against with the now-guns,” said Omri in a muffled voice.

  “Yeah, I know. Still. It doesn’t help to—to be a Boone.”

  The weak joke about the crybaby cowboy made Omri chuckle just a little.

  “Where is Boone, by the way?” he asked, sniffing back his tears.

  “I told you. I sent him back—he asked me to. Gave him a new horse, and off he went. Look.”

  He opened the cupboard. On the shelf was Boone, standing beside his new horse, a tall, alert-looking black one. On the floor of the cupboard, Corporal Fickits and his men were clustered together, with their various weapons. Patrick gathered them all up, put the soldiers back in the biscuit tin, but kept Fickits and Boone separate. Boone went into his pocket, horse and all. He always kept him there, when he wasn’t real, for luck. He was actually as fond of Boone as Omri was of Little Bear. Omri put Fickits in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “The only thing we can do right now is to get some sleep,” Omri said.

  Patrick settled down on his floor cushions while Omri clambered up onto his bunk bed under the skylight. He looked up at the stars through the branches of the old elm tree which his father kept saying should be cut down because it was dead. Skeletal as it was, to Omri it was a friend.

  “Let’s bring Boone back tomorrow,” Patrick whispered just before they dropped off. “I don’t seem to be able to face things without Boone, whether he cries or not. Besides, I want to know if he likes his new horse.”

  At dawn Omri was awakened by a familiar shout.

  “Omri, wake! Day come! Much need do!”

  Omri, feeling sticky-eyed and thick-headed with tiredness, slid backward down the ladder to the floor. Patrick was still sound asleep. The gray dawn light was just creeping through the skylight.

  “It’s dead early, Little Bear,” he muttered, rubbing his face and stifling a series of yawns.

  Little Bear didn’t hear him properly. He caught only his name and the word “dead.” He nodded his hard-muscled face once and grunted.

  “One more dead in night.”

  Omri’s throat closed up with a sick feeling.

  “Another? Oh, no … I’m sorry!” He meant sorry-ashamed, not just sorry-regretful. He felt every dead Indian brave was on his own conscience. He should never have made the modern weapons real, never have sent Little Bear and his braves back in time with them. The trouble was, he seemed still not fully to have accepted the fact, which he knew with one part of his brain, that these little people were not just toys come to life. They were flesh and blood, with their own characters, their own lives and destinies. And against his own intentions Omri had been drawn in. He’d found himself acting out his own part in these destinies, which would never have been possible but for the magic of the cupboard … and the key.

  The key turned any container into a kind of body-shrinking time machine. His seaman’s chest had taken him and Patrick back to the eighteenth century, to Little Bear’s time and place. Omri had not had time, so far, even to begin to think about the possibilities of that.

  Now he scanned the seed tray and saw that two of the Indians who had not been injured were carrying another body out of the longhouse and into the little paddock Pa
trick had made with miniature fencing for the ponies, and which was now a makeshift morgue. Matron followed the sad procession, her face, rather grim at all times, now grimmer than ever.

  “I did my best,” she said shortly. “Bullet lodged in the liver. Couldn’t reach it.”

  She watched the two braves lay the dead Indian down beside the others. Suddenly she turned to face Omri.

  “I know I did that operation on your friend!” she said. “And I operated last night—emergency ops—three of them—but blow it all, I’m not a surgeon! Stupid of me—conceited—to think I could cope. Can’t. Not trained for it. Anyway … too much for any one person—” Her voice cracked.

  “Matron, it’s not your fault—” began Omri, terrified that this capable, efficient, down-to-earth woman might be about to burst into tears, which would have unmanned him completely.

  “Didn’t say it was! My fault indeed!” She glared at him, took her spectacles off, polished them on a spotless handkerchief from her apron pocket, and put them back on her formidable nose.

  “Blessed if I know how I got here, what this is all about. Now don’t you go pulling the wool over my eyes, I know when I’m dreaming and when I’m not—this is real. The blood’s real, the pain’s real, the deaths are real. My ops were real, they were the best I could do, but what is also real is my—my—my basic inadequacy.”

  She suddenly snatched the handkerchief out of her pocket again and blew her nose on it. She wiped her nose back and forth several times and then gave a great, convulsive sniff.

  “What we need here is a properly equipped medical team!”

  Omri gaped at her.

  “If we don’t get one—and quickly—more of these poor men are going to die.”

  After a moment, during which she glared at him expectantly through her spectacles, Omri said slowly, “I’ll tell you the truth about your being here and—all the rest of it. But you probably won’t believe me.”