by E. Nesbit
CHAPTER 4. EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGO
Next morning Anthea got old Nurse to allow her to take up the 'poorlearned gentleman's' breakfast. He did not recognize her at first, butwhen he did he was vaguely pleased to see her.
'You see I'm wearing the charm round my neck,' she said; 'I'm takingcare 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 thengreeny light, and then it spoke. Oh! I wish you could have heard it--itwas such a darling voice--and it told us the other half of it was lostin the Past, so of course we shall have to look for it there!'
The learned gentleman rubbed his hair with both hands and lookedanxiously 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 wasmissing?'
'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, andall that, but really, I'm not allowed to tell anybody anything aboutthe--the--the person who told me. You won't forget your breakfast, willyou?'
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--anytime 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 wonderedwhether all children were like these. He spent quite five minutes inwondering before he settled down to the fifty-second chapter of hisgreat 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 ofagitation at the thought of going through the charm into the Past. Thatidea, 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 thatthe charm should not be used; and though each was in its heart veryfrightened indeed, they would all have joined in jeering at thecowardice of any one of them who should have uttered the timid butnatural suggestion, 'Don't let's!'
It seemed necessary to make arrangements for being out all day, forthere was no reason to suppose that the sound of the dinner-bell wouldbe able to reach back into the Past, and it seemed unwise to excite oldNurse's curiosity when nothing they could say--not even the truth--couldin any way satisfy it. They were all very proud to think how well theyhad understood what the charm and the Psammead had said about Time andSpace and things like that, and they were perfectly certain that itwould be quite impossible to make old Nurse understand a single wordof it. So they merely asked her to let them take their dinner out intoRegent's Park--and this, with the implied cold mutton and tomatoes, wasreadily granted.
'You can get yourselves some buns or sponge-cakes, or whatever youfancy-like,' said old Nurse, giving Cyril a shilling. 'Don't go gettingjam-tarts, now--so messy at the best of times, and without forks andplates ruination to your clothes, besides your not being able to washyour hands and faces afterwards.'
So Cyril took the shilling, and they all started off. They went roundby the Tottenham Court Road to buy a piece of waterproof sheeting to putover the Psammead in case it should be raining in the Past when they gotthere. For it is almost certain death to a Psammead to get wet.
The sun was shining very brightly, and even London looked pretty. Womenwere selling roses from big baskets-full, and Anthea bought four roses,one each, for herself and the others. They were red roses and smeltof summer--the kind of roses you always want so desperately at aboutChristmas-time when you can only get mistletoe, which is pale rightthrough to its very scent, and holly which pricks your nose if you tryto smell it. So now everyone had a rose in its buttonhole, and sooneveryone was sitting on the grass in Regent's Park under trees whoseleaves would have been clean, clear green in the country, but here weredusty and yellowish, and brown at the edges.
'We've got to go on with it,' said Anthea, 'and as the eldest has to gofirst, you'll have to be last, Jane. You quite understand about holdingon 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,' sheadded, 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 dropme. I can't bear being dropped.'
Jane with trembling hands took the Psammead and its fish-basket underone arm. The charm's long string was hung round her neck. Then they allstood up. Jane held out the charm at arm's length, and Cyril solemnlypronounced the word of power.
As he spoke it the charm grew tall and broad, and he saw that Jane wasjust 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 gothrough it. All round and beyond the arch were the faded trees andtrampled grass of Regent's Park, where the little ragged children wereplaying Ring-o'-Roses. But through the opening of it shone a blaze ofblue and yellow and red. Cyril drew a long breath and stiffened hislegs so that the others should not see that his knees were trembling andalmost knocking together. 'Here goes!' he said, and, stepping up throughthe arch, disappeared. Then followed Anthea. Robert, coming next,held fast, at Anthea's suggestion, to the sleeve of Jane, who was thusdragged safely through the arch. And as soon as they were on the otherside of the arch there was no more arch at all and no more Regent's Parkeither, 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 andrubbed their eyes. During this dazzling interval Anthea felt for thecharm 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 lookedaround them. The sky was very, very blue, and it sparkled and glitteredand dazzled like the sea at home when the sun shines on it.
They were standing on a little clearing in a thick, low forest; therewere trees and shrubs and a close, thorny, tangly undergrowth. Infront of them stretched a bank of strange black mud, then came thebrowny-yellowy shining ribbon of a river. Then more dry, caked mud andmore greeny-browny jungle. The only things that told that human peoplehad been there were the clearing, a path that led to it, and an oddarrangement 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 Londonin 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, orwhat.'
