Magic by the Lake

by Edward Eager

  Katharine glanced ahead. She turned pale. "Don't look!" she cried; so of course everyone did.

  A curved fin was bearing down toward them. No one needed to be told whose fin it was. Martha began to cry.

  "Don't give up. Not yet," said Mark grimly. "Look over there."

  Everybody looked the other way. The tropical sun, a hot red ball, was sinking toward the blue waves. In its heat the last remnants of the iceberg were dissolving fast. The four children could hear small tinkles and crackings below them now as its underpinnings gave way, and when they looked down, they could see heaving sea through the poor final fragment that was just big enough to bear their weight. It was a race between the iceberg and the sun. The shark could afford to wait. Martha had her hands over her eyes, but she peeked between her fingers and saw the curved fin hovering nearby.

  Then the last thin ice melted, and the four children felt themselves sinking. But they didn't plunge into watery saltness, or into sharky, toothy sharpness either. For as the iceberg sank, so did the sun, and the four children landed with a thud on hard, dry flooring.

  They were sitting in a circle on the living room floor looking at a dishpan full of water.

  Their mother came into the room. "What are you doing in here?" she said. "The storm stopped ages ago. Don't you want to go swimming?"

  Mark and Martha and Jane and Katharine rose crampedly to their feet and staggered to fetch their bathing suits. And the mind of each grappled dazedly with the fact that it was still only morning after the long full day they'd already had.

  As they came out into the sunlight, a black-and-white towhee was scratching among the weeds near the porch. Thinking it was the penguin grown to handier, convenient size, Carrie hurried away after it.

  The four children paid her no heed. The lake was waiting. They ran into it.

  5. The Bottle

  When Mr. Smith came home from the bookshop that evening, he brought newspapers with him, and the newspapers had staring headlines. Some American explorers had discovered the South Pole.

  "Isn't it exciting?" said the children's mother.

  "Oh, that," said Martha.

  "It's all right, I guess," said Jane, "if you like that kind of thing."

  But as soon as they were alone, the four children read the newspaper accounts through carefully. None of the stories made any mention of Carrie, and they didn't say anything about four ghostly children, either.

  "It's not fair," said Jane. "It was our best chance of going down in history, so far. Now I'll have to think of something else."

  "I don't mind for myself," said Martha. "It's Carrie. You'd think the least they could do would be name the continent after her!"

  "Little Cattia," said Mark.

  "Feline Island," said Katharine.

  "New Carrie," said Jane.

  There was a pause. "Oh, well," said Mark. "At least we'll always know we were a part of it."

  "We can feel secretly proud," said Katharine.

  "Virtue is its own reward," said Martha.

  "It would be," said Jane. "As if it weren't dull enough already! It's adding insult to injury." But she cut the newspaper stories out and put them away in her top bureau drawer just the same.

  The reason the four children were alone was that their mother and Mr. Smith were in the upstairs bedroom talking. They talked for a long time, and dinner was late, and after dinner (and dishes) their mother and Mr. Smith kept looking at each other as if they had something on their minds and wanted to be alone with it, and kept asking the four children if they weren't tired and didn't want to go to bed early, until at last the four children saw the point and decided to humor the poor hapless adults, and they went to bed. And Jane and Katharine and Martha went to sleep.

  Mark went to sleep for a while, but then he woke up. The reason he woke up was that their mother and Mr. Smith had come downstairs from their bedroom for a midnight snack and were sitting in the living room having it. And the light shone in Mark's • eyes on the sleeping porch, and he could hear every word they said.

  Of course, he knew perfectly well that eavesdropping is wrong, and he probably should have called out and warned them, but by the time he thought of this he'd already heard so much he decided it would be embarrassing. And besides, he wasn't dropping from the eaves; he was lying obediently in his own bed, and if people would come talking right by an open window right next to him, he couldn't help that, could he? And besides, it was interesting.

  So he lay low and said nothing. After a while their mother and Mr. Smith put out the living room light and went upstairs. But still Mark lay awake for a long time thinking.

