The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  This is what the voice said. I think it must have meant Napoleon by the small man, the conqueror. Because I know I have been told that he took an army to Egypt, and that afterwards a lot of wise people went grubbing in the sand, and fished up all sorts of wonderful things, older than you would think possible. And of these I believe this charm to have been one, and the most wonderful one of all.

  Everyone listened: and everyone tried to think. It is not easy to do this clearly when you have been listening to the kind of talk I have told you about.

  At last Robert said—

  ‘Can you take us into the Past—to the shrine where you and the other thing were together. If you could take us there, we might find the other part still there after all these thousands of years.’

  ‘Still there? silly!’ said Cyril. ‘Don’t you see, if we go back into the Past it won’t be thousands of years ago. It will be now for us—won’t it?’ He appealed to the Psammead, who said—

  ‘You’re not so far off the idea as you usually are!’

  ‘Well,’ said Anthea, ‘will you take us back to when there was a shrine and you were safe in it—all of you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘You must hold me up, and speak the word of power, and one by one, beginning with the first-born, you shall pass through me into the Past. But let the last that passes be the one that holds me, and let him not lose his hold, lest you lose me, and so remain in the Past for ever.’

  ‘That’s a nasty idea,’ said Robert.

  ‘When you desire to return,’ the beautiful voice went on, ‘hold me up towards the East, and speak the word. Then, passing through me, you shall return to this time and it shall be the present to you.’

  ‘But how—’ A bell rang loudly.

  ‘Oh crikey!’ exclaimed Robert, ‘that’s tea! Will you please make it proper daylight again so that we can go down. And thank you so much for all your kindness.’

  ‘We’ve enjoyed ourselves very much indeed, thank you!’ added Anthea politely.

  The beautiful light faded slowly. The great darkness and silence came and these suddenly changed to the dazzlement of day and the great soft, rustling sound of London, that is like some vast beast turning over in its sleep.

  The children rubbed their eyes, the Psammead ran quickly to its sandy bath, and the others went down to tea. And until the cups were actually filled tea seemed less real than the beautiful voice and the greeny light.

  After tea Anthea persuaded the others to allow her to hang the charm round her neck with a piece of string.

  ‘It would be so awful if it got lost,’ she said: ‘it might get lost anywhere, you know, and it would be rather beastly for us to have to stay in the Past for ever and ever, wouldn’t it?’

  CHAPTER 4

  EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGO

  Next morning Anthea got old Nurse to allow her to take up the ‘poor learned gentleman’s’ breakfast. He did not recognize her at first, but when he did he was vaguely pleased to see her.

  ‘You see I’m wearing the charm round my neck,’ she said; ‘I’m taking care of it—like you told us to.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said he; ‘did you have a good game last night?’

  ‘You will eat your breakfast before it’s cold, won’t you?’ said Anthea. ‘Yes, we had a splendid time. The charm made it all dark, and then greeny light, and then it spoke. Oh! I wish you could have heard it—it was such a darling voice—and it told us the other half of it was lost in the Past, so of course we shall have to look for it there!’

  The learned gentleman rubbed his hair with both hands and looked anxiously at Anthea.

  ‘I suppose it’s natural—youthful imagination and so forth,’ he said. ‘Yet someone must have… Who told you that some part of the charm was missing?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘I know it seems most awfully rude, especially after being so kind about telling us the name of power, and all that, but really, I’m not allowed to tell anybody anything about the—the—the person who told me. You won’t forget your breakfast, will you?’

  The learned gentleman smiled feebly and then frowned—not a cross-frown, but a puzzle-frown.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I shall always be pleased if you’ll look in—any time you’re passing you know—at least…’

  ‘I will,’ she said; ‘goodbye. I’ll always tell you anything I may tell.’

  He had not had many adventures with children in them, and he wondered whether all children were like these. He spent quite five minutes in wondering before he settled down to the fifty-second chapter of his great book on ‘The Secret Rites of the Priests of Amen Ra.’

  It is no use to pretend that the children did not feel a good deal of agitation at the thought of going through the charm into the Past. That idea, that perhaps they might stay in the Past and never get back again, was anything but pleasing. Yet no one would have dared to suggest that the charm should not be used; and though each was in its heart very frightened indeed, they would all have joined in jeering at the cowardice of any one of them who should have uttered the timid but natural suggestion, ‘Don’t let’s!’

  It seemed necessary to make arrangements for being out all day, for there was no reason to suppose that the sound of the dinner-bell would be able to reach back into the Past, and it seemed unwise to excite old Nurse’s curiosity when nothing they could say—not even the truth—could in any way satisfy it. They were all very proud to think how well they had understood what the charm and the Psammead had said about Time and Space and things like that, and they were perfectly certain that it would be quite impossible to make old Nurse understand a single word of it. So they merely asked her to let them take their dinner out into Regent’s Park—and this, with the implied cold mutton and tomatoes, was readily granted.