'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 fornatural history.
The Psammead reached out a hairy arm from its basket and pointed to aheap of mud at the edge of the water.
'What do you call that?' it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slidinto the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from abricklayer'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 anenormous slaty-blue slug showed itself against the black bank on the farside of the stream.
'It's a hippopotamus,' said Cyril; 'it seems much more real somehow thanthe 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 washorrible. Of course it might be another hippopotamus, or a crocodile, ora lion--or, in fact, almost anything.
> 'Keep your hand on the charm, Jane,' said Robert hastily. 'We ought tohave a means of escape handy. I'm dead certain this is the sort of placewhere 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 andfair, and though her skin was tanned by the sun, you could see that itwould have been fair too if it had had a chance. She had every chance ofbeing tanned, for she had no clothes to speak of, and the four Englishchildren, carefully dressed in frocks, hats, shoes, stockings, coats,collars, and all the rest of it, envied her more than any words oftheirs or of mine could possibly say. There was no doubt that here wasthe right costume for that climate.
She carried a pot on her head, of red and black earthenware. She did notsee the children, who shrank back against the edge of the jungle, andshe went forward to the brink of the river to fill her pitcher. As shewent she made a strange sort of droning, humming, melancholy noiseall on two notes. Anthea could not help thinking that perhaps the girlthought this noise was singing.
The girl filled the pitcher and set it down by the river bank. Thenshe waded into the water and stooped over the circle of cut reeds. Shepulled half a dozen fine fish out of the water within the reeds, killingeach as she took it out, and threading it on a long osier that shecarried. Then she knotted the osier, hung it on her arm, picked up thepitcher, and turned to come back. And as she turned she saw the fourchildren. The white dresses of Jane and Anthea stood out like snowagainst the dark forest background. She screamed and the pitcher fell,and the water was spilled out over the hard mud surface and over thefish, which had fallen too. Then the water slowly trickled away into thedeep 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 wasthat the girl could understand Anthea and Anthea could understand thegirl. YOU, at any rate, would not understand ME, if I tried to explainit, any more than you can understand about time and space being onlyforms of thought. You may think what you like. Perhaps the childrenhad found out the universal language which everyone can understand, andwhich wise men so far have not found. You will have noticed long agothat they were singularly lucky children, and they may have had thispiece of luck as well as others. Or it may have been that... butwhy pursue the question further? The fact remains that in all theiradventures the muddle-headed inventions which we call foreign languagesnever bothered them in the least. They could always understand andbe understood. If you can explain this, please do. I daresay I couldunderstand your explanation, though you could never understand mine.
So when the girl said, 'Who are you?' everyone understood at once, andAnthea replied--
'We are children--just like you. Don't be frightened. Won't you show uswhere you live?'
Jane put her face right into the Psammead's basket, and burrowed hermouth 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 saidrather crossly. 'You can always get back to Regent's Park in time if youkeep 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 trumperything that pretended to be silver; it had a glass heart of turquoiseblue hanging from it, and it was the gift of the maid-of-all-work at theFitzroy Street house. 'Here,' said Anthea, 'this is for you. That isto show we will not hurt you. And if you take it I shall know that youwon't hurt us.'
The girl held out her hand. Anthea slid the bangle over it, and thegirl's face lighted up with the joy of possession.
'Come,' she said, looking lovingly at the bangle; 'it is peace betweenyour house and mine.'
She picked up her fish and pitcher and led the way up the narrow path bywhich 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 itquite different from the Phoenix and Carpet happenings.'
The belt of thick-growing acacia trees and shrubs--mostly prickly andunpleasant-looking--seemed about half a mile across. The path was narrowand the wood dark. At last, ahead, daylight shone through the boughs andleaves.
The whole party suddenly came out of the wood's shadow into the glare ofthe sunlight that shone on a great stretch of yellow sand, dotted withheaps of grey rocks where spiky cactus plants showed gaudy crimson andpink flowers among their shabby, sand-peppered leaves. Away to the rightwas something that looked like a grey-brown hedge, and from beyond itblue smoke went up to the bluer sky. And over all the sun shone till youcould 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 allright.'
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 merelysnarled--
'If you don't go now I'll never help you again.'
'OH,' whispered Anthea, 'dear Jane, don't! Think of Father and Motherand 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'sno danger or it wouldn't go. It's not so over and above brave itself.Come on!'