  Right after breakfast next morning, before swimming or anything, he called a conference. And because the sight of the lake might prove too tantalizing, when there was nothing they could do about it till day after tomorrow, he called it on the other side of the cottage, the side next to the pasture with the sheep and the unfriendly rams. Jane and Katharine and Martha sat in a row on the split-rail fence and listened, while Mark perched on a boulder and drew patterns in the earth with a stick, as he talked.

  "The thing is," he said, "this summer may be all very well for us, and a consolation devoutly to be wished, but it's hard on Mr. Smith," (for he could never bring himself to say Uncle Huge, the way Martha did). "He has to run all this and the bookshop, too. He's having to kind of lead a double life."

  "Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," said Katharine.

  "Only different," said Jane.

  "And the thing is," said Mark, "it's beginning to Tell on him. His Business is Suffering. And he's worried about it. I heard him tell Mother so."

  "He looks tired, too," said Martha. "All that driving back and forth."

  "And it's all our fault," said Katharine. "We've been enjoying the magic, and wasting its sweetness on our own desert air, and never thinking of others at all."

  "We've got to do something," said Jane.

  "What'll we do?" said Martha.

  "That's the whole point," said Mark. "The next wish has got to be for him."

  "You're right," said Jane. "It's only fair."

  "What'll we wish?" said Martha.

  "That's the whole point," said Mark again. "We don't want to rush off half-cocked, the way we did when we tried to help Mother with the half-magic that other time. Remember what happened."

  They remembered.

  "No," he went on, "this time we've really got to think it over first. And that's why it's good that we've got two whole days before the magic. We can be thinking."

  "Good," said Jane. "We'll do that."

  "Let's," said Katharine.

  Martha nodded her head earnestly.

  And with that settled, the four children forgot all about Mr. Smith for the moment and turned their minds happily to the important question of how they were to while away the golden hours in the meantime.

  It was a blue-skied morning, and the sun shone brightly but coolly, and a fresh wind blew.

  "This," said Mark, "is the kind of day when the open road calls."

  "Let's explore," said Jane.

  "We already did," said Martha.

  "Not that old South Pole," said Jane in tones of scorn. "Let's explore our own territory. See America first. We've never found out where that red-clay road goes."

  "We could take our lunch," said Katharine.

  "What kind of sandwiches?" said Mark.

  "Jam," said Martha thoughtfully, "and peanut-butter-and-banana, and cream-cheese-and-honey, and date-and-nut, and prune-and-marshmallow..."

  A time passed.

  Their mother came into the kitchen. "What's all this mess?" she said. "Nobody leaves this house till it's cleaned up."

  And nobody did.

  By the time Jane and Mark and Katharine were ready to go, the sun had climbed lots higher in the sky and wasn't half so cool. And they had made so many sandwiches and tasted the important parts of each so many times to get just the right blends that by now everybody's gorge rose and nobody
felt like having a picnic for ages, at least. But they packed the lunch basket with the sandwiches, anyway.

  "Where's Martha?" asked somebody.

  It turned out nobody had seen her for some time.

  "Here I am," said a voice at that moment. " Are we all ready?" And a small figure walked in from outside.

  "No thanks to you," said Mark. "Workshirk."

  "I had something to do," said Martha.

  "Naturally," said Jane. "At a time like this. Just for that you get to carry the lunch basket." And Martha did.

  The four children went over the rolling meadow with the sheep, keeping well out of the way of the untrustworthy rams, and came into the red-clay road some distance beyond the farm where the milk came from. From now on all was unexplored territory, and they explored it.

  Once some bluebirds flew over saying, "Tru-alee," and for a while there were some bright yellow wildflowers growing by the side of the road that Mark, who always knew about such things, said were tansy, also called bitter buttons. Jane, ever venturesome, tasted a few and said they were bitter all right. None of the others cared to try.

