by Joan Aiken
Harriet switched off the radio and went to look out of the window. The fine day had clouded over and large drops of rain were beginning to fall. “I wonder if Mark has got to Herringbloom Ponds,” thought his sister. “I wonder what is happening to him? It's lucky I made him cut his fingernails before he went off and put them in that little silver box...."
Mark did not appear at breakfast. Nor at lunch. This was not particularly unusual. But when his place was empty at supper time, his mother became a little perturbed.
"If he was going off for the day you'd think he would have taken something to eat with him. But nothing seems to be missing from the larder.... And it's meat loaf for supper, his favourite."
Harriet felt obliged to speak up. “He asked me not to mention where he was going for twelve hours—"
"Why, for goodness’ sake?"
"In case you were going to bid for the carp ponds, Father."
"Well, I was,” said Mr. Armitage triumphantly. “And I did. And what's more, I bought them. Thought they ought to be back in the family."
"Oh wow,” said Harriet.
"Darling! You bought those ponds? Whatever for?"
"Fishing, what else?” Mr. Armitage helped himself to another slice of meat loaf. “Always wanted my own fishing water."
"But the curse?"
"Mark went off to Herringbloom? What time did he leave?"
"Four o'clock this morning. Or thereabouts,” Harriet said. “He wanted to get there just after sunrise."
"Why just at that time, may I ask?"
"Because I told him supernatural power is just at its lowest at dawn. And also he had an idea that you were going to bid for the ponds, Father."
"Tough bidding it was, too, against old Lady Ullswater,” Mr. Armitage grumbled. “I could have got those ponds for five hundred less if she hadn't hung on for so long, obstinate old besom. But why should Mark want to be there before I bought the place?"
"The owner of the ponds and his heirs are in the direct line of the curse. He felt it might be better to get there before you made that connection."
"Troublesome young devil,” growled Mark's father. “Now what are we supposed to do? What do you reckon has happened to him?"
"We had better go along there,” Harriet said ponderingly. “If the curse has caught up with Mark there may be some way of unravelling or reversing it."
"Yes, we'd better go.” Mr. Armitage pushed back his chair. “Anyway I'd like to take a look at the place before it grows dark. I'll get out the car."
"Well, I'm not going,” Mrs. Armitage said firmly. “I always make the Christmas puddings on Midsummer Night, and I have got out all the ingredients and the pudding-basins—it would be shocking bad luck to alter that habit. If there is a curse you will have to unloose it without my help. Harriet had better take all her occult bits and bobs. Oh dear! I hope we haven't lost Mark for good. He is so careless! He was going to fix the oven door for me—he kept promising—thoughtless boy! And he's never done it...."
Her face crumpled, and Harriet gave her mother a hug.
"Don't worry, Ma; we'll bring him back somehow, even if it's in the shape of a goldfish. And perhaps after all he's just having a wonderful time fishing."
"Selfish young tyke,” remarked his father.
Harriet ran off to collect three tape-recorders, a powerful magnet, a flute, Mark's fingernails, a tin of toast crumbs left over from the meat loaf, and a hand mirror, besides a few other odds and ends that might come in useful.
"What are the toast crumbs for?” said her father.
"To feed the fish! Have you brought your rod?"
"Of course."
Harriet and her father were rather silent as they drove through Froxfield Green and on to Herringbloom. The trip took about twenty minutes. A beautiful golden glow lay over the midsummer countryside. The rain had stopped. Father and daughter were deep in thought. Mr. Armitage was wondering what sort of bait to use; Harriet was wondering whether she had brought the right equipment to counteract a powerful curse.
Herringbloom Ponds lay linked by waterfalls in a shallow valley set about with elder and willow trees which dangled green and golden trailers over the still water. Each pond was oval in shape and about the size of a tennis court. By the middle pond grew a huge old willow whose gnarled and wrinkled trunk, wider than a church door, had Mark's bicycle propped against it.
