by Edward Eager
"I think it's just sleep-talk," she said. "The time has come for desperate measures."
"Let me," said Martha, glad to get away from the doorway even for a second.
She ran to the bathroom and fetched a wet sponge. Avoiding the sputtering Carrie, she ran back to the bed and trickled the sponge upon Jane.
Jane sat up in bed and struck her sister full in the face.
In the tears and apologies and mopping-up that followed, Jane awoke sufficiently to be engaged in sensible conversation and to notice the gurglings and spittings of Carrie.
"What did somebody do—wish she could talk?" she asked.
"Yes, I did. How did you know?" Martha stared in amazement.
"How did you happen to find the charm? Who told you you could go through my things?"
"I didn't! I don't know what you mean!"
"Wait a minute. Where were you standing when you wished it?"
"I wasn't. I was sitting down." And Martha showed her where.
"You must have leaned back and touched it."
"Touched what?" said Martha.
"What charm?" said Katharine.
"The charm in the shoebag," said Jane. "Wait till I tell you."
She told them.
"I don't see how you're so sure," said Martha, when she had finished. "About Mother last night, I mean."
"She just as good as said so," said Jane, "and I Sherlock Holmsed the rest. Don't you see? She wished she were home and ended up halfway home! I wished there'd be a fire and got a little fire! A child's-size fire! Martha wished Carrie could talk and she can half talk!"
"Wah. Oom. Fitzbattleaxe," remarked Carrie.
"Exactly," said Jane. "It's that nickel I found, only it isn't a nickel! It's a magic charm and it does things by halves! So far we've each got half of what we wished for—all we have to do from now on is ask it for twice as much as we really want! You see?"
"I haven't had fractions yet," said Martha.
Jane explained further. Martha became weary of the explanation.
"What would twice as much as never having to learn fractions be?" she wanted to know, at last.
"Don't be silly—you don't want to ask it things like that!" Katharine cried in scorn.
"Nobody's going to ask for anything till we talk it over and decide," Jane announced firmly. "We don't want to waste any more wishes—we can't tell how soon we might wear it out! We'll make plans, and then take turns. My turn yesterday doesn't count, 'cause I didn't know. I get to go first, 'cause I'm the oldest."
"What would twice as much as not being the youngest anymore be?" was the bitter question of Martha, who was tired of always coming last.
But the others paid her no heed.
"I mean to ask for all kinds of really wonderful, exciting, important things!" Katharine was saying. "Only I'm not sure just what yet."
"Idjwitz! Selfitz! Fitzmefitz!" said Carrie, suddenly.
They looked at her in remorse. Now that they knew the reason for them, her outcries weren't so alarming anymore—they'd even almost forgotten about her. But, in spite of the fact that she seemed to be learning to express herself a little more clearly, she was plainly so enraged by her half-talking state that something had to be done.
"Poor Carrie, I'll fix you up first of all," Jane promised. "The charm's right in here."
She put her hand into the shoebag. But it wasn't.
She put her hand into another compartment. The charm wasn't there, either!
She began wildly searching through all the different sections, taking out pairs of shoes and shaking them. The magic thing wasn't in any of them. Jane began to get in one of her rages.
"Really, what a house!" she cried. "Nothing ever stays where you put it! Has Miss Bick been cleaning my room again?"
"No, she said it needed it but it was beyond her!"
"Mark!" was the next thought of Jane. "I wondered where he was! Has anyone seen him?"
"I did," reported Martha. "He came in here and got his roller skates, just a few minutes ago."
"Roller skates!" Jane's voice was a wail. "They were in the shoebag! He must have found the charm and taken it! A person might as well be living in a den of thieves around here!"
"I don't think he did," Martha said. "He said the whole thing was just a coincidence."
"He probably never noticed the magic charm at all," Katharine pointed out reasonably. "He probably just put the skates on with it in one of them, where you probably put it in the dark last night, without realizing. It probably got stuck down there in the tightening part. It's probably still there, only he probably doesn't know. He'll probably make a wish pretty soon, and then suddenly..."
