The Magic Meadow

by Alexander Key

  They didn’t dare travel without the weapons. When they made camp tonight, they would sleep under the Belleview blankets, and he and Diz Dobie and Nurse Jackson would take turns staying awake and doing guard duty. The three of them had spent part of an afternoon with the crossbows, learning how to handle them.

  Brick felt his first twinge of uneasiness as they filed past the turpentine still. While he examined the meadow, dim in the dawn mist, he paused a moment to shift the new shoulder strap holding his laundry bag, then again he gripped his crossbow with both hands so he could carry it in a ready position. The weapon was cocked and loaded, the short arrow being held in place by a clip that would automatically release it when he pressed the trigger. It operated like a gun, and he knew it was just as dangerous, so he was careful to keep it pointed to the left and toward the ground. Because he was steadier on his feet than Diz Dobie, who walked ahead, he had been given the rear position, for there was less chance of his stumbling and accidentally discharging an arrow.

  Up ahead Nurse Jackson, who was pushing the loaded wheelchair—it had been turned into a cart to carry their extra gear—stopped to give Charlie Pill a chance to rest. In the past few days the thin boy had learned to use his legs better, but he was forced to walk with a stick and he was much too weak to carry a bag.

  As Brick studied the meadow, not liking the emptiness of it, he was suddenly aware that the sky was turning red. Remembering his first incredible sunrise, he called to the others to watch. This second one was just as awesome, and Nurse Jackson was so moved by it that she murmured in astonishment, “Great day in the morning! I’d forgotten the Lord made sights like this!”

  When the great burning disc was above the trees, she said to Princess, “There’s something different about it. You could be right. Maybe we really are on Earth’s twin.” She shook her head. “Well, let’s get moving, gang. We’ve got some ground to cover before dark.”

  Only now did Brick see the horses in the rising mist. They were standing rigid with flaring nostrils, staring at something in the shadows on the opposite slope. He could make out nothing, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched.

  The feeling stayed with him as he trudged on after the others. A coldness began to knot in his stomach.

  The coldness was still in him at midday when they stopped to rest and to eat a single corn cake apiece. He had lost count of the number of rest periods they had been forced to take.

  “How far do you think we’ve come?” he asked Nurse Jackson.

  “Possibly a mile and a half,” she said quietly.

  He chewed worriedly on his lip. At this rate it would take them a week to get to the fish camp.

  She said, “Just pray the weather holds, and we’ll be all right. If we run out of food, I’m sure we can find enough wild stuff to do us.” She studied the sun a moment, which seemed to be at zenith, then carefully set her watch by it. “Maybe it’ll work this time,” she added hopefully.

  “When you check it tomorrow,” he said, “I bet it’ll be an hour fast.”

  “But, Brick, what’s wrong? Is it only the watch?”

  “Dunno for sure yet. I’m just sort of guessing.”

  He still didn’t have anything to prove the idea that had come to him, and it sounded much too crazy to talk about. Nor did he mention his belief that they were being followed. He hadn’t been able to sight the creature, and he was beginning to believe they had nothing to fear from it till dark.

  As they tramped onward, much too slowly for his peace of mind, his dread of the coming night was somewhat offset by the excitement he felt at every new turn of the trail. He knew the others shared his feeling, but Nurse Jackson’s growing wonder surprised him.

  “Look at those oaks!” she exclaimed once. “The size of them! Why, it’s like a great park here.”

  It was, indeed, very parklike in places, and he could see long vistas under the spreading limbs, often with deer shying away from them. Birds and squirrels were everywhere.

  “Wasn’t it like this in Alabama?” he asked.

  “Maybe once,” she said. “But not in my day. Brick, this is all virgin country. It’s never seen an ax.”

  “Have you noticed any strange trees, or queer birds or things?”

  “No, they’re all familiar. But I do think it’s peculiar that we haven’t seen a rabbit yet. Or even a snake. I just can’t understand it.”

  Brick thought he knew the answer to that, but he said nothing.