  ‘You can get yourselves some buns or sponge-cakes, or whatever you fancy-like,’ said old Nurse, giving Cyril a shilling. ‘Don’t go getting jam-tarts, now—so messy at the best of times, and without forks and plates ruination to your clothes, besides your not being able to wash your hands and faces afterwards.’

  So Cyril took the shilling, and they all started off. They went round by the Tottenham Court Road to buy a piece of waterproof sheeting to put over the Psammead in case it should be raining in the Past when they got there. For it is almost certain death to a Psammead to get wet.

  The sun was shining very brightly, and even London looked pretty. Women were selling roses from big baskets-full, and Anthea bought four roses, one each, for herself and the others. They were red roses and smelt of summer—the kind of roses you always want so desperately at about Christmas-time when you can only get mistletoe, which is pale right through to its very scent, and holly which pricks your nose if you try to smell it. So now everyone had a rose in its buttonhole, and soon everyone was sitting on the grass in Regent’s Park under trees whose leaves would have been clean, clear green in the country, but here were dusty and yellowish, and brown at the edges.

  ‘We’ve got to go on with it,’ said Anthea, ‘and as the eldest has to go first, you’ll have to be last, Jane. You quite understand about holding on to the charm as you go through, don’t you, Pussy?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t got to be last,’ said Jane.

  ‘You shall carry the Psammead if you like,’ said Anthea. ‘That is,’ she added, remembering the beast’s queer temper, ‘if it’ll let you.’

  The Psammead, however, was unexpectedly amiable.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ it said, ‘who carries me, so long as it doesn’t drop me. I can’t bear being dropped.’

  Jane with trembling hands took the Psammead and its fish-basket under one arm. The charm’s long string was hung round her neck. Then they all stood up. Jane held out the charm at arm’s length, and Cyril solemnly pronounced the word of power.

 
As he spoke it the charm grew tall and broad, and he saw that Jane was just holding on to the edge of a great red arch of very curious shape. The opening of the arch was small, but Cyril saw that he could go through it. All round and beyond the arch were the faded trees and trampled grass of Regent’s Park, where the little ragged children were playing Ring-o’-Roses. But through the opening of it shone a blaze of blue and yellow and red. Cyril drew a long breath and stiffened his legs so that the others should not see that his knees were trembling and almost knocking together. ‘Here goes!’ he said, and, stepping up through the arch, disappeared. Then followed Anthea. Robert, coming next, held fast, at Anthea’s suggestion, to the sleeve of Jane, who was thus dragged safely through the arch. And as soon as they were on the other side of the arch there was no more arch at all and no more Regent’s Park either, only the charm in Jane’s hand, and it was its proper size again. They were now in a light so bright that they winked and blinked and rubbed their eyes. During this dazzling interval Anthea felt for the charm and pushed it inside Jane’s frock, so that it might be quite safe. When their eyes got used to the new wonderful light the children looked around them. The sky was very, very blue, and it sparkled and glittered and dazzled like the sea at home when the sun shines on it.

  They were standing on a little clearing in a thick, low forest; there were trees and shrubs and a close, thorny, tangly undergrowth. In front of them stretched a bank of strange black mud, then came the browny-yellowy shining ribbon of a river. Then more dry, caked mud and more greeny-browny jungle. The only things that told that human people had been there were the clearing, a path that led to it, and an odd arrangement of cut reeds in the river.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Well!’ said Robert, ‘this is a change of air!’

  It was. The air was hotter than they could have imagined, even in London in August.

  ‘I wish I knew where we were,’ said Cyril.

  ‘Here’s a river, now—I wonder whether it’s the Amazon or the Tiber, or what.’

  ‘It’s the Nile,’ said the Psammead, looking out of the fish-bag.

  ‘Then this is Egypt,’ said Robert, who had once taken a geography prize.

  ‘I don’t see any crocodiles,’ Cyril objected. His prize had been for natural history.

  The Psammead reached out a hairy arm from its basket and pointed to a heap of mud at the edge of the water.

  ‘What do you call that?’ it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slid into the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from a bricklayer’s trowel.

  ‘Oh!’ said everybody.

  There was a crashing among the reeds on the other side of the water.

  ‘And there’s a river-horse!’ said the Psammead, as a great beast like an enormous slaty-blue slug showed itself against the black bank on the far side of the stream.

  ‘It’s a hippopotamus,’ said Cyril; ‘it seems much more real somehow than the one at the Zoo, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m glad it’s being real on the other side of the river,’ said Jane. And now there was a crackling of reeds and twigs behind them. This was horrible. Of course it might be another hippopotamus, or a crocodile, or a lion—or, in fact, almost anything.

  ‘Keep your hand on the charm, Jane,’ said Robert hastily. ‘We ought to have a means of escape handy. I’m dead certain this is the sort of place where simply anything might happen to us.’

  ‘I believe a hippopotamus is going to happen to us,’ said Jane—‘a very, very big one.’

  They had all turned to face the danger.