"Stop!" Jane could bear no more. "We've got to find him! Before he wishes for some awful thing and gets half of it! Where do you suppose he could haven gone?"
Jane was rushing into her clothes now.
"Wah! Mefitz! Mefitz!" said Carrie, crossly.
"All right. We'll take you along." Martha, who was beginning to understand Carrie's half-language, hoisted her up under one arm.
They met Miss Bick in the hall.
"Where are you taking that cat?" she wanted to know.
"Idjwit! Foo! Fitzouta thewayfitz!" said Carrie savagely.
Miss Bick backed away, turning pale.
"That cat is ill!" she cried.
"I know. We're taking her to the vet's," Katharine called back over her shoulder.
Like everything else lately, the lie was only half an untruth. They were taking Carrie to be cured, if the charm could cure her.
The children emerged from the house, and stood looking around. Fortunately they lived on a corner lot, and could look down streets running in all four directions.
But no welcome sound of whirring skate wheels, no welcome sight of an eleven-year-old boy rewarded them. Finally they started hurrying south on Maplewood Avenue, not because south looked any more promising than east or north or west, but because they had to start somewhere. Martha tried to muffle the sounds Carrie kept making by holding her close to her, but the few passers-by they met kept turning to stare after them.
"Wah! Oom! Fitzpatrix!" Carrie screamed at the passers-by. She almost seemed to be enjoying herself.
, "Hush. Hush," Martha told her. She was having hard work running fast enough to keep up with her sisters. "It won't be long now. At least, oh, I hope it won't!"
Meanwhile Mark had been skating around the neighborhood for some time. It was a dark, gloomy day and he wished the sun would come out. A minute later it did sort of half peep through the clouds.
Now that he was older, roller skating didn't seem quite the thing of whirlwind speed that it used to be, back in the days when it was new to him. He wished the skates would go faster. Pretty soon it seemed as though they did, a little.
But just skating around by himself wasn't very much fun. He wished all the guys were back from their vacations. He wished that when he came to the vacant lot up ahead, he'd see them there, playing baseball as usual.
And for a second, as he whizzed past the vacant lot, he did seem to sort of half-see a ghostly game in progress.
He rounded the corner and came down his own block on Maplewood. As he passed Mrs. Hudson's house he wished, as he'd often wished before, that just for once the iron dog in the yard would be alive, instead of only iron.
Then he looked back. For a minute he thought he heard a faint muffled bark, and it seemed as though the iron tail had tried to wag. Mark guessed he must have a pretty vivid imagination, all right, the way Miss Amrhein, his last year's teacher, had always said.
Thinking of Miss Amrhein reminded him of school. Maybe somebody'd be hanging around the playground, somebody else who hadn't gone away for vacation. He turned at the corner, and skated down Monroe Street toward the school building.
***
It was just after Mark turned the corner that Jane and Katharine and Martha came out of the house and started hurrying down the street.
As they passed Mrs.
Hudson's yard, Carrie the cat struggled out of Martha's arms and ran up to the iron dog.
"Yah!" she cried, hissing and spitting at him. "Fitzbully! Fitzmutt! Curfitz!"
A strangled growl came from within the iron dog, and he strained forward, trembling, as though trying to lunge at Carrie.
Jane gave a cry of triumph.
"Look!" she cried. "It's half-alive! Mark must have been here! He must have wished! Hurry up—we're on the right track!"
Martha dragged Carrie away from the iron dog and rushed on after the others. At the corner they hesitated, then turned and ran down Monroe Street, toward the school.
Mark stood looking around the playground. It was deserted, as he might have known it would be. Disappointed, he hauled himself up on the trapeze bar, hung by his knees, and swung head downward. He almost—but not quite—wished it were time for school to begin again; so all the kids would be back. A person might as well be on a desert island as in this empty town!
The thought of desert islands reminded him that he hadn't reread Robinson Crusoe yet this year. He was still thinking about Robinson Crusoe when his sisters came running into the playground.