"So he got here at least, silly young ruffian,” said Mr. Armitage, and he threw his head back and shouted “MARK!” at the top of his voice. His only answer was echoes, running up and down the side of the valley.
A few bubbles rose from the still surface of the pond. A couple of blackbirds chattered angrily in the trees.
"I don't think shouting is going to bring him,” said Harriet.
"Then I shall fish while you get on with whatever you think you ought to do.” Her father unpacked his rod and baited his hook. Then, with an expert twitch, he slung his line over the quiet water of the middle pond.
Harriet watched rather apprehensively. Suppose she were to lose both her father and her brother on the same day? How could she explain that to her mother?
She wondered how Mrs. Armitage was getting on with the Christmas puddings. She hoped Mrs. Armitage hadn't forgotten the lucky silver charms.
The tree behind Harriet whispered to her, “Don't let him do that! Don't let him cast!"
"Why?"
"It's a mockery of their power!"
"Power,” thought Harriet. “Step out of the frame of time and you acquire power."
"But who are they?” she asked the tree.
Instead of an answer, there was an explosion: a huge shape burst from the water, scattering spray all around. It was bigger than a hippopotamus, gray and white, shining, with a cruel, contemptuous mouth and two mean little eyes. Over the mouth hung a dank pair of black moustaches.
It snapped and swallowed Mr. Armitage's rod and line as if they had been cheese straws, then sank below the water again, leaving arrowy ripples trailing from end to end of the pond.
"God bless my soul!” said Mr. Armitage. “A shark! A shark of the hammerhead species, if I am not mistaken."
He stood looking perplexedly at the broken rod handle, which he still held. Then he said, “Do you suppose, Harriet, that the shark has swallowed Mark?"
"Well—I do hope not,” said Harriet. But her tone was rather shaky.
"I said they would be angry,” remarked the tree.
"What should I do now?"
"Answer three questions."
"Yes?"
"What is sadder than a lost child? What remains when voices are gone? What dies every day and lives forever?"
"The child's parents. Words remain when voices are gone. The sun dies daily and lasts forever."
"Look into your glass,” said the tree.
Harriet looked into the hand mirror and received a shock. Looking back at her was her own face as it would be if she lived to the age of a hundred. She shivered.
"Now you can remember,” said the tree.
"I remember their burying and my digging up a box with gold things in it."
"So do that."
Mr. Armitage always carried a spade in the boot of the car. Harriet fetched it and began digging among the tree's bony and twisted roots.
Her father was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands.
"I don't understand!” he said tremulously. “Talking trees—giant sharks—what is going on?"
"We are trying to find Mark."
"But where is he?"
"Lost in the past, I believe,” said Harriet, digging away among the roots.
"The past? But why?"
"It's one of the commoner curses, specially among family feuds and disputes. If you think about it, worse than putting someone in prison. Women often used it to get rid of tiresome male relations. Ah!” said Harriet, and dug up a small heavy metal box, rusted and crusted with earth. “Can you open this, Father?"
Mr. Armitage could, by dribbling rus
t solvent (which, luckily, he also kept in the car boot). Inside were fragrant cedar shavings, a gold-backed set of false teeth, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.
"Give me the tooth, Sister!” said Harriet.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It was what the weird sisters said. They shared an eye and a tooth between them."
"I'm lost in all this,” said Mr. Armitage gloomily. “What about that shark?"
"The shark might be Marianna or Victoria. Or both of them using the same pair of teeth. But I'm not sure about that moustache,” Harriet said doubtfully.
A breeze shook the willow trees. Harriet had the impression that all the dangling fronds swung closer to listen.
She said cautiously, “Or, of course, the shark might be Mark."
"My own son? Turned into a shark?"
"You don't often find sharks in carp ponds,” Harriet pointed out.
"Outrageous impertinence!” Mr. Armitage snorted. “In my ponds! I bought them!"
"You bought the curse, too."
"So how do we get rid of this infernal curse?” demanded her father.
"A curse is like a crease in material. You have to go back to the time before it was crumpled and iron it out flat."