  But otherwise, one red-clay hill proved very much like another, and they kept going on and on, and there didn't seem to be any end to them, until at the top of the third one Martha, who hadn't been in on all the sandwich-making and who had been carrying the heavy basket all this while, sat down by the side of the road and said she wasn't going a step farther until she had her lunch right here and now.

  "Not out here in the sun like this," said Katharine, wiping perspiration from her eyebrows. "Human flesh couldn't stand it. It'd broil."

  "There's a woods coming," said Mark, pointing ahead. "If we just keep on, we're sure to find an ideal spot."

  So he and Jane and Katharine and a reluctant Martha trudged down the third hill and toiled up the fourth, and at the top of it the woods came right up to the side of the road, and there proved to be a track that turned off and went in among the trees, and the four children followed it.

  "Coolth," said Katharine. "Blessed, blessed coolth."

  "That's no word," said Jane.

  "It ought to be," said Katharine, pressing on.

  A woods in August isn't quite the magic thing that it is in early spring, when birds are still fresh-voiced and violets are pushing through. Still, a woods is a woods, and the four children hadn't been in one for weeks at least, and there were branches to swing from (Mark), and side paths to explore (Jane), and ferns to collect and keep dropping (Katharine), and all the time Martha kept finding one ideal spot after another, and the other three kept saying they weren't quite ideal enough.

  At last they came to a clearing with a brook curving through, and though it wasn't the babbling time of the year, there was still a satisfactorily wet trickling at the bottom, and Jane sat down on the bank and took off her shoes and socks and put her feet in the water and announced that this was the place for her. So then there were the sandwiches to be unpacked and divided with scrupulous fairness, and after that Jane traded all her peanut-butter-and-banana for all Katharine's prune-and-marshmallow, and after that nobody said anything for a long time.

  "Now," said Martha finally. "What are we going to do about Uncle Huge and the magic?"

  "We can't do anything," said Mark. "Not yet."

  "What are we going to do when we do do something?" said Martha, sounding like a popular song, as Katharine pointed out.

  A discussion of the chief ballads of the day followed, and a stirring rendition of "Do, Do, Do What You've Done, Done, Done Before" on the part of Jane and Katharine. When silence had been restored, Martha returned to the subject.

  "I've been thinking," she said, "about that treasure."

  "What treasure?" said Katharine.

  "The treasure on the island, silly," said Mark. "The pirate treasure, the treasure in the chest. I've been thinking about it, too."

  "Why, yes!" Jane joined in excitedly. "Sure! That pirate captain marked the stone with his initials as plain as plain! We could find it and dig it up in no time! It's a cinch!"

  "Of course, we never saw inside it," said Katharine, "but you can guess what it'd be. Would pieces of eight still be worth anything after all these years?"

  "Rare coin collectors would give untold millions," said Mark. "There're probably jewels there, too. We could probably give Mother some and still have enough left over to put us all on Easy Street!"

  "That's what we'll do, then," said Jane.

  "I thought of it first," said Martha.

  "Day after tomorrow," said Katharine. "I can't wait."

  "We'll get back to the house now and plan," said Mark.

  To pack the empty sandwich papers in the lunchbox and bury the unsightly crusts (of which there were a good many) was but the work of a moment, and the four children set upon the homeward trek.

  "Which direction?" Katharine wondered.

  "That-a-way," said Mark, pointing, and then starting through the trees. Everyone else followed.

  Ten minutes later they were still walking, and there was still no sign of the red-clay road.

  "It ought to be right ahead any minute now," said Mark.

  But it wasn't. What was right ahead was a clearing, with a brook curving through and a stray sandwich paper somebody had forgotten caught in a bush and rustling in the breeze.

  "We've come in a circle," said Jane.

  "Are we lost?" said Martha, beginning to sound scared.

  "Pooh," said Mark. "That's nothing. That always happens in a woods. You veer toward the left cause your heart's on that side."

  "Well," said Jane, "it's nice to know our hearts are on the right side, anyway."