"Thank goodness we found you in time to warn you!" Jane cried. "What have you been doing?"
Mark, still hanging head downwards, looked up at her.
"I was just wishing we were all on a desert island," he said.
Next moment the trapeze seemed to give way and he fell heavily to the ground. But instead of landing on the scratchy gravel of the playground, he fell on hot sand.
He rolled over and looked around him. His sisters sat nearby, looking only a trifle less surprised than he felt. Above, a flaming-hot sun blazed in a cloudless sky. Otherwise there didn't seem to be anything anywhere but sand.
"What happened? Where are we?" he cried dazedly.
Jane sighed grimly.
"You just got half a wish," she told him. "Desert, yes. Island, no."
Mark looked around again. It was all too true. Desert there certainly was, but no welcome sight of distant waves graced the horizon—only more sand, mile on monotonous mile of it.
"It's all right," Jane went on, a bit wearily. "I just do wish everybody wouldn't keep wasting wishes, though! Take off your skates and I'll get us home again."
To make Mark understand even a part of the situation was the work of several moments. They told him about the half-fire, about Mother, about Carrie. At last he began to believe.
He took off one of the skates and shook it. Nothing happened. He took off the other skate and shook it.
Something metal shot through the air in a bright arc, glittering in the pitiless light of the desert sun, then fell into the sand.
Each of the children would have sworn that he knew just where the magic thing had fallen, and four pairs of hands set to work with a will, burrowing in the sandy hotness. One pair of paws set to work also, Carrie the cat having decided to be helpful for once. There was a good bit of getting in each other's way and arguing.
Five minutes later the magic charm had still not been found. The sand was beginning to feel hotter. Fingers were getting sorer and tempers shorter.
"Don't crawl where I'm digging," said Katharine to Martha.
"Don't dig where I'm crawling," said Martha to Katharine.
"The way that charm keeps not staying put," said Jane, "you'd think it wanted everything to work out wrong!"
Ten more minutes passed.
"I for one," said Martha, sitting back exhausted, "will never play in a sandbox again."
"All the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten this old sand," agreed the poetical Katharine, also sitting back.
"But we have to find it!" Jane cried, still digging desperately. "Otherwise we'll never get home! We'll die of thirst and some Arab will find our bleached bones months later and never know who we were!"
"I'm thirsty now," said Martha. "I'm hungry, too," she added.
"How do we know this really is Arabia?" asked Mark. "Maybe it's just Death Valley."
"Either way," said Jane, "is small comfort. Keep digging. Though it is like looking for a camel in a needle's eye," she admitted.
It was then that the caravan appeared.
It was a rather shopworn-looking caravan, only three mangy camels with one ragged Arab driving them, and some very meager, empty-looking packs on the camels' backs, but it served to make plain to the four children that they were, in fact, in that fabled wasteland they had read of so much in fact and fiction.
"Lost in the Sahara!" cried Katharine dramatically.
Mark was more practical.
"Caravan ahoy!" he shouted. "S 0 S! Help! Lend a hand!"
The three mangy camels and the ragged Arab altered their course and came toward them.
As they drew nearer, the four children began to wish they wouldn't. The ragged Arab's expression was crafty, and definitely unattractive. As he came to a stop before them he smiled, which made him look more unpleasant than ever.
"Bismillah!" he said.
"How!" said Martha.
"What do you think he is, an Indian?" hissed Mark, under his breath. He addressed the Arab. "Allee samee show humble servant nearest oasis chop-chop?"
"He won't understand that either—that's Chinese!" said Jane.
But the Arab seemed to comprehend.
"Western children follow Achmed," he said.
Jane refused to go.
"We can't leave the charm!" she cried. "It's our only chance to get home!"
"We might get to a place where there's Western Union. We could cable Mother collect. She might send for us," said Katharine doubtfully.
"It would cost untold millions and take ages!" cried Jane. "I won't budge from this spot! We'll find the magic thing if we keep looking!"