"Mark used to be a nice friendly little fellow,” quavered Mr. Armitage, almost in tears. “Liked me to take him for walks. Held my hand. Not the way he is now, always skiving off on his own to go fishing."
Harriet, carefully hanging an Aeolian harp on a weeping willow tree, felt sad for parents who must always lose their children, stage by stage, into the harsh world.
The harp let out a soft sigh, as if agreeing.
A water-rat slipped from the bank and swam to the far side of the pond, leaving a wake of V-shaped ripples.
"Rats. Mark used to be afraid of rats,” recalled his father.
The surface of the pond cleared. As Harriet adjusted her equipment they could see a reflection of Mark, aged about nine, kneeling and looking into the water.
"Mark! Take care! You'll fall in!” shouted his father.
Mark paid no heed to the warning.
"He can't hear you,” Harriet said. “He's in another time band."
Mark's image in the water faded. The reflections of two ladies, dressed in white, with hats and plumy feather fans, appeared, upside down, sitting at a table under a parasol. They seemed to be arguing. A man approached them and said something that annoyed them even more. They waved their fans furiously at the man, who slipped and staggered by the brink of the water.
The surface of the pond bulged as if the shark were about to explode from it again. Harriet had just fitted a tape into her battery player. Complicated music ran about the valley.
Now Harriet carefully scattered a handful of toast crumbs across the water. A whole school of small fish rose and snapped eagerly at the crumbs.
"Why, bless me!” said Mr. Armitage. “What became of the shark? The crazy pond seems to be alive with tiddlers. What became of the two ladies? Where's Mark?"
The reflection of Mark suddenly reappeared, aged about four, wearing brown canvas overalls and a red shirt. He carried a seaside spade and bucket.
"Dear little feller he was at that age,” said his father fondly. “But why can't you get him at the right age?"
"It takes a lot of practice. Where is the ruined mansion?” Harriet asked.
"Up by the top pond. I can remember being taken to tea with the great-aunts and being given home-made lemonade and ginger-snaps,” recollected Mr. Armitage.
Harriet strolled upstream along the bank, leaving the tapes playing.
The ponds were connected by three cascades fringed with ferns and little daisy-like plants growing in cracks between the rocks. Above the topmost waterfall stood an aged house which was half-burned and ruinous. A green and juicy creeper climbed and dangled over the ruins. A wavering mist rose from the frothy pool at the foot of the fall, which was about the height of a two-storey house.
Harriet could see that it would not be possible to get into the mansion without fighting through a mass of vegetation which blocked the doors and window holes.
She stood by the lip of the waterfall, watching the smooth, shining water as it poured over, and thinking about Mark.
She remembered how, when they were six or seven, she had fallen into a stream and he had pulled her out; she remembered how he had given her his favourite shell because none of hers were as good as his; she remembered how he had cried when their cat Walrus was found dead of old age in the garden.
"Mark!” she whispered. “Where are you? Come back...."
She dropped his fingernails into the waterfall.
The mist at the foot of the fall wavered. Then it began to form into a spiral. The sprays of green leaves dangling from the willows started to twirl. Clouds in the sky above darkened and writhed into corkscrew shapes. A whistling wind spun the long grass into funnels. Discs of rain scoured the surface of the pond. Then the whole pond rose into the air, as a cork is twisted out of a bottle. Harriet grabbed the trunk of a massive willow and wrapped her arms round it, or she would have been sucked up into the sky along with the pond water. She could feel the tree writhing as she hung on to it. “What in the world can be happening to Father?” she wondered. “And Mark?” She saw the two white-clad ladies, with their parasol, and the dark man, swirl briefly by; they vanished into a spiral of mist.
Then the landscape settled down; the pond sank back into its bed; only the dangling fronds of the willows and the long grasses remained tightly twisted and plaited.
Like the ribbons on a Maypole, Harriet thought vaguely as she let go of the willow trunk and gave it a grateful pat.