  The trail was fairly open and hard underfoot, and seldom did Nurse Jackson have much trouble with the wheelchair. The worst spot was at a rocky ledge, just before they stopped for the night. Here all the gear had to be unloaded and carried down separately. By the time this was done, they were glad to make camp and gather wood for a fire.

  With the ledge at their backs and a fire in front of them, Brick felt they were safe. Even so, he slept fitfully on the hard ground after his watch was over, and every small strange noise brought him up on his elbow, listening.

  The night seemed endless. But nothing happened, and in spite of muscles that were beginning to ache with every movement, he was glad to be up at dawn and help Nurse Jackson begin the ordeal of the second day.

  This new section of the trail seemed only a repetition of the part they had covered already. The only noticeable differences were the rockier ground and the widening stream. By noon the rocks were making the wheelchair difficult to handle. Brick unloaded it, and with Diz Dobie to help he managed to remove the small swivel wheels at the back. Now the chair could be tilted and drawn easily like a cart.

  Just before they continued their journey, he remembered Nurse Jackson’s watch. As he had predicted, it was an hour fast.

  She looked at him worriedly. “Brick, I’m beginning to believe you know something I don’t. What is it?”

  He shook his head. “I’m still guessing. Did you happen to see the moon last night?”

  “No. It was too misty. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing much. I haven’t seen it many times in my life, and I’d sort of like to know what you thought of it.”

  Princess said, “Wouldn’t it be just too utterly breathtaking if the moon here turned out to be a sumptuous pink? I simply adore pink.” Then she added, “Brick, do you know how to catch fish?”

  “Well, I’ve read about it. All you have to do is to bait a hook and drop it into the water.”

  “Does it hurt the fish?”

  Charlie Pill said, “Aw, phooey! Don’t you know fish haven’t got feelings?”

  “I certainly hope not,” she said uneasily. “But it’s upsetting to think they might have. We’re going to be awfully, awfully hungry when we reach the lake—and I just love fish. But I don’t believe I could bear to eat one if it came screaming out of the water. I’d simply rather starve.”

  Brick had already made up his mind that, before he allowed any starving to be done, he would secretly kill a deer and bring in the meat without telling what it was. But before he could do that he realized he would have to destroy the creature that had been following them. Its presence frightened the deer, so that he almost never saw them except at a distance, running. He’d given up wondering why the thing continued to shadow them. So far it had stayed well out of sight, but he could still feel its presence, and several times by watching carefully he’d caught the vague movement of it through the trees at their rear. He was sure by now that it was spotted.

  The thought of the thing was chilling enough, but of equal concern was the knowledge that their food was going to run out long before they reached the lake. Charlie Pill seemed to realize it too, for the thin boy did his best to walk faster. He kept it up till they camped that night, and he managed to hold a steady pace all through the third morning. But at noon he collapsed.

  “Why don’t the rest of you guys go on ahead and start catching fish?” he pleaded. “That’s the smart thing to do. I’ll follow soon’s I can. You can have a ton of fish all cooked and ready to eat by t
he time I get there.”

  “Nothing doing,” Brick told him. “We’re sticking together. It’s not safe to be alone.”

  Nurse Jackson agreed with him, and before going on, she made Charlie rest for two hours while they searched the immediate area for wild greens and mushrooms. When they made camp that evening she cooked the rice that she had been saving, then added the wild things to make it go farther.

  By careful rationing, the rice lasted until the evening of the fifth day. Brick was hungry when he rolled in his blanket that night, but they’d all been hungry for several days, and a few more hours of it didn’t seem to matter. The fish camp, surely, couldn’t be more than a mile or two away, and they were bound to reach it some time in the morning.

  A sudden slash of rain drove them up at dawn. They packed hurriedly and took to the trail without bothering to make tea.

  “We’ll have a real breakfast in a little while,” Nurse Jackson promised confidently. “We’re almost there, and there’s bound to be plenty of cornmeal and stuff for cooking fish. And, gang,” she added, “keep those blankets over your heads. I don’t want anybody catching pneumonia. There’ll probably be a stack of dry blankets at the camp.”

