Five Children on the Western Front

by Kate Saunders

  ‘My dear Edie, you really must learn to stand up to this Agnes Foster, who sounds like a very nasty little girl. Couldn’t you ask Miss Poole to seat you somewhere else during silent sewing hour?’

  Edie found the old, soft baby’s hairbrush, and spent ages carefully brushing the Psammead’s fur.

  ‘It feels so soothing,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes, when the wind is in the right direction, I even think I feel a little spark of magic coming back to me.’

  Edie was the first to notice that something was wrong.

  The Psammead had bad dreams. He would thrash about until the floorboards around his bath were covered with sand, then Edie had to snatch the dustpan and brush while Mrs Field wasn’t looking, and sweep it all up and put it back in the bath.

  ‘I think there’s something on his mind,’ she told Anthea. ‘Not just that he can’t get home. He won’t tell me what the dreams are about, but I hear him shouting things – yesterday it was, “You shall all DIE at sunset!”’

  The others, even Anthea, thought this was funny, and whispered it to each other during dinner.

  But they weren’t laughing for long.

  ‘It can’t go on, that’s all,’ the Lamb said.

  Anthea frowned anxiously. ‘I don’t understand. This never used to happen in the old days.’

  ‘Rather not,’ Jane said. ‘In the old days, the Psammead had enough magic to keep himself hidden. I can’t think why he keeps popping out like this, but the Lamb’s quite right – we have to stop it.’

  Jane, Anthea, the Lamb and Edie were having a crisis meeting in the dining room. It was early December, and they were also making paper chains for Christmas. Mother and Father were in London at the theatre, and wouldn’t be back until the last train. Mr and Mrs Field had gone to bed and it was Lizzie the maid’s evening out. It was safe to talk about the Psammead.

  ‘But he can’t help it,’ Edie said firmly. ‘He says it just happens. So we couldn’t stop him, anyway.’

  ‘He seems to have lost the power to stay invisible,’ Jane said. ‘Or even to stay safely in one place. What on earth will we do if we can’t keep him hidden?’

  Jane was the first victim. She was cycling to school along a country lane, when the Psammead suddenly appeared in the basket of her bicycle.

  ‘I got the shock of my life,’ she told them all later. ‘I near as anything crashed into the hedge – and then he woke up and disappeared. Just WHAT is he playing at?’

  The following day, during a Latin lesson, Winterbum nudged the Lamb and whispered, ‘I swear your desk moved!’

  The Lamb opened the lid of his desk, and to his incredible horror, found the furry form of the Psammead snoring gently with his head resting on a pile of inky books. He prodded the creature awake with the end of his pencil, and got into trouble when the Psammead shouted, ‘OW – get off, horrid boy!’

  ‘Winterbum thought it was me fooling about,’ the Lamb said later. ‘So did Mr MacTavish. The only reason I didn’t get detention was because he taught Squirrel, and I’m the hero’s brother.’

  The day after that, Anthea nearly screamed aloud when the sleeping Psammead turned up under a pile of bandages at her first-aid class. Each time he appeared, the Psammead vanished the minute he woke up. He was always dismayed, and always promised never to do it again.

  But this morning, just when they were beginning to think the appearances had stopped, they received two urgent letters from the boys.

  ‘Dear Girls and Lamb – SOS!!!’ Cyril scribbled from France. ‘I was in the middle of inspecting an ammunition dump last night when I found SAMMY snoozing inside a box of shells! For the love of Mike, keep him away from the war!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Robert wrote crossly from Cambridge. ‘Do you lot have any idea what you-know-who gets up to while you’re looking the other way? I took the cover off a dish during dinner in hall – and practically had a heart attack when I found a rather grubby sand fairy comfortably draped around a plate of pork and greens! It’s only the sheerest luck that he disappeared before the other chaps saw him. Tell him to expect a piece of my mind when I get home.’

  ‘Bobs thinks it’s our fault,’ the Lamb said. ‘As if we knew how to send him anywhere.’

  ‘I vote we dig up the Psammead and read him the Riot Act,’ Jane said. ‘He has simply got to understand that we can’t look after him unless he stays out of sight.’