She saw her father and Mark coming slowly towards her. Mr. Armitage held Mark's arm. Mark looked rather dazed.
"A tornado in England in June, what next?” grumbled Mr. Armitage. “I shall certainly write to The Times. I hate to think what may have happened to my car...."
"Are you all right?” Harriet asked her brother.
"I think I must have gone to sleep.” He gave a great yawn. “But my bike is a total write-off. And I can't find my fishing rod. I'd have fallen into the pond if Dad hadn't grabbed me—"
The sun suddenly set.
"We had better go and see what's happened to the car,” said Mr. Armitage, looking with disapproval at the slate-gray surface of the ponds, the dark, dangling twisted willow tendrils. “I'm almost sorry I bought this place,” he muttered.
"Oh, you'll see, it will be quite different from now on,” Harriet reassured him. “Look, the old ladies are back at their table.” She pointed at the reflection in the first pond, where the upside down ladies were offering a cup of tea to the dark man.
"He's getting his tea in a moustache cup!"
"What about all the things you brought?"
"Nothing left but bits and pieces."
Harriet's mirror, tapes, Aeolian harp, magnet, and flute lay shredded on the twisted grass. But she noticed one of the old ladies was wearing the false teeth and the other one had the gold-framed spectacles.
"We have got Mark back, that's the main thing.” Harriet gripped Mark's left hand; Mr. Armitage still held on to the other.
"I never was away,” Mark argued.
But Harriet looked at the watch on his wrist, which showed date as well as time.
"According to your watch, you've been away for a year—"
"That's just nutty!"
"And where's the car?” demanded Mr. Armitage.
Luckily the car was only a quarter of a mile down the road from where he had left it. And it seemed unharmed, but the boot, mysteriously, was full of shingle. A large dead shark lay on the grass verge. Mark would very much have liked to take it home, but fortunately it was far too big to put into the boot. It had a moustache.
"Good thing he's done for, anyhow,” remarked Mr. Armitage. “No hope of a peaceful day's angling so long as that feller was in the water."
The house, when they reached it, afte
r a rather silent drive, was full of the smell of Christmas pudding.
"Ah, you got Mark back, that's good,” said Mrs. Armitage comfortably. “If you had come back without him, I was going to suggest dropping one of my puddings into the pool."
"Is that a remedy against curses?” asked Harriet, all professional interest.
"Oh yes, my dear, one of the best. Much more likely to work than all that BBC 13 mumbo-jumbo. You try it next time, you'll see. But the best thing to remember,” said Mrs. Armitage, “is, don't go fishing on witches’ day...."
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Milo's New Word
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* * * *
When Uncle Claud Armitage came back from the island of Eridu, he brought some problems for his niece and nephews. Climbing stiffly off the train (for Uncle Claud was quite an old man), he started the walk up Station Road to his brother's house. But he soon noticed that he was being followed. Pit-pat, pit-pat went the footsteps behind him in the dusk.
Uncle Claud stepped into a phone box and dialed his brother's number.
Outside the lighted box, in the shadows, something waited and listened.
"Hallo?” piped a little voice in Uncle Claud's ear.
"Hallo? Is that Mark or Harriet? Listen, quickly, there's no time to lose. I want to tell you a tremendously important mathematical secret—the greatest discovery since Euclid—"
He went on talking very fast. After a while he said: “Did you get that?"
"Hallo?” said the little voice again.
Behind Uncle Claud, the door was softly opening. He looked round—just too late. He felt the lightest possible touch on his arm. Next minute, his fingers curled up and turned black. They had become claws. His arms stretched out, flattened, and became leathery wings. Uncle Claud shrank. With a whir and a flit, he soared away into the dark-blue evening sky, where one star had just flashed out, ahead of all the others.
Uncle Claud had turned into a bat.
At the Armitage house, Mark was setting the table for supper, while Harriet made scrambled eggs. Their parents were out at a Village Green Improvement Society meeting in the church hall. Their young brother, Milo, was on the bottom stair, building a castle out of telephone directories.