  In spite of hunger that was beginning to gnaw, and thin overworked muscles that ached so badly that it took courage to keep wobbly legs moving, they turned it into a game and laughed at the rain and made up silly songs and chanted them as they trudged along. Noon came, and still there was no sign of the new camp. They huddled for a while under a tree, resting, then set out again, slower now and chanting only occasionally. By midafternoon they were silent.

  But somehow they stumbled on, urged by Nurse Jackson, who kept repeating with a cheerfulness Brick knew she couldn’t feel, “Just a little farther, gang. We’re almost there.”

  Then Charlie Pill began to chant feebly, “We’re almost there.… We’re almost there.…” How Charlie Pill did it and kept going, Brick didn’t know, but he added his voice to Charlie’s, and soon everyone was chanting, “We’re almost there! We’re almost there!”

  And suddenly they were there.

  First there was a shout from Diz Dobie ahead. Then he cried, “I see the fence! And there’s the thatched roof!”

  But when they came through the dripping trees and stood beside him, no one could say anything.

  There was the fence, and they could see the roof at the corner of it. But there was no house, and no lake. The thatched roof covered only an open shed no larger than the turpentine still. In front of it, where a lake had been, there was only a broad empty area of sand and mud, with the shallow stream winding through the middle of it. The stream flowed down through a recently washed-out break in an ancient earthen dam covered with trees.

  Brick felt as if the end of the world had come.

  9

  SINGING IN THE SKY

  If anyone spoke a word while they dragged themselves up to the gate and entered the place, Brick was not aware of it. The shelter was almost a duplicate of the one over the turpentine still, except that it had a fireplace on one side instead of the ovenlike apparatus for heating resin. A picnic table and a few benches occupied the center of a stone floor. The tall fence surrounding a small apple orchard enclosed two sides of the structure, but hardly gave a feeling of security against the unknown dangers of the night.

  As for food, it was obvious that none had been left here. Some fishing poles for catching it lay across the beams overhead, and various utensils for cooking and eating it filled a low cupboard to the left of the chimney, but that was all. Brick could hear water running from what seemed to be a spring out back, but he was too tired to investigate it. What they needed now was a fire.

  He removed the arrow from his crossbow, then tossed it and his soaked blanket on the table and crouched by the fireplace. The last visitors here had left wood and kindling arranged inside, ready for the lighter, and in less than a minute he had a roaring blaze going. As it sent out its drying warmth, everyone huddled before it. At the moment, they were too miserable for speech, and too exhausted and disappointed for further thought or action. They wanted only to rest.

  Brick glanced at Lily Rose, who had known all along that they shouldn’t have left the bunkhouse. “Thanks for not saying ‘I told you so!’” he mumbled. “Golly, I sure goofed when I got the idea for coming here. We should have stayed where we were.”

  Her peaked face broke into a sudden smile. “Oh, this isn’t so bad,” she managed to say. “It’s ever so much better than Belleview, and—and anyhow, look what we did! If we can come this far, we can go the rest of the way.”

  Nurse Jackson hugged her. “That’s the spirit, honey. And we’ll make out. Don’t any of you ever think we won’t. I’ve been sitting here trying to remember something about a plant I saw out there where the lake used to be. It’s just now come back to me. Brick, Diz, let’s go out yonder and dig for our supper.”

  She took the adze and a basket from the gear on the converted wheelchair, and led them through the gate and over into the soft ground where the lake had been. Here grew hundreds of long-stemmed plants with leaves like huge arrowheads. When they tugged on the now-wilted leaves and dug down with the adze, they found large tubers that resembled potatoes.

  “Duck potatoes!” Nurse Jackson said happily. “We’ll really feast tonight!”

  And feast they did. Maybe it was because he was so hungry, but those duck potatoes, boiled over the fire and with no seasoning but their natural sweetness, seemed to Brick the best things he’d ever tasted. The others enjoyed them just as much, and Charlie Pill said, “Boy o’ boy, I’d walk twenty miles for a taste of these!”

