Magic in the Mix

by Annie Barrows

  They returned to their math. For a long time, the quiet was broken only by whispered numbers.

  Miri glanced up. Nothing.

  Okay. Negative seventy-five divided by point-seven-five. She stared at it blankly.

  A rustle.

  She glanced up.

  A suppressed laugh.

  Miri and Molly looked at each other and grinned. The boys. They were up to something. Probably something bad. Probably something that they’d enjoy now and regret later. Probably something Miri and Molly would want to see. Together, the two girls rose from their chairs.

  Soft footsteps on the stairs.

  A clinking rattle. “Shh,” very soft.

  Miri and Molly tiptoed into the hall. “What’re you guys doing?” Molly said, and they turned—

  Two soldiers in dark blue coats and crumpled caps stared at them. Miri felt the blood drain from her face. They’ve broken through, she thought, backing away. There’s nothing between us and the war.

  Then she saw: It was Ray and Robbie, dressed for their reenactment.

  “Oh my gosh,” she gasped.

  Robbie looked at her fiercely. “So just shut up, okay? If you rat us out, I’ll tell Mom about yesterday.”

  “But you don’t know anything about yester—” she began before she realized he was talking about her absence from school and gulped back her words. “You just surprised me. Wow. You look so old, like real soldiers—”

  Ray saluted. “One hundred and sixth New York, at your service!”

  Molly took a breath. “You look great,” she said hesitantly. “But—what’re you doing? I mean, I thought Dad and Mom said you, um—couldn’t go.”

  “Yeah, but they can just—”

  “Chill, Robbie,” said Ray soothingly. He turned to his sisters. “Look, it’s totally not fair, because he did it, the paper, I mean. Just ’cause Dad doesn’t think it’s, like, worthy, it’s totally not fair to say he didn’t do it. And they said he could go if he finished, which he did at, like, two a.m. So we’re going,” he concluded.

  Miri was watching Robbie. “I didn’t think you liked reenacting that much. I mean, enough to get in trouble for.”

  “You don’t know,” he said, lifting his chin defiantly. “First, Mom’s all like, you gotta do this reenactment, and then they’re all, you can’t do it. I don’t care. They’re total a—” Even in his fury, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Jerks.”

  “How’re you going to get there?” Molly asked.

  “Mr. Emory,” said Ray promptly. “He says he’ll give us a ride from Boyce, and that’s only two miles. I looked on the map.”

  “We can walk two miles,” said Robbie.

  “I meant, how are you going to get out of here?” Molly said.

  “Dad’s out back, right?” said Ray, with the air of someone who had done research.

  “And Mom’s shopping,” said Robbie. “So, easy—” He opened the front door with a flourish. And then shut it quickly. “Fritz.”

  “Are the kids out there, too?” asked Ray, exasperated.

  “Yup,” said Miri. “And you know how much they like to tell on people.”

  Ray and Robbie looked at each other bitterly. “And Dad’s in the back,” muttered Ray. “We’re prisoners in our own house.”

  “This is totally not fair!” said Robbie. “This is nuts!” He paced the hallway like a tiger in a cage.

  Miri and Molly looked at each other and edged toward the kitchen. They didn’t want to be around when he blew his top. He usually threw things.

  But as they settled back to work, they heard, not an explosion, but a laugh. “Sweet!” exclaimed Ray.

  There was a pause, and then they heard Robbie say, very softly, “Bye.”

  What? Molly and Miri turned to look at each other. Bye? “Guys?” called Miri. From the front hall came silence.

  Suddenly, Molly shoved back her chair. “Guys!” she yelled, running, “Guys! Ray! Robbie! Oh nonono! Miri!”

  But Miri was already at her side. Together, their hearts like lead, they stared at the gaping hole in the side of the living room. Where the plastic tarp had been shoved aside, they could see out into the bright golden trees and the wheeling blackberry bushes. They could hear the buzz of their father’s drill and the efficient snap of Fritz’s clippers. For a moment, the two girls looked at their simple, normal, beautiful world.

  And then they climbed up on the jagged edge of the wall and jumped out of it.

  Chapter 11

  “They must have noticed something,” said Molly, crunching over fallen leaves.

  Miri nodded. It seemed impossible that her brothers could have traveled so far into the woods without noticing the complete lack of neighbors and cars and houses. Or the number of trees that would have had to spring up overnight to account for the thick forest they were moving through. Or the eerie silence that hung over everything. But what she said was, “They don’t pay attention to how things look.”