  ‘You mustn’t be mean to him,’ Edie said firmly. ‘Whatever’s going on, I know he can’t help it. And I know he’s as worried about it as we are.’

  ‘You spend the most time with the Psammead – I’ve often wondered what you two talk about,’ Anthea said.

  ‘He does most of the talking,’ Edie said. ‘He likes to tell rather rambling stories, and I can’t always hear them because only his mouth and eyes are sticking out of the sand. They’re mostly about emperors I’ve never heard of. And earthquakes and fires. And I think he’s worried about something.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ the Lamb said. ‘He’s worried about getting home.’

  ‘I think it’s more than that. I think he has a dark secret.’

  ‘What sort of secret?’ Anthea asked.

  Edie’s cheeks turned hot; she wasn’t used to everyone staring at her and waiting to hear what she had to say. ‘Yesterday, when I went to see him, he was muttering about “hiding from the great justice”.’

  ‘Did you ask him about it?’

  ‘Yes – but he got rather shifty and pretended he hadn’t said it.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a criminal on the run,’ the Lamb suggested.

  ‘Oh, Lamb – I’m sure he’s not a criminal. Oh, dear!’ Anthea looked at the others helplessly.

  ‘Right.’ Jane stood up. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this before Mother and Father come back. We can’t put it off any longer – there’s no knowing where he’ll turn up next.’

  ‘Bring the dear old thing down here,’ Anthea said. ‘The attic’s freezing, and we’ll have plenty of warning if anyone comes in.’

  Ten minutes later, the Psammead was sitting in the middle of the dining-room table, in a nest of coloured paper chains. ‘I distinctly told you not to disturb me unless the German tribes invaded. Since they clearly haven’t, will one of you kindly explain why you’ve dragged me out of bed?’

  They were all uneasy; he was such a touchy creature, and nobody wanted to be the one to offend him.

  ‘Show him those letters from Squirrel and Bobs,’ the Lamb muttered.

  ‘Oh dear,’ the Psammead said. ‘Do I take it that I wasn’t dreaming when I visited your brothers?’

  ‘I’m afraid they both saw you,’ Anthea said as gently as she could. ‘You didn’t do any harm – but you really, really mustn’t do anything like that again.’

  ‘You can’t trust most humans not to treat you like an animal,’ Jane pointed out. ‘We’ve already rescued you from a pet shop – next time it might be a zoo, and that’d be a lot trickier.’

  ‘We’d have to break in at night.’ The Lamb brightened, rather liking the idea.

  ‘Oh – please do be careful.’ Edie dreaded the Psammead falling into the hands of people who wouldn’t understand him. ‘If anything happened to you, I just couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Look here,’ Jane said briskly, ‘when you came last time, you definitely had the power to keep yourself out of sight. We were the only ones who could see you.’

  The Psammead’s whiskers drooped and his telescope eyes retreated into his head. ‘I simply don’t have the magic. When I first woke up here, I assumed I’d somehow lost my magic by mistake. But the truth is far more awful – I think it has been CONFISCATED.’

  ‘What?’ Edie asked.

  ‘It means taken away by some higher power,’ the Lamb said. ‘Like when Mr MacTavish confiscated my champion conker.’

  ‘But – I’m terribly sorry, dear old Psammead – I just don’t understand.’ Anthea made her voice as gentle as she could, seeing that the sand fairy was w
orking himself towards an agitated huff. ‘What higher power? And why would it do such a thing?’

  ‘Maybe you committed a crime,’ suggested the Lamb.

  The Psammead’s whiskers bristled crossly. ‘I’m not a criminal – it’s all a misunderstanding. But I can’t get home until I make a formal appeal to – to – well, whatever this higher power is that’s keeping me here. Don’t ask me what higher power, or why it sent me here. The war came or maybe the earth’s crust broke.’

  There was a silence, and the children looked at each other uncertainly.

  ‘The universe seems to have a message for me,’ the Psammead said. ‘You must bring me all the ancient stones and carvings you can find lying around the house – nothing on parchment or paper, as that will be too modern. I need to study them carefully.’

  ‘We don’t have things like that here,’ Edie said. ‘They’re all shut up inside museums.’

  ‘Then you must take me to a museum.’

  ‘You know we can’t do that.’

  ‘Actually, I think we can,’ Anthea said. Her face lit up and she looked like a gleeful little girl. ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea. Father wants us to visit Old Nurse before Christmas, doesn’t he?’ Old Nurse still had her lodging house in Bloomsbury, where they’d stayed nine years ago. ‘She lives practically opposite the British Museum, which is stuffed with ancient things. We could take the Psammead with us and kill two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Kill birds?’ the Psammead echoed. ‘Do you mean – sacrifice them to the gods?’

  ‘No, no – it’s just an expression.’ Anthea made a warning face at the Lamb, who was snorting with laughter. ‘And if we go to Old Nurse’s, we should think about talking to the Professor. If anyone knows about the ancient past, it’s dear old Jimmy. Let’s do it this Saturday.’

  Five

  AN OLD ENEMY AND A NEW FRIEND

  ‘I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY, this carrier has definitely SHRUNK.’ The Psammead’s voice floated out of the folds of Edie’s school coat, the only one with enough room underneath to carry him in his home-made sling. ‘It’s so tight round my waist I can hardly breathe!’

  It was a raw December afternoon, and nearly closing time at the British Museum. Anthea, Jane, Edie and the Lamb had been there for nearly three hours, searching for anything that might give a clue as to why the Psammead couldn’t get to his mysterious home. They stopped at the top of a dingy staircase, outside yet another gallery filled with things from the ancient world.

  ‘Shhhh!’ Jane hissed. ‘For the last time, keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘He has to talk a bit,’ Edie pointed out, ‘to tell us where to take him. We don’t know which part of history he comes from.’

  Edie had been carrying the Psammead all day – on the train, in the ladies cloakroom at the station, in the park where they’d eaten their sandwiches – and his weight was starting to make her back ache, but she continued to patiently lug him through gallery after gallery. And every time, all he’d said was, ‘Too modern! Far too modern!’

  ‘How can ancient Egypt be too modern?’ the Lamb wanted to know. ‘History doesn’t go back any further than that.’

  ‘Of course it goes further back!’ The Psammead shot an indignant eye out of Edie’s top buttonhole. ‘The Egyptians were newcomers!’

  ‘I think my feet are about to fall off,’ Anthea said. She was carrying a heavy basket with the remains of their lunch and a box of jasmine soap that Mother had sent for Old Nurse (the Lamb would never understand as long as he lived why old ladies actually liked being given soap). ‘We must’ve walked for miles, and seen every lump of stone in the world. Psammead, dear, can’t we stop now?’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ the Lamb said. ‘Those sandwiches were hours ago – I’m famished. And I bet Old Nurse has made a cake.’ They had arranged to visit Old Nurse straight after the museum.

  The Psammead huffed crossly. ‘Selfish boy – I’m searching for a message from the cosmos, and all you can think about is your stomach!’

  ‘He’s not selfish,’ Anthea said, whispering and doing her best to keep her patience. ‘And you might be more considerate to poor little Edie, who’s absolutely worn out.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Edie said loyally. ‘But it’s hard to find what you’re looking for when you don’t even know yourself. And you haven’t recognised anything yet – unless you count that statue of the Roman emperor who still owes you money.’

  ‘I told you,’ the Psammead said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it. Where are we now?’

  Jane read the notice above the door: ‘Artefacts of the Ancient Near East’.

  ‘Hmmm, that sounds promising – take me in.’

  They all rolled their eyes at each other wearily.

  ‘Well, all right,’ Anthea said, ‘but this is the last one for today.’

  Trying to look as casual as possible, the four of them strolled into the gallery. They made an odd group, huddling around the small and strangely blob-like figure of Edie. This gallery was a long, gloomy room, lit by flares of gaslight high up on the walls. The glass cases were filled with ancient statues and carvings.

  ‘More dusty old rocks,’ Edie muttered. ‘Don’t poke your head out – we’re not alone.’

  There was one other person in this obscure and dusty gallery – a young soldier in a private’s uniform. He glanced up when they all came in, but was now busy sketching something in one of the glass cases.

  ‘What a nuisance.’ The Psammead’s voice floated up sourly. ‘Tell whoever it is to clear off.’

  ‘We’ll do nothing of the kind,’ Anthea whispered, with the first hint of sharpness. ‘This museum’s open to everyone, and he has as much right to be here as you do.’

  ‘Probably more,’ the Lamb whispered, ‘because he’s a soldier and there’s a war on.’

  ‘All right! Walk me round these glass cases and get as close as you can.’

  Once again they began the slow shuffle past the exhibits.

  ‘YOU!’ the Psammead gasped suddenly.

  ‘You’ve seen something!’ Edie forgot to whisper. ‘You’re trembling!’

  ‘Enheduanna!’ groaned the Psammead. ‘Am I never to be free?’

  ‘What do you mean? Where is it?’

  ‘Far, far away, on the banks of the Euphrates—’

  The Lamb bent down to read the printed notice. ‘The things in this case are from the Akkadian Empire, twenty-fourth century BC – crikey, did the world even exist that long ago?’

  ‘Ow!’ Edie yelped. ‘Keep still!’

  There was a loud ripping sound and before anyone had time to do anything the Psammead suddenly dropped onto the polished floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Frozen with horror, the four of them watched him scuttling like a fat, furry spider across the floor to the glass case.

  Edie hurried after him. ‘Come back!’

  It was too late.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ the young soldier said. ‘You can’t bring animals in here – blimey, what IS that?’

  He dropped his sketchbook on a nearby bench and came to stare at the Psammead. He was a very nice-looking young man with a friendly face and bright blue eyes, and Edie was glad to see that he wasn’t frightened or angry – in fact, he seemed fascinated.

  ‘Blimey!’ he said again.

  ‘I TOLD you my carrier was too tight,’ snapped the Psammead. ‘And by the way, young man, I am NOT an animal.’

  The soldier’s face was a study of astonishment as he turned pale and his mouth fell open.

  There was a long, dreadful silence. Was this the end of keeping their sand fairy secret? Would this soldier call the museum guards and the police?

  ‘It spoke!’ the soldier whispered. ‘Am I going barmy?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the Psammead said. ‘You’re extremely fortunate – very few people have seen an authentic sand fairy. If everything was in its right place, you’d be bowing and worshipping me.’

  ‘Sorry, chum.’ The soldie
r grinned suddenly. ‘I’ve never heard of sand fairies, and I’m not the worshipping type.’

  The Psammead shot out his eyes and took a good look at the young man. ‘I see that you wear the uniform of a common soldier, and you speak with the common accent of an underling. I’ve no idea why the universe has introduced us.’

  ‘I’m no underling, chum. And I’m proud to wear the uniform of a common soldier.’

  ‘Please,’ Anthea whispered, her face as red as a brick, ‘please don’t mind him – he doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘He can be quite rude sometimes,’ the Lamb said. ‘But only because his brain’s sort of stuck thousands of years in the past.’

  ‘Let me introduce myself to this warrior slave,’ the Psammead said grandly. ‘I am the Psammead – spelled P.S.A.M.M.E.A.D.’

  The young soldier stopped looking at Anthea and chuckled. ‘You’re a proper caution, whatever you are. I’d pay good money to see something like you in a music hall.’

  ‘Now, who are you? Do you have a name – or perhaps a slave number?’

  ‘He’s not a slave!’ the Lamb hissed.

  The young soldier was laughing now, not at all offended but gazing at the Psammead with such delight that it made him look hardly older than the Lamb. ‘I’ll give you my name, rank and serial number – Private Haywood E., 2646388. You can call me Ernie. Blimey – if the other fellows in my hut could see me now! They think I’m crazy for spending my weekend leave in a museum.’

  Far away, deep in the bowels of the great building, a bell rang.

  ‘Closing time,’ Jane said. ‘We’re miles from the main door. We’d better hurry – Edie, can you get the Psammead back into his carrier?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Edie opened her coat; the carrier Anthea and Jane had stitched all those years ago was now nothing but a few faded rags. ‘He’s broken it. Now what do we do?’