This Jane at last consented to do.
As they got nearer to the browny fence they saw that it was a greathedge about eight feet high, made of piled-up thorn bushes.
'What's that for?' asked Cyril.
'To keep out foes and wild beasts,' said the girl.
'I should think it ought to, too,' said he. 'Why, some of the thorns areas long as my foot.'
There was an opening in the hedge, and they followed the girl throughit. A little way further on was another hedge, not so high, also of drythorn bushes, very prickly and spiteful-looking, and within this was asort of village of huts.
There were no gardens and no roads. Just huts built of wood and twigsand clay, and roofed with great palm-leaves, dumped down anywhere. Thedoors of these houses were very low, like the doors of dog-kennels.The ground between them was not paths or streets, but just yellow sandtrampled very hard and smooth.
In the middle of the village there was a hedge that enclosed what seemedto be a piece of ground about as big as their own garden in Camden Town.
No sooner were the children well within the inner thorn hedge thandozens of men and women and children came crowding round from behind andinside the huts.
The girl stood protectingly in front of the four children, and said--
'They are wonder-children from beyond the desert. They bring marvellousgifts, and I have said that it is peace between us and them.'
She held out her arm with the Lowther Arcade bangle on it.
The children from London, where nothing now surprises anyone, had neverbefore seen so many people look so astonished.
They crowded round the children, touching their clothes, their shoes,the buttons on the boys' jackets, and the coral of the girls' necklaces.
'Do say something,' whispered Anthea.
'We come,' said Cyril, with some dim remembrance of a dreadful day whenhe had had to wait in an outer office while his father intervieweda solicitor, and there had been nothing to read but the DailyTelegraph--'we come from the world where the sun never sets. And peacewith honour is what we want. We are the great Anglo-Saxon or conqueringrace. Not that we want to conquer YOU,' he added hastily. 'We only wantto look at your houses and your--well, at all you've got here
, and thenwe shall return to our own place, and tell of all that we have seen sothat your name may be famed.'
Cyril's speech didn't keep the crowd from pressing round and looking aseagerly as ever at the clothing of the children. Anthea had an ideathat these people had never seen woven stuff before, and she saw howwonderful and strange it must seem to people who had never had anyclothes but the skins of beasts. The sewing, too, of modern clothesseemed to astonish them very much. They must have been able to sewthemselves, by the way, for men who seemed to be the chiefs woreknickerbockers of goat-skin or deer-skin, fastened round the waistwith twisted strips of hide. And the women wore long skimpy skirts ofanimals' skins. The people were not very tall, their hair was fair, andmen and women both had it short. Their eyes were blue, and that seemedodd in Egypt. Most of them were tattooed like sailors, only moreroughly.
'What is this? What is this?' they kept asking touching the children'sclothes curiously.
Anthea hastily took off Jane's frilly lace collar and handed it to thewoman who seemed most friendly.
'Take this,' she said, 'and look at it. And leave us alone. We want totalk among ourselves.'
She spoke in the tone of authority which she had always found successfulwhen she had not time to coax her baby brother to do as he was told. Thetone was just as successful now. The children were left together and thecrowd retreated. It paused a dozen yards away to look at the lace collarand to go on talking as hard as it could.
The children will never know what those people said, though they knewwell enough that they, the four strangers, were the subject of the talk.They tried to comfort themselves by remembering the girl's promiseof friendliness, but of course the thought of the charm was morecomfortable than anything else. They sat down on the sand in the shadowof the hedged-round place in the middle of the village, and now for thefirst time they were able to look about them and to see something morethan a crowd of eager, curious faces.
They here noticed that the women wore necklaces made of beads ofdifferent coloured stone, and from these hung pendants of odd, strangeshapes, and some of them had bracelets of ivory and flint.
'I say,' said Robert, 'what a lot we could teach them if we stayedhere!'
'I expect they could teach us something too,' said Cyril. 'Did younotice that flint bracelet the woman had that Anthea gave the collar to?That must have taken some making. Look here, they'll get suspicious ifwe talk among ourselves, and I do want to know about how they do things.Let's get the girl to show us round, and we can be thinking about how toget the Amulet at the same time. Only mind, we must keep together.'
Anthea beckoned to the girl, who was standing a little way off lookingwistfully at them, and she came gladly.
'Tell us how you make the bracelets, the stone ones,' said Cyril.
