The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit (best free novels .txt) 📗

Psammead and its fish-basket under one arm. The charm’s long string was hung round her neck. Then they all stood up. Jane held out the charm at arm’s length, and Cyril solemnly pronounced the word of power.

As he spoke it the charm grew tall and broad, and he saw that Jane was just 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 go through it. All round and beyond the arch were the faded trees and trampled grass of Regent’s Park, where the little ragged children were playing Ring-o’-Roses. But through the opening of it shone a blaze of blue and yellow and red. Cyril drew a long breath and stiffened his legs so that the others should not see that his knees were trembling and almost knocking together. “Here goes!” he said, and, stepping up through the arch, disappeared. Then followed Anthea. Robert, coming next, held fast, at Anthea’s suggestion, to the sleeve of Jane, who was thus dragged safely through the arch. And as soon as they were on the other side of the arch there was no more arch at all and no more Regent’s Park either, 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 and rubbed their eyes. During this dazzling interval Anthea felt for the charm 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 looked around them. The sky was very, very blue, and it sparkled and glittered and dazzled like the sea at home when the sun shines on it.

They were standing on a little clearing in a thick, low forest; there were trees and shrubs and a close, thorny, tangly undergrowth. In front of them stretched a bank of strange black mud, then came the browny-yellowy shining ribbon of a river. Then more dry, caked mud and more greeny-browny jungle. The only things that told that human people had been there were the clearing, a path that led to it, and an odd arrangement 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 London in 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, or what.”

“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 for natural history.

The Psammead reached out a hairy arm from its basket and pointed to a heap of mud at the edge of the water.

“What do you call that?” it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slid into the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from a bricklayer’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 an enormous slaty-blue slug showed itself against the black bank on the far side of the stream.

“It’s a hippopotamus,” said Cyril; “it seems much more real somehow than the 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 was horrible. Of course it might be another hippopotamus, or a crocodile, or a lion—or, in fact, almost anything.

“Keep your hand on the charm, Jane,” said Robert hastily. “We ought to have a means of escape handy. I’m dead certain this is the sort of place where 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 and fair, and though her skin was tanned by the sun, you could see that it would have been fair too if it had had a chance. She had every chance of being tanned, for she had no clothes to speak of, and the four English children, carefully dressed in frocks, hats, shoes, stockings, coats, collars, and all the rest of it, envied her more than any words of theirs or of mine could possibly say. There was no doubt that here was the right costume for that climate.

She carried a pot on her head, of red and black earthenware. She did not see the children, who shrank back against the edge of the jungle, and she went forward to the brink of the river to fill her pitcher. As she went she made a strange sort of droning, humming, melancholy noise all on two notes. Anthea could not help thinking that perhaps the girl thought this noise was singing.

The girl filled the pitcher and set it down by the river bank. Then she waded into the water and stooped over the circle of cut reeds. She pulled half a dozen fine fish out of the water within the reeds, killing each as she took it out, and threading it on a long osier that she carried. Then she knotted the osier, hung it on her arm, picked up the pitcher, and turned to come back. And as she turned she saw the four children. The white dresses of Jane and Anthea stood out like snow against the dark forest background. She screamed and the pitcher fell, and the water was spilled out over the hard mud surface and over the fish, which had fallen too. Then the water slowly trickled away into the deep 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 was that the girl could understand Anthea and Anthea could understand the girl. You, at any rate, would not understand me, if I tried to explain it, any more than you can understand about time and space being only forms of thought. You may think what you like. Perhaps the children had found out the universal language which everyone can understand, and which wise men so far have not found. You will have noticed long ago that they were singularly lucky children, and they may have had this piece of luck as well as others. Or it may have been that... but why pursue the question further? The fact remains that in all their adventures the muddle-headed inventions which we call foreign languages never bothered them in the least. They could always understand and be understood. If you can explain this, please do. I daresay I could understand your explanation, though you could never understand mine.

So when the girl said, “Who are you?” everyone understood at once, and Anthea replied—

“We are children—just like you. Don’t be frightened. Won’t you show us where you live?”

Jane put her face right into the Psammead’s basket, and burrowed her mouth 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 said rather crossly. “You can always get back to Regent’s Park in time if you keep 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 trumpery thing that pretended to be silver; it had a glass heart of turquoise blue hanging from it, and it was the gift of the maid-of-all-work at the Fitzroy Street house.

“Here,” said Anthea, “this is for you. That is to show we will not hurt you. And if you take it I shall know that you won’t hurt us.”

The girl held out her hand. Anthea slid the bangle over it, and the girl’s face lighted up with the joy of possession.

“Come,” she said, looking lovingly at the bangle; “it is peace between your house and mine.”

She picked up her fish and pitcher and led the way up the narrow path by which 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 it quite different from the Phœnix and Carpet happenings.”

The belt of thick-growing acacia trees and shrubs—mostly prickly and unpleasant-looking—seemed about half a mile across. The path was narrow and the wood dark. At last, ahead, daylight shone through the boughs and leaves.

The whole party suddenly came out of the wood’s shadow into the glare of the sunlight that shone on a great stretch of yellow sand, dotted with heaps of grey rocks where spiky cactus plants showed gaudy crimson and pink flowers among their shabby, sand-peppered leaves. Away to the right was something that looked like a grey-brown hedge, and from beyond it blue smoke went up to the bluer sky. And over all the sun shone till you could 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 all right.”

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 merely snarled—

“If you don’t go now I’ll never help you again.”

“Oh,” whispered Anthea, “dear Jane, don’t! Think of Father and Mother and 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’s no 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 great hedge 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 are as long as my foot.”

There was an opening in the hedge, and they followed the girl through it. A little way further on was another hedge, not so high, also of dry thorn bushes, very prickly and spiteful-looking, and within this was a sort of village of huts.

There were no gardens and no roads. Just huts built of wood and twigs and clay, and roofed with great palm-leaves, dumped down anywhere. The doors of these houses were very low, like the doors of dog-kennels. The ground between them was not paths or streets, but just yellow sand trampled very hard and smooth.

In the middle of the village there was a hedge that enclosed what seemed to 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 than dozens of men and women and children came crowding round from behind and inside the huts.

The girl stood protectingly in front of the four children, and said—

“They are wonder-children from beyond the desert. They bring marvellous gifts, 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 never before 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 when he had had to wait in an outer office while his father interviewed a solicitor, and there had been nothing to read but the Daily Telegraph—“we come from the world where the sun never sets. And peace with honour is what we want. We are the great Anglo-Saxon or conquering race. Not that we want to conquer you,” he added hastily. “We only want to look at your houses and your—well, at all you’ve got here, and then we shall return to our own place, and tell of all that we have seen so that your name may be famed.”

Cyril’s speech didn’t keep the crowd from pressing round and looking as eagerly as ever at the clothing of the children. Anthea had an idea that these people had never seen woven stuff before,