  ‘Don’t be silly little duffers,’ said the Psammead in its friendly, informal way; ‘it’s not a river-horse. It’s a human.’

  It was. It was a girl—of about Anthea’s age. Her hair was short and fair, and though her skin was tanned by the sun, you could see that it would have been fair too if it had had a chance. She had every chance of being tanned, for she had no clothes to speak of, and the four English children, carefully dressed in frocks, hats, shoes, stockings, coats, collars, and all the rest of it, envied her more than any words of theirs or of mine could possibly say. There was no doubt that here was the right costume for that climate.

  She carried a pot on her head, of red and black earthenware. She did not see the children, who shrank back against the edge of the jungle, and she went forward to the brink of the river to fill her pitcher. As she went she made a strange sort of droning, humming, melancholy noise all on two notes. Anthea could not help thinking that perhaps the girl thought this noise was singing.

  The girl filled the pitcher and set it down by the river bank. Then she waded into the water and stooped over the circle of cut reeds. She pulled half a dozen fine fish out of the water within the reeds, killing each as she took it out, and threading it on a long osier that she carried. Then she knotted the osier, hung it on her arm, picked up the pitcher, and turned to come back. And as she turned she saw the four children. The white dresses of Jane and Anthea stood out like snow against the dark forest background. She screamed and the pitcher fell, and the water was spilled out over the hard mud surface and over the fish, which had fallen too. Then the water slowly trickled away into the deep cracks.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ Anthea cried, ‘we won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said the girl.

  Now, once for all, I am not going to be bothered to tell you how it was that the girl could understand Anthea and Anthea could understand the girl. You, at any rate, would not understand me, if I tried to explain it, any more than you can understand about time and space being only forms of thought. You may think what you like. Perhaps the children had found out the universal language which everyone can understand, and which wise men so far have not found. You will have noticed long ago that they were singularly lucky children, and they may have had this piece of luck as well as others. Or it may have been that…but why pursue the question further? The fact remains that in all their adventures the muddle-headed inventions which we call foreign languages never bothered them in the least. They could always understand and be understood. If you can explain this, please do. I daresay I could understand your explanation, though you could never understand mine.

  So when the girl said, ‘Who are you?’ everyone understood at once, and Anthea replied—

  ‘We are children—just like you. Don’t be frightened. Won’t you show us where you live?’

  Jane put her face right into the Psammead’s basket, and burrowed her mouth into its fur to whisper—

  ‘Is it safe? Won’t they eat us? Are they cannibals?’

  The Psammead shrugged its fur.

  ‘Don’t make your voice buzz like that, it tickles my ears,’ it said rather crossly. ‘You can always get back to Regent’s Park in time if you keep fast hold of the charm,’ it said.

  The strange girl was trembling with fright.

  Anthea had a bangle on her arm. It was a sevenpenny-halfpenny trumpery thing that pretended to be silver; it had a glass heart of turquoise blue hanging from it, and it was the gift of the maid-of-all-work at the Fitzroy Street house. ‘Here,’ said Anthea, ‘this is for you. That is to show we will not hurt you. And if you take it I shall know that you won’t hurt us.’

  The girl held out her hand. Anthea slid the bangle over it, and the girl’s face lighted up with the joy of possession.

  ‘Come,’ she said, looking lovingly at the bangle; ‘it is peace between your house and mine.’

  She picked up her fish and pitcher and led the way up the narrow path by which she had come and the others followed.

  ‘This is something like!’ said Cyril, trying to be brave.

  ‘Yes!’ said Robert, also assuming a boldness he was far from feeling, ‘this really and truly is an adventure! Its being in the Past makes it quite different from the Phoenix and Ca
rpet happenings.’

  The belt of thick-growing acacia trees and shrubs—mostly prickly and unpleasant-looking—seemed about half a mile across. The path was narrow and the wood dark. At last, ahead, daylight shone through the boughs and leaves.

  The whole party suddenly came out of the wood’s shadow into the glare of the sunlight that shone on a great stretch of yellow sand, dotted with heaps of grey rocks where spiky cactus plants showed gaudy crimson and pink flowers among their shabby, sand-peppered leaves. Away to the right was something that looked like a grey-brown hedge, and from beyond it blue smoke went up to the bluer sky. And over all the sun shone till you could hardly bear your clothes.

  ‘That is where I live,’ said the girl pointing.

  ‘I won’t go,’ whispered Jane into the basket, ‘unless you say it’s all right.’

  The Psammead ought to have been touched by this proof of confidence. Perhaps, however, it looked upon it as a proof of doubt, for it merely snarled—

  ‘If you don’t go now I’ll never help you again.’

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Anthea, ‘dear Jane, don’t! Think of Father and Mother and all of us getting our heart’s desire. And we can go back any minute. Come on!’

  ‘Besides,’ said Cyril, in a low voice, ‘the Psammead must know there’s no danger or it wouldn’t go. It’s not so over and above brave itself. Come on!’