The Key to the Indian

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “That doll was probably the only toy near at hand when you got here,” Omri said.

  “You are being really helpful. Exactly how did I ‘get here’?”

  “The knapsack brought you.”

  “The knapsack. I’m trying so hard not to kill you. All right. How did the knapsack ‘bring’ me?”

  “You were touching it in the car when Dad turned the key. It was the key that was magic.”

  At this point, Gillon lost it completely. “Magic! Are you mad! Don’t tell me you believe in magic!”

  Omri felt exasperated at such obtuseness. “Gilly, look around you. This is real. We’ve travelled through time. We’re small – we’ve brought two puppets to life. Of course it’s magic. Just get your mind around it.”

  Gillon’s face sagged. He stared at him. Then he sat down rather suddenly on the ropes. His feet dangled through two holes and he clutched a strand of rope with each hand. He seemed to need to hold on to something.

  “You’ve accepted that you’re now a puppet thirty centimetres high,” said Omri quietly. “Is it so much harder to accept magic?”

  Gillon said, after a bit, in quite a different voice, “I’m scared. God, Om – I’m so scared.”

  “Don’t be, it doesn’t help.”

  “We really are small, aren’t we? I mean look at this bed, it’s like a football field with holes. And that man! Blimey, I just closed my eyes when he came in. I didn’t look properly, I didn’t let myself. A giant… a giant great-grandfather…” His face crumpled. Gillon, who Omri hadn’t seen cry since he was about eight.

  Omri crawled over to him across the ropes. He put his arm round his brother’s shoulders.

  “Don’t, it’s okay, Dad’ll bring us back, we’re quite safe,” he said, with a confidence he didn’t completely feel.

  “Safe! What if the giant notices we’re real? What if anybody does?”

  “They won’t hurt us.”

  “You’re kidding! It’ll be like Pinocchio and Stromboli!”

  “This is a storeroom. Nobody probably comes in here. We’ll be left in peace in here until Dad—”

  To give the lie to this comforting assurance, the door to the room opened and two children came in. Omri twisted his head and gave them one terrified look. They were like the ones in the square who had tried to touch and handle him.

  “Flop!” muttered Omri, and flopped. After a stunned second, Gillon did the same, but it was too late.

  The children had seen.

  Unfortunately, Omri had flopped with his head turned away, so he had to use his ears to determine what was happening. There was an excited buzz of whispering. He heard the faint sound of small bare feet crossing the floor. Then he sensed something warm hanging over him, hesitating – a hand. It touched him, felt him, turned him over. He almost fainted from the feeling of powerlessness. All the defence he could think of was to freeze, to stretch his eyes, trying to look like a painted puppet. But it was useless.

  Two pairs of sharp young eyes were examining him from a short distance away. They were much wider open than his own. A brown, grubby finger poked his cheek and his stomach and was snatched away. The children – a boy and a girl – looked at each other. The boy said something. Then he reached over and gingerly picked up Gillon.

  Gillon didn’t bother about trying to look like a puppet. He sprang to life in the boy’s hand, struggling, clawing and kicking. The boy held on, until Gillon, turning his head, bit his hand. At that, the boy dropped him back on the bed and jumped backwards with a yell. Gillon bounced once and then tried to crawl away.

  The girl, who only looked about six, ran to the door with her hands over her ears, uttering a wail of fear. The boy sprang after her, slammed the door shut, grabbed the girl and gave her a good shake. Then he took her by the arm and dragged her back to the bed, telling her off all the way. Omri could well imagine what he was saying – “Don’t make a noise, stupid, someone’ll come! Let’s find out about this for ourselves!” Just what anyone would say, anyone with a bit of sense.

  An argument ensued, which the boy, who was a few years older than his little sister, won. Meanwhile Omri and Gillon were as far away as they could get on the mattress, pressed against the wall, clinging to each other.

  Omri managed to whisper to Gillon, “It’s okay, they’ll probably just play with us. Don’t fight them! Don’t frighten them!”

  “Me frighten them!” said Gillon between chattering teeth.

  The boy let go of the girl and squared up to Gillon. He said something to him – a question. Of course, in Hindi. But it was strange. Omri could guess what he was saying, because this, or something very like it, had once happened to him.

  “He’s saying, ‘Let me pick you up,’” he said to Gillon.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you? Nod to him, but tell him to be gentle.”

  Gillon threw him a look. But then he nodded to the boy and put his hands out in front of him, palms down, and made a “gently” gesture. His hands were shaking.

  The boy reached out carefully, ready to snatch back his hand if Gillon turned fierce again. He put it round Gillon’s waist. He lifted him very slowly until Gillon’s face was level with his.

  Gillon pushed the headscarf off his head and said in a deep voice, “Hello. I’m a boy. A guy. A bloke.” He showed off his biceps, but unfortunately the Indian boy thought he was threatening him and thrust him, suddenly and sickeningly, away from him to arm’s length.

  “It’s all right!” called Omri. “He just wants you to know he’s a – a sahib!”

  The two children looked at him swiftly.

  “Sahib?” said the boy, and looked back at Gillon. “Memsahib.”

  Omri shook his head hard. “No. Sahib.”

  The boy scowled under his black brows. He seemed to make up his mind, and handed Gillon abruptly to his sister. She nearly dropped him, but he snapped an order at her. She looked at him fearfully, then looked at Gillon. Her face softened. She squeezed him, giggled, and climbing on to the bed, sat cross-legged and began to take Gillon’s clothes off.

  “NO! NO! Stop it – you can’t – I’m a fellow, I tell you, let me alone!” shouted Gillon at the top of his very small lungs. He twisted and jerked and fought, but it was no use.

  The girl took the end of the sari in her right hand and flicked Gillon away from her. He rolled off the edge of the bed and fell to the floor, the long piece of silk unwinding swiftly, somewhat breaking his fall. She twitched it to free the last bit, leaving Gillon flat on his back in a little red blouse, his Turkish slippers, and nothing else at all other than a tape tied tightly around his waist.

  He clutched himself modestly and drew up his knees.

  “This is the worst,” he muttered furiously. But it wasn’t, because the boy now picked him up and gazed at him in astonishment. The girl too.

  Then they both looked at Omri.

  “Memsahib?” the girl asked.

  “No, no! I’m a sahib, too!” Omri hastened to say, repeating the biceps gesture. “Boy, like you!” He pointed. “Not like you,” he added, shaking his head and pointing to the girl.

  The two children looked at each other and burst out laughing. She picked up the sari and, laying Gillon on one end of it, began rolling him back into it. She had barely finished carefully tucking it in to the waist-tape when suddenly there came the sound of an adult voice, calling. Probably, thought Omri, it was Jothi, the servant woman he had seen before.

  Both the children jumped, guiltily. The boy threw a conspiratorial look at the girl and picked up Omri. Then he said something which was clearly “Come on! Let’s get out of here!” He thrust Omri legs first down the front of his loincloth, climbed on to the bed, opened one of the shutters, and the next moment Omri felt himself and his captor dropping through space. A jolt as they landed. A scuffling and more jolts as the boy turned and caught his sister as she let herself fall from the window. Then they were running, running through the heat on hard-
packed red earth.

  11

  The Snake Charmer

  As the boy ran, Omri, jolting about, trying to hold himself steady by clutching the roll of cotton at the waist of the loincloth, was trying to figure out time.

  How long had he been here?

  One hour? More? If his body were still in the front seat of the Ford, and if the Ford were rolling along the main road to the south-west on the way to Dartmoor, his dad must soon notice that he was not just normally asleep. That Gillon, in the back, slumped against the ancient knapsack, was also unconscious. It wasn’t like either of them to sleep through a daytime car journey. Anyway, his dad always stopped off for a coffee and a snack when he was doing a long drive.

  It couldn’t be much longer before they were taken back. It was just a matter of hanging on.

  Unless…

  Unless Omri’s Dad had himself ‘gone’ somewhere when the key turned!

  Did he have anything on him that would take him back to some station in time, some ‘layer’ of the past? Something in his pocket, perhaps, as Omri had had the little elephant?

  In which case… there would be nobody to turn the key, nobody who knew how to bring them back.

  Horrendous. The worst… Back here in nineteenth century India for good… No. He wouldn’t believe anything so appalling. He pushed the thought from his mind.

  He craned round the boy’s thin waist and looked behind. He could see the little girl, panting along in his wake. She was holding Gillon tightly pressed to her chest. Omri could see he was clinging for dear life to her blouse, with his legs scrabbling and swinging about, trying to find purchase on the folds of her skirt.

  Where were they going?

  They were running past a line of bungalows, set about with palms and other tropical trees. The homes of rich people… Omri could see Indian gardeners at work, and in the street was a passing parade of rickshaws, people on bicycles, carts pulled by buffaloes, many people on foot, and an occasional horse-drawn carriage – always occupied by white people, the men in khaki safari suits, and the women dressed much like Jessica Charlotte, only in more summery clothes. The air was hazy, and there was a strong smell of dust and flowers and spicy cooking, mixed with a sharp, acrid, choking whiff of burning rubbish. The sun beat down on them. Omri began to wish he had a solar topee.

  Suddenly they were back where Omri had started – in the big open space. He noticed now there was a market in progress there, but it wasn’t like an English one. There was a terrific din, for one thing, and masses of colour and movement as hundreds of people struggled to buy and sell in the thick of crowds, animals as well as humans.

  There were few stalls or tables; mostly people had their wares laid out on the ground: mounds of fruit, fires cooking things, cages with animals and birds in them, sacks full of all kinds of strange things Omri had never seen before – seeds, powders, roots, bunches of greenery, nut-like things – which added a new, intriguing medley of smells that Omri caught and sniffed as his captor ducked and squirmed among the sellers.

  At the far end was the stage that Omri had been ‘dancing’ on when he first arrived. It was empty now. The formal entertainment was over, though there were various jugglers, musicians and magicians moving through the crowds. Omri saw a man up ahead, sitting cross-legged in the dust with a basket in front of him, playing a pipe; a large snake was rearing out of the basket, swaying in a sinister fashion… A cobra! Omri knew it by its hood. The boy was going to pass right by it!

  Omri instinctively ducked as they squeezed past – the cobra’s head was just level with his face, well within striking distance, but it never even moved – it must be half-asleep!

  The boy ran up to the stage and took a flying leap on to it, which brought Omri’s stomach halfway to his mouth. Immediately, a big man with a beard and a curled moustache leapt on from the other side and ran at him, shouting, threatening him with his fist. The boy promptly jumped down again. At this moment, his little sister came puffing up. They crouched down almost under the stage and held a conference. This gave Omri and Gillon a chance to exchange a few frantic words.

  “I told you! Stromboli! They’re going to try to earn money with us!” hissed Gillon.

  “Yes. And we must just do it. Whatever they want.”

  “What? Dance? Sing?” Gillon was aghast.

  “Just jump about! Nobody’ll pay any attention, they’ll think it’s a trick! Look at all the people here who are doing crazy things—”

  “You are nuts. If this crowd sees two stringless puppets ‘jumping about’, they are going to tear us to pieces between them!”

  Omri thought fleetingly of the dozens of street urchins who had tried to get their hands on him when they thought he was just a regular puppet. “So what do we do?”

  “Lie down and pretend to not be alive.”

  Omri realised that was their best bet. Besides, the kids deserved to be shown up. If he had ever tried to put his little people on show, it would have served him good and right if they’d lain down and played dead.

  The boy raised his head and peeped across the stage. The angry man with the moustache had gone… He and the girl stood up cautiously. The boy took a deep breath, and started to shout. He was trying to attract a crowd to watch the ‘show’, but he could hardly be heard, and nobody paid attention. He shouted himself hoarse, and the little girl squeaked and waved her free arm every now and then, the one that was not clutching Gillon. At last it looked as if they would have to give up.

  But then, suddenly, a merchant from a nearby stall came to their rescue.

  He moved to the children, smiling a broad snowy-white smile through his grey whiskers. He bent down and evidently asked the boy what he was trying to do. The boy, who was nearly in tears, explained, with gestures. He jerked Omri out of the top of his loincloth and held him in front of the man’s face and shook him. Omri hung limp. He could just imagine what the boy was saying: “I want people to watch! Look! He’s alive!”

  The merchant hardly glanced at Omri. He smiled indulgently and patted the boy’s head. He said something soothing, and turned back to his stall – he had a real stall with brass and copper pots of all shapes and sizes ranged on it, and others dangling from a rail beneath the awning. He reached between them and unhooked something from deep in the shadows of his stall.

  Omri gasped. It was the chimes – his mother’s ‘young in heart’ bowls. Only now they were new and shining reddish-bronze in the sun. He could see the beautiful, exotic designs of dragons clearly on the upturned bowl shapes.

  The merchant had a stick in his hand. He held up the bowls by their cord and struck the largest one at the top. It issued a deep, resonant, gong-like tone. People nearby stopped what they were doing and glanced round. The merchant, smiling broadly, struck the next bowl, and the next, down to the smallest. Then he played a little tune with the five notes at his disposal. By this time a small crowd had gathered.

  The merchant gave the boy a little wink. Then he stepped on to the stage and began to harangue the crowd. He pointed his stick at the two children, and evidently advised people to watch. He made jokes, and people laughed; Omri could see they were getting into a good mood, ready to be entertained. The merchant beat the chimes again, and then reached down and, putting his hand into the boy’s armpit, hiked him on to the stage in one easy movement, like an elephant lifting something almost weightless with its trunk.

  Next moment, Omri felt himself snatched out of the boy’s hands. A big, powerful hand held him now, and raised him high, shaking him above the crowd, while the resounding voice went on – a skilled showman, this. He had the crowd with him now; scores of people were crowding to the foot of the stage, laughing and excited.

  The little girl reached up her hands, one of which held Gillon. The merchant handed his bells to the boy and took Gillon away from the girl, while eager hands from the front of the crowd lifted her on to the stage beside her brother. Now Gillon, too, was being waggled and dangled before the audience. Om
ri could easily imagine that the man was saying, “Look! Puppets without strings! Now watch how the little ones will make them dance!”

  The big man suddenly decided to get more playful. He tossed Gillon one way, Omri the other! They flew past each other, each suffering an agony of terror before the opposite hand caught each of them. The crowd applauded this little piece of juggling. Encouraged, the man did the same trick several times more. Omri heard Gillon let out a cry as he hurtled past, the kind you make when you’re on a terribly scary ride at a fair, but fortunately nobody seemed to hear. Omri, for his part, thought he might very well throw up. What if the man missed, and he dropped to the stage? He could hardly keep still – he wanted to twist himself free, but he knew his only hope was to lie perfectly limp, with tight-shut eyes. It had been Gillon’s good advice – Omri only hoped his brother was taking it himself!

  He felt himself being passed back to the boy.

  The crowd was silent now. You couldn’t hear anything except the cawing of crows and the more distant noises at the far end of the square. It was a poised, anticipating silence, like a held breath.

  The boy held Omri up before his own face. The big, dark eyes in the thin brown face stared into his. He could plainly see that Omri was alive, that he was there, and he whispered something to him, and again Omri guessed what it probably was: “Go on, do it for us, please!” And a ridiculous, quixotic, and terribly dangerous urge came over Omri.

  He wanted to do it.

  Impressions and ideas flashed through his head. He guessed these kids were the children of Matt’s servants. He knew, from the little scene in the bungalow sitting room, that Matt could treat his servants unkindly. Jothi had looked really frightened, as if – were her husband to lose his job because of spilling paint on the solar topee – it would be a complete disaster for them.

  The children were thin, like their mother. The reason the boy’s eyes were so big was because his face was bony and pinched. The plea in those eyes was plainer than language.