  "Left," Mark corrected her.

  "You know what I mean," said Jane.

  "Maybe if we all sort of leaned toward the right and tried again," said Katharine.

  This didn't sound very sensible and looked even sillier, but the four children were willing to try anything. Turning their backs to the brook, they walked lopsidedly away. A time passed.

  "I've seen that stick before," said Katharine, pointing at the ground.

  "That's not a stick, it's a branch," said Jane.

  "Whatever it is," said Katharine. "I remember that knobbly part. We're in a circle again."

  A few steps farther on, the familiar brook appeared.

  "We are lost," said Martha, sounding really scared now. The four children sat down on the bank and faced this fact.

  "Now I know what it means about not seeing the woods for the trees," said Jane, looking round at the curtain of green.

  "I for one," said Katharine, "will never feel the same about Arbor Day again."

  "If that brook were the lake," said Jane, "we could touch it and wish ourselves home right now."

  "And if it were day after tomorrow," Mark reminded her.

  "Oh, those old rules!" said Martha. "Always making things harder!"

  "We asked for them, don't forget," said Mark. "It was worse when we didn't have any."

  "Maybe we should call the turtle," said Katharine. "It sent a penguin before."

  "What would it send in a woods?" Jane wondered. "A moose, maybe."

  "O turtle?" said Mark, but not as if he expected any answer.

  Still, everybody looked round in every direction, just the same. Nothing passed by but a caterpillar who was just looking.

  "It can't come," said Mark. "The magic's bigger than it is now. It said so."

  "Yes, it did, didn't it?" said Martha in rather a peculiar voice. "Then if we had some lake water here now, we could make it come, couldn't we?"

  "If," said Mark. "If!"

  "Well?" said Martha. And she triumphantly drew a small bottle from her pocket.

  "That's Mother's best French perfume," said Jane.

  "It was," said Martha. "She used the last drop the night we all went to the dance. She said I could have the bottle for my handkerchief drawer. It's got lake water in it right now. I went down to the beach and got some before we sta
rted, just in case!"

  She finished and looked round at the others proudly and defiantly, and everybody's heart sank. Because everybody knew Martha had got over being scared now and was going to be awful. That was always the way with Martha, and when she was that way, there was no doing anything with her.

  "This is terrible," Katharine wailed. "She'll make the turtle come, and that'll break all the rules, and the magic'll be out of control again! Wait!" she begged Martha. "Remember how it was that first day! Remember that big snake thing?"

  "Give me that bottle," said Jane, "before you do something foolish."

  "I won't," said Martha. "What do I care about those old rules, or that old snake thing either? If we wait till day after tomorrow, Uncle Huge could go bankrupt in the meantime! We've got to get him that treasure right now!"

  "Careful," said Mark. "Every time we ever broke rules before it brought us nothing but disaster!"

  "I don't care," said Martha. "Anyway, I'm tired of woods and my feet hurt."

  "Of course that's the whole point," said Jane. "Shame on you! Pretending you're doing it for Mr. Smith when all along you're just being selfish!"

  "Oh, I am, am I?" cried Martha in a rage. "Just for that I'll do the whole thing by myself, and you needn't any of you even bother to come along! You can stay here and wait for three days for all I care! I don't need you and I don't need that old turtle, either!" And pulling the stopper from the bottle, she dashed its contents recklessly all over her hands and front. "I wish," she cried, "that all the rules were broken and I was on that island with the pirate's treasure this minute!"

  And she was.

  It all happened so quickly that not even Mark could do a thing to stop her. All he and Jane and Katharine could do was stand staring stupidly at the spot where Martha had been and where she now suddenly wasn't anymore. And if you have ever looked at a spot where somebody suddenly isn't anymore, you will have some idea of how he and Jane and Katharine felt.

  A chill wind sprang up and blew through the empty space, just to make it eerier.

  Some drops of water that had rolled off Martha's hands splashed to the ground.

  "Quick!" cried Katharine. "Touch them and wish!"