'With other stones,' said the girl; 'the men make them; we have men ofspecial skill in such work.'
'Haven't you any iron tools?'
'Iron,' said the girl, 'I don't know what you mean.' It was the firstword she had not understood.
'Are all your tools of flint?' asked Cyril. 'Of course,' said the girl,opening her eyes wide.
I wish I had time to tell you of that talk. The English children wantedto hear all about this new place, but they also wanted to tell of theirown country. It was like when you come back from your holidays and youwant to hear and to tell everything at the same time. As the talk wenton there were more and more words that the girl could not understand,and the children soon gave up the attempt to explain to her what theirown country was like, when they began to see how very few of the thingsthey had always thought they could not do without were really not at allnecessary to life.
The girl showed them how the huts were made--indeed, as one was beingmade that very day she took them to look at it. The way of building wasvery different from ours. The men stuck long pieces of wood into a pieceof ground the size of the hut they wanted to make. These were abouteight inches apart; then they put in another row about eight inches awayfrom the first, and then a third row still further out. Then all thespace between was filled up with small branches and twigs, and thendaubed over with black mud worked with the feet till it was soft andsticky like putty.
The girl told them how the men went hunting with flint spears andarrows, and how they made boats with reeds and clay. Then she explainedthe reed thing in the river that she had taken the fish out of. It was afish-trap--just a ring of reeds set up in the water with only one littleopening in it, and in this opening, just below the water, were stuckreeds slanting the way of the river's flow, so that the fish, when theyhad swum sillily in, sillily couldn't get out again. She showed them theclay pots and jars and platters, some of them ornamented with black andred patterns, and the most wonderful things made of flint and differentsorts of stone, beads, and ornaments, and tools and weapons of all sortsand kinds.
'It is really wonderful,' said Cyril patronizingly, 'when you considerthat it's all eight thousand years ago--'
'I don't understand you,' said the girl.
'It ISN'T eight thousand years ago,' whispered Jane. 'It's NOW--andthat's just what I don't like about it. I say, DO let's get home againbefore anything more happens. You can see for yourselves the charm isn'there.'
'What's in that place in the middle?' asked Anthea, struck by a suddenthought, and pointing to the fence.
'That's the secret sacred place,' said the girl in a whisper. 'No oneknows what is there. There are many walls, and inside the insidest oneIT is, but no one knows what IT is except the headsmen.'
'I believe YOU know,' said Cyril, looking at her very hard.
'I'll give you this if you'll tell me,' said Anthea taking off abead-ring which had already been much admired.
'Yes,' said the girl, catching eagerly at the ring. 'My father is one ofthe heads, and I know a water charm to make him talk in his sleep. Andhe has spoken. I will tell you. But if they know I have told you theywill kill me. In the insidest inside there is a stone box, and in itthere is the Amulet. None knows whence it came. It came from very faraway.'
'Have you seen it?' asked Anthea.
The girl nodded.
'Is it anything like this?' asked Jane, rashly producing the charm.
The girl's face turned a sickly greenish-white.
'Hide it, hide it,' she whispered. 'You must put it back. If they see itthey will kill us all. You for taking it, and me for knowing that therewas such a thing. Oh, woe--woe! why did you ever come here?'
'Don't be frightened,' said Cyril. 'They shan't know. Jane, don't yoube such a little jack-ape again--that's all. You see what will happen ifyou do. Now, tell me--' He turned to the girl, but before he had time tospeak the question there was a loud shout, and a man bounded in throughthe opening in the thorn-hedge.
'Many foes are upon us!' he cried. 'Make ready the defences!'
His breath only served for that, and he lay panting on the ground. 'Oh,DO let's go home!' said Jane. 'Look here--I don't care--I WILL!'
She held up the charm. Fortunately all the strange, fair people were toobusy to notice HER. She held up the charm. And nothing happened.
'You haven't said the word of power,' said Anthea.
Jane hastily said it--and still nothing happened.
'Hold it up towards the East, you silly!' said Robert.
'Which IS the East?' said Jane, dancing about in her agony of terror.
Nobody knew. So they opened the fish-bag to ask the Psammead.
And the bag had only a waterproof sheet in it.
The Psammead was gone.
'Hide the sacred thing! Hide it! Hide it!' whispered the girl.
Cyril shrugged his shoulders, and tried to look as brave as he knew heought to feel.
'Hide it up, Pussy,' he said. 'We are in for it now. We've just got tostay and see it out.'