But the Arab, Achmed, seized her by the arm and propelled her, none too gently, toward the nearest camel.
"Do what he says," Mark whispered to Jane. "We have to get some water, anyway. We can always find this spot again if we leave the roller skates to mark it."
He didn't add that his fear was that the wind might bury the skates in sand before they could return. He didn't mention some other fears that were bothering him, either.
Jane allowed the Arab to help her up onto the nearest camel. Mark helped Katharine climb onto the second one, and the Arab lifted Martha onto the third. With Mark and the Arab on foot, they started away over the desert.
After a bit, Jane began to enjoy the new sensation of riding camel-back, and forgot the charm for the moment. Katharine too seemed almost happy, but the up-and-down motion made Martha seasick and she begged to be taken down.
Mark helped her off the camel and she walked along with him. But her short legs soon tired, and her feet grew sore from the hot sand burning through the thin soles of her shoes. Mark had to half-carry. her and the going was slow. They lagged a bit behind the others.
What worried Mark was that he didn't trust Achmed the Arab. Achmed had been all too eager to take the children with him, and Mark didn't like his smile.
Presently Mark's fears were confirmed. Carrie the cat seemed to be making friends with the third camel, the one Martha had been riding. She frisked along by the camel's side. The camel leaned his head down to hers. It almost looked as though they were conversing together, the way animals undoubtedly do.
A moment later Carrie ran back to Mark and Martha. Her fur was standing on end with anger and excitement.
"Foo! Idjwitz!" she hissed at Mark. "Fitzachmed fitzwieked! Fitzkidnap! Ransomowitz!"
"I was afraid of that," said Mark. "Who told you?"
"Fitzcamel!"
Martha began to cry.
"Don't worry," Mark told her. "We'll escape somehow."
But he wished he knew how. Fortunately just then the oasis came into sight, which distracted Martha's attention.
It wasn't a very big oasis—no Western Union—but there were two or three date palms and a spring of water. Everyone stopped for a welcome drink. The dates w
ere delicious. Martha took off her shoes to cool her feet with water from the spring. There was a good deal of sand in her shoes, and as she shook it out it was Mark who first saw the round, shining, silvery thing that fell out with it.
Though he'd never had a real look at it before, he didn't need to be told what it was. His hand shot out and he caught the charm in mid-air before it could be lost again.
Katharine had seen it a second after Mark.
"I told you not to crawl where I was digging!" she told Martha.
Jane had seen it a second after Katharine.
"It's the charm!" she cried. "Wish us home! Here, let me!"
But the Arab, Achmed, was standing nearby, and had seen the shining thing, too. He strode forward, seized Mark by the wrist, and brought the silver charm close to his eyes, close enough to see the mystic marks on it.
The expression of his face changed. No longer did he look like a kidnapper who was planning and plotting wickedness. He looked like a righteous man who has caught a thief in his house, or even worse, in the temple of his gods. His voice was stern.
"Western child steal sacred charm," he cried. "Sacred charm lost many years. Give back!"
His hand closed on the charm but Mark's hand had closed on it first. Mark said the only thing that came into his mind.
"I wish you were half a mile away!"
And immediately, of course, Achmed the Arab was half of half a mile, or a quarter of a mile, away. The children could just see him, like a tiny dot far off on the desert sands. But the dot was coming nearer, as Achmed ran toward them again.
"Quick! Let me—I'll get us home! You don't know how!" Jane cried to Mark, but Mark waved her away. He was thinking.
"After all, maybe the charm did belong to his race," he said.
"It belongs to us now!" said Jane.
"Losers weepers finders keepers!" said Katharine.'
"But maybe it was stolen. From a temple or somewhere," said Mark, slowly. "You know how people used to be unjust to natives in the olden days. It doesn't seem fair."
The others had to agree that it didn't. All except Carrie, who was seldom troubled by noble motives.
"Fitzachmed fitzwicked!" she reminded Mark.