  “You just did,” Nurse Jackson chuckled. Everyone laughed, and she added, “Believe me, gang, that’s a real miracle. When I think how crippled all of you were two weeks ago …”

  It was almost dark now. Brick piled more wood on the fire to help dry out their blankets, then looked speculatively at a wooden disc on one of the posts. It was just like the disc at the turpentine still. He went over and turned it, and was rewarded by a flood of soft light from above.

  Nurse Jackson blinked at it and shook her head. “Will you tell me how they get power ’way out here at the end of nowhere, without a line or anything?”

  Brick nodded wearily. “I think it’s the thatch. It—it soaks up power from the sun and stores it in those straws.”

  “But, Brick, that seems almost too advanced—”

  “Not for these people.”

  “These people,” said Princess, “are absolutely unspeakably advanced, and I can prove it. Real early this morning, before the rain got us up, I—I saw something.… I—I didn’t tell you about it because it was so—so utterly shattering and breathtaking that … that I wanted to think about it first.…” Her pale head was nodding, and it was becoming hard for her to speak. She managed to add, “But I’ll have to … tell you about it in the morning.… Right now I’m … just … too … tired.…” Her head fell forward, and she was suddenly sound asleep.

  Brick was so exhausted himself that he had little recollection afterward of curling up in a barely dry blanket, for consciousness ceased the moment his head touched the floor. After five nights in the outdoors on the hard ground, the smooth stone surface felt almost comfortable.

  Something awoke him abruptly at dawn.

  For a minute or two after he opened his eyes he lay still, listening, wondering what could have disturbed him. The fire in the fireplace had gone out, and a red glow was spreading from the eastern horizon. In the west a giant moon was setting. The color shocked him, for it was actually more pink than gold. He was aware of the soft splash of water from the spring, and an assortment of peepings and tick-tockings—mainly crickets and frogs, he knew now—mingled with the sleepy twitterings of birds that were only half awake. But none of these had disturbed him. He’d heard something else. What could it have been?

  All at once it came to him. He’d heard singing.

  Brick sat up. Singi
ng? Yes, and it had come from overhead.

  He flipped his blanket aside and moved quickly in his bare feet to the edge of the shelter and glanced up. There was nothing in the rapidly reddening sky but a lone bird flapping over the empty lake, and the great pink moon riding the darkness in the other direction. He could see it better now, and he studied it curiously. A few nights ago he had briefly glimpsed it in the mist, but he hadn’t been able to tell much about it. Singing in the sky—and a pink moon. Princess ought to love that.

  While he changed from his dry pajamas to his not-so-dry clothing, he began to wonder if the singing had actually been overhead, or if he’d merely heard it in his mind. Maybe he’d been tuning in while he slept, and had not realized it. But no, he’d heard it with his ears—and it had come from the sky.

  Frowning, he got kindling from the pile of wood behind the chimney and started a fire in the fireplace. Still puzzling over the riddle, he went out to get water from the spring, but he’d hardly taken three steps from the shelter when there was a sudden movement beyond the fence, and pandemonium broke loose. It was like that night back at the bunkhouse when all the fiends of darkness had begun to shriek together. Only here it was worse, for the fiends were closer, and there were no walls to muffle the sound of them.

  Abruptly everyone in the shelter was awake and calling out in alarm. Brick glimpsed a flock of birds as big as chickens fanning out into the weed-grown orchard at his rear, but his attention went to the creature beyond the fence that had frightened them.

  Before he could get a clear view of it, Nurse Jackson had appeared beside him, her sturdy form draped in a blanket. “Guineas!” she burst out happily. “Real live guineas! Didn’t dream they were here—but that means we’ll have eggs for breakfast.” She sighed. “They do make a horrid racket, don’t they? Such wild things, and they seem to have gone wild here. Papa used to raise ’em when I was a kid, and I should have realized they were what you heard that night.… Brick, what are you staring at?”