  “They’re morons,” muttered Molly.

  Miri nodded again. They were morons. They paid no attention. They goofed around, they didn’t do their homework, they galloped around battlefields thinking it was a video game. They lied, they teased, they yelled, they tiptoed into the kitchen on their gigantic feet, sprigs of hair bursting from under their caps, their eyes shining. “We got you guys something,” whispered Robbie, his hands cupped carefully around the dirtiest T-shirt in the world. “A present. Because of yesterday.” Miri’s heart tightened. And Robbie again, his blue eyes huge in the dim light. “I don’t see how they could do it,” he was saying. “Fight like that, I mean. I couldn’t.” He couldn’t. She had to save him. Both of them.

  But how? Where could they be? At the bottom of the long, sloping field in front of the 1860s version of their house, the two girls had paused and, in order to choose their direction, tried to think like Ray and Robbie. After a few moments, they’d concluded that choosing randomly would be the same as thinking like their brothers, and they’d turned left. Since then, they’d trudged through a long, monotonous series of fields and woods, all of them the same brownish-green color in the smoke-smelling afternoon. Miri shivered, only partly from the chilly breeze. Where were they? What could have happened to them?

  Molly stopped. “We should have found them by now.”

  Miri hadn’t wanted to say it. She surveyed the trees, bushes, and weeds around her. They looked like all the other trees, bushes, and weeds she’d seen in the past two hours. “You don’t think—I mean, they couldn’t have, but—you don’t think they could’ve run into an actual battle, do you?”

  “If there were a battle close enough for them to have run into, I think we would have heard it,” Molly said at once, and Miri could tell that she had been worrying about the same thing. “Remember how loud it was?”

  Miri nodded, listening to the silence. “Yeah. I guess we just keep going.”

  They hiked on, more anxious than ever. Trees, a creek, a rolling field. More trees. A fence. Trees, trees, trees, a rolling field. Trees. A fence with a rolling field on the other side—

  Suddenly, Molly’s hand gripped Miri’s arm. Beyond the fence, at end of the field, was a man on horseback. He hadn’t seen them. His back was toward them, and he made no movement. He was simply sitting in the saddle, looking into the woods.

  “Should we ask if he’s seen them?” murmured Miri.

  “Wait a sec,” Molly breathed.

  Miri craned her neck, straining to get a better glimpse through her glasses. There was a slight creak as the man shifted a little in the saddle, and as he did, Miri saw the long shape of a gun lying across his lap. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

  “Listen,” whispered Molly at the same moment.

  Miri listened. The light breeze, which had brought the creak of the man’s saddle to her ears, carried the rattle of leaves and the patient wuffle of the horse’s breath. Then she heard a faint “Shut up!”

  The man had heard it, too.
He straightened and raised his rifle in one smooth movement.

  “I wanna eat eat eat—” bellowed Ray, backing out of the trees at a run.

  “Monkey foooood!” chorused Robbie, loping after him. “I wanna eat—” He stopped, his face brightening at the sight of the man on horseback. “Hi! Hey! Good! Are we there? We’re so dang lost, man!”

  Ray turned, tripping over his own legs as he did so. “Cool dude! You got a gun! Whoa!” The horse whinnied in alarm as the boys gangled toward her. “Where’d you get the horse? They didn’t give us a horse. Where’s Mr. Emory?”

  “We’re with him. Mr. Emory,” said Robbie, gazing up at the man in the saddle.

  The man laughed, high and excited, and Miri’s mouth went dry. She’d know that laugh anywhere.

  “No,” she moaned under her breath. “Not Carter.”

  Run away, her mind pleaded. Run, run, run, NOW. But her brothers stood trustingly beside Carter’s horse.

  Molly gripped Miri’s arm with white knuckles. “We could charge him,” she whispered. “We’ll run right at him and scream, and maybe the horse will shy—” She started forward.

  “No!” Miri yanked her back. “He’s got a gun! He’ll shoot us for sure—you know he will!”

  Carter was still laughing. “Union’s pretty hard up, I guess, drafting nits like you. We’ll win this war yet.”

  “What?” said Robbie. As usual, he didn’t wait for an answer. “You seen Mr. Emory?”

  “You’re with General Emory?” Carter’s voice rose. “Why, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day. And would you look at that!” He craned his head forward. “A matched set! I’ll be damned! Congratulations, boys. You are the answer to my prayers—or you would be, if I prayed. Two prisoners of war, matched and made to order, to replace the ones I mislaid yesterday! Ha!” He cackled gleefully, and Miri and Molly looked at each other, shaken. Replacement prisoners? Their own brothers were replacements for Jamie and his uncle? “Now,” Carter was saying, “are you two going to come along easy or are you going to put up a fight?”

  “Where are we going?” demanded Ray. “We’re supposed to get a ride with Mr. Emory.”

  “Shut up, boy,” said Carter irritably. “You talk too much. Move. Ahead of me.”

  Miri tensed. She knew what was coming. Dozens—possibly hundreds—of safety lectures had pounded in one simple message: Never, ever go anywhere with a stranger. Her brothers were about to put their training into action. Don’t, she begged them silently.

  But they did. Ray straightened and took a step backward. “No, thanks,” he said, as recommended. “We’ll stick to our own plan.”

  “What?” Carter said in disbelief.

  Robbie moved to stand alongside his brother. “We’ll be going now,” he said in the deepest voice he could manage.

  Carter leaned down from his saddle and cracked Robbie across the face with the butt of his rifle, sending him sprawling in the grass.

  “Hey!” yelled Ray, backing away. “What the heck are you doing, man? Oh! Whoa! You’re not supposed to do that!” He knelt beside his brother and then looked up at Carter in horror. “That’s blood!”

  “My God!” roared Carter. “Why is it my fate to encounter imbeciles? What have I done to you, Lord, that you should serve me this way? Get up, you wretched clot, and get the other on his feet, and march. You are a prisoner of war! Get up, or I’ll whip you down the road before me like a mule. Get up!”

  Ray’s eyes were wide as he helped Robbie to his feet. Dazed, Robbie took a wheeling step and fell again. Once more, Ray heaved him up until they both stood, unsteadily, before Carter.

  Miri’s hand went to her mouth and Molly’s did the same. Robbie’s face was streaming blood.

  “Through the gate,” ordered Carter.

  “But he can’t,” stammered Ray. “Walk, I mean. Not yet, anyway. Look at—”

  Carter lifted his rifle and took aim at Ray’s face. Miri and Molly clutched at each other helplessly, not breathing. For a long moment, no one moved. Then Ray grabbed Robbie by the arm, turned him around, and propelled him into a staggering step toward the gate. “It’s another miracle cure,” Carter said sourly and nudged his horse forward.

  The two girls followed. At first, they attempted to move without making a sound, but that proved both impossible and time-consuming, and they nearly lost sight of the threesome ahead of them. Pretty soon, they decided to give up on silence and concentrate on speed. No one gave any sign of noticing. Carter, on horseback, demanded that the boys keep up with his pace, and they struggled to obey. Trailing fifty feet behind, Miri saw Ray wrap his arm around Robbie to hold him upright, a gesture so unthinkably unlike him that it scared her more than anything that had happened yet.

  Stay alive, stay alive, she ordered them. She had used the same words the day before, commanding Jamie to live. And see, she encouraged herself, that had worked out. Yeah, right. It hadn’t worked out very well for Ray and Robbie. Ugh. Don’t think about that. Think about getting Robbie and Ray away from Carter. She reviewed the possibilities. They could attack. Surely, the four of them—but no, that was ridiculous. Carter had a gun and a horse. Plus, she thought, remembering his steel-trap fingers, he was probably stronger than the four of them put together. And if he caught sight of Miri or Molly, he’d be more than happy to shoot them as payback for the day before.

  “We could throw a rock at him,” Molly said under her breath.

  “We’d have to bean him,” Miri muttered, “and if we missed, he’d know we were here.” No, attack was out. They’d have to outwit him. When they got wherever it was they were going, Miri and Molly would—what? Do something. Miri tried to think of a plan and came up blank. Maybe Molly would think of something. Maybe some big Yankee with a gun would rescue them. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but follow and hope that they wouldn’t be discovered. And hope that Robbie was okay. And hope that they’d be able to get back to the house and the twenty-first century again. And hope that they wouldn’t run into some battle on the way. Hope’s cheap, commented her brain. And guess why? Because it’s not worth anything. Who asked you? she retorted.

  Chapter 12

  Some hours later, the girls were crouched in the shadow of a small wooden structure—an outhouse, from the smell of it—taking turns peering at a patch of lumpy grass in the distance.

  Robbie was lying on it. They knew this because they could see one of his shoulders and the top of his head. The rest of him, all of Ray, and most important, the whereabouts of Carter, were blocked by the corner of a big white house jutting into their view.

  Robbie was lying very still.

  “Probably he’s just resting,” Miri whispered for the sixth time.

  “But where’s Ray?” hissed Molly. Miri stretched her head as far forward as she dared and got a glimpse of Robbie’s other shoulder. “You think they took him someplace?”

  Miri could only shake her head. There was no way to know. After the torturous walk, they’d been relieved to see the fields give way to a wide road and then a house or two. A short time later, Carter directed his prisoners toward something that looked almost like a village—a few buildings clumped together—and then turned them down a dirt lane leading to the big white house. Miri and Molly had ducked from tree to tree to outhouse, keeping their brothers in sight until they saw Carter pull his horse to a halt and dismount. At that, they, too, came to halt, stuck at the back of the outhouse as first Carter and then Ray disappeared from view around the white corner. After a moment, Robbie lay down on the ground. That was all, for a long time. So Miri and Molly waited, twitching at every sound, peering at Robbie’s head, telling each other he was okay, and trying to make a plan.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s just resting,” said Miri worriedly.

  “This is crazy,” muttered Molly. “We should just go get him. I’m going to go get him.” She started forward—and jumped back again as Carter’s enormous figure appeared beside Robbie, prodding him with his boot.
/>   Robbie didn’t move.

  Carter frowned, considered, and then kicked him in the ribs. Robbie groaned and curled into a ball. Carter looked up, toward the house. “He’s alive!” he called. “So that’s two!” He walked jauntily away.

  Two prisoners. Two replacements for Jamie and his uncle. Miri felt slightly sick. She and Molly had made this happen or, at least, allowed it to happen. To think that she had been so proud the night before that she had saved Jamie. She hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what the older man had said—“You can get yourself some other boys, easy.” That was what Carter had done: He’d gotten her brothers. Easy. And if it hadn’t been them, she reminded herself, it would have been someone else’s brothers.

  “We did this,” she muttered to Molly.

  “I know we did,” Molly said. “And now we have to undo it.”

  We have to undo it. But how? Okay, Miri told herself, the good news is that we know Robbie’s alive. But what about Ray? And where are they going to be taken? We should just go for it, she decided. We should stop waffling and go for it. And then Carter will kill us. Okay, we’ll wait, she decided. We’ll wait and see what happens. But they might take the guys somewhere we can’t get them. We should go for it, she decided. But Carter. But—

  “Mir?” Molly interrupted her thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Look at the house.”

  “The house?” Who cared about the house?

  “Yeah, the house,” whispered Molly. “And look up the road that way.” She pointed. “Does it look familiar?”

  Impatiently, Miri turned to glance at the house. White, columns, long windows, big. So what? The road. Church, some kind of barn, store, house, big deal.

  Wait. Miri squinted at the church. White. A bowl-shaped dome thing on top. A cemetery in the back. She swung quickly back to the house. Long windows with fans of glass at the top. Lots of low buildings behind. A wide front yard.

  “Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “It’s Paxton.”

  In their own time, Paxton was a small, tired town featuring the usual assortment of fast-food restaurants, church thrift shops, insurance offices, grocery stores, and an out-of-place organic herbalist. But on a sign at the edge of town, it called itself PAXTON, DREAM OF THE OLD DOMINION, which meant it had been around for a long time. Every fifth grader within forty miles had to go on a field trip to view the historic sights of Paxton, consisting of a well, a piece of a jail, a church, and the Buckley House. At the Buckley House, nice ladies in hoopskirts showed them shiny old furniture, so it was generally considered to be the winner of the Field Trip Boredom Sweepstakes. In Miri and Molly’s year, a kid on his second round of fifth grade and therefore his second round of the historic sights of Paxton, had tried to set the house afire. While this had added some temporary zest to the field trip, the ensuing teacher/policeman/firefighter frenzy had lasted all afternoon, giving Miri and Molly’s class what their teacher later called a priceless opportunity to become experts in the architecture